| Submit your comments on this article |
| Olde Tyme Religion |
| Spengler: Reason to believe, or not - Benedict And The Muslim 38 |
| 2006-10-19 |
| EFL- Pope Benedict XVI has drawn a collective response from the Muslim world, in the form of an open letter from 38 Islamic leaders regarding his September 12 address in Regensburg. "All the eight schools of thought and jurisprudence in Islam are represented by the signatories," according to a press release hailing the letter as "unique in the history of interfaith relations". [1] The pope provoked outrage by suggesting that Islam rejects reason: the open letter proves him right. They argue that there is no dichotomy in Islam between reason and faith, which turns out to mean that there is no role for reason. Some of the issues raised in the Muslim response are bit abstract, but the practical implications are quite stark. Theology, as Benedict stated on September 12, is "inquiry into the rationality of faith". Its most important function is to reject purported revelation that cannot possibly be true, such that faith may acknowledge revelation that might be true. Christianity and Judaism have endured two centuries of withering criticism from scientific study of their sacred texts. To perform the same function in the case of the Koran puts a scholar's life at risk. I do not know whether the scholars who question the Koran's authenticity are correct - I am not a specialist in such matters - but I am quite sure that their conclusions are reasoned. If reason might demonstrate the founding premises of a religion to be false, it is nonsense to argue, as the clerics do, that reason itself can be subsumed into a system of religious belief. Reason and faith need each other, the pope argued in Regensburg. At the same time, modern science requires philosophical, and even theological premises which it cannot itself provide. Kurt Goedel, the 20th century's greatest mathematician, proved that no mathematical system can prove its own axioms, which must be accepted as if it were a matter of faith. As Benedict said: "Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought - to philosophy and theology." But the pope added, "For Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality ... God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry." Conversion by force through jihad is the consequence of irrationality. Here is the response of the 38 Muslim clerics in the open letter: [T]he dichotomy between "reason" on one hand and "faith" on the other does not exist in precisely the same form in Islamic thought. Rather, Muslims have come to terms with the power and limits of human intelligence in their own way [emphasis added], acknowledging a hierarchy of knowledge of which reason is a crucial part ... [I]n their most mature and mainstream forms the intellectual explorations of Muslims through the ages have maintained a consonance between the truths of the Koranic revelation and the demands of human intelligence, without sacrificing one for the other. God says, We shall show them Our signs in the horizons and in themselves until it is clear to them that it is the truth (Fussilat 41:53). Reason itself is one of the many signs within us, which God invites us to contemplate, and to contemplate with, as a way of knowing the truth. Reason, the Muslim clerics aver, is one more of the "signs in the horizon" that God sets before us to reveal His presence, like sunsets and rainbows. Now, I suppose that sunsets, rainbows, cellular mitosis and one's capacity to bisect an angle all might serve as inspiration. Reason in the West, though, is something quite different. Reason first of all is the capacity to doubt, to subject belief to the sort of merciless questioning that made Socrates so unpopular in Athens. Benedict drew a parallel between Socratic reasoning and Hebrew revelation to which I objected (Not what it was, but what it does, October 3, 2006). Socratic reasoning is ironic and destructive in Kierkegaard's reading, not affirmative of faith. [2] But that is a secondary matter here. Reason, in the Muslim clerics' view, is a sign from God, an object that God has created and planted in our brains to show us God's presence. For example, if I say that as a reasoning fellow I don't believe in Allah, the answer must be, "Aha! You are using your reason to doubt the existence of Allah, and the fact that you have reason demonstrates the existence of Allah, because if you have reason, someone must have given it to you, and that only could be Allah." To state that the dichotomy between faith and reason simply doesn't exist in Islam is another way of saying that Islam does not admit reason. The modern concept of reason, Benedict observed in his September 12 address, begins with Rene Descartes in the 17th century, who shifts the subject to the individual man away from God. Descartes' most famous dictum, "I think, therefore I am," changes the subject from the Scholastic question, that is, the existence of God. Rather than ask, "How do I know whether God exists?", Descartes asks, "How do I know that I exist?" To which the simple answer is: if I don't exist, then who's asking the question? Following our 38 Muslim clerics, the Muslim reply must be: "Aha - you believe that you have thoughts, but those thoughts must come from somewhere, and where could those thoughts come from, except for Allah? It is not 'I think, therefore I am', but rather, 'I think, therefore Allah is'." If God simply has planted reason in our brain the better to demonstrate to us His presence, then we have no thoughts that God does not send us. God as it were has placed a radio transmitter in our brain and is sending us signals. The trouble is that not only Allah can plant a radio transmitter in our brain, but also Satan. Suppose I employ reason to conduct the most elementary sort of consistency check on the Koran. I will have trouble reconciling Sura 47:4 ("When you meet the unbelievers, strike off their heads," etc) with 50:45 ("We well know what the infidels say, but you are not to compel them"), and hundreds of other verses on other subjects. Reason shows only a contradiction; reconciliation of such statements requires recourse to a tradition of "abrogation" of supposedly early verses by later verses for which no empirical demonstration exists. ... f the Pentateuch of the Old Testament was revealed to a handful of individuals, not just to Moses as tradition has it, Christians and Jews can absorb the damage. Not so Muslims if the Koran was revealed to (or redacted by) someone else than Mohammed. That is why some prominent text critics of the Koran publish under pseudonyms ("Christoph Luxenburg", "Ibn Warraq"), or not at all. In the Western tradition, Descartes' man - rather than God-centered metaphysics - led first to a revolt against faith. But science, as Benedict argued on September 12, had to learn its own limitations. Creation ex nihilo, once derided as the most unreasonable of Biblical doctrines, does not seem so unreasonable now that the physicists concede that all the laws of nature cease to have meaning prior to the origin of the universe in the Big Bang. Mathematics, thanks to Kurt Goedel, now must admit its axioms depend on faith rather than proof. Modern reason began as the antagonist of faith, but in its best manifestation has been housebroken into its proper role as the Accusing Angel in the heavenly court. The core of the issue is human freedom. ... Interesting piece on the practical applications of Reason and Faith. It explains to some degree the stark disconnect on the concepts of "Reason" between the Western and Islamic worlds. I think the reverb from the "38"'s letter of reply is going to have far-reaching consequences. |
| Posted by:mrp |
| #7 Wich makes the USPS' annoucement that they're getting rid of a lot of boxes very interesting. Removing extra targets. |
| Posted by: anonymous2u 2006-10-19 23:38 |
| #6 As wid the USA via 9-11/WOT, then Israel, and now Benedict, where the West's enemies are concerned the burden is on the West to save and justify {Radical] Islam, etal. before the West either surrenders to same, andor is destroyed by same. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2006-10-19 23:24 |
| #5 I think we will see IED's much more than we will see suicide bombers in the US. IED's have already been seized (not used) along our southern borders. |
| Posted by: Snuns Thromp1484 2006-10-19 23:10 |
| #4 The theological grounds for the coming world war are being set today : the Pope and Western religious leaders are trying to explain the concept of "Faith seeking Reason" to the Muslim "Submission or death" crowd. The Muslims will, of course, reject any form of rationalism or reformation, which will lead to the world war in the next 5-10 years. And a great deal of that war will be fought on the streets of the West since we are already heavily infiltrated by the Muslim horde. I have no doubt that we in the West will start seeing belt bombers on our streets on a regular basis within the next 5 years. |
| Posted by: Shieldwolf 2006-10-19 21:01 |
| #3 Perhaps in parts, but is isn't just any obfuscation; the open letter is a formal reply by Muslim scholars to an address given by the head of the Catholic Church. This isn't just an academic froth-fest or a panel discussion between academics. On one hand, the Pope is the leader of over 1 billion Christians (a point made explicit in the letter) and his address in Regensburg included serious critiques in regards to Islam - points senior Islamic representives from diverse Islamic schools felt compelled to answer. When "All the eight schools of thought and jurisprudence in Islam are represented by the signatories", the issue escalates to a higher level than we've ever seen before. Whether or not we in the West find their letter "reasonable", there isn't much doubt that the stakes involved are very, very big. |
| Posted by: mrp 2006-10-19 20:23 |
| #2 hmph. Taquyia. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2006-10-19 18:22 |
| #1 The Spengler-excerpted paragraph from the open letter - starting with: [T]he dichotomy between "reason" on one hand and ending with as a way of knowing the truth should have been block-quoted. My apologies for the confusion. |
| Posted by: mrp 2006-10-19 12:59 |