It's finally happened. I've heard an argument from an evangelist which I haven't heard a thousand times before. In fact, three of them.
1) Islam is true because it prevents car crashes. Music is forbidden in islam, because music excites your emotions, which makes you drive too fast, which makes you crash. But no music means no dangerous driving.
2) Islam says music makes you think of sex. Islam says thinking of sex is bad. Islam saves you from things which islam says is bad. Therefore islam is true.
3) In answer to my comment that you can't persuade someone into or out of a religion for the same reason you can persuade someone into or out of love: In islam you *can* persuade someone to fall in love. The reason being:
3.1) It's forbidden to fall in love before marriage, because doing so might lead to the man declaring his intention to marry the women, but then changing his mind, which always causes severe psychiatric problems for the woman.
3.2) Getting married is a complicated, costly procedure involving the man seeking permission from the woman's father, and paying a large dowry. If he divorces her later, he loses their house and property, which he probably can't afford. Therefore he will decide to stay with her, which after a few years will lead to love.
3.3) A man is incapable of loving any children he didn't personally progenitate, therefore is incapable of raising them. But if he and his wife do procreate, then fall out, the presence of the offspring will force them to stay together, which will force them to decide to fall in love.
And as an extra added bonus:
4) Hospitals in the west are replacing medicine with readings from the Qu'ran, which cast out demons and thus work much better than nasty drugs. It says so in a little book, and books are always reliable because if they weren't, the police wouldn't let people publish them.
And the moral of the story is: For one who wants to believe, any excuse is good enough...but no amount of excuses is ever enough.
1) Islam is true because it prevents car crashes. Music is forbidden in islam, because music excites your emotions, which makes you drive too fast, which makes you crash. But no music means no dangerous driving.
2) Islam says music makes you think of sex. Islam says thinking of sex is bad. Islam saves you from things which islam says is bad. Therefore islam is true.
3) In answer to my comment that you can't persuade someone into or out of a religion for the same reason you can persuade someone into or out of love: In islam you *can* persuade someone to fall in love. The reason being:
3.1) It's forbidden to fall in love before marriage, because doing so might lead to the man declaring his intention to marry the women, but then changing his mind, which always causes severe psychiatric problems for the woman.
3.2) Getting married is a complicated, costly procedure involving the man seeking permission from the woman's father, and paying a large dowry. If he divorces her later, he loses their house and property, which he probably can't afford. Therefore he will decide to stay with her, which after a few years will lead to love.
3.3) A man is incapable of loving any children he didn't personally progenitate, therefore is incapable of raising them. But if he and his wife do procreate, then fall out, the presence of the offspring will force them to stay together, which will force them to decide to fall in love.
And as an extra added bonus:
4) Hospitals in the west are replacing medicine with readings from the Qu'ran, which cast out demons and thus work much better than nasty drugs. It says so in a little book, and books are always reliable because if they weren't, the police wouldn't let people publish them.
And the moral of the story is: For one who wants to believe, any excuse is good enough...but no amount of excuses is ever enough.
K: what's the problem? Sounds nearly as 'reasonable' as DM.
ReplyDeleteWell, the M part of DM sounds fairly reasonable. In that I think it's more useful for solving practical problems to assume there's a world external to my experiences, made of many types of "stuff", as opposed to "mind" or "spirit" or "qualia".
DeleteNot that there's a way to prove it - or even formulate it clearly - but it serves my workaday, mundane purposes, like boiling the kettle.
As for dialectics and islam, the latter takes a lot more effort to make it mean whatever one wants it to mean at the time.
...which reminds me. Must write more songs.
ReplyDeleteHi there Camy. New blog I see - will read tonight, with bedtime my Halib Haar maa'a Zanjabil (hot milk with ginger).
DeleteWould be good to meet up sometime, and this time it can be my treat.
As for writing songs, I'm never sure whether it's a matter of writing poetry and setting it to music, or writing chords and making up words to help you remember them :-).