The Issue of Islamic Conservatism

[Leonardo17]

@Leonardo17

I agree with the final statement. There should be laws directing people only to believe in what they can directly observe or verify with experiments done to see if someone is completely right or not. Trying to do things by believing what somebody or some book said is full of risks from the very beginning.

I can’t imagine an idea more inimical to freedom that attempting to legislate belief. 

I also don’t understand how such laws could be enforced.

Boru

Neil deGrasse Tyson has this description of an utopic society called rationalia in which all government decision and state policies need to be based on observable scientific facts and easily verifiable ideas:
https://neildegrassetyson.com/commentary...ationalia/
 
I don’t know if this is possible but I’m totally in
 

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- What we are talking about is the average attitude of the typical John or Jane Doe of this planet in our current era. We like observable realities and verifiable facts in all areas of our lives.
 
So my first point is: Anyone who disagrees with that and wants to rely on some ethnic traditions or some interpretation of spiritual beliefs instead is actually out of sync with the realities of our times.
 
- I am not so out of touch with the more positivistic attitudes either. Observation, verifiable realities and reasoning can take us a very long way and provide answer to most of our existential questions.
 
So Deist is basically somebody like me, who usually agrees with all of the above. Yet has left room in his/her belief system for the study of higher realities (This term belongs to one of the students of Yogananda, whose books I happen to have read). And I say study because the whole thing happens in a life time. You don’t get to know things immediately. It’s something in which you learn and you learn and you keep learning until you get to a point of spiritual enlightenment which is a relatively rare occurrence.
 
So I don’t have any problem with ordinary / average believers either. Most of them belong to religious communities and churches that are more or less Ok. They learn to be humble from the very beginning. Then, in many cases, they get to have good priests or teaches who are able to teach them some level of spiritual knowledge which does help most people in facing the difficulties of human existence on this planet.
 
So I’m fine with atheism. I’m also fine with the more moderate forms of religion as well.
 
One thing that I really don’t like and which is also mentioned in Muslim scriptures is the use of faith for personal (Ego based) benefits. The story of the Pharaoh in the Koran mentions that. Also all those UFO sects, suicide sects, sects in which people are drugged and hypnotized to be exploited by their “Gurus” is an ugly reality of our time. There were such sects in the past. Ottoman Sultans massacred several such sects with all their adherents (because they really had to). But today, these “Gurus” can do what Hitler and Mussolini did. If given a chance they can use mass media and social media to hypnotize and brainwash more people into their twisted belief systems. If they seize power as in Iran or Afghanistan they can start to oppress ordinary people (described in first part of this post) and try to force them to not be people of the 21st century but act as if they were some peasant living in the middle of the 10th century who believe that the world is a flat pace in which the eternal combat between the forces of Yahveh and Satan are being staged.
 
I also want to share this link about anti-Israel protests in Amsterdam:




 
 
So believer or atheist, 99% of us don’t want any of this ….t. We have evolved. We don’t fight each other on “Which God is the True God?” anymore. Believer or atheist. We are past that already.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

There should be laws directing people only to believe in what they can directly observe or verify with experiments done to see if someone is completely right or not. Trying to do things by believing what somebody or some book said is full

Again, what form would those laws take and how would you enforce them? Would you fine people for believing in Bigfoot? What’s the jail sentence for persisting to believe in a flat Earth despite all evidence to the contrary? Not only is the idea ridiculous and unenforceable, it would stifle scientific inquiry.

As I said earlier, Dr. Tyson is an admirable scientist, but that utopian scheme of his will never get off the ground, let alone succeed.

Boru