Divine, do you think religion itself is the problem? or rather the people practicing the religion


Per your question above: I am yet to study a religious doctrine/system that is not morally flawed. When looking at my analysis of a religion I focus on the doctrine/dogma, holy book of a said religion and customary practice by its adherents. None of the Abrahamic faiths denounced slavery or believed in the true equality of human beings. There are genocidal acts in the Koran and Torah. The very concept of praying for forgiveness to "God" for harm caused on others, society is very immoral in itself and lacks accountability.
On another note, all religions are not equal in bigotry, moral bankruptcy, divisiveness and proclivity for violence. They are as varied and diverse as sport; some extremely violent like boxing, while others more benign like golf.

Yes indeed, poignant and thought provoking article. In todays world no ideology, religion or dogma is recluse from getting vetted and scrutinized. I am all for the dialogue and discourse on all aspects of human existence. Africans/Nigerians must open their eyes and minds and bring them into the 21st century especially as it pertains to religion and culture. We cannot base our morality and spirituality on bronze age middle eastern myths.

Don't blame the West

The 'root causes' of Islamist terrorism do not lie in poverty or western imperialism, but an age old conflict between reason and revelation

By Robert Sibley, Ottawa Citizen January 3, 2011 6:40 AM Comments (2)

During the last decade of Islamist terrorism, numerous commentators, particularly those on the left, have adopted a materialist approach to explain why some Muslims want to slaughter guests at hotels in Mumbai or detonate bombs at Christmas festivals in Sweden.

Terrorism, they argue, is rooted in poverty, frustration over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and memories of western imperialism. In other words, so the argument goes, the West itself is to blame for terrorism. If only the West would apologize, make reparations, abandon Israel, leave the Middle East and Afghanistan, all would be well. Or at least that's where the root-cause crowd's assumptions logically lead.

The problem with this materialist view of terrorism is that it largely misses the spiritual motivations that inform Islamist geo-politics. As political theorist Barry Cooper argues in his book, New Political Religions, or, An Analysis of Modern Terrorism, the Islamists, like the Nazis and Communists, are motivated more by a "disease of the spirit" than materialist aspirations. "When ordinary human beings see themselves as specially chosen by God, or even as gods themselves, they are not necessarily psychopaths, but they most definitely are spiritually disordered."

Cooper draws on Eric Voegelin, a 20th-century political philosopher who coined the term "pneumopathology" to account for the spiritual diseases of the modern world. Voegelin argued that some people -- politicians, intellectuals, journalists, for example -- prefer to see the world as a projection of their desires rather than comprehend its reality. Such fabulists effectively live in what Voegelin called a "second-order reality." If they acquire power they all-too-often pursue extreme measures -- genocide, gulags, crashing airplanes into buildings -- to transform the world to suit their fantasies of perfection.

In the case of the Islamists, they imagine Islam spreading across the globe and the establishment of a worldwide caliphate based on shariah law. They see themselves empowered by Allah to bring about this new world order by destroying a civilization they regard as spiritually empty. Thus, Islamism constitutes a political religion of apocalyptic proportions.

You don't have to look far to find hints of such second-order thinking. The New York Hall of Science is currently staging an exhibit titled "1001 Inventions" that purports to show that Islam enjoyed a Golden Age of scientific and intellectual accomplishment when Europe was wallowing in the Dark Ages. According to a New York Times reviewer, the exhibition's promoters claim Islam's cultural glories were later "misappropriated" by the West.

It is true that, between the seventh and 10th centuries, Islamic culture spread across North Africa and the Middle East -- prompting the building of libraries, universities and cities where science and philosophy were prized. Scholars, such as al-Zahrawi and al-Haytham, made significant contributions to medicine and physics. Philosophers such as al-Kindi and al-Farabi absorbed Aristotle and Plato and, like the Greeks, tried to apply reason to the problems of Muslim society. But to deny that Muslim thinkers borrowed heavily from other cultures -- evidence, again, of second-ordering thinking -- is a distortion of historical reality. As the Times' reviewer puts it: "Major cultures of the first millennium (China, India, Byzantium) are mentioned only to affirm the weightier significance of Muslim contributions."

But then Islam's Golden Age was golden only in comparison to the endarkenment that descended on Western Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century. According to some historians, the rise of Islam in the seventh century exacerbated Europe's "Dark Age." "Islam, far from being a force for enlightenment in the so-called Dark Age, was actually responsible for the destruction of the literate and urban civilization that we now call Classical," says John J. O'Neill, the author of Holy Warriors: Islam and the Demise of Classical Civilization. The Muslim conquests of the Christian lands of the Middle East and North Africa in the seventh and eighth centuries were, he says, made much easier by the breakdown in law and order throughout the Mediterranean as the borders of the Roman imperium receded. In this regard, the "1001 Inventions" exhibition is, perhaps, being disingenuous.

Worse, though, says the reviewer, is the exhibition's failure to account for the "long eclipse" of Islamic culture. Indeed, one of history's much-debated puzzles is why the Muslim world stagnated after its Golden Age, why the spirit of scientific inquiry and philosophical debate by and large faded from Islamic culture.

Blame the imams. In the 11th century, Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, a brilliant if tormented theologian, published The Incoherence of the Philosophers, effectively bringing to conclusion centuries of debate in the Muslim world about the primacy of reason versus that of revelation. Reason makes us question things, makes us doubtful and uncertain, al-Ghazali argued. He attacked philosophers who thought that humans could know the world by means of rational thought. Reason, he said, leads to despair. Only divine revelation, the word of God as revealed in the Koran, provides certain knowledge of how best to live. Human reason must submit to Allah's will.

A century later, another Muslim philosopher challenged al-Ghazali's views. In The Incoherence of the Incoherence, Ibn Rushd -- better known in the West as Averroes -- argued that reason was God's gift to mankind and was to be used for the betterment of society. Ignorant theologians should not intrude on areas they don't understand. It was too late. The imams carried the day. Averroes' books were burned and he fled into exile. The voice of reason fell silent in courts of the caliphs and Muslim culture gradually ossified.

Some scholars argue that Islamist terrorism can be traced to this eclipse of reason. Unlike Christianity, which eventually found a way to balance the claims of Athens and Jerusalem, leaving it open to the scientific reasoning that re-emerged in the Renaissance and Enlightenment, Islam has never reconciled reason and revelation. This unwillingness to reconcile the human and the divine fosters the kind of spiritual pathologies that give birth to terrorism.

"Islamism is grounded in a spiritual pathology based upon a theological deformation that has produced a dysfunctional culture," argues political scientist Robert Reilly in a newly published book, The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis. Mainstream Sunni Islam, which comprises the majority of the faithful in the Muslim world, "has shut the door to reality in a profound way." This, says Reilly, is the consequence of Islam's long suppression of reason in favour of religious dogmatism.

Reilly refers to the abandonment of scientific thinking as the "Dehellenization" of Islam. Islam was eventually dominated by those who thought like al-Ghazali. They held that the Koran contained Allah's direct speech. And, because Allah's will and action is unlimited, the Koran, as his eternal word, must apply to all times and places. There is no need to look elsewhere in responding to the human condition, regardless of changing circumstances. Since Allah is the first cause of everything, there is no need to look for secondary causes; that is to say, no need to use reason to understand nature's laws, and, therefore, no need for science.

Such a mindset, Reilly argues, forgoes many attributes Westerners regard as essential to the modern mind, particularly philosophical skepticism and scientific reasoning. "If one lives in a society that ascribes everything to first causes, one is not going to look around the world and try to figure out how it works or how to improve it," he writes. "The Middle East is poor because of a dysfunctional culture based upon a deformed theology, and unless it can be reformed at that level, economic engineering or the development of constitutional political order will not succeed."

Other political theorists argue that democracy cannot establish deep roots in a culture where human reason is not paramount because, in Barry Cooper's words, "the prerequisite of democracy is the respectability of reason." But without respect for reason there can be no notion of discovering natural laws. And without natural law, says Cooper, "there can be no constitutional political order by which human beings, using reason, create laws to govern themselves and act freely."

Such views, if valid, augur ill for the presence of Islam within the secular West. If radical Islam is, as Reilly contends, rooted in the suppression of reason, it is hard to see how even moderate Muslims can achieve a deep and wholesome attachment to western societies and their values. How can genuinely devout Muslims identify wholeheartedly with a modern secular society that denies the efficacy of their faith? And if they can't, what are they going to do about it?

The Islamists' answer, obviously, is that no accommodation is possible. Hence, they ultimately seek the transformation of the West to accommodate Islam. Chandra Muzaffar, a widely respected Malaysian Islamic scholar, writing in a 2006 book, The New Voices of Islam, captures this spiritual aspiration: "Islam and the post-Enlightenment secular West are diametrically opposed to one another.

Muslims will then realize that unless they transform the secular world of the West, that vision of justice embodied in the Koran will never become a reality." The challenge for Islamists, obviously, is whether they can achieve that transformation better through demographic domination over the next few decades or through violence.

The challenge for Westerners, perhaps not so obviously, is whether they will awaken in time from their multicultural slumbers to protect their cultural heritage and avoid, possibly, a new dark age.

Robert Sibley is a senior writer with the Citizen.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

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From The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine
THE NEW TESTAMENT.

The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.

As it is nothing extraordinary that a woman should be with child before she was married, and that the son she might bring forth should be executed, even unjustly, I see no reason for not believing that such a woman as Mary, and such a man as Joseph, and Jesus existed; their mere existence is a matter of indifference about which there is no ground either to believe or to disbelieve, and which comes under the common head of, It may be so; and what then? The probability, however, is that there were such persons, or at least such as resembled them in part of the circumstances, because almost all romantic stories have been suggested by some actual circumstance; as the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, not a word of which is true, were suggested by the case of Alexander Selkirk.

It is not the existence, or non-existence, of the persons that I trouble myself about; it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene. It gives an account of a young woman engaged to be married, and while under this engagement she is, to speak plain language, debauched by a ghost, under the impious pretence (Luke, chap. i., ver. 35), that "the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee." Notwithstanding which, Joseph afterward marries her, cohabits with her as his wife, and in his turn rivals the ghost. This is putting the story into intelligible language, and when told in this manner, there is not a priest but must be ashamed to own it. [NOTE]

Obscenity in matters of faith, however wrapped up, is always a token of fable and imposture; for it is necessary to our serious belief in God that we do not connect it with stories that run, as this does, into ludicrous interpretations. This story is upon the face of it, the same kind of story as that of Jupiter and Leda, or Jupiter and Europa, or any of the amorous adventures of Jupiter; and shows, as is already stated in the former part of the Age of Reason, that the Christian faith is built upon the heathen mythology.

As the historical parts of the New Testament, so far as concerns Jesus Christ, are confined to a very short space of time, less than two years, and all within the same country, and nearly to the same spot, the discordance of time, place, and circumstance, which detects the fallacy of the books of the Old Testament, and proves them to be impositions, cannot be expected to be found here in the same abundance. The New Testament compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act, in which there is not room for very numerous violations of the unities. There are, however, some glaring contradictions, which, exclusive of the fallacy of the pretended prophecies, are sufficient to show the story of Jesus Christ to be false.

I lay it down as a position which cannot be controverted, first, that the agreement of all the parts of a story does not prove that story to be true, because the parts may agree, and the whole may be false; secondly, that the disagreement of the parts of a story proves the whole cannot be true. The agreement does not prove true, but the disagreement proves falsehood positively.

The history of Jesus Christ is contained in the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The first chapter of Matthew begins with giving a genealogy of Jesus Christ; and in the third chapter of Luke, there is also given a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Did those two agree, it would not prove the genealogy to be true, because it might, nevertheless, be a fabrication; but as they contradict each other in every particular, it proves falsehood absolutely. If Matthew speaks truth, Luke speaks falsehood, and if Luke speaks truth, Matthew speaks falsehood; and as there is no authority for believing one more than the other, there is no authority for believing either; and if they cannot be believed even in the very first thing they say and set out to prove, they are not entitled to be believed in any thing they say afterward. Truth is a uniform thing; and as to inspiration and revelation, were we to admit it, it is impossible to suppose it can be contradictory. Either, then, the men called apostles are impostors, or the books ascribed to them has been written by other persons and fathered upon them, as is the case with the Old Testament.

The book of Matthew gives, chap. i., ver 6, a genealogy by name from David up through Joseph, the husband of Mary, to Christ; and makes there to be twenty-eight generations. The book of Luke gives also a genealogy by name from Christ, through Joseph, the husband of Mary, down to David, and makes there to be forty-three generations; besides which, there are only the two names of David and Joseph that are alike in the two lists. I here insert both genealogical lists, and for the sake of perspicuity and comparison, have placed them both in the same direction, that is from Joseph down to David.
Genealogy according to Matthew. Genealogy according to Luke.
Christ 23 Josaphat Christ 23 Neri
2 Joseph 24 Asa 2 Joseph 24 Melchi
3 Jacob 25 Abia 3 Heli 25 Addi
4 Matthan 26 Roboam 4 Matthat 26 Cosam
5 Eleazar 27 Solomon 5 Lev 27 Elmodam
6 Eliud 28 David [NOTE] 6 Melchi 28 Er
7 Achim 7 Janna 29 Jose
8 Sadoc 8 Joseph 30 Eliezer
9 Azor 9 Mattathias 31 Jorim
10 Eliakim 10 Amos 32 Matthat
11 Abiud 11 Naum 33 Levi
12 Zorobabel 12 Esli 34 Simeon
13 Salathiel 13 Nagge 35 Juda
14 Jechonias 14 Maath 36 Joseph
15 Josias 15 Mattathias 37 Jonan
16 Amon 16 Semei 38 Eliakim
17 Manasses 17 Joseph 39 Melea
18 Ezekias 18 Juda 40 Menan
19 Achaz 19 Joanna 41 Mattatha
20 Joatham 20 Rhesa 42 Nathan
21 Ozias 21 Zorobabe 43 David
22 Joram 22 Salathiel



Now, if these men, Matthew and Luke, set out with a falsehood between them as these two accounts show they do) in the very commencement of their history of Jesus Christ, and of whom and of what he was, what authority (as I have before asked) is there left for believing the strange things they tell us afterward? If they cannot be believed in their account of his natural genealogy, how are we to believe them when they tell us he was the son of God begotten by a ghost, and that an angel announced this in secret to his mother? If they lied in one genealogy, why are we to believe them in the other? If his natural genealogy be manufactured, which it certainly is, why are we not to suppose that his celestial genealogy is manufactured also, and that the whole is fabulous? Can any man of serious reflection hazard his future happiness upon the belief of a story naturally impossible, repugnant to every idea of decency, and related by persons already detected of falsehood? Is it not more safe that we stop ourselves at the plain, pure, and unmixed belief of one God, which is Deism, than that we commit ourselves on an ocean of improbable, irrational, indecent and contradictory tales?

The first question, however, upon the books of the New Testament, as upon those of the Old, is, Are they genuine? Were they written by the persons to whom they are ascribed? for it is upon this ground only that the strange things related therein have been credited. Upon this point there is no direct proof for or against, and all that this state of a case proves is doubtfulness, and doubtfulness is the opposite of belief. The state, therefore, that the books are in, proves against themselves as far as this kind of proof can go.

But exclusive of this, the presumption is that the books called the Evangelists, and ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and that they are impositions. The disordered state of the history in those four books, the silence of one book upon matters related in the other, and the disagreement that is to be found among them, implies that they are the production of some unconnected individuals, many years after the things they pretend to relate, each of whom made his own legend; and not the writings of men living intimately together, as the men called the apostles are supposed to have done — in fine, that they have been manufactured, as the books of the Old Testament have been, by other persons than those whose names they bear.

The story of the angel announcing what the church calls the immaculate conception is not so much as mentioned in the books ascribed to Mark and John; and is differently related in Matthew and Luke. The former says the angel appeared to Joseph; the latter says it was to Mary; but either Joseph or Mary was the worst evidence that could have been thought of, for it was others that should have testified for them, and not they for themselves. Were any girl that is now with child to say, and even to swear it, that she was gotten with child by a ghost, and that an angel told her so, would she be believed? Certainly she would not. Why, then, are we to believe the same thing of another girl, whom we never saw, told by nobody knows who, nor when, nor where? How strange and inconsistent it is, that the same circumstance that would weaken the belief even of a probable story, should be given as a motive for believing this one, that has upon the face of it every token of absolute impossibility and imposture!

http://www.ushistory.org/paine/reason/singlehtml.htm
IT has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my thoughts upon religion. I am well aware of the difficulties that attend the subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to a more advanced period of life. I intended it to be the last offering I should make to my fellow-citizens of all nations, and that at a time when the purity of the motive that induced me to it, could not admit of a question, even by those who might disapprove the work.

The circumstance that has now taken place in France of the total abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of everything appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive articles of faith, has not only precipitated my intention, but rendered a work of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest in the general wreck of superstition, of false systems of government, and false theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true.

As several of my colleagues and others of my fellow-citizens of France have given me the example of making their voluntary and individual profession of faith, I also will make mine; and I do this with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man communicates with itself.

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

But, lest it should be supposed that I believe in many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive any thing more destructive to morality than this?

Soon after I had published the pamphlet Common Sense, in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion. The adulterous connection of church and state, wherever it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually prohibited by pains and penalties, every discussion upon established creeds, and upon first principles of religion, that until the system of government should be changed, those subjects could not be brought fairly and openly before the world; but that whenever this should be done, a revolution in the system of religion would follow. Human inventions and priestcraft would be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed and unadulterated belief of one God, and no more.

Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.

Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some other observations on the word revelation. Revelation, when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it.

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication — after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so. The commandments carry no internal evidence of divinity with them; they contain some good moral precepts, such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver, or a legislator, could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention. [NOTE]

The rest of the article is located here:http://www.ushistory.org/paine/reason/singlehtml.htm