Loopholes in Religion

[MangoMan]

Re: Loopholes in Religion

Salaam Psyah,

Thank you for taking the time to respond in detail. Please find some comments inline.

@psyah

A loophole is an evident weakness in the wording of a law or instruction that people can exploit to evade the intent of that law or instruction.
A blind man may not see the undressed woman in front of him, but it does not belie the fact that she is naked. If the tools to assess Reality themselves are in question then we revert back to the basis above – that some things remain in the Unseen, either permanently or until a point until we have to ability to see them.

Its not the case of ‘A’ blind man. Here, ‘everybody’ is blind, in that sense. While there are dozens of undressed women, one of whom is THE WOMAN. And it is THE WOMAN who has decided to make everyone blind and then test them on their ability to recognize her from all the other women. If they fail, they burn in hell forever.

@psyah

A question is posed about “God Who Created human beings so that they could worship Him” to then lead on the question of “why” and “what God receives from this. In Islam we have our understandings about Allah (SWT) from scripture so we cannot make things up. His Attributes are sufficient to cater for all possible and feasible lines of questioning. Some lines of questioning are absurd because they force logical fallacies to be entertained. So as long as the question leads to somewhere sound there is an answer to it – as far as I have found within the Islamic scriptures themselves.

First of all – We can ask the question “why would God?” but we should ask ourselves first – “why would we need to know the motives of God?” That is a hard question to answer. There is no reason to know why God does anything; merely we need to know what our expectation is from God. By asking the question “why would God …” we are making the assumption that we will understand the motives of God. Since we cannot make that assumption when we do it can cause us to become distant from the original intent. Distant meaning – our faculties may find a reason to move away from our duty to God based on being unable to fathom His motives – which would be a fallacious reason to do so. There is actually a straight forward answer … What does God receive when we worship Him? The answer is … He receives worship. The question is a tautology. Once having established that God Created us and He deserves our worship then we offer worship. This equation of justice need not be any more complicated than that. Justice is present in our own design – we desire justice and we feel the need to meet that justice by acting in accordance with it. If after establishing that God deserves our worship and we fail to do it we harm our own sense of balance and justice. If we make the tacit arrogation that we can understand the motives of God then already this is an inferior concept of God and contradicts the understood Attributes of God and our relationship to Him – at least from the Islamic point of view.

These are the things I find difficult to understand:

@psyah

1. In Islam we have our understandings about Allah (SWT) from scripture so we cannot make things up. His Attributes are sufficient to cater for all possible and feasible lines of questioning
2. Some lines of questioning are absurd because they force logical fallacies to be entertained.
3. First of all – We can ask the question “why would God?” but we should ask ourselves first – “why would we need to know the motives of God?” That is a hard question to answer. There is no reason to know why God does anything; merely we need to know what our expectation is from God. By asking the question “why would God …” we are making the assumption that we will understand the motives of God.

Why do we need to limit the spectrum of questioning? To protect our beliefs? So that the views held by our ancestors for thousands of years do not get shattered? I mean, it does make sense if we are being protective of our religion. After all, we love it. But then lets just say that: No questioning of religious beliefs. Why are we seeking ONE TRUE religion then? If we don’t put a religion to test using all the possible lines of reasoning, how can we convince others of ONE TRUE religion then?
Your reasoning starts from a point where you have already made a conclusion and you are trying to justify it. But what about those who were born with different beliefs? How can they test the validity of religions? And if indeed your religion is THE TRUE religion, then are they not disadvantaged? Because if they are also told that they have their own limited spectrum in which they are allowed to question, then how will they ever find this TRUE religion?

@psyah

Consider then a scenario that she had five such children and one of her children was adamant on killing his siblings, the only way to stop him would be to kill him or maim him, would she not do that despite her love?

Again, I find this analogy a bit too simplistic: an analogy which suits the answer you want to hear, not an analogy you should make in order to understand something and then to be ready to accept whatever is the outcome of the analogy. Here, no children of God is adamant on killing his siblings. Here, God can burn his beloved ‘children’, in hell forever even if they are perfectly fine with each other but just do not recognize him using their ‘limited intelligence’ given to them by him.