The Islam Thread

[Lucem Ferre]

Originally Posted by elphenor

that pretty much demonstrates your fundamental misunderstanding of religion

Shows your fundamental misunderstanding of the point.

You can literally interpret anything to mean anything you want by cherry picking it enough but when you get right down to it the religions are literally teaching people bad things as doctrine the same way something like Mein Kampf did.

[Lucem Ferre]

Originally Posted by elphenor

scripture inherently requires you to interpret it, it's not a straight forward instruction manual or a coherent ideology

smart mother****ers can spend years and years in school studying religious texts

What are you basing this on other than the fact that you live in a secular society?

I assure you the bible wasn't meant to be as abstractly followed as you think.

[jwb]

That paints the idea that scripture is devoid of any true meaning with regard to how the author meant it and how it's typically interpreted by religious devotees, which clearly isn't true.

The more you make this type of argument the more your ignorance on the topic is exposed.

[Lucem Ferre]

Because it's self contradicting nonsense written by multiple people with multiple agendas.

A lot of them pushing bad ideas that don't leave a lot of room for interpretation but people cherry pick out because it doesn't look good in a more evolved and secular society.

[Lucem Ferre]

Oh, and that it was written a long ass time ago in a language that's really hard to translate.

[Neapolitan]

Originally Posted by elphenor

according to some polls about 40% of Muslims even in the Middle East say there's more than one way to read the text

That leaves an even greater amount, about 60% (if my math is correct), who don't.

[Lucem Ferre]

Islam wasn't moderate, Muslims were.

[Lucem Ferre]

Originally Posted by elphenor

Islam isn't anything until someone interprets it

And if it says something garbage like, "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them." where there isn't much room for interpretation then it's bad even if the people interpreting the religion choose to ignore that part.

[Frownland]

Originally Posted by elphenor

I'm not really educated enough

You really think so?

[jwb]

Originally Posted by elphenor

according to some polls about 40% of Muslims even in the Middle East say there's more than one way to read the text

the idea that there's more than one way to read the text doesn't mean there's an infinite number of interpretations. E.G. there is perhaps some ambiguity about whether Christians should try to follow Mosaic law but there is absolutely no ambiguity about the fact that Mosaic law prescribes the death penalty for having gay sex.

It's also important to point out that there are different genres of writing within the holy books themselves, some of which lend themselves to allegory and metaphor more than others. So Ecclesiastes or Psalms is much more ambiguous in its meaning than Leviticus or Deuteronomy.

The Quran and Hadiths also has different types of passages, some more ambiguous than others. So maybe it's ambiguous exactly what punishment should be meted out to adulterers, for example, because the Quran prescribes a different punishment than the Hadiths. But the fact that adultery is wrong or haram and should be considered a crime is not at all ambiguous.

So ultimately I think the different interpretations argument doesn't offer nearly as much flexibility as you think it does. Religious texts are also not unique in this regard. Marx's writing is also interpreted differently by different readers... But there is a basic core message that if you miss that in his writing that's just a failure at reading comprehension rather than a truly viable alternative interpretation.

To the extent there are progressive adherents to Abrahamic religion, those are people who simply don't follow/ignore large parts of the text that has a backwards message. Which I think is a good thing, but make no mistake that this is what they are doing.

Don't get me wrong, extremists typically do this too and they ignore some of the good parts of the text. There's virtually nobody that follows it completely faithfully as you suggest, but that's because it's contradictory and ultimately not really worth following at all, rather than there being some more enlightened way to interpret it.