As I noted below, I am observing the exchange over at Thebit’s blog. The reason I keep a watch over Thebit is that to me he seems a good example of an intellectual and thoughtful Muslim. Haroon is also of that kind. They are intellectual and reflective members of the faith, making references to figures as disparate as Al-Ghazali and Charles Bradlaugh. And yet, note this quote from Haroon: “Firstly, why do Muslims identify headscarves as mandatory? Because they read the texts.” Readers know how I feel about “texts” (see here, here and here).
A thought experiment, what if you introduced Haroon & Jim Kalb, a traditionalist Roman Catholic, with the intent that they have a discussion about the merits of their religions? Well, you would probably observe a lot of textual and philosophical references. Kalb would no doubt defend the incarnation, the Triune God and point to the clues in the Hebrew Bible that foretell the rise of Christianity. Haroon would respond with skepticism at the Athanasian formulation of the Triune God, raise questions about the incarnation on textual and philosophical grounds and perhaps make the case that Islam is the “primal” religion. Now, another thought experiment, a Muslim farmer from rural Punjab and a Catholic farmer from rural Spain have a talk about their faith (assume they have a “universal translator”). What would they talk about? I suspect the verbal exchange would be truncated and awkward. The two individuals would know the basics of their faith and how they differ, but I doubt they could discursively analyze the differences between their religions and engage in a debate critiquing each other’s implicit propositions.
Honestly, I believe that the emotional experience of god that both the Muslim and Catholic farmers have is basically the same. They might beseech their god in the same manner, for the same reasons, and experience cognate emotions when engaged in communal worship or individual devotions. God is a supernatural agent that has a personal relationship with the individual, a powerful being who offers succor and sense in a complex world.
In contrast, the elite conception of gods are as variegated as human cultures. The Abrahamic god is a being “outside time, all good, all powerful and all knowing.” The Hindu god “expresses itself in all of existence,” everything is a fragment of god, the ultimate “ground of being.” One difference between the Christian god and the Muslim god is that the former is conceived as “one substance” and “three persons.” I put quotations because I really don’t know what the hell half that is supposed to mean. Atheists have always gotten a lot of leverage out of exploring the contradictions in the various axioms that theologians attribute to god. The connection between the god of the people and the god of the philosophers & theologians seems tenuous at best, why would individuals pray to a supernatural agent as if it perceives time serially if they know that their clerics tell them god is “outside time” and “all knowing” (why verbalize? why even think, as god knows all thoughts that will be?).
Of course religious professionals have clever answers to all questions of logic. After all, god is not responsible for evil even though god created everything because evil is just the lack of good (see, so god never created evil!). Personally, I know far more about the differences between religions than most people, I know the difference between Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christians, those who adhere to the Nestorian position and the Monophysite position, dualist vs. monistic Hinduism, and so forth. And yet I think that most of the philosophical differences are nothing more than word games inferred from gibberish. I say this because the axioms are almost always slippery gibberish! Otherwise, they would be banal and less than awe-inspiring (demi-gods are comprehensible). Atheists enjoy grappling with the philosophical aspects of religion, it’s so easy to expose as internally contradictory, no one really has a good grasp of what it means to be “all knowing,” as no one is god (do you know everything at the moment, or you do you keep accumulating it as time progresses, or do you know alll the various paths that time might take since you are “outside of time?”).
So what’s the point of all of this? These word games are crucial in marking coalitions. The various disputes over Christology might have a meaning to philosophers, but most historians often glean political and social cleavages as the real motivation for a mass movement in favor of a particular Christological position (that is, Monophosytism spread in Syria and Egypt because it served as a counter-point to domination from Constantinople, which adhered to Chalcedonianism). People can assent to mantras and creeds without knowing really what they’re talking about, the label and profession is enough to distinguish one from another (ask most Christians about the Nicene Creed and they have only the sketchy basics). It’s easy for philosophers and theologians to come to different conclusions based on propositional logic because the axioms are not reallly clear in the first place, so people create their own idea from impressionistic axioms and mold their own chain of propositions. Often it is self-serving (they know what conclusion they will reach), and often they become persuaded by their own rational capacities. If you listen to arcane disputes between co-religionists at the elite levels you will see faux-rationality gone wild. The emotional content of religion takes a back seat to the vicissitudes of language.
For more on this line of thought, see Dan Sperber’s article INTUITIVE AND REFLECTIVE BELIEFS. Interestingly, I think it is the reflective, rational and intellectual aspect of god-belief and worship that has been mobilized into murderous Wars-of-Religion.
Posted by razib at 04:47 PM