What do you think of Islam?

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sgttomas
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Re: What do you think of Islam?

Post by sgttomas » Sat Jan 07, 2017 1:27 pm

met wrote: st, what do you think of this Maggie Ross quote? (She is an Angican "anchorite" - a contemplative in Julian of Norwich's tradition - who also lectures sometimes at Harvard and Oxford.)
These problems are but irruptions of a more fundamental problem: in any human population there are those who are far more interested in accruing power and control than living in an integrated way that requires a certain tolerance of, if not reliance on, uncertainty and ambiguity. They are interested in short-term results, even if is at the expense of long-term survival. Institutions, especially religious institutions, tend to follow a trajectory that might generally be described as moving from vision to consolidation, and then through institutionalization, encapsulation, fragmentation, and finally to decline.

The religion is finally reduced to strategies to make people feel safe and confirm them in their own prejudices, instead of .... leading them into the true security of what may feel like free-fall into the love of God.
I think there's some insight there, but what are the human population forces that tend to keep thing stable? There's a balance at play. Why prejudice chaos over stability? Just because we have created fragile systems and so those are all of our cultural and ecological cues at the moment, discounts the reality of that vision and consolidation that gives meaning to people's lives and equips people to establish good and resist evil.

Also, on the longest time scales everything dies. So...I dunno. Not much really being said there, I guess.

Peace,
-sgttomas
Prophet Muhammad (God send peace and blessings upon him) is reported to have said, "God says 'I am as My servant thinks I am' " ~ Sahih Al-Bukhari, Vol 9 #502 (Chapter 93, "Oneness of God")

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sgttomas
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Re: What do you think of Islam?

Post by sgttomas » Sat Jan 07, 2017 1:28 pm

Jim B. wrote: People need some kind of cultural structure as a 'way in' to the sacred. The problem is that the structure tends to follow its own logic as do the people who adopt that structure. The institution tends to become sacred as well, or at least regarded that way. Maybe this isn't all bad and it's probably unavoidable. The down-side is you get the ossifying of the structure, which is why reform movements periodically crop up, like new shoots breaking through the concrete. If only the cultural artifacts could be kept as provisionally or liminally sacred .

I think this is a more genuine view of the cycles of religious belief and institutions, because it acknowledges the "internalist paradigm". Also, I think it's more accurate to say that cultures evolve and the institutions of culture need to have the capacity to address the broader culture. Decline isn't the result of a bunch of vengeful assholes but just from irrelevancy.

Seems legit.

:mrgreen:

Peace,
-sgttomas
Prophet Muhammad (God send peace and blessings upon him) is reported to have said, "God says 'I am as My servant thinks I am' " ~ Sahih Al-Bukhari, Vol 9 #502 (Chapter 93, "Oneness of God")

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met
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Re: What do you think of Islam

Post by met » Sat Jan 07, 2017 3:05 pm

sgttomas wrote:
met wrote: st, what do you think of this Maggie Ross quote? (She is an Angican "anchorite" - a contemplative in Julian of Norwich's tradition - who also lectures sometimes at Harvard and Oxford.)
These problems are but irruptions of a more fundamental problem: in any human population there are those who are far more interested in accruing power and control than living in an integrated way that requires a certain tolerance of, if not reliance on, uncertainty and ambiguity. They are interested in short-term results, even if is at the expense of long-term survival. Institutions, especially religious institutions, tend to follow a trajectory that might generally be described as moving from vision to consolidation, and then through institutionalization, encapsulation, fragmentation, and finally to decline.

The religion is finally reduced to strategies to make people feel safe and confirm them in their own prejudices, instead of .... leading them into the true security of what may feel like free-fall into the love of God.
I think there's some insight there, but what are the human population forces that tend to keep thing stable? There's a balance at play. Why prejudice chaos over stability? Just because we have created fragile systems and so those are all of our cultural and ecological cues at the moment, discounts the reality of that vision and consolidation that gives meaning to people's lives and equips people to establish good and resist evil.

Also, on the longest time scales everything dies. So...I dunno. Not much really being said there, I guess.

Peace,
-sgttomas
Well, yeah, I chose her because she IS a mystic (instead of a social critic or a religious leader or politician) & is actually required to spend a good part of the year meditating somewhere in solitude. (Her most interesting point academically is probly her repudiation of the concept of "mystical experience", which she thinks is dead wrong & a modern concept that we read into the ancient/medieval mystic literature, just (basically) reiterating the same old, self-reflective "self" who-as the old texts she studies say - needs to be forgotten/relinquished in mystical pursuits....)

What I was thinking about here was religious studies scholars' concepts of "locative" vs "excessive" versions of religion - similar to your juxtaposing of chaos & stability just now, & Jim's "open and closed religions" above. Is Xianity (at least in its core narratives) an "excessive" religion .... in comparison to Islam's "locative-ness"?

Is there an "inside/outside" duality between them?

Really, I suspect this is NOT true, andonly a lame straw man, but you kinda agreed with what Jim said above, so....
The “One” is the space of the “world” of the tick, but also the “pinch” of the lobster, or that rendezvous in person to confirm online pictures (with a new lover or an old God). This is the machinery operative...as “onto-theology."
Dr Ward Blanton

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met
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Re: What do you think of Islam?

Post by met » Tue Jan 24, 2017 4:34 pm

Why prejudice chaos over stability? Just because we have created fragile systems and so those are all of our cultural and ecological cues at the moment, discounts the reality of that vision and consolidation that gives meaning to people's lives and equips people to establish good and resist evil
Hmm, st, I'll answer this for you now cuz I found a pertinent Malabou quote and you were asking about her on another thread... I think there's an issue with thinking "the truth" exclusively as an unchanging reality, be cuz, whatever that ultimate stasis is, eg a Platonism or a science/mathematical thing, it CANT be personal, since the personal, the living, accd'ing to Malabou anyway, IS change, or at least always implies the potential for it.

She said this.....
“it is in so far as whatever the difference of their approaches, there nonetheless appears to be a consensus regarding a definition of essence as stability, self-presence, and nature, in both the ontological and biological meaning of the term.”
So, given a static, "orderly" concept of truth, a person--a living, sentient, relational being--can ONLY fit in as a process, a part of a telos that's ultimately expected to arrive at a finished, perfectly "orderly," unchangeable state, and not as an end in itself, n'est ce pas?

(So sim'ly as our comments about afterlives? We weren't happy with the thought of "an infinity of the same" - eternally continuing just as limited as we are now - but we also thought any kind of more Eastern "merge into godhead" was just as static and unsatisfying?)
The “One” is the space of the “world” of the tick, but also the “pinch” of the lobster, or that rendezvous in person to confirm online pictures (with a new lover or an old God). This is the machinery operative...as “onto-theology."
Dr Ward Blanton

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met
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Re: What do you think of Islam?

Post by met » Thu Jan 26, 2017 11:57 pm

And here is somebody's theologization of Malabou
Hope because this presumed natural order contains only the most superficial understanding of nature: nature void of culture, stripped of choice, opposed to freedom and creativity; nature void of life insofar as it precludes resistance, and resistance void of nature insofar as it poses insurrection as an unnatural violation of the natural order.

Whether gods or mortals, to be is to change—which means not only to have the capacity to change but to have the capacity to make change......

Excerpt From: "An Insurrectionist Manifesto: Four New Gospels for a Radical Politics" - "Mortals" essay - by Jeffery W Robbins
The “One” is the space of the “world” of the tick, but also the “pinch” of the lobster, or that rendezvous in person to confirm online pictures (with a new lover or an old God). This is the machinery operative...as “onto-theology."
Dr Ward Blanton

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