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@croweupc
It's ok to use the internet for research, but not to pass off entire posts as if they are out of your own head.
I think 'Dr' Franklin isn't worth engaging with - I doubt he has any original ideas of his own.
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@Dr.Franklin
@croweupc
I note a great many Bible conrradictions concern Chronicles.
The theory I favour is that Chronicles is a re-write of the material in the earlier OT books. The writer of Chronicles (often called 'The Chronicler') seems to have been unable to resist the temptation to exaggerate some of the numbers to make the iconic and semi-legendary kings of Hebrew histrory (Solomon and David) appear even more glorious than in the old legends. His enlarged numbers and other changes never serve to dimish the picture of Hebrews or their great kings so they aren't random errors.
The differences in the portryal of David in Chronicles and the early books is also worth noting. For example In 2 Samuel David has the husband of Bathsheeba (Uriah the Hittite) by whom he has a child killed. The Chronicler completely omits that blemish on David's character.in his account.
Of course nobody knows exactly why the Chronicler wrote his book but there are plenty of theories. But whatever his reasons, he purposely 'tweaked' the old stories.
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@Dr.Franklin
@croweupc
Talk about plagiarism!
One should at least acknowlege the source.
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@3RU7AL
if determinism holds then whether we blame or punish wrobg-doers is iteself pre-determined, as is the outcome of this debate. 'Que Sera Sera'.
Sorry i'm not very motiated by the 'free will' topic anymore. I'm faking it!
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@3RU7AL
not sure how this relates to free will..
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@Snoopy
Finding appropriate words is not easy when someone is being deliberately awkward about it! I am not sure conseratism and liberalism are only applicable in a political context - they can work in a religion context too. One can be deliberately obstructive and quibble - it depends on people's attitude towards the discussion.I found myself curious that you found what can be presumed a political ideology (conservatism) fitting for Islam, whilst among evangelical Christianity in the United States you mentioned fundamentalism which is essentially a slightly more liberal reading conforming with orthodoxy, but with different traditions and not "within the church".
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@Snoopy
That's to be expected generally speaking, but not particularly among youth. Considering that they live in an environment hostile to actual Islamic doctrine, conservatism proves a logical necessity.
Perhaps if you wrote at slightly more length I'd get your meaning. What is your reasoning?
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@RationalMadman
@3RU7AL
That is a distinct possibility. However it assumes rather than proves free will is absent.Your choice of the tea or coffee is enslaved to brain chemistry, hormones and context/environment.
If I choose tea, it is because I desire tea at that time. 'Fancying a cuppa' is a subjective state. It is - as yet - not proven that 'fancying a tea' and 'fancying a coffee' are different brain states. I'd bet money they are different states, but the existence of an 'ethereal free will' that is not part of physical reality is a theoretical possibility.
I think it will remain a theoretical possibility until the problem of how subjectivity arises is cracked. Chalmers does not call that 'the hard problem of consciousness' for nothing - it is extremely hard.
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You addressed the post to me directly, now your talking in the second person. What is the matter with you prosser.
3rd person. I was going to change it to 'you, Stephen' but it's only a forum post which will end up getting read by 3 people tops so I couldn't be arsed.
Listen Prosser. I don't blame MUSLIMS for doing what they doing. They will do what it takes for themselves and their barbaric ideology to survive. I blame absolute bastards like you for refusing to see what MUSLIMS are doing to preserve their ideology. so fk you gain prosser!.....
It would help your cause of not being taken as a bigot if you stopped referring to your opponents as 'absolute bastards'!
The details are not clear, but something is pushing muslims - especially younger muslims - into adopting conservative interpretations of Islam. It is as if young Americans were increasingly embracing Evangelical undamentalist Christianity - (which may or may not be the case, but that's for another time).
I don't see any up-side to that shift in attitudes! The big question is why are muslims are embracing conservative islam rather than its progressive forms. Before you, Stephen, start on there being no conservative or liberal forms of Islam I will point out that conservative Islam - with its meticulous observance of the letter of the qu'ran and hadith - is a relatively recent development. It can been traced to writers such as al Wahhab and Sayyid Qutb.
It is my view Islam has no ideology until it is interpreted. Nor can religion be considered in isolation form politics and economics. The reasons
Khuram Shazad Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba perpetrated the london bridge attack can't be reduced to the presence of a verse in the koran.
Is pointing that out Islamic apologetics or bleeding heart liberalism? Or is it trying to be objective because that is the best way to understand and solve a problem?
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@RationalMadman
@mustardness
@3RU7AL
@zedvictor4
If free will is real that then it should be possible to imagine a person without free will, and that person would be different from a person with free will.
So what would a person without free will be like? If you asked a free-will-less person to choose between tea or coffee, what would they do? if free will does not exist there can be no difference between having it and not having it.... how confident can be be that there is no difference between having and not having free will?
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@Stephen
I think what you're getting at is that 'Moderate' is not the same as 'Liberal or 'Progressive'!
That is, I think, true. I think its very likely that conditions and events - local and global - have resulted in many British muslims adopting a more 'narrow and conservative' reading of Islam than even a generation or so ago.
The question is do we want British muslims to be more liberal or do we want them not here at all? I think that the latter is not only odious it is impossible! We have no choice but to attempt the former, no matter how difficult it seems.
It gets even harder with people like Stephen demonising Islam and Muslims at every opportunity! I think we do need to discuss the social impact of Islam, but there's more to debate than posting videos selected to show muslims in a bad light. There are loads of other places to go for that sort of stuff.
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@Deb-8-a-bull
If there was a god, one could suspect he deliberately sows the seeds of discord! He replaced the old covenant with the new that Jews do not accept, and then revealed a 'newer covenant' to Mohammed that Christians do not accept.
If one believed in God, one could believe he wants people to quarrel and fight. But there is no God and people quarrel over the meaning of stories made up by men long ago and written to further their own selfish interests.
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@rosends
This page looks like a good suumary of biblical punishments.
Fines and 'scourging' were indeed applied for some minor offences, but the death penalty applied much more commonly than seems reasonable to us today! It was a very different world.
The story of the man stoned for picking upsticks on the sabbath is - IMO - not a historical event but serves to illustrate the importance of observing the sabbath, as a symbol of observing the rules of the YHWHist religion generally. The priests could use the story as the precedent for harsh treatment of any Hewbrew or Jew who deviated from what was laid down. Thus the priests could maintain control and discipline over the exiles, hence ensuring that Jewish identity (or rather the yhwhists' prefered version of jewish identity) was preserved.
Rather like Islam today, there was no distnction made between national/ethnic identity and religious identity; in other words no distinction between treason and blasphemy. Ergo, a sabbath breaker was a traitor, and even in today's world often treason is a capital offence where murder is not.
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@croweupc
I'm not sure that any punishment other than death is ever mentioned in the bible! I suspect that 'one-size' approach has its origin in the Hebrew's own origin as a nomadic tribe with no jails and didn't use cash.
Numbers 35:31 suggests that later on fines ('ransoms') replaced the death penalty except in the case of murder.
"'Do not accept a ransom for the life of a murderer, who deserves to die. They are to be put to death."
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I think I posted that link previously... if not to that article then certainly to the associated radio 4 documentary; I remember you saying that you refused to listen to it.
"Sarfraz Manzoor is a moderate Muslim but wonders if he is an oddity. Is the idea of the silent moderate Muslim majority a myth or reality?"
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@mustardness
The number of options is the same for a beginner as an expert - if what you mean by option is 'legal move'.
I regret saying anything as I don't really enjoy 'free will' threads any more!
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@Stephen
Yes an article that seems to go all the way in supporting what I say, not you.
I read it thoroughly before I linked to it, and I re-read it just now. I think it reflects my thinking about this issue very well. I think you must have a very wrong idea of what my position is! (In fact I know you do, because you keep calling me an Islamic apologist!).
What is it that you think I am saying? I certainly haven't avocated capitulation nor even appeasement or complacency - but I often think you must believe I crave being a doormat for irrational fanatics.
I note that Parkfield school has not 'caved in'. I am not aware of the details of any compromise and perhaps there will be more rumblings, but the fanatics have lost. It is immoderate Islam that is under threat, not 'Britishness'. That will certainly produce more problems as conserative Muslims strive to hang on, but I think the only way they can win is if the right succeeds in fomenting and ratcheting up anti-islamic and anti-Muslim sentiment.
At least I hope so, as we can scarce afford to deport Moeen Ali or Abdul Rashid until after we have won the world cup.
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@mustardness
Given the rules of chess there is a definite number of options - as in legal moves - at each point. A beginner cannot evaluate the avaliable choices effectively - especially for the opening few moves - so it feels to them that they have a wide choice.
An expert will reject many options almost without thinking and will choose their move from a small subset of the options available.
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@mustardness
I'm a rubbish chess player, but I suspect that a chess master sees fewer options than a beginner but sees them deeper.Brain function-ability varies, from one person to the next, however,IFF we those two brain above have exactly the same functionability --not amount of knowleddge or experience--- then the chess-master will see more options and that is irrelevant to issue of "free will".
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@Stephen
Why don't you do some research and find out why the term 'moderate' is an issue in the Muslim world?Why do muslims get "worked up" over the term, such as Erdogan the prime minister of Turkey with many Islamic Empires under his historical belt and who should know better than you, all about Islam and what it means to be a muslim.
Anyway, you must be extremely pleased - and relieved - to have found something that can be construed as almost justifying saying that there are no-go areas and that 'great swaths of the uk' have been overtaken by muslims.
I think it also exemplifies why I started a thread 'Why is Islam backward' and my link to an excellent article on why the prospects of reforming islam are poor at this time.
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@croweupc
It goes back to the time when priests had a monopoly on 'truth' - they were the sole authority about this world and the next. it was ;ikre that for thousands of years, and its very recent - within the last 2-3 hundred years - that their monopoly became threatened. The priests lost their authority about the natural world - scientists, not priests, could tell you about thunder, what made crops to grow and the stars to move.
That loss of status was resisted - it's well known that Galilieo was arrested and forced to deny his discoveries; less well known is that Giorfdano Bruno was burned at the stake for similar offences. It was a 'turf-war' over who had authority to pronounce on the 'nature of nature'.
An uneasy truce was next threatened when science offered a non-religious alterative to the nature of mankind - that battle is ongoing today.
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@Stephen
Stephen:Which is extremely unfortunate for muslims who actually do want to actaully live in a peaceful integrated western society.KP:You mean the 'moderates' you've been denying exist for months?Stephen: IF I MEANT "MODERATES",I WOULD HAVE SAID SO.
I think "muslims who actually do want to actaully live in a peaceful integrated western society." is a pretty good definition of what most people - at least most non-Musims - think of by 'moderate Muslims', and by extension the version of Islam they follow is 'moderate Islam'.
It's quite possible you, Stephen, do not think there are such Muslims, or that such an Islam is not Islam. That can be debated, but I don't get why you get so worked-up over a term that has become the usual idiom. When I quoted wikipedia saying 'Human' is 'homo sapiens' you dismissed it as 'semantics'! Honestly, if you are fussy about using words properly, you wouldn't keep call me a ruddy apologist!
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@Stephen
OK, so it was probably only quite, not very, primitive humans that invented gods.
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@Yassine
- Indeed. Tolerance is a weak concept. Secularists, in advancing their ultimate morality, fail to deliver & impress. Kindness, Respect, Charity, Affection & Compassion are far more valuable than just Tolerance.
I don't know any secularist who would disagree with "Kindness, Respect, Charity, Affection & Compassion are far more valuable than just Tolerance.' But often when they are all absent tolerance is an achievable staging post.
Secularists, in advancing their ultimate morality
As I am a secularist, I'm interested to know what my ultimate morality is.
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@RationalMadman
You don't mean 'endgame'.
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@disgusted
You can just grab some popcorn and watch this one...
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@Stephen
I am damn sure I have never posted that Islam is gay friendly!
Get this into you skull - I don't post against you because I love Islam. I post against you because I think you post inflamatory propaganda.
Are there social issues due to the presence of a muslim minority in the UK? Of course there are!!
What do you, Steve, do about those issues? You make sure every story that can show that minority in a bad light gets the maximum possible exposure here on DArt and possibly elsewhere.
My job is annoying you.
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@Mopac
Ok. I'll just run that past PGA and yassine... if they agree I'll pass on the recomendation!The Orthodox Catholic Church is the Christian Church. That being the case, instruction should be received from the holy orders of the church.
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@Stephen
i'm sure you are well aware how a skilled speaker can 'work' his audience. I wonder what the response would have been if he'd started by saying 'how many here twould throw a gay off a tall buiding?' But he didn't do that - he built up to it. It was skilled oratory.More playing down and apologising. Denial denial denial. FK you prosser. Those muslims in that video are all agreeing with what the speaker has said, there is no getting away from it.
I don't deny the video is genuine - of course there are fear and hate mongers on the islamic side, your allies in the headlong rush to civil strife. But none of them post on DA! (Yassine is a proper apologist for Islam, but he's not a hate monger.) Do you think I'd allow an Islamist hawk to post inflamartory half-truths and distortions unanswered?
Omar is right - all you do is post unhelpful and infamatory posts and have nothing constructive to say.
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@Mopac
Don't expect to figure it out on your own.
But who to listen to?
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@Castin
Since the Jews were an impoverished minority group even before the time of Paul, I can't discount the possibility that they were subjected to prejudice even before that time.
Prior to Paul communities of Jews were sometimes persecuted for what they were doing at the time, such as not worshipping the approved gods or rising up in rebellion. After Paul, Jews were persecuted for being Jews.
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@Stephen
I have also asked you three times to tell me if the MUSLIMS in this video are what you would call "moderate Muslims"? This will be the forth.
What I see in the video are people being manipulated.
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@RoderickSpode
I've written previously that there is a trend in the historical books of the bible - they start with pure myth and legend in the Pentateuch and end with almost straight history in Ezra. Basically, the further back from the compilation of the OT around the Baylonian exile in the 7thC BCE the less historical it is.
The Sennacherib Prism comes from near the end, Joshua from the near the beginning.
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@Yassine
It is most definiterly not irrelevant. There are social tensions between communities in the UK and europe and people are dieing at the hands of radicals and fanatics on both sides. Is it 'irrelevant' that young men are being motivated and radicalised to commit murders in the name of Islam? Is it irrelevant that non-Muslims murder Muslims in retaliation, as in new zealand a few weeks ago?All this is entirely irrelevant
And all you can do is bad mouth christians! Is that supposed to help? In what way does that promote peace? Are you better than Steve or of the same vile type intolerant bigot that causes ordinary men and women to die for nothing, sacrificed as pawns by ideologically driven fanatics?
Christians and Muslims profess love and peace, but it seems that it is me, an atheist, that is the only one here working for reconciliation.
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@TheRealNihilist
I think the answers would be rather simple. Following these questions that is:Is life worth living weighing the positive and negative aspect of it?Should we ought to carry on living given the findings above?
My initial problem is how to weigh the positive and negative aspects - indeed maybe the problem is identifying what the negative and positive aspects are!
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@RoderickSpode
Theologically, there can't be a problem with God doing whatever is necessary to 'stop the sun' without any undesirable side-effects. I find it strange that believers try to mix science and miracle.
I am firmly in the 'minimalism' camp in relation to the histricity of the Mosaic books. I doubt that the story of Joshua has any basis in fact. A long time ago I expected to find that those books gave a garbled and theocratic version of real events and people. If so, there would be a 'rational' eplanayin for things like the sun standing still for Joshua, but now I think 'Never happened' is nearer the mark.
IMO the early books were compiled to bolster the morale of the Jews exiled in Babylon with a grand saga of their glorious past and the promise of a return to that greatness. Telling the plain, unvarnished truth was not the intent - preserving the Jewish idenity was.
I'm not one for left-field opinions - I tend to go with mainstream scholarship which says that neither Josha nor his conquest ofI Israel are historical.
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@Stephen
@Ramshutu
@disgusted
@TheRealNihilist
Why? because just like prosser , they have been defending Islam far too long to admit that they are also have been part of the fkn problem that they have caused and got it so , so fkn wrong.
It gets really boring to keep on repeating that I am not a defender of Islam. In my thread 'why is islam backward' I wrote
But in the islamic world a narrow, fundamentalistic attitude to scripture developed centuries ago is still going strong, and (some would contend) only getting stronger, to the detriment of everbody (especially Muslims).
I then provided a link to a piece that discussed the poor prospects of reform in Islam. Islam is backward in its attitude towards gays, women, science - you name it. These are matters on which Stephen and I (and gus) surely agree.
So why the mutual animosity? Bluntly, if I see someone pouring petrol on a fire my instinct is to stop him! Then maybe the fire will not get out of control. But because I don't co-operate in his patriotic crusade against Islam and Moslems he brands me an 'islamic apologist'.
Clearly when young muslims are inspired to mow down strangers with a rented van something has gone horribly wrong. There are Muslim equivalents of Steve whipping also up tribal hate, using more or less the same tricks of half-truth and emotional rhetoric. Steve has more in common with a radical Imam than he may realise.
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@Stephen
Are you aware what an 'apologist' is?
Apologetics (from Greek ἀπολογία, "speaking in defense") is the religious discipline of defending religious doctrines through systematic argumentation and discourse.
As I have pointed out elsewhere, Yassine is an example of an Islamic apologist, but I am not.
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@ludofl3x
I think we know what gus was getting at and it isn't really about the specifics of human evolution. He's saying that human socities that are culturally primitive - such as hunter-gatherer tribes - have gods. It not exactly a controversial claim!God is just another god, an imaginary character invented by humans. Even very primitive humans invented gods, they're not difficult to invent.
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@ludofl3x
Would we develop the concept of gods before we had an adequate language?
It's well documented human brain size inceased almost exponentially:
AFAIK we are far off knowing how human mental powers relate to brain size. No one knows how far to the left on that graph you have to before brains aren't upto holding concepts like 'god', but the curve is so steep it might not be much.
We have completely moved away from why gus said what he said!
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@Stephen
Homo erectus (meaning 'upright man') is a species of archaic humans
According to wikipedia "A human is a member of the species Homo sapiens," so homo erectus isn't a human at all. Yet it has an article on 'ancient humans' that implies a broader definition of 'human'.
There isn't a canonical definition of 'very primitve humans'.
I don't know how to rule out h. erectus believed in gods. I don't mind if people think I think it is possible the proto-humans emerging from the trees belived gods, as long as they don't think I think it is likely! Anyone who did think that should have done so only briefly because in the final line of the same post I am more specific:
"I'd bet the farm we believed in gods 10,000 years ago and a large field on 50,000. 100,000? May be, 1 million? May be not."
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@disgusted
Can you supply the teaching notes for this course? You know, exactly what is being taught?
Best I can find so far
An unteresting snippet:
He [ie Andrew Moffat, the originator of the 'No Outsiders' course ] quit a previous teaching post after a row with Christian parents who rejected his anti-homophobia lessons.
I think Steve would say 'forced out' (not 'quit') f it was Muslim parents!
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@3RU7AL
Thanks, but I don't even remember posting it!
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@TheRealNihilist
I'd like to spend a lot more time on it.
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@Stephen
I am also suggested that god wasn't invented the day "we" apes climbed down from the trees as has also been suggested.
It was not a serious suggestion - I intended only to imply that belief in gods could go way back. I don't expect that homo erectus could have absract concepts like 'gods', but it's hard to know what a few scattered bone fragments did or didn't believe!
If we say that 'human' is resticted to homo sapiens then I think gus is probably dead right. If human includes hominids (or hominims - I can never remember the difference) then he would be (probably) wrong. Either way there is no realistic possibility of 'proof' before a few thousand years ago.
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@Yassine
@Stephen
What you wrote was "muslims who actually do want to actaully live in a peaceful integrated western society.". What word you think is appropriate for the Islam do those Muslims follow?
I'm more than happy to not use the word 'moderate' if you suggest an alternative. There are Muslims who want to establish a world Caliphate and are prepared to use violence and force to achieve it. There are "muslims who actually do want to actually live in a peaceful integrated western society." - at least in theory!
We need labels to discuss the issue. In the west non-muslims have adopted 'Islamist' and 'Moderate' for that purpose. Many Muslims do not like those terms, for reasons I gave earlier.
So please do uggest term for the different sorts of Islam and their followers - they may catch on! But I don't expect many Muslims to read my posts, so I will stick with 'islamist/ihdist/fanatical' etc for one sort and 'moderate' for the other.
I've @ed Yassine to see if we can get our resident Muslim's view!
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@disgusted
Careful... that might get quoted by Jihad Watch!the percentage of Muslims rose from 10% to 90% in 18mths.
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@TheRealNihilist
My instinct is that it's probably wrong. I don't worry over much about what I can prove, in the sense that I'd have to think very long and hard before I go against my instinct that life is worth living!
I treat it as a challenge - to come up with a counter-argument. Just thinkig about it will be a useful exercise, but I don't see it aecting my 'real life'.
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@Stephen
Greedy Pigs is in Bradford, not Savile Town.Are you saying it wasn't from the 90% muslim community asking for the word "pig" to be removed from a food outlets name.
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@TheRealNihilist
I don't think it is a philosophical position anyone really holds because the logical consequence would seem to be to commit suicide immediately!
It's a bit like idealism - nobody really believes it, but it's great for making people think hard and long about assumptions they didn't realise they had - at least that its effect on me!
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