Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
Current time: March 29, 2024, 11:52 am

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
[Quranic Reflection]: Anthropomorphism and God in Islam
#11
RE: [Quranic Reflection]: Anthropomorphism and God in Islam
Theism is defined by describing the divine in such a way. An intervening and personal god.

As to whether it removes respect from a god to be described in that way, the way in which every single theist describes their god..well, I guess that depends on how shitty a view of people you have, Winter. You could have decided that your god was swinelike rather than personal, for example.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Reply
#12
RE: [Quranic Reflection]: Anthropomorphism and God in Islam
(June 15, 2021 at 6:35 am).BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: One of Allah's most common sobriquets is 'the Merciful'. Mercy is an exclusively human emotion. Allah is therefore anthropomorphized.

Boru

"Mercy" is an absolute and abstract trait. For example you have the trees covering a spot on a hot day, clouds raining water after a drought. Mercy exists in the universe way before humans.
Reply
#13
RE: [Quranic Reflection]: Anthropomorphism and God in Islam
That's just you ascribing mercy where there is none.

Where you might interpret the scene of shade beneath a tree as merciful, someone else might only perceive a frighteningly cold darkness away from the warmth of the sun.
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter
Reply
#14
RE: [Quranic Reflection]: Anthropomorphism and God in Islam
(June 15, 2021 at 6:35 am)Belacqua Wrote:
(June 15, 2021 at 4:42 am)WinterHold Wrote: God is an entity that we can't imagine with our minds

I wonder if the tendency to anthropomorphize has something to do with the fact that the big religions are supposed to be for everybody, including both the educated and the illiterate. 

So for example Americans think of Taoism as being philosophical and abstract, because the Tao Te Ching has been fairly well known in English. It doesn't talk about a Big Father or a scary Hell. But I know that (pre-Mao) if you went to a Taoist temple in China there would likely be paintings of Hell to scare the simple people into behaving themselves. There was a difficult version for people who were better educated, and another version for the regular folk.

It's just easier to imagine a Heavenly Father than an apophatic divine. So the elites were comfortable with a simplified version for the common folk, which took the symbols more at face value. No doubt it offends our modern democratic feelings today, but I think a two-tier approach was common in Taoism, Buddhism, and Christianity. 


But I don't know about Islam.

Many humans prefer the easier thinking route; i.e they don't like moving their brains to think about an absolute, abstract deity.

Islamic clergy followed a similar path too; very similar actually. Their tool to anthropomorphize God is the :Hadith" with both its Sunni/Shiite versions.

(June 15, 2021 at 6:36 am)Brian37 Wrote:
(June 15, 2021 at 4:42 am)WinterHold Wrote: In this topic I want to discuss "Anthropomorphism" and how it corrupts religion and the "image of God" in our heads.


"Anthropomorphism" is defined by:


Moreover, it's also removing any kind of respect the creature has to God. Since God is an entity that we can't imagine with our minds or even apply attributes to. Actually, we need a "word from God" first telling us how to approach him correctly, what traits to "apply to him" and what names should we call him with.

The Quran says about God:



Simply, we can't picture or imagine an "eternal refugee" who is "one and only", never was born or gave birth and has no equal.

But Anthropomorphism was always present in both "Christianity and Pagan religions -Judaism forbids it like Islam-:



God is beyond description, all we can do is take the description he gave in the Quran, and that's it.

"God is beyond description", your words.

I agree, so why would I want to take the words of a book written by ignorant humans?

"God is neither a material nor a spiritual being", again your quote.

Sounds like you are describing the non existent.

The "Quran" is not the word of man, it's the "literal exact words of God himself".
Reply
#15
RE: [Quranic Reflection]: Anthropomorphism and God in Islam
One would think a real deity could have written a better book.
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter
Reply
#16
RE: [Quranic Reflection]: Anthropomorphism and God in Islam
(June 15, 2021 at 6:35 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: One of Allah's most common sobriquets is 'the Merciful'. Mercy is an exclusively human emotion. Allah is therefore anthropomorphized.

Boru

Not to mention that Muhammad had a conversation with Allah in heaven after he arrived there on a flying donkey, and bargained with Allah as with a common peddler on the street, which is very anthropomorphized.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
Reply



Possibly Related Threads...
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  [Quranic Reflection] : "Joseph; he came to you before with the clear proofs". WinterHold 60 4259 September 22, 2023 at 10:01 pm
Last Post: LinuxGal
  [Quranic Reflection]: The Aten. WinterHold 35 2764 June 10, 2023 at 9:56 pm
Last Post: Paleophyte
  [Quranic Reflection]: the sound of hell. WinterHold 13 1410 April 18, 2023 at 10:28 pm
Last Post: Ravenshire
  [Quranic reflection]: Homosexuality is nothing but Sexual Gratification. WinterHold 58 4076 March 27, 2023 at 11:29 am
Last Post: Neo-Scholastic
  [Quranic reflection]: hell is a black hole-part V, objects never leave hell. WinterHold 40 2977 January 5, 2023 at 11:57 am
Last Post: HappySkeptic
  [Quranic reflection]: hell is a black hole-part IV: the noodle effect. WinterHold 21 2078 November 25, 2022 at 11:25 am
Last Post: LinuxGal
  [Quranic reflection]: What is time? WinterHold 13 1297 July 29, 2022 at 3:11 am
Last Post: BrianSoddingBoru4
  [Quranic reflection]: The Big Bang theory in the Quran. WinterHold 62 4202 June 14, 2022 at 1:21 pm
Last Post: The Grand Nudger
  [Quranic reflection]: hell is a black hole-part III WinterHold 71 4486 May 8, 2022 at 3:33 pm
Last Post: JairCrawford
  [Quranic Reflection]: Quran vs Hadith- why the Hadith is false WinterHold 176 11501 January 15, 2022 at 2:39 pm
Last Post: Angrboda



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)