Secularism and Atheism

Society Religion & Philosophy
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Re: Secularism and Atheism

I dont think Secular countries have more atheists, they simply have more freedom for atheists to express themselves. I suspect there are many closet atheists in places like Pakistan and Saudi etc, but they simply dont have the freedom to come out and admit it, for fear of being ridiculed or ostracized.

Secularism doesn't create atheism, it just gives them the freedom to be open about it. If there is any direct correlation between Atheism and Secularism it only to the extent that secularism doesnt impose any specific relgious belief on anyone, thereby allowing for independent thought. Its hard to think independantly in a religion saturated country like Pakistan.

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Why should we need an ultimate arbitrator? Why can good not be done for the sake of good?

What is good and what is bad is not an arbitrary thing, its hard wired into our psyche. Stealing is bad and murder is bad, not because we are told as such by god, but because it is inherent in us to understand these things as being bad.

If arbitration is of value, and i suppose it is at some point, then that is the role of society... Society judges what is or is not permissible.

But even if we assume god is the ultimate source of right and wrong, im reminded of Platos "Euthyphro" in which the question is raised, does god love something because its pious, or is something pious because god loves it? Another words, are morale deeds deemed to be as such by god because they are morale by nature, or are moral deeds such because they were deemed to be as such by god? So citing god doesnt really resolve our dilema. Because if things are morale by nature, then why would we need god to tell us that? It implies there is a moral standard outside of god. And if they are moral only because god says they should be, then god could have easily made something that is moral be immoral and so morality thus is arbitrary...

(Im curious, Muslim philosophers must have wrestled with this back in the day, what is the Islamic resolution to the Euthyphro's dilemma?)

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you mean, caring others so others will care us is an ethic?

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where the concept of randomness is then? how can you be that specific in you view of the world? You are contradicting with so-called concept of world-view...
just because you say that things are morale by nature does make it like that...

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thats tit for tat ethic. Religious ethic is forgiveness. Forgive if someone do bad to you. This may not fit in worldly ideologies, as they believe teaching lesson to someone who did bad to you. eent ka jawab pathar se dena or PeRe ko ghaar tak chad ke aana :)

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lolz, funny ethic :D

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or if you will not do good to me or do bad to me, then i will tell you how my ethics turn into revenge.... :D

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yes when someone believe 'Aalam Neest dobara' and 'There will be no accountability', then feelings like revenge flourish. You allegedly destroyed one of my building, I will definitely destroy whole of your conutry and many of your generations. :D

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ajazali and muqawwee123 ... that is exactly the case ... there is a sense of good and bad within us, but it is fully realised through the prism of religion. I do feel however that every person has the nature of being good without having to believe in God, but that good is not commendable for the purpose of akhira, it merely comes in to play for this dunya.

A tit for tat ethic is still a form of goodness it is merely less good than the concept of forgiveness. Aspects of forgiveness do exist with the maternal model too. However, this is when people leave rationale and include "well being" in to their equations for assessing what is good or bad.

Concluding for God - is a "well being" factor too ... it can be reasoned but it cannot be logically deduced - the possibility of God can be logically deduced, but not the absolute logical proof.

To clarify ... I am not saying a tit for tat process is the ethic, but I am saying that "fitness for purpose" is not the only conclusion that comes from evolution. I don't believe in evolution, but there were opinions that stated evolution is about "mutual gain" not about "survival of the fittest" ... From a philosophical point of view humans are ALIKE - so what is good for me is good for you, what is bad for you is bad for me ... these are all logically deductible.

But that above process looks at the equation in isolation ... Now considering the relative component.

If you have some item call it X then it means that I do not have X - shown as 'X ... If X is good for you - that means either 'X is bad for me or serves me no good and no bad.

For AX ... = +1
For B'X ... = -1 or 0

Since A is like B then it follows that B'X and AX is an injustice. Unless ...

AX(B) - which is that A shares the goodness of X with B.

It can be determined if you try hard that sharing and forgiveness are similar in logical steps and hence virtuous because they lead to justice.

If religion is the only thing that can give us a sense of good then how can we say that the people without religion will be punished? They can argue before God that, "I didn't have religion therefore I could not make the conclusion of good and bad - hence I was unable to deduce the good of religion because in order to have done that I needed religion" ...

To avoid this confusion ... and potential get out clause ... We must as religious people say that a sense of good and bad is possible without religion or God, but when religion comes to us so we can analyse it - it teaches us how to enhance that sense of good and bad - through the prism of religion our already present sense of good and bad is enhanced. So it means some good needs to be present without both faith and God in order for the people to conclude God.

Others who do not wish to entertain this say that guidance comes from Allah (SWT) which is true, but an effort a step needs to be made first, otherwise a skewed form of fatalism results and people will have an argument against punishment entirely saying that there is no justice in people doing what they are compelled to do and then get punished for it.

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yes, if someone starts looking for rationale in every mater of life then i can prove easliy his/her that morality is not required at all. Good and bad both are within us, religion enforces for good.

caring others so others will care us is not ethic, sort of interdependance means neither good nor bad.

aspect of frogivness in maternal model is not ethic either, that is some sort of personal liking behavior. As you must have seen a mother of one child will not have same feelings for other child of other mother

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this is becoming what is considered " vain tzlk" especially when plato enters the scene. Yes all of the fruitless arguments of the kuros loving greeks ( plato was a child molester and it was norm to have a young boy in greek society) have been destroyed by islamic thinkers no place for that here however

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Oh dear! ....

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Im disappointed, i thought you would answer with an intelligently thought out response to something that is clearly an important theological issue, and something that early Islamic thinkers would have inevitably encountered as they were the ones to reintroduce Plato to the world...

Ironically, you are very much like Euthyphro, who if you havent read it, runs off as soon as Socrates starts dissecting his brain over this issue. Shouldnt a true momin be a bit more patient? Instead of attacking Plato, why not attack the substance?

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Re: Secularism and Atheism

Im not saying things are moral by nature. Im posing to you a philosophical dilemma that was proposed by plato.

Question is simply this.

Is something moral because God made it so, or is it moral because he saw that it was moral and told us.

If it is moral because God made it so, then moral/immoral is arbitrary.

If it is moral by its nature, then that implies a standard outside of God...

So for those of us who feel we need an ultimate arbitrator to determine right from wrong, doesn't citing god only raise more questions, not less?

If Atheists have difficult questions to answer, then so do the religious.

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Your a smart fellow, what say you on the subject of Euthyphro? Have you read it?

Its a rather difficult question, and I have yet to figure out a reasonable answer to it. I havent been able to find much of an answer on Google either.

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Peace Med911

Not at all ... I 'm just a regular schmo ... Alhumdulillah with lots of confidence in my faith ... If I can't find the solution it says more about me than what I placed my faith in.

to answer the question ... So I pray that I am assisted by God.

I believe that a sense of good and bad is inside each one of us and this is due to the fitra that we dwell in ... Of course the fitra comes from God.

Now there are two universes that this question plays itself out in ... 1) The conceptual or abstract universe and 2) the real manifest universe.

In the abstract universe 1) we subject our act and the act of God to our SENSE of piety thus making it SEEM that piety is universal existing independently from God ...

However, all this time we should also realise that in the real manifest universe 2) our sense of being able to discern anything in an abstract way including our fitra is given to us by God.

so the dilemma reduces down to a simple trick ... In one case we are entertaining the abstract idea of God in the other case we are entertaining abstractly the real interplay of God with His Creation. Since the two universes differ in the scenario then the dilemma itself is merely a delusion .... A delusion of conflation between the workings of the abstract world with the workings of the real manifest world.

God has told us what He likes through the fitra ... Because we use that fitra to tell ourselves that what God likes for us to do, we should consider that to be pious and have the ability to put a label of good on to God too. This ability to reason out logically is part of our Fitra ... So any formula that we suppose and any logical construct that we set up we will never escape the fitra ... But the question tricks us on the surface that it actually achieves that, but it does not. No dilemma. We can merely label things to be good or bad ... What makes them good or bad is determined by God.

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Med brother while I understand your concern and where you are coming from, I can tell you from experience that this is not going anywhere once armchair philosophy comes into play. I have done this so many times, and once you start addressing and responding to Plato type arguments, it is a non-stop tit for taat and Allah says in the Quran
Baqarah 2:18] Deaf, dumb and blind; and they are not to return.[Baqarah 2:171] And the example of the disbelievers is similar to one who calls upon one that hears nothing except screaming and yelling; deaf, dumb, blind - so they do not have sense.
As for those whose fate is disbelief, whether you warn them or do not warn them - it is all one for them; they will not believe. Allah has sealed their hearts and their ears, and on their eyes is a covering; and for them is a terrible punishment.

Besides Ibn Tamiyah has already refuted Aristotole’s logic to the point of no return. Let me just quote wiki for this sorry I am being lazy.

"Fakhr al Din al Razi Amoli (b. 1149) criticised Aristotle’s “first figure” and developed a form of inductive logic, foreshadowing the system of inductive logic developed by John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). Systematic refutations of Greek logic were written by the Illuminationist school, founded by Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi (1155–1191), who developed the idea of “decisive necessity”, an important innovation in the history of logical philosophical speculation.[SUP][12]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_philosophy#cite_note-Herald-12)[/SUP] Another systematic refutation of Greek logic was written by Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328), the Ar-Radd 'ala al-Mantiqiyyin (Refutation of Greek Logicians), where he argued against the usefulness, though not the validity, of the syllogism[SUP][20]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_philosophy#cite_note-20)[/SUP] and in favour of inductive reasoning.[SUP][12]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_philosophy#cite_note-Herald-12)"
[/SUP] the 11th century al-Ghazali, who is famous for his *Incoherence of the Philosophers critique of philosophers, was himself an expert in philosophy and logic. His criticism was that they arrived at theologically erroneous conclusions. In his view the three most serious of these were believing in the co-eternity of the universe with God, denying the bodily resurrection, and asserting that God only has knowledge of abstract universals, not of particular things, though it should be noted that not all philosophers subscribed to these same views
***IBn tamiyah pretty much destroys Greek Philosophy. Oh and almost forgot to mention Illama Iqbal. There are volumes of refutations .**However, if the arguments of IbnN Tamiyah and Ibn Qayyim and Ilaama Iqbal’s philosophy does not convince these guys, you think what I have to say will? It won’t and it’s due to the above quoted verses from Quran. I have done so before and found it to be fruitless and concluded that discussing philosophy, especially useless Greek Philosophy is a complete waste of time, and it is by its very nature endless and non-conclusive. If i ask you to draw a circle and take your finger and keep tracing the path of the circle with your finger as long as you possibly can..you will burn calories…put in effort..you may even feel like you did something, but you in fact did nothing, and the circle is still the circle and your finger is still the finger..and you are exhausted. As for absolutes, it’s very very simple…something is “moral” because God made it so…nothing is anything by “nature” as nature is not an independent entity. Allah has saved us from all this talk by making it clear that “nature” itself is a creation of Allah and therefore nothing is ever anything by “nature” as there is no cause and effect independent of Allah. There are two things in this Universe..the creator…and the created…you know who the creator is..so it’s not hard to know that everything else is the creation..things are not moral by nature..as nature itself is a creation.. fianlly I will like to remind you brothers of this hadith

t is narrated on the authority of Abu Huraira that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: Men will continue to question one another till this is propounded: Allah created all things but who created Allah? He who found himself confronted with such a situation should say: I affirm my faith in Allah.

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Re: Secularism and Atheism

Philosophy is important today however, because we are being bombarded with disinformation and propaganda and we need the tools to discern that. We can also read and use the philosophy of the Muslims mentioned. If it is a complete waste of time why did these great Muslims bother with it themselves?

And if it is true that the nature of it is endless and non-conclusive then we can study it properly and show where the conclusiveness should lie - just like the previous great Muslim philosophers.

And notthatguy ... after saying it is pointless ... you then proceed to do a fairly good job at a philosophical counter of the platonic dilemma ... Philosophy is inescapable, to varying degrees we all use it.

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Fair enough... Philosophy is more an academic past time. Interesting, but I agree, ultimately futile. Thanks all.

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The response that I gave Med911 ... Did it make sense to you? Do you have reservations?