Dealing with edge cases.

[Mystic]

You bring a good and important subject.  One of the purposes of Quran or perhaps it's primary purpose, is so we reflect.

It also has forbidden explicitly to follow what we have no knowledge of.

Without reflection, people won't understand. Without understanding proofs it offers, we will never unite on it's truths.

If we follow scholars who wish to lead us and act like they are our great leaders and attribute purity to themselves, we are bound to err, like all people erred in religion in the past.

Also no verse is to be believed in blindly, because, you can then misinterpret it and follow a misinterpretation out of ignorance, all in the name of following God.

God wishes to guide humans, but he needs us to reflect.

He condemned in the Quran severely people who gave up natural knowledge they had of right and wrong for leaders or even for lies attributed to scriptures by scholars.

So it's per Quran never good enough to believe in something because a "holy book" says so, but rather, a holy book must be studied and believed in the truths it iterates, and truth should not be mixed with falsehood.

I believe people always assume worst interpretations when comes to Quran due to sorcery.   For example, obeying those who hold the Authority from us...in 4:59, despite the context, people make it as if it refers to rulers be they good or evil.

Without reflection, all it's proofs remain ambiguous. With reflection, it's full of insights and iterates proofs well.

To believe any of it dogmatically and blindly, goes against it's whole message that it's meant to be followed with knowledge and assessed for it's clear bright signs, and guidance is about seeing and perceiving; not following blindly.

Well liberal religion is way better than fundamentalist religion. But it seems like it would be way better for moral instruction to be clearly spelled out to me. But I think most of the stuff that's truly obscene is stuff that your average person doesn't want to do except in the worst circumstances. Torture, murder, mutilation(which I guess is torture),theft stuff like that-most of us are rarely even tempted to do these things. I just avoid doing things that harm others. I don't know if I'm a true humanist.

So would the original text not strictly prohibit mutilation? Or is it just not as strong a condemnation? 

I'm just guessing, and I'm not saying I agree with the Quran, but maybe the people that copied it down changed the meaning to what they want it to say.

Although it is much newer than the Christian Bible.

If religious people focus on the good stuff and don't condemn behaviors that don't hurt anybody, I feel much better about how they practice their religion.

It's not about liberal or fundamentalist. 

To me 3 essential questions come to a book claiming to be from God:

1) How should a verse be seen if we look at it from the perspective it is from God.

2) How should a chapter look and be reflected about, if it is from God.

3) How can we definitely know it is from God.


I feel the problem is people belittle God and throw him behind their backs, in favor their clergy, and idols, and leaders that have no proof to be followed from God, that we end up interpreting his book in the most horrible ways possible.

Suppose Quran is not from God but a person assumes that God can speak such words in another divine book. So isolate the verse and say it's from God but forget the Quran and Islam paradigm.

What can it mean?

Of course, if we go to it with lenses to confirm our biases, we are going to impose our opinion on God's book rather then reflect on God's book so that it can guides us and give us insight.