Societies don't have to be secular to be modern

[Viking]

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...

Why then should I use a book which you seem to agree is completely unreliable in terms of fact to help me with dealing with that question?

[grumbler]

BTW, it is amusing to see the same people who insist that the Bible is hogwash turning around and citing Wikipedia as authoritative! 

[Barrister]

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.

I find your contention stupid because I challenge it's assumption that you can't trust something that is symbolic.   You can (and perhaps should) trust things that are symbolic.

Whether or not Noah actually built an ark has little to do with the message of redemption of that story.

[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 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.

In my opinion there are different concepts embraced by the term "truth".

I believe for example that the Golden Rule is a "true" concept. It is not however "true" in the same way as a robust scientific theory not yet disproven.

Similarly I am of the opinion that many religions have elements to them that are "true", strictly in the former sense. I do not believe that any one of them is "true' in the latter sense.

[ulmont]

There is no evidence of life off this planet, though there is evidence for lack of lack.  Xenobiology isn't about testing for life on moon rocks, or whatever, though.  It is a purely theoretical science right now.

This is definitely not true for the Penn State astrobiology degree:

Astrobiology is a field devoted to the exploration of life outside of Earth and to the investigation of the origin and early evolution of life on Earth.

http://www.geosc.psu.edu/graduates/degrees.php

Whose theoretical xenobiology degree are you thinking of?

[Viking]

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

Show me the law of evolution, the law of nuclear fission and the law of phisiology or any scientific law within geology then I'll stop laughing.

[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...

Why then should I use a book which you seem to agree is completely unreliable in terms of fact to help me with dealing with that question?

You can use it or not, the choice is up to you.

But it is foolish to reject it because it's not "true" when it appears clear that it was never written in the first place as a piece of literal history.  It's like picking up a novel and being frustrated that it isn't a textbook.

[Viking]

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.

Well, the bible does say something about the movement of the stars. It claims the stars are fixed in the firmament. That is just plain wrong.

As for human existence and the relationship to the outside world. If you are going to use Religion to help you understand this then I expect you deal with the truth of the religion first. Until you do that then you don't pass the laugh test.

Don't have anal sex! Why? God sez so! WTF?

[Berkut]

But there is evidence that life exists, and hence it is certainly an interesting scientific endeavor to try to understand how it might exist elsewhere, and to even create theories to explain why life exists here, and what that might mean for its existence elsewhere.

And this is why there is theoretical science at all, even when there is no evidence; because it is possible to conduct science in the lack of evidence; it just cannot progress very far.

I don't think there is this lack of evidence you claim. There is all kinds of evidence, but there isn't much that is very telling, except in a larlgely negative way.

I would not agree that there is no evidence that life exists elsewhere - the fact that it exists here is evidence that it might exist elsewhere.

You may believe this, but yours is an unscientific assertion; more like religion than science.

Not in the least. Observing that life exists in some particular environment is in fact evidence that life might exist in some other environment that is similar, and is certainy testable of falsifiable. And in fact such tests have been done, with mixed results.

  Life's existence anywhere isn't dependent on its existence "here" nor is life present "here" saying anything about its existence elsewhere.

I don't think I said there was any dependence, I simply noted that its existence here suggests that it might exist elsewhere in similar conditions, if such conditions in fact exist.

So yes, its existence here certainly DOES say something about the possibility of it existing elsewhere. The fact that life exists in the depths of the polar ocean suggests that it might exist in a possible Europan ocean, for example.

In fact, probably the most fundamental question in science is "do the scientific conclusions we draw apply universally?  Or does physics itself change over the universe?"

So they make hypothesis like "maybe life exists on Mars!' and then they test them. Lately by sending probes to Mars, and prior to that by studying meteorites that came from Mars. So there is plenty of evidence to be studied, even if a conclusion is still beyond us.

There is no evidence of life off this planet, though there is evidence for lack of lack.

There are Mars asteroids that some claim contain fossilized microbes that indicate there may have been life on Mars at some point. So there is in fact such evidence, although it may not be particualrly well accepted.

  Xenobiology isn't about testing for life on moon rocks, or whatever, though.  It is a purely theoretical science right now.

How does xenobiology differ from astrobiology, if it does at all?

I don't agree that theoretical science is unconcerned with evidence. I think it is very much concerned with evidence, and still make hypothesis and tests them.

[Pat]

BTW, it is amusing to see the same people who insist that the Bible is hogwash turning around and citing Wikipedia as authoritative! 

I suppose you're referring to me There's footnotes on all the claims in the Wikipedia-article I linked. You said lactose tolerance/intolerance is "seldom genetic". I referred you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_tolerance#History_of_genetic_prevalence

If what it says is wrong, show it wrong. Go ahead.

[Berkut]

BTW, it is amusing to see the same people who insist that the Bible is hogwash turning around and citing Wikipedia as authoritative! 

Wiki has a rather huge advantage over the bible. At least it can be updated.

[Pat]

BTW, it is amusing to see the same people who insist that the Bible is hogwash turning around and citing Wikipedia as authoritative! 

Wiki has a rather huge advantage over the bible. At least it can be updated.

[Berkut]

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.

I will keep that in mind if I run into someone who makes such a claim.

[Viking]

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.

I find your contention stupid because I challenge it's assumption that you can't trust something that is symbolic.   You can (and perhaps should) trust things that are symbolic.

Whether or not Noah actually built an ark has little to do with the message of redemption of that story.

The way I understand the Noah Story is that God promises never to murder almost all the humans again. I think the truth of the flood story is pretty much fundamental the morale of the story. If god didn't murder almost all humans then the promis not to do so again makes no sense.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Neither is religion.  An unproven scientific theory is just as viable as religious faith except that the unproven scientific theory has at least the potential to be proven correct through the scientific method.

Or disproven.  Religious faith can never really be disproven.  You could go back in time with a camera and prove decisively that none of the stuff that the Bible claims actually happened and it would not make much of a difference for alot of people.

I imagine that would make a huge difference to almost everyone.

There is actually something very close to this going on with Islam. Most research on Islam in the west is funded by the gulf states so it has been very uncritical. But now we're starting to see independent research into the history of Islam, especially from Germany. Most of it has not been translated yet, but it is interesting to read interviews like this one:

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



In his book "The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research into Its Early History," the theologian Karl-Heinz Ohlig has come to the conclusion that Islam was not originally conceived as an independent religion. Alfred Hackensberger has talked with the author

Your book bears the title "The Hidden Origins." What is hidden about the origins of Islam?

Karl-Heinz Ohlig: All the information we posses on the origins of Islam is taken from later texts – "biographies" that were written in the 9th and 10th centuries. One of these texts, the Annals of at-Tabari (10th century), is also the source of further histories. As such, we lack any corroborating contemporary texts for the first two centuries.

Can these later documents still be regarded as accurate? From a scholarly point of view, are they not something akin to falsifications?

Ohlig: To categorize these texts, or similarly the books of Moses or the Romulus and Remus tale, as falsifications would be entirely wrong, as one has to take into consideration this specific literary genre. Religious-political foundation myths are not history texts and nor were they meant to be.

You advocate the thesis that Islam was not conceived as an independent religion. What proof do you have for this claim?

Ohlig: According to the evidence of Christian literature under Arab rule from the 7th and 8th centuries, as well as from Arab coinage and inscriptions from this period, such as that on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the new rulers adhered to a Syrian-Persian form of Christianity that rejected the decisions of the Council of Nicaea. Instead, it regarded Jesus as the messenger, the prophet, the servant of God, but not the physical son of God, who is a strictly unitary being not "adjoined" to any person. The fathers of the Church, for instance, regarded John of Damascus (d. around 750) as a heretic, because his Greek understanding of Christianity did not correspond to their views. There is no mention of a new, independent religion of the Arabs before the 9th century.

Does this mean that Islam was only made into an independent religion at a later date?

Ohlig: This formulation sounds somewhat arbitrary or like a conscious decision. It is much more the case that religions often arise in that a new assessment is made of the inherited religious conceptions of a tradition. These are then interpreted differently, solidified, and systematized in a specific manner.

You have also engaged in historical-critical research with respect to the Prophet Mohammed. What can be said about his person?

Ohlig: It has been established that the earliest coinage with the motto MHMT appeared in eastern Mesopotamia around 660, made their way westward, and there bilingual coins were stamped with MHMT in the center and muhammad in Arabic script at the edge. These coins bear a Christian iconography, i.e. always with crosses, so that the name muhammad is clearly to be understood as a predicate of Jesus, as in the Sanctus of the mass ("praise be to he that comes...").

Here, muhammad means "revered" and "praiseworthy" or "He who is revered" and "He who is praised." This also corresponds to the inscribed text on the Dome of the Rock, where the title muhammad refers to the Messiah, Jesus, the Son of Mary, and the servant of God. It also fits in with the polemics of John of Damascus against statements he considered heretical.

Later, it seems as if this Christological predicate lost its reference, so that it appears in the Koran as a frequently mentioned, nameless prophet, which could then be historicized into the form of an Arab prophet. The earliest source of this historicization is to be found in writings of John of Damascus, who speaks of the pseudo-prophet Mamed. Only later could the wealth of stories of this Mohammed fill out the historical deficit.

So what you are saying is that the term muhammad could possibly be referring to Christ?

Ohlig: It is entirely possible – even when previously historically improvable – that an important preacher was present at the beginning or at another point in the history of the Koran movement. However, according to the evidence of Arab coins and the inscription in the Dome of the Rock, it must be assumed that the term muhammad, the revered or the praiseworthy, was originally a Christological honorific title.

Why is it that these links haven't previously been made?

Ohlig: Such inquiries are forbidden in Muslim theology, which hasn't yet passed through its Enlightenment. Western Islamic studies remains preoccupied with philology without employing the established methods of historical scholarship. Similarly, there is little religious-historical or Christian theological investigation into the extremely varied cultural traditions of the Middle East. As such, the roots and motives of these traditions are not recognized.

In your book "Early Islam," you write that you do not wish to harm this religion. Many Muslims will see the exact opposite in your work.

Ohlig: Since the 18th century, many Christians, even to this day, regard the Enlightenment as an attack and an attempt to destroy their religion. In reality, however, it has allowed Christianity to survive in the modern world and also be applicable to the lives of modern man. This is a phase that Islam still has to go through, but it is unavoidable if it doesn't want to exist in the future only in ghetto-like, closed communities.

Alfred Hackensberger

© Qantara.de 2008

Karl-Heinz Ohlig is professor of Religious Studies and the History of Christianity at the University of the Saarland, Germany.

http://www.qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php/_c-478/_nr-756/i.html





There are other researchers into the early history of Islam. The Richard Dawkins Foundation on Research and Science and Sam Harris' The Reason Project last year funded a conference into the early history of Islam: http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/19589/sec_id/19589



This is interesting because the Koran is the foundation of Islamic faith. Much more than the Bible is the foundation of Christian faith. In Christian faith the foundation is the life of Jesus. What you find in the NT is just a gathering of testimonies on the life of Jesus. Not so with the Koran, which, according to muslims, is supposed to be the final word of God, recited to Mohammed through the arch-angel Gabriel.

If the early history of Islam can be falsified, then that does indeed remove all foundations for Islamic faith. But somehow I doubt that the Islamic world will look and the evidence and go "oh, okay, I'll suppose we'll stop belive it now".

that's something that would significantly change the way we should view history of that timeperiod I guess.