Societies don't have to be secular to be modern

[Valmy]

That's what happens when you use Reason in Religion. It all gets very confusing and stupid.

I don't find it confusing or stupid at all.  It is actually very coherent if you understand the objectives of the authors. 

[Barrister]

That's what happens when you use Reason in Religion. It all gets very confusing and stupid.

Confusing, absolutely.  Why wouldn't it be though - it's all about asking some of the most absolute and fundamental questions.  Nobody ever thought that trying to figure out the meaning of life would be easy.

But stupid?  Far from it...

[The Brain]

We do not know that drugs cause certain effects, we know that we have no other good reason to explain what happens after the drugs are taken.

No, generally we have excellent explanations of the exact metabolic pathway that certain drugs effect.

We do not know that nuclear bombs explode, we just know of nothing which can cause the explosion that happens when we drop the bomb.

No, we know exactly what happens in a nuclear bomb.

We do not know that evolution happens, we just don't have any theory which explains all the observations of biology.

Evolution, due to the very long-time scale, is not able to be "proven" like some other areas of science, and thus is stuck with the label of "theory".  But just because some areas are not able to be conclusively tested doesn't mean that all of science is that way.

I have a science degree.  Mine is in geology.  Certain areas of geology are proven, because they can be replicated in a lab.  Other areas are not, given the enormous time scales involved.

[Barrister]

No, generally we have excellent explanations of the exact metabolic pathway that certain drugs effect.

No, we know exactly what happens in a nuclear bomb.

Evolution, due to the very long-time scale, is not able to be "proven" like some other areas of science, and thus is stuck with the label of "theory".  But just because some areas are not able to be conclusively tested doesn't mean that all of science is that way.

I have a science degree.  Mine is in geology.  Certain areas of geology are proven, because they can be replicated in a lab.  Other areas are not, given the enormous time scales involved.

All of these are Theory. Read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory and then come back.

Done.  Now you read this:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law

[Malthus]

But they say nothing about the truth or falsity of the religion claims.

Ultimately, the truth or falsity of the claims of any moral or philosophical system comes down to intuition, not scientific disproof.

Indeed the very terms "true" and "false" are not really appropriate in this context. If I am not a utilitarian, is utilitarianism "false"?

Similarly, I am not a Buddhist. Can I "disprove" that life is, ultimately, full of suffering caused by desire?

I, nor anyone else on my side of the argument here I believe, have any quarrel with viewing religion as no more than moral philosophy. But I doubt the religious people would be content with that.

I am not on a "side". What I disagree with is the notion that religion is all nonsense because it makes claims not subject to disproof, which at least some people appear to be saying.

To my mind at least, religion tends to veer into nonsense when it makes claims that *are* subject to disproof.

[Berkut]

We do not know that drugs cause certain effects, we know that we have no other good reason to explain what happens after the drugs are taken.

No, generally we have excellent explanations of the exact metabolic pathway that certain drugs effect.

And those are theories. Testable theories, and they change all the time, because it turns out that some detail was not quite right. And sometimes, as a result of these changes, we even make new drugs!

But still just theories, and still almost always turn out to be wrong, or at least incomplete. Never proven.

We do not know that nuclear bombs explode, we just know of nothing which can cause the explosion that happens when we drop the bomb.

No, we know exactly what happens in a nuclear bomb.

Incorrect. We ahve a theory about how the world works, and tehn we make a bomb that ought to work if our theory is right, and ought not to work if it is wrong. Turns out it does work, so our theory surivices.

But hey - something happened we did not quite expect! Our yield was less (or more) than we thought! Why, it turns out our theory was not correct after all, and we have to modify it to explain this difference!

holy crap, we just falsified our theory, and replaced it with a new one!

This is ongoing, right now. The only thing we have ever "proven" by detonating an atomic bomb is that the old theory was not quite right in some way. Falsifiability.

We do not know that evolution happens, we just don't have any theory which explains all the observations of biology.

Evolution, due to the very long-time scale, is not able to be "proven" like some other areas of science, and thus is stuck with the label of "theory".

You cannot name me one single "theory" in science that has been "proven" to be complete and not subject to further revision. You are wrong Beeb - there anre no theories that are "proven". None.

  But just because some areas are not able to be conclusively tested doesn't mean that all of science is that way.

I have a science degree.  Mine is in geology.  Certain areas of geology are proven, because they can be replicated in a lab.  Other areas are not, given the enormous time scales involved.

No, certain theories have not been disproven, but that is not at all the same thing.

[Berkut]

That's what happens when you use Reason in Religion. It all gets very confusing and stupid.

I don't find it confusing or stupid at all.  It is actually very coherent if you understand the objectives of the authors. 

[Valmy]

But they say nothing about the truth or falsity of the religion claims.

Well IMO religion has nothing useful to say about anything outside of human existance and our relationship to the outside world and each other.

It won't tell you about the movement of the stars nor why birds migrate south for the winter.

[Viking]

Anything in the bible can be a non litteral and non accurate recording of events? How do you know what to believe then? Anything can be wrong or untrue. How do you know what to have faith in?

Well that's the challenging part then isn't it. 

I don't have all the answers.

OK, so much for you claiming that Religion has science and reason then?

How so?

I thought you said Religion has reason? Defend that proposition. Use reason to deal with my contention that you can't trust anything in the bible because it might just be symbolic.

[Pat]

Interview with Karl-Heinz Ohlig
Muhammad as a Christological Honorific Title

This guy is gonna get himself killed

He is a very brave man indeed.

He's not alone though. Professor of Islamic Theology, Mohammed Kalisch, a German convert into Islam, did indeed cause a fire-storm by declaring that the Prophet Mohammed likely never existed.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122669909279629451.html

Professor Hired for Outreach to Muslims Delivers a Jolt
Islamic Theologian's Theory: It's Likely the Prophet Muhammad Never Existed

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By ANDREW HIGGINS

MÜNSTER, Germany -- Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a Muslim convert and Germany's first professor of Islamic theology, fasts during the Muslim holy month, doesn't like to shake hands with Muslim women and has spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam, he says, guides his life.

So it came as something of a surprise when Prof. Kalisch announced the fruit of his theological research. His conclusion: The Prophet Muhammad probably never existed.
Theology Without Muhammad

Read a translated excerpt from "Islamic Theology Without the Historic Muhammad -- Comments on the Challenges of the Historical-Critical Method for Islamic Thinking" by Professor Kalisch.

Muslims, not surprisingly, are outraged. Even Danish cartoonists who triggered global protests a couple of years ago didn't portray the Prophet as fictional. German police, worried about a violent backlash, told the professor to move his religious-studies center to more-secure premises.

"We had no idea he would have ideas like this," says Thomas Bauer, a fellow academic at Münster University who sat on a committee that appointed Prof. Kalisch. "I'm a more orthodox Muslim than he is, and I'm not a Muslim."

When Prof. Kalisch took up his theology chair four years ago, he was seen as proof that modern Western scholarship and Islamic ways can mingle -- and counter the influence of radical preachers in Germany. He was put in charge of a new program at Münster, one of Germany's oldest and most respected universities, to train teachers in state schools to teach Muslim pupils about their faith.

Muslim leaders cheered and joined an advisory board at his Center for Religious Studies. Politicians hailed the appointment as a sign of Germany's readiness to absorb some three million Muslims into mainstream society. But, says Andreas Pinkwart, a minister responsible for higher education in this north German region, "the results are disappointing."

Prof. Kalisch, who insists he's still a Muslim, says he knew he would get in trouble but wanted to subject Islam to the same scrutiny as Christianity and Judaism. German scholars of the 19th century, he notes, were among the first to raise questions about the historical accuracy of the Bible.

Many scholars of Islam question the accuracy of ancient sources on Muhammad's life. The earliest biography, of which no copies survive, dated from roughly a century after the generally accepted year of his death, 632, and is known only by references to it in much later texts. But only a few scholars have doubted Muhammad's existence. Most say his life is better documented than that of Jesus.
[Sven Muhammad Kalish]

Muhammad Sven Kalish

"Of course Muhammad existed," says Tilman Nagel, a scholar in Göttingen and author of a new book, "Muhammad: Life and Legend." The Prophet differed from the flawless figure of Islamic tradition, Prof. Nagel says, but "it is quite astonishing to say that thousands and thousands of pages about him were all forged" and there was no such person.

All the same, Prof. Nagel has signed a petition in support of Prof. Kalisch, who has faced blistering criticism from Muslim groups and some secular German academics. "We are in Europe," Prof. Nagel says. "Education is about thinking, not just learning by heart."

Prof. Kalisch's religious studies center recently removed a sign and erased its address from its Web site. The professor, a burly 42-year-old, says he has received no specific threats but has been denounced as apostate, a capital offense in some readings of Islam.

"Maybe people are speculating that some idiot will come and cut off my head," he said during an interview in his study.

A few minutes later, an assistant arrived in a panic to say a suspicious-looking digital clock had been found lying in the hallway. Police, called to the scene, declared the clock harmless.

A convert to Islam at age 15, Prof. Kalisch says he was drawn to the faith because it seemed more rational than others. He embraced a branch of Shiite Islam noted for its skeptical bent. After working briefly as a lawyer, he began work in 2001 on a postdoctoral thesis in Islamic law in Hamburg, to go through the elaborate process required to become a professor in Germany.

The Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. that year appalled Mr. Kalisch but didn't dent his devotion. Indeed, after he arrived at Münster University in 2004, he struck some as too conservative. Sami Alrabaa, a scholar at a nearby college, recalls attending a lecture by Prof. Kalisch and being upset by his doctrinaire defense of Islamic law, known as Sharia.

In private, he was moving in a different direction. He devoured works questioning the existence of Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Then "I said to myself: You've dealt with Christianity and Judaism but what about your own religion? Can you take it for granted that Muhammad existed?"

He had no doubts at first, but slowly they emerged. He was struck, he says, by the fact that the first coins bearing Muhammad's name did not appear until the late 7th century -- six decades after the religion did.

He traded ideas with some scholars in Saarbrücken who in recent years have been pushing the idea of Muhammad's nonexistence. They claim that "Muhammad" wasn't the name of a person but a title, and that Islam began as a Christian heresy.

Prof. Kalisch didn't buy all of this. Contributing last year to a book on Islam, he weighed the odds and called Muhammad's existence "more probable than not." By early this year, though, his thinking had shifted. "The more I read, the historical person at the root of the whole thing became more and more improbable," he says.

He has doubts, too, about the Quran. "God doesn't write books," Prof. Kalisch says.

Some of his students voiced alarm at the direction of his teaching. "I began to wonder if he would one day say he doesn't exist himself," says one. A few boycotted his lectures. Others sang his praises.

Prof. Kalisch says he "never told students 'just believe what Kalisch thinks' " but seeks to teach them to think independently. Religions, he says, are "crutches" that help believers get to "the spiritual truth behind them." To him, what matters isn't whether Muhammad actually lived but the philosophy presented in his name.

This summer, the dispute hit the headlines. A Turkish-language German newspaper reported on it with gusto. Media in the Muslim world picked up on it.

Germany's Muslim Coordinating Council withdrew from the advisory board of Prof. Kalisch's center. Some Council members refused to address him by his adopted Muslim name, Muhammad, saying that he should now be known as Sven.

German academics split. Michael Marx, a Quran scholar at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, warned that Prof. Kalisch's views would discredit German scholarship and make it difficult for German scholars to work in Muslim lands. But Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, an Islamic studies scholar at the University of Marburg, set up a Web site called solidaritymuhammadkalisch.com and started an online petition of support.

Alarmed that a pioneering effort at Muslim outreach was only stoking antagonism, Münster University decided to douse the flames. Prof. Kalisch was told he could keep his professorship but must stop teaching Islam to future school teachers.

The professor says he's more determined than ever to keep probing his faith. He is finishing a book to explain his thoughts. It's in English instead of German because he wants to make a bigger impact. "I'm convinced that what I'm doing is necessary. There must be a free discussion of Islam," he says.
—Almut Schoenfeld in Berlin contributed to this article.

Write to Andrew Higgins at [email protected]
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1

Interestingly, he got support in his interpretation from the Alawites.

[Viking]

But they say nothing about the truth or falsity of the religion claims.

Ultimately, the truth or falsity of the claims of any moral or philosophical system comes down to intuition, not scientific disproof.

Indeed the very terms "true" and "false" are not really appropriate in this context. If I am not a utilitarian, is utilitarianism "false"?

Similarly, I am not a Buddhist. Can I "disprove" that life is, ultimately, full of suffering caused by desire?

I have no problems with anything you wrote here above. So you agree that the truth or falsity of moral or philosophical claims is unrelated to the claims of religion about their truthiness?

I don't know what you mean by "truthiness".

Truth

I was trying to be funny.

[Malthus]

But they say nothing about the truth or falsity of the religion claims.

Well IMO religion has nothing useful to say about anything outside of human existance and our relationship to the outside world and each other.

It won't tell you about the movement of the stars nor why birds migrate south for the winter.

Yup.

[grumbler]

I don't think so - first of all, I would dispute that there is currently an accepted "best" theory on xenobiology - although there are certainly lots of hypothesis out there. 

You cannot move the goal posts.  The "best theory" is the term here, and the best theory in Xenobiology is certainly based on no evidence whatever.  It may not be "accepted," but that is a different standard.  The "best theory" always starts out not "accepted."

There is no direct evidence of life existing on other planets*, but there is certainly plenty of evidence that it could - the fact that it exists on THIS planet is rather suggestive, for example.

This isn't evidence of anything but life on earth, though.

We study life at it exist in extermely hostile earth environments, as another example. Scientists run experiments trying to re-crate a variety of environments under which life could arise. That is all evidence.

But not evidence of life off of earth (zenobiology*apparently there are some scientists who believe that the Mars tests were not nearly as conclusive about the lack of evidence for life there as was reported. I have no real idea how credible that is though. [/quote]

The point is that science doesn't need evidence to be science, it needs a mindset.  The science cannot proceed very far without evidence (no one will be winning a Nobel prize for their work in xenobiology any time soon), but a dogmatic insistence that science is all about evidence is unwarranted.

[The Brain]

a Quran scholar at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences

lol

[Viking]

That's what happens when you use Reason in Religion. It all gets very confusing and stupid.

I don't find it confusing or stupid at all.  It is actually very coherent if you understand the objectives of the authors.

Well, I'm still dealing with BB's claim that religion has reason. So, if you test the claims of religions by the terms of theology then you find yourself facing contradictions constantly. I don't think religion stands the test of reason.