Lawry, Maggie, Jonathan and MD
Many thanks Lawry, your observations were appreciated, useful
and interesting. The non-moqish part of it I find in accordance with
my own approach - filling in many gaps of my knowledge. We both
seem to see the Church's insistence on the Bible as a cosmologic
guidebook a mistake and the following up by latter-day Christians
with regard to the evolution theory, contraceptives (AIDS) ...etc. as
more of the same. One point though. You said
> ... to the question of science and religion in Islam. Generally, Islam
> has had a much easier time assimilating new scientific knowledge than
> has Christianity. (I can't speak to Judaism, on this point. Jonathan?)
> Islam simply does not countenance a conflict, and so the discovery of
> the physical world was viewed as a natural and wonderful thing.
Yet, I can't really see how a revelation religion (and Islam is one
isn't it?) can avoid digging in when science start speaking about
the final things.
> Religious teachers and scientific ones are equally honored in the
> Muslim world, and the doctrines of Islam have little to say about the
> nature of the physical world, focusing instead on issues of morality
> and spirituality, and social practices and justice
Even if the Koran don't say anything about the physical world it
does say that God created it (no?) and if - as in the West - science
appear as the base for doubting the god-head itself - treating it as a
idea among other ideas, there must come to a conflict. Is the
concept "free-thinker" completely absent within Islam? Possibly
the islamic world isn't divided in "physical and spiritual", but a
moral order, in which case it confers to the pre-hellenist Greece
and the MoQ is proved ...again
I also wait for Jonathan's response.
> I can't speak for the MoQ on this issue, but to suggest that products
> of the intellect were/are not honored in Islamic societies is hugely
> ignorant. (PLEASE tell me that this is not what Pirsig said!) I could
> list Arabs who made great contributions in mathematics, physics,
> architecture, engineering, etc. and were in their days and still today
> remain greatly honored. I could point to the Egyptian Nobel Prize
> winner (was it chemistry or medicine?) a couple of years ago who was
> welcomed back in Cairo by hundreds of thousands (literally) of
> Cairenes. When was the last time that a Nobelist was welcomed back
> from Stockholm by more than a few dozen relatives, friends and
> colleagues? Or interviewed prominently by every newspaper in the major
> cities of his/her country?
My intention wasn't to say that at all. This misunderstanding is
based on the difference between the MoQ Intellectual level and
traditional use of the term - more equated with "intelligence". I fully
recognize the great contributions to science, law, art ..etc. of
ancient and modern people of every faith and nationality of the
earth.
What Pirsig says? I actually have a comment from him to the
present situation.
> > Within the long, long MOQ view of things Iım optimistic that
> > this current social earthquake will relieve social tensions that
> > have existed for centuries and lead to a better world. Apparently
> > Islam is now split between those, such as the urban Egyptians, who
> > favor the social freedom that allows the intellectual level to grow;
> > and conservative Muslim clerics, who want to prevent any social or
> > intellectual freedom. Christianity had the same problem during the
> > Renaissance and overcame it. So have other religions. In every case
> > that I can think of, the static forces have had to slowly and
> > painfully give way to the Dynamic ones.
In my interpretation this means that the Islamic world has reached
the intellectual LEVEL /social LEVEL confrontation (Q-intellect and
Q-society for short) that has spawned so much unrest in the
Christian world right up to our time (it will do forever because these
inter-level struggles are permanent, but when Q-intellect wins, the
conflict recedes much like the biological/social struggle is regarded
part and parcel of existence, and the inorganic/biological IS
existence ...in a SOM context).
Pirsig uses the terms social and intellectual (too) freely, but imo
"social earthquake" and "social tensions" indicate a culture torn
between Q-intellect and Q-social VALUES, not any conflict of
"social values" - they are fixed. "Social freedom" means a culture
dominated by Q-intellect. while "intellectual freedom" is a bit
superfluous in a MoQ context.
.............................................................................
Maggie said
(to Lawrie) who had said:
> > Christianity and Islam believe that they have a divine mandate to
> > spread their beliefs, certainly by the book (missionaries and
> > teachers) and at certain times in both their histories, by the
> > sword if the book failed.
> which interestingly, is a trait that Christianity picked up as a
> Helenistic Judaism, a combination of the Jewish traditions of prayer
> with the philosophic schools' imperative to spread their philosophy,
> to be "right." This prosyletizing WAS new as a component of
> religion. And it came from the philosophers, the pioneers in intellectual
> thought.
Didn't Jesus issue a standing "missionary order" to the disciples?
Anyway this aligns with my moq-inspired idea that there was a
parallel development on the Eastern shore to the one in Greece
and that Christianity is a Jewish-Hellenist amalgamation.
Thanks to you both
Bo
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