Hi David M. On 22 Oct. you wrote: (Re. if SOM is one of intellect's helpers or intellect itself) > DM: My point, is that a full undertstanding has to consider all the > chickens and eggs involved and that causality flows up and down the > levels. A man can redirect water to the dam or if he gets his actions > wrong, fall in and drown.
I didn't get your point (see below) > DM: Religion is made up of many, often conflicting, aims, seeing > one as the most significant is a simplification. Yes, things are complicated but history has told us that complexity is the lack of the right explanation. Ref. the Ptolemaian cosmology's baffling complexity and Copernicus who made it wonderful simple. The Ptolemaians scholars loved to point to the complexity as proof of how great God was to have created such an intriguing system. SOM creates a similar mess, but instead of embracing MOQ's solution you want to keep the "many conflicting aims..." Bo: > > You can hope for "much change in the Islamic world" but it will > > never come about. A democratic, secular, muslim country is an > > oxymoron. > DM: I propose Turkey as a clear example. In the intellect-steeped Europe a strong military influence is considered a threat to democracy, but when one crosses the Bosporus things turn upside down, the Military are the bulwark against islam's notorious anti-democratic tendency. I am deeply impressed by Kemal Ataturk's effort to modernize Turkey, but one sees Islam's notorious pressure back to a religion-run society. Christendom was just like that in its "semitic" period when kings and Emperors of Europe had to have the Pope's blessing, but after the Renaissance its true "Jesuitic" content came to the fore: His rebellion (that the Mosaic Law was to serve the humans, not humans serving the law, or how it sounds in English) is an about turn. Think of it. The Law - be it Jewish Tora or Muslim Koran - is supposed to be God's written order. If one claims that this is "for humans to decide" it undermines the old social order (of humans' only purpose is to serve God) and Jesus did just that. He had picked up the intellectual signals from Greece - by way of the Romans. Another watershed is Jesus' words about "giving unto Cesar ..etc" this allowed the secular/religion split, a Christian could be a good civil citizen while keeping his faith. The lack of this split is the very thing that haunts the Muslim world, they can't be secular citizens, to be so is to the be an infidel. Compare with the Orthodox Jews who hate the secular state Israel just as much as the Palestinians, go to conferences in Iran(!!) to reject the Holocaust and try to raise as much hell for Israel as possible. Bo Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
