Dear Banjo Paterson,

I was writing about practice not what it says in religious texts.

The Bible contains:

Exodus 22:17 “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” That is a holy text to both Christian and Jews. Communicants of neither religion have killed witches in the history of Australia. That sentence would not be a reliable guide to the current practices of Christians and Jews.

The Bible also forbids eating pig. Jesus, as a Jew, probably never ate it. However, Christians in Australia will buy Christmas and Easter hams. Some Christians get quite excited about homosexuality citing the Jewish Bible as justification even though the New Testament says nothing about it. Yet they eat pig which is no more acceptable than homosexuality in the Jewish Bible.

The same thing goes for Islam and Judaism. Text in sacred works is not a reliable guide to what is actually practiced.

You wrote: “Wikipedia on “thought-crimes” under Islamic Sharia law”
There is not one Sharia law. There are many different Sharia laws. The one Wikipedia quoted was Hanafi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia#/media/File:Madhhab_Map3.png
As you can see from the map of different Sharia laws Turkey is mostly Hanafi and is also 99% Muslim. Yet Turkey has separation of religion and state, and the state does not enforce Sharia.

Turkey has a Muslim majority as Australia has a Christian majority, but both countries do not live under religious law. Apostates are not subject to penalties under Turkish law.

Halakha is mainly derived from the Talmud which is a commentary on the Bible. The Talmud is complete. It reports discussions on various religious question both the the minority and the majority view. If there is not unanimity Jews are free to follow either the minority or majority view. However, the many different sects of Judaism may follow Halakha rigorously or completely dispense with it. Halakha is still subject to modification even though the Talmud is complete.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_responsa_in_Judaism tells about the past and current modifications of Jewish religious law.
Most modern Jews even most of the orthodox do not believe in either an afterlife or heaven.

Dear George,

<<Whatever Western philosophy school you approve of, it was probably influenced, in this or that sense, by Descartes.>>

True, but I do not follow Western philosophy and the two Western philosophers that I appreciate lived long before Descartes - Ecclesiastes and Diogenes.

<<I would not be so eager to call Descartes’... arguments sloppy>>

Assuming that "Cogito" is translated correctly as "I think", how would Descartes know that HE is the thinker? He was understandably aware that thinking was going on, but who, if any, is the thinker?

When we are deeply absorbed in a book or a computer game, we temporarily identify with the hero and believe that his/her thoughts and actions are ours. If in that state we see a thought-cloud above the hero, we could believe at the time that WE are thinking that. It often takes a power-cut to realise that it was never us who thought those thoughts or did those deeds.

All that Descartes could really conclude is that there exists some mind or brain which produces those thoughts, one that he considered (without proper justification) "his", but nothing about himself.

<<since I do not know of anybody - influenced or not by Descartes - who would claim thinking (e.g. before, rather than after, acting) was not important>>

Thinking is just something we happen to do, not something so important that our "AM"ness depends on.

According to Yoga philosophy, thinking is second-best: the ideal is to quiet the mind so that it stops thinking ("Chitta Vritti Nirodha", http://abhyasayogaroom.com/Abhyasa_Yoga_Room/Yoga_Philosophy.html), but as this is not easy at all, meanwhile it is important to think only pure thoughts.

Can I belatedly add my support to Yuyutsu's response to Banjo. Please keep on publishing Peter's articles. I don't always agree with Peter's views, but he is always thought-provoking and interesting.

Having the humility to admit you're wrong is a virtue in my book.

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Dear david f,

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Thank you for all that detailed information. Apparently there is much greater diversity and evolution in Judaism and Islam than I had perceived via the media, including the major international media which I scrutinize regularly.
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« I was writing about practice not what it says in religious texts. »

Thanks for the precision. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I thought you were speaking about “thought-crimes” as defined by Halakha (which I understood was Jewish religious law) and Islamic Sharia law, comparing these to Christian Canon law and opposing them to the notion of “sin” in religion in general.
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It is interesting to see at a glance where the various branches of Islam are located in the world on those maps you posted. It seems the Sunnis have been more active on the international scene than the Shias. Thank you. I shall conserve that for future reference.

As for the other link you provided, I have the impression that delving into the intricacies of Jewish responsa is a lifetime task. I doubt that my curiosity will go that far. It is sufficient for me to know that it exists and what it is basically all about. Thank you at least for that.
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Allow me to add as a final observation, david, that I have made a mental note to double-up on my efforts to try to understand more precisely what it is you are actually debating about before charging in like an elephant in a china shop.

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Yuyutsu,

For me and many people - philosophically savvy or not - the statement “since I think (do some thinking, if you like) I exist” is self-explanatory and obvious. What is not nearly that obvious is that all other common beliefs can be derived from this, if I properly understand what Descartes meant.

You say you do not subscribe to any Western philosophy after Ecclesiastes and Diogenes. That, of course, explains our misunderstanding. There is not much to understand about contemporary mathematics if you stop at Pythagoras or Euclid. The same about Western philosophy.

Descartes has to be understood in the context of Western philosophy, the same as e.g. Patanjali that you linked to, and the various schools of Hinduism, have to be understood in the context of Hindu tradition that gave rise to concepts or ideas dealt with by those schools.

I could not subscribe to any version of Hindu philosophy, because I do not satisfactorily understand them. But even if I thought I could, I would not call their arguments, or approaches to thinking about the human experience, sloppy.

Sorry, it should have started "Dear Yuyutsu".