George wrote:

"For instance, there are many manifestations of Islam that I do not like, to say the least, but I have to accept that there must be something more to Islam than just these negative things, since it attracted a billion adherents."

Dear George,

Islam is a religion of laws rather than creeds. That means they can be more open to new ideas and are not constrained by a requirement for orthodoxy. There was no counterpart in early Islam to the Christian Inquisition. One could let one's mind speculate.

Mohammed opposed compulsion in religion. That contrasts favourably with the injunction expressed in the New Testament that one should spread the Gospel. There is no consideration as whether the Gospel is wanted. Unfortunately Muslims don't always follow that injunction.

Chemistry, navigation, astronomy and other sciences still use the the Arabic words such as alembic (a type of flask), Deneb (a star), apogee (a high point in orbit). Islamic universities had Buddhist, Jewish and Christian scholars while Christian universities were restricted to Christians. They took many things from other cultures and developed many things themselves.

Computer programming rests on the concept of the algorithm named from Muhammed ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi who developed it around 825. Islamic mathematicians developed the sine theorem of spherical trigonometry, studies of cubic and quartic equations, reform of the calendar, developments in non-Euclidean geometry and iterative methods to solve equations.

Islamic Spain had a Golden Age in which Muslim, Jewish and Christian scholars participated. There is no counterpart in Christian history.

Unfortunately in the fourteenth century a rigid faction of Islamic scholars closed 'the gates of ijtihad': independent reasoning on matters of religion was effectively outlawed.

This devastated Muslim society. Muslim culture lost its dynamism and degenerated, while the Muslim community was transformed from an open to a closed society.

At about the time Islam entered their Dark Ages Europe was coming out of theirs with the Renaissance.

However, Islam for the most part retained a greater tolerance than Christianity. Jews expelled from Christian Europe from the eleventh century on often found refuge in Muslim lands.

relda,
Thanks for the link to Dolhenty, a young “classical philosophic realist” as he calls himself, i.e. a Thomist I did not know about. I sort of grew up with neo-Thomism of the 1930s and 1940s (notably Jean Maritain) that I found in my father’s library because nothing non-Marx-Leninist was then available in the bookshops of a Communist country. Later I found out that there was also something called “transcendental Thomism“ (Joseph Maréchal) inspired by Kant.

In 1971, John Macquarrie, an Anglican theologian and philosopher, wrote that “the dynamic intellectualism of this new Thomism is important as a corrective to the dangers of subjectivism and sentimentalism to which some forms of existentialism can lead” in his book ‘20th Century Religious Thought‘ that became my “bible“ of what I know about modern Christian theology. Perhaps not yet “insanity” - nobody called existentialism insane - but already an early warning that now Doherty expresses more forcefully.

Personally I think neo-Thomism - sometimes called Existential Thomism, which has nothing to do with existentialism - can be taken as a good starting point or background of a philosophy or world-view, adjusted to account for recent findings of neuroscience, biology, physics and cosmology. This adjustment is somehow missing in Doherty’s interesting, and mostly justified, critique of what he calls “intellectual insanity”. Also, Doherty could have been a bit more open-minded towards philosophical perspectives he criticises.

Basically, however, neo-Thomism is a good position from where to criticise modern (and postmodern) thinking, offering us a mirror, albeit situated in the past, showing the good (and the bad) that got lost. However, without being constructive, without showing how to use the “intellectual insanity” as an anti-thesis that could lead to a more promising, but still realistic, synthesis.

I think, if such a new synthesis, a “second renaissance” of “sane” Western thinking is possible, it will not come from the traditional West (like the first one did not come from Greece). Even if it came from the outside, that would be one outcome of globalisation that we should welcome.

I think also Peter might like Doherty’s criticism.

Priscillian,
You critique my post saying that it is not concise while also saying I don’t give enough examples of the axioms. (Some people are hard to please.) And I must convince you of sharing my world view in 350 words. You set quite a challenge.

You spent a lot of your 350 words trying to put words in my mouth. I don’t see where I was ‘condemning the godless heathen’. I never said since my cup is yellow then my cup is a canary, or anything resembling that type of logic. That belongs to you. I never said that ‘a few bad people’ such as Hitler and co. give Nazism a bad name.

My contention was fairly straight forward, and that was, right thinking leads to right conduct, or conversely, poor thinking leads to poor conduct. If the basis of our thinking is that some ‘races’ are more evolved than others, then it is only natural that ideas of superiority will be justified and acted upon.

When people are continually told that they are only slightly upgraded apes and not too far removed from pool scum rather than creatures made in the image of God, it will affect decision making and conduct. It certainly makes the unwanted a bit easier to dispose of.

You say the law decriminalising abortion does not justify abortion on moral grounds. Actually, the proposed law justifies abortion on any or every ground.

You seem inclined to come to the defence of this law decriminalising abortion, yet also say you’re willing to define human life as starting at conception. If so, it must be that you feel okay about the lives of the innocent being terminated dependent upon the will or whim of another.

Sancho,
That stuff you said about selective breeding has little if anything to do with the concepts of microbe-to-man evolution.

Most Victorians share a good essential grasp at recognising a human being. When the family come to the hospital and watch the ultra-sound of the little tyke up on the big screen, discuss family resemblances, and naming possibilities, they know.

Dan,
I haven't got too much to say about your post because I think we can all see where you are coming from.

I did however have a little giggle when you said:-
"When people are continually told that they are only slightly upgraded apes and not too far removed from pool scum rather than creatures made in the image of God.............."
The only people saying this are ignorant fundamentalist Christians. Anybody who knows anything at all about the theory of evolution would not claim this. Read a book called "The Origin of Species" by a fellow called Charles Darwin then maybe we can discuss his theories. It's only fair after all because I have read your holy book a number of times, cover to cover.

I don't require you to explain your world view in 350 words, I can just go to any fundamentalist web site and read it for myself. Mind you it wouldn't really need 350 words anyway would it?

Battle lines between Christian theology and Science are but fabricated paradigm shifts;
http://cpds.apana.org.au/Teams/Archive/philosophy.htm#Design

The presumptions to instigate this little secularist myth are devoid of any logic – (Fact) - then change language meanings to suggest otherwise: Chomsky was good at that.
Expounding the virtues of subversive and divisive linguistics is a continuum to instigate further presumptions that are devoid of any logic and deductive reason, so it is mere speculation that is then accepted by some as their fact; when it become clear that it is devoid of any fact in its entirety ; it is simple to distinguish and it simpler to dispel mythical assumptions.

Interesting All, Your link suggests weak states also threaten liberty and not just ones that are oppressive. Our avenues for critical thinking are important – this suggests the type of analytical criticism (dialectic) applying equally to any area of discipline – economic, scientific or theological. Nietzsche and Derrida gave an often unpopular, if not controversial, critique in the area of theology - but their goal was to “uncover the unconscious assumptions built into one's own culture”, a heightened perspective on ‘freedom’ resulted, a legacy of western civilization. Our contentment however may breed the laziness that weakens us. This applies equally to our religious institutions, which incidentally are no longer in need such of a dominant class of clerics, I do not suggest an absence of guidance – but people necessarily need seek it.

Interestingly, the power of the clerical class has been broken everywhere but in Islam… the process is happening, albeit slowly occurring, as the extremists of this religion are brought to task. I spoke of the myth of ‘The Age of Faith’ in an earlier post, so too is there a myth in the “Golden Age" of Islam. The "interfaith utopia" or better, the "myth of an interfaith utopia", in Spain and under Islam, in general, challenged supposedly enlightened Christians to live up to the promise of emancipation and grant the Jews rights and privileges. Not quite so. Tolerance, at least as we know it in the West since the time of John Locke, was not considered a virtue in medieval monotheistic societies. Exclusive by nature, monotheists declare(d) all others (including other monotheists) to be infidels. If medieval Christianity "tolerated" Judaism, that is, permitted Jews to live and practice their religion, it was because Christians generally believed that God wished Jews to be preserved as witnesses to Christian triumphalism. Some interpretive rigor is also certainly needed to discover common ground between the modern Western ideal of democratic pluralism and the praxis of various pre-modern Muslim societies – this is not say the seeds of this pluralism didn’t exist (for in fact they did)