The issue of Blasphemy in Islam

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm asking you why god has never nixxed the tradition, not whether a god needs animal sacrifice. Could go either way I guess..maybe they don't -hence my question..but maybe they actually do need the blood of some animal for some reason of magic - in which case my question is moot.

The pig thing just leads into more of the same kind of questions. Now..I..ofc..think there's a pretty good cultural explanation for it...but magic book says it's a god rule. Maybe god should explain that one too?

[Leonardo17]

1) I think I answered that question. Since there was already a strong culture of animal sacrifice, the message might have been to maintain the tradition in a way that benefits the poorest layers of society.
2) I don’t know about paganism that well. But I know that the issue of “energy” is very important in these traditions. Not only as animal blood. In India and ancient Egypt they had rituals that would in some cases take weeks to perform. There was always this thought of “bribing the Gods” that was entirely abolished in monotheistic religions. In fact, it wasn’t so in early Paganism either. But this is the subject of another discussion.
3) I’m not sure I understood your point on this. The “magic book” is to be seen as a “user’s manual”. Sometimes strict obedience is needed, but in most cases you have the duty “to ask yourself and God” about the reason of the guideline (whichever guideline might that be). So all of these issues are (and should be) the subject of a constant debate.
As an explainer: I know that there are some benefits in the consumption of pork meat. But in middle age Europe sheep and cattle were the preferred meat of aristocrats while pig was the preferred protein source for the peasants. Anyhow, I am reducing my consumption of meat altogether because most doctors agree on the fact that a plant-based diet with a limited amount of animal protein is the ideal way of nutrition.

[The Grand Nudger]

1) I think I answered that question. Since there was already a strong culture of animal sacrifice, the message might have been to maintain the tradition in a way that benefits the poorest layers of society.

An answer that further indicts such a god as a fuck up.  A shitty practice that it decides not to say a word about, because it hopes it might help do some -other- thing that it -also- doesn't do.  IDK..but if were a believer, I wouldn't be in the business of multiplying gods failures when asked about just one of them....but I do respect what a terrible position your beliefs have put you in..in this regard.   Forced to offer things like..well..like all of this...or fail a loyalty test. Oddly enough, theres a super simple answer for why god wants sacrifices in old magic book. It likes the smell of burnt flesh.

Kinda puts later abrahamists hell in perspective, eh?

2) I don’t know about paganism that well. But I know that the issue of “energy” is very important in these traditions. Not only as animal blood. In India and ancient Egypt they had rituals that would in some cases take weeks to perform. There was always this thought of “bribing the Gods” that was entirely abolished in monotheistic religions. In fact, it wasn’t so in early Paganism either. But this is the subject of another discussion.

You're in luck, I do!...but, to be completely honest, there's not actually any difference between paganism and islam in this regard.  As you flirted with above, it's just one expression of a long standing human tradition that turned out to be false by every stated metric, measure, or reason.  You think that bribing gods was done away with, but in mere reality, gods simply asked for different coins, and still do. The defining factor of any theistic god belief, pagan or abrahamic, is personal interventionism.

3) I’m not sure I understood your point on this. The “magic book” is to be seen as a “user’s manual”. Sometimes strict obedience is needed, but in most cases you have the duty “to ask yourself and God” about the reason of the guideline (whichever guideline might that be). So all of these issues are (and should be) the subject of a constant debate.
As an explainer: I know that there are some benefits in the consumption of pork meat. But in middle age Europe sheep and cattle were the preferred meat of aristocrats while pig was the preferred protein source for the peasants. Anyhow, I am reducing my consumption of meat altogether because most doctors agree on the fact that a plant-based diet with a limited amount of animal protein is the ideal way of nutrition.

A users manual that bends the truth for effect, and still gets it wrong? This is your gods work? More academically, the pig thing had nothing to do with the middle ages or europe. It came down to you from judaism somewhere in the late bronze or early iron. Just someone repeating something which was, itself, on les than solid ground. Pigs don't chew their cud and have cloven hooves. More accurately, though, their Others were pig farming city dwellers, and the people who wrote the myths big mo and co stole were rural shepherds. Culture war. There's alot of stuff like this, broadly referred to as the pastoralist influence.

Speaking of what doctors know..did god not know that when making this meat world? When making us meat eaters? When affirming sacrificial practices? Or will you be forced, here, to offer an even more ludicrous view of an imagined past to cover a ludicrous view of an imagined god?

I have too many of these to ever expect you to have a well considered answer for. The genre, though, isn't so much about gods or magic books as it is reformers. People who are dissatisfied with explanations like "cuz god likes the smell of burnt animals" and want to put forward a different conception of god, or why god does or says what god is said to do and say. I find it odd, and cross purpose, for reformers to shackle themselves to exactly those x's they wish to minimize. A quicker way to the end of all of this, is to ask whether or not there are -any- examples in the entirety of magic book (and I would choose the most assanine and manifestly false as a rule) that you think..might not have been uttered by any gods? Ultimately..because..ure, I see no reason that a god couldn;t be a know nothing fuck up, but I wonder how far down that road you'd go to maintain any, some, or all of those items....and to what end?

[Leonardo17]

[The Grand Nudger]

How much in magic book, that you've read, do you think might have been about politics and sheeple, rather than something a god said to a man in a cave?

Logically speaking, ofc.

There are other items, if you'd prefer not to explore that one...such as the notion implicit in your comments above that atheists or agnostics are not, themelves, people with great convictions. That seems to be a human trait, not an ingroup-outgroup thing. The sets of convictions are different, but the commitment, not so much. Or..perhaps, whether or not you'd truly wish to see the end of religious dictatorship - or that the problem is the the Right Dictatorship has not presented itself. Gods dictatorship, as expressed in the torture porn rag you call a user manual that requires strict obediance. Your notion that contemporary reformed religions are in any true or even credible sense a "return" to the "original" messages? Is that true of neo-paganism, for example..or do you allow that historic neopagans were a kindof rowdy lot keen on blood..despite the current manifestation being a bunch of hippys?

I think you're probably doing being human better than the first muslims, but you're not doing islam better. Likewise, odin would be pissed at the folks using his name today - and not for good or wholesome reasons as you or I might see them.

[Leonardo17]

1) A lot. You must have heard that the prophet Mohammad was at war with Arabs who wanted to maintain the old ways. And there are many verses that are focusing on these issues.
2) These are very large issues that are beyond my amount of knowledge. But
a) Of course they have convictions but they won’t for instance a non-believers republic with a morality police beating and killing women who decide to wear the Hijab for instance
b) I think there are no reformed religion. The protestant churches in America who have worked to abolish the Woe-Rade law were also “reformed” Christian as you would put it. So the return to the original message has to be an individual action. Not a collective action undertaken by a group or society in general. I only said that the ideas of Luther were correct. I didn’t say I’m a Lutheran
- There is a phenomenon called invented religions. Hinduism is in many ways a polytheistic religion but is has roots that go back to 3000 BC (or perhaps even more) and a whole set of sages, Yogis, schools of Hinduism with serious amounts of religious material that have to be taken seriously by any theologians.
You cannot create a new religion with a mail-group, a website and a few Hippy-like dressed people who say they decided to become Pagans. But sorry for this. I know that there are real neo-Pagans in Europe, Australis and North-America. But this is my vision of things. Vercingetorix (The Gaulish King) was a true Pagan. Today we don’t really know a lot about their deities and how people perceived these deities and what were their day to day religious beliefs and how they saw the world in general. But this is my opinion. (Anyone willing to go to Stonehenge to celebrate the shamhain festival – or whatever – has my blessing to do so, but I simply don’t thing of it as the same thing that – for instance – the ancient Athenians believed in. I think there is difference between the two )
c) All I am saying is that we live in a different age. So if we have a certain belief system (which I do) I think it can only make sense if it is in line with the reality of our time. This principle was valid for the first Muslims as well. In fact their beliefs were truly revolutionary and more adapted to the reality of their times than the already existing idolatry religions of the Arabian Peninsula at that time. (Or at least this is how I see things)

[The Grand Nudger]

1) A lot. You must have heard that the prophet Mohammad was at war with Arabs who wanted to maintain the old ways. And there are many verses that are focusing on these issues.

How problematic do you think that is for islam, that alot of the things attributed to some god may actually be the opinions of a human warlord?

2) These are very large issues that are beyond my amount of knowledge. But
a) Of course they have convictions but they won’t for instance a non-believers republic with a morality police beating and killing women who decide to wear the Hijab for instance
b) I think there are no reformed religion. The protestant churches in America who have worked to abolish the Woe-Rade law were also “reformed” Christian as you would put it. So the return to the original message has to be an individual action. Not a collective action undertaken by a group or society in general. I only said that the ideas of Luther were correct. I didn’t say I’m a Lutheran
- There is a phenomenon called invented religions. Hinduism is in many ways a polytheistic religion but is has roots that go back to 3000 BC (or perhaps even more) and a whole set of sages, Yogis, schools of Hinduism with serious amounts of religious material that have to be taken seriously by any theologians.
  You cannot create a new religion with a mail-group, a website and a few Hippy-like dressed people who say they decided to become Pagans. But sorry for this. I know that there are real neo-Pagans in Europe, Australis and North-America. But this is my vision of things. Vercingetorix (The Gaulish King) was a true Pagan. Today we don’t really know a lot about their deities and how people perceived these deities and what were their day to day religious beliefs and how they saw the world in general. But this is my opinion. (Anyone willing to go to Stonehenge to celebrate the shamhain festival – or whatever – has my blessing to do so, but I simply don’t thing of it as the same thing that – for instance – the ancient Athenians believed in. I think there is difference between the two )
c) All I am saying is that we live in a different age. So if we have a certain belief system (which I do) I think it can only make sense if it is in line with the reality of our time. This principle was valid for the first Muslims as well. In fact their beliefs were truly revolutionary and more adapted to the reality of their times than the already existing idolatry religions of the Arabian Peninsula at that time. (Or at least this is how I see things)

Is magic book not an idol?

[Leonardo17]

1) That’s not how I see it no.
2) Abrahamic religions don’t like idols. There is the story of Abraham breaking down the idols in a temple with an axe and then putting the axe in the hand of the last remaining idol and telling the guardians of the temple “He must have done it. There is life in him isn’t there?”.
Even Christian depictions of Jesus, the apostles and the virgin were at one time broken down by iconoclasts (during the Reign of the emperor Justinian I If I remember correctly). So no, monotheism refuses idolatry.

[awty]

Jesus isn't an idol in Abrahamic religions?

And for the Catholics - all the saints and the Virgin Mary?

[The Grand Nudger]

1) That’s not how I see it no.

 We must be miscomminicating - that's okay, I honestly doubt we can go very far with this one.

2) Abrahamic religions don’t like idols.

What religions say about themselves, vs what religions actually do and are. 

I think that beliefs about a sacred and magical book that ends up a prized and well cared for possession are direct stand ins for the idols you may be more familiar with.  They perform the function of idols, and are believed to have similar supernatural powers as those idols, and are treated like those idols.  Many neopagans use their own magic books in precisely the same way.

There is the story of Abraham breaking down the idols in a temple with an axe and then putting the axe in the hand of the last remaining idol and telling the guardians of the temple “He must have done it. There is life in him isn’t there?”.
Even Christian depictions of Jesus, the apostles and the virgin were at one time broken down by iconoclasts (during the Reign of the emperor Justinian I If I remember correctly). So no, monotheism refuses idolatry.

Monotheism doesn't do that, you may do that...though I think it's questionable whether or not you actually do refuse idolatry.... but it's not a requirement of or rule for monotheism.

If I had to guess, you think you refuse it because of a narrow and dogmatically important bit about offending god. Which, conveniently, is why I think you might want to reassess islams relationship to a magic book. If that sort of thing is unwarranted, and forbidden, and offends god....... well.