Search the Community

Recently I was reading about the Catholic traditionalist Joseph de Maistre. He is well known from criticising the rational basis of morality. For example, he says that marriage and monarchical succession do not seem to be rational. His reasoning: a man may reasonably choose to do other things with his life than marry one or more women, and bad kings as well as good issue forth from the lines of their fathers. Nevertheless, he concludes that the institutions of marriage and monarchy have proven essential to society, or at least better than alternatives. He is also fiercely critical of the Enlightenment-era notion that the ideal society operates on the basis of reason. Per de Maistre, reason allows men to criticise the basis of society, so that even the best of orders can be questioned. In turn, de Maistre posits that society requires a foundation which is beyond inquiry, impervious to prying minds: He says that the basis of the moral law must remain inscrutable. He says that man is fundamentally irrational, or rather arational, and that the Earth is essentially a battlefield and altar. Only a coercive, irrational system can control man’s dark, implacable instincts. De Maistre seems to imply that morality is more intuitive than quantitative. The heart takes precedence over the intellect. There is an interesting parallel in Islam. Islam gives precedence to the wise and noble-born rather than the ignorant and base. Also, Islam does ultimately rest on revelation rather than reason. For example, some things may be spiritually harmful, but not produce measurable effects. One must therefore trust the authorities’ rulings on these matters. But if the ignorant and base, the laymen, are not competent, how may they decide which scholars are wisest and should be heeded? How may they choose between the contending claims of different religions and their scholars? After all, both Islam and Christianity rely on exegetical authority to support their different perspectives on the Trinity and original sin. (The Quran says that man is created weak, so is that weakness or tendency to evil original sin?) And if the miraculous, revelatory basis of religion cannot be tested in every case, then of what use is reason? Is the Truth, like good and evil, ultimately based on the heart rather than the intellect? For example, people often speak of pornography: “I know it when I see it.” It can’t be defined objectively, or intellectually, but rather subjectively, in the heart. Thoughts?

I have two questions which myself and many others have toiled with in regards to circumcision, the first based on Surah 95:4 Indeed we have created mankind in the best design. The second about the morality of circumcising a child. 1. Circumcision is a once in a lifetime occurrence wherein a certain area of genitalia from the male is cut off, based on the verse I mentioned if we were created in the best design why then do we need to take off a portion of our complete design. Certainly it can't be similar to cutting ones hair and fingernails as these are reoccurrences. 2. When described outside a religious sense the idea of cutting a young child's genitalia can seem to be abhorrent and evil. I will share a video that relays Christopher Hitchens and his objections that occupy this question, and what would be the Islamic response to such an objection. [Minute 4:20 and onwards @Qa'im @baqar @funklebits @eThErEaL @Sirius_Bright @ShiaChat Mod @hasanhh @Moalfas@Ashvazdanghe @Ibn Al-Ja'abi @Ibn Al-Shahid @realizm @Mahdavist

How have we reconciled our faith in the miracles of the Prophets (a) with reasoning and rationality? And how does that play out with the miraculous claims from other religions - such as the existence of a tripartite God or a five-headed God or a God who can manifest into a monkey-human and fly across a country? Why are those 'unreasonable' but ours are totally reasonable?

At the time of Prophet Noah ((عليه السلام)) when the great flood occurred the population of the Earth was Ive read to be speculated around 750 million. Taking this into consideration out of those odd 750 million surely not all of those individuals could fit inside the ark as well as a great sum of those individuals were most likely not at the age of cognizance; therefore did they just die in vain, were they somehow preserved, or what was the case in regards to their “innocence” and the evident damnation they were facing, for surely Allah (سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى) does no wrong to any living being in this world and the hereafter.

Logical reasoning Intellectual arguments Rational recognitions Eternal reflections Purity of spirit Eternal soulfulness

Russell's teapot argument and its many variants are oft repeated arguments championed by many athiests who claim that they prove that belief in God is irrational. The teapot argument goes something like this: If someone were to claim that there was a teapot orbiting the Sun between Earth and Mars, but this teapot was undetectable by any telescope, then we would react with incredulity. There is no evidence for such a teapot, so we would believe that there is no such teapot, and therefore we should believe that there is no God as there is no evidence for God.The point of the argument is to show that lack of evidence for God entitles use to believe that that He doesn't exist. Mark Sharlow in his new paper The End of the Teapot Argument for Atheism (and All its Tawdry Imitators) quite rightly argues that these arguments are 'shockingly weak'. The reason that we react with disbelief is not because we lack evidence for such a teapot (because it's undetecable), but rather because such a teapot is intrinsically improbable. In order for a teapot to be orbiting the Sun between the Earth and Mars, humans would probably have to put it there. But we know that it's very unlikely that humans put a teapot there. The alternative is that the teapot formed by chance which is even more improbable. So belief in such teapot is implausible. Suppose that instead of a teapot, we are told that an oblong rock with 2 craters that is undetectable with telescopes is orbiting the Sun between Earth and Mars. Would we react with disbelief? No, because such an object isn't intrinsically improbable, eventhough it is undetectable and we have no evidence that such an object exists. The difference between the oblong rock and the teapot is that we have independent reasons to doubt the existence of the latter. So in order for the teapot to be analogous to the existence of God, the athiest would have to present us with independent arguments against the existence of God. Without these arguments, the teapot argument is worthless. Suppose the athiest succeeds in presenting us arguments, the teapot argument would still be evidentially impotent, as any strength whatsoever that it has is solely from these independent arguments. Its the independent arguments that would be doing all of the work, so the teapot argument adds nothing to the atheist's case. Sharlow goes through the variants of the teapot argument: the invisible pink unicorn, the flying spaghetti monster, faires, Santa etc. and shows that they are all likewise intrinsically improbable. He then offers another argument for the improbability of the orbiting teapot et al. based on arbitrariness. The moral is that if you want to argue that something doesn't exist then you need an argument. Appealing to orbiting teapots and invisible unicorns isn't going to help you.