The Qur'an . . ? Really?

[Blog of Reason]

Discussion thread for the blog entry "The Qur'an . . ? Really?" by Th1sWasATriumph.

Permalink: http://blog.leagueofreason.org.uk/reason/the-quran-really/

 

[borrofburi]

retroviren

The German word for retrovirus?

 

[Th1sWasATriumph]

Huh. I thought viren was plural of virus, but apparently the plural is the same as the singular. Which sounds weird. You don't say "look at all these virus", you say "look at all these virii/viren" surely?

 

[borrofburi]

Huh. I thought viren was plural of virus, but apparently the plural is the same as the singular. Which sounds weird. You don't say "look at all these virus", you say "look at all these virii/viren" surely?

Huh. Yah, I thought it was virii, I am glad I did not suggest that, for it seems, after cursory research, that virus is the plural.


Anyway, I do agree, muslims tend to have worse arguments than christians. I've always figured it's a sort of selection pressure effect: christians have had hundreds of years with this pesky "free speech" and thus hundreds of years to have all their awful arguments shot down and replaced by not so awful arguments. However the whole concept of debate and disagreeing and free criticism is fairly new to islam as a whole, and as such we get some terrible arguments. I suppose that's probably ethnocentric of me, and possibly horribly inaccurate, but that's been my rationalization for the mind numbingly non sequitur arguments the muslims I've come across have presented to me.

 

[obsidianavenger]

Huh. I thought viren was plural of virus, but apparently the plural is the same as the singular. Which sounds weird. You don't say "look at all these virus", you say "look at all these virii/viren" surely?

Huh. Yah, I thought it was virii, I am glad I did not suggest that, for it seems, after cursory research, that virus is the plural.


Anyway, I do agree, muslims tend to have worse arguments than christians. I've always figured it's a sort of selection pressure effect: christians have had hundreds of years with this pesky "free speech" and thus hundreds of years to have all their awful arguments shot down and replaced by not so awful arguments. However the whole concept of debate and disagreeing and free criticism is fairly new to islam as a whole, and as such we get some terrible arguments. I suppose that's probably ethnocentric of me, and possibly horribly inaccurate, but that's been my rationalization for the mind numbingly non sequitur arguments the muslims I've come across have presented to me.

i think they also come from a more mystical tradition whereas christianity and the west went in for aristotle and rationalism. they had some seriously weeeeeird philosophy in the middle ages

 

[xman]

There is nothing quite so debilitating as a closed mind. Everyone should make it their work to keep theirs open.

 

[Giliell]

retroviren

The German word for retrovirus?

German: One Virus, two Viren.
Only my gran keeps calling them Virusse :lol:

Well, I think that the only good coming out of debating a creationist is mental exercise and a brief revision of your scientific knowledge.

It's liek playing chess against somebody who never bothered to learn the rules, keeps moving the knight in a straight line, eats your king and then declares victory

 

[AndromedasWake]

Regarding scientific predictions in the Qu'ran, one can't help but wonder what these evangelical Muslims make of Democritus of Abdera. By 400 BCE he had outlined fundamentals of what would become atomic theory (at least 16 centuries earlier), he proposed that all stars/worlds were in motion, that other stars were suns with planets, and that some of those planets might harbour life, whereas others would be barren. He advocated a framework of humanitarian ethics based on happiness, and he believed that humans were descended from lesser species, and had undergone a long phase of developing culture and society, replacing some of their animalistic tendencies and distinguishing themselves from the rest of the animal kingdom. In this respect, he was an evolutionist around 24 centuries before Darwin's time.

The phrase "ahead of his time" doesn't quite cut it. And all of this was allowed, because he lived in Thrace, where people weren't cloistered by a dogmatic regime or cast out for attempting to utilise reason.

To me, the insights of Democritus make ANYTHING that can be seen as a scientific prediction in 14th century scripture seem laughable.

 

[rabbitpirate]

Huh. I thought viren was plural of virus, but apparently the plural is the same as the singular. Which sounds weird. You don't say "look at all these virus", you say "look at all these virii/viren" surely?

Is it not just viruses?

 

[AndromedasWake]

It is 'Viruses'.

 

[5810Singer]

Well, I think that the only good coming out of debating a creationist is mental exercise and a brief revision of your scientific knowledge.

It's liek playing chess against somebody who never bothered to learn the rules, keeps moving the knight in a straight line, eats your king and then declares victory

I agree with you totally.

A lot of creationists knowingly lie to try and "win" the "debate".

I don't debate them over science, I just point out all the obviously stupid things in the Bible (goats-stripy sticks, rabbits chewing cud, men living in whales for a month or so, etc, etc,), they invariably crack and start talking about allegorical teachings, to which I reply: "Does your God know that you pick and choose which scripture you're going to "believe"...?"

I like using their own weapons against them.

 

[borrofburi]

Here's the rather enlightening wikipedia discussion of the desire to pluralize virus as virii instead of viruses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_form_of_words_ending_in_-us#Virus

Some excerpts:

Since vīrus in antiquity denoted something uncountable, it was a mass noun. Mass nouns , such as air, rice, and helpfulness in English , pluralize only under special circumstances, hence the non-existence of plural forms in the texts.[2]

It is unclear how a plural might have been formed under Latin grammar if the word had acquired a meaning requiring a plural form. In Latin vīrus is generally regarded as a neuter of the second declension, but neuter second declension nouns ending in -us (rather than -um) are so rare that there are no recorded plurals. Neuter nouns of other declensions always end in -a (in the nominative, accusative and vocative), but even if we were to apply this rule to vīrus, it would be conjecture to guess whether this should give us vīra, vīrua, or something else. There simply is no known plural for this word in Classical Latin.

Even were the Latin plural known, English-speakers would not be obliged to use it. Examples of Latin loanwords into English which have regular English plurals in -(e)s include campus, bonus, anus and cancer. These stand beside counterexamples such as radius (radii) and alumnus (alumni). Still other words are commonly used with either one: corpus (corpora, or sometimes corpuses), formula (formulae in technical contexts, formulas in more everyday ones).

Usage of virii within Internet communities has met with some resistance, most notably by Tom Christiansen, a figure in the Perl community, who researched the issue and wrote what eventually became referred to in various online discussions as the authoritative essay on the subject,[3] favoring viruses instead of virii. The impetus of this discussion was the potential irony that the use of virii could be construed as a claim of superior knowledge of language when in fact more detailed research finds the naive viruses is actually more appropriate.

In summary, I was wrong. Twice. And it's not even that I was right, and then changed my mind to wrong. I was wrong, and then changed my mind to something also wrong... Ah well, such is life.

 

[borrofburi]

Well, I think that the only good coming out of debating a creationist is mental exercise and a brief revision of your scientific knowledge.

It's liek playing chess against somebody who never bothered to learn the rules, keeps moving the knight in a straight line, eats your king and then declares victory

It has its uses. On rare occasions you'll find a creationist who is simply ignorant because he's spent his life with other creationists hearing only creationist tripe and never really hearing any of the evidence (*cough* thefearmonger, or alternatively me several years ago). But usually it's about the fence sitters, people who are weakly associated with either side, who then read the debate and see the creationists be stupid, and it pushes them a little bit towards science.

I've also stopped thinking of it as a debate and started thinking of it as a science lesson (and indeed, it was a college level biology course that convinced me, but it took a whole semester to learn all the ways in which evolution is "true"); you aren't playing chess, that would be debating, instead think of it as someone telling you cars run on magic: you don't "debate" such a person, you *teach them* what really happens inside and engine until the only gap left for magic to fill is chemistry (err, unless you are good at chemistry, then I guess you can teach them that).

Of course, as a science lesson the rules are a bit different than normal lessons: this one is purely volunatry on the internet where "too long didn't read" runs rampant; the guy you write it for is probably not the person who is most likely to benefit from it (i.e. the fence sitter, who is even more likely to tl;dr); the guy you write it for is highly antagonistic. For these reasons I usually go back to the beginning: what science is, what theory and fact mean, what the fact of gravity is, what the theory of gravity is, what the fact of evolution is, what the theory of evolution is, why the fact of evolution is indeed a fact, etc.


And again, this may be ethnocentric of me and is probably wrong, but it seems to be even more true when dealing with a muslim, because they seem even more ignorant of what science is and how it works, and how that makes it a good method of finding knowledge, and how computers are great evidence that science *does* work, and how evolution is scientific, etc. They seem even more likely to be very ignorant while simultaneously arrogant.

 

[borrofburi]

A lot of creationists knowingly lie to try and "win" the "debate".

I don't debate them over science, I just point out all the obviously stupid things in the Bible (goats-stripy sticks, rabbits chewing cud, men living in whales for a month or so, etc, etc,), they invariably crack and start talking about allegorical teachings, to which I reply: "Does your God know that you pick and choose which scripture you're going to "believe"...?"

I like using their own weapons against them.

The knowingly lie to "win" is mitigated if you go back to the basics, though is by no means eliminated. And again, it's rarely about the person you're actually talking to, even though they specifically will be frustrating.

And I disagree with your method, mostly because if you point out obviously stupid things it is *always* possible, given an omnipotent, or at least extremely powerful, magic man. Anything "obviously stupid" becomes "obviously possible" with said powerful magic man. Here, I can even do it right now: goats-stripy sticks was a lesson in obedience, and god made the goats stripy with his magic, which is why we can't repeat the experiment anymore. A man living in a whale for a month is perfectly fine, god used his magic to fix problems A, B, C.... etc. Again, *everything* in scripture will always work given a sufficiently powerful magic man (this can be seen in the occasional creo response that dinosaur bones were put there as a joke by god to test our faith (though most of them don't go that route, especially not recently)).

And again, this works in the same way for muslims, though I personally am not well acquainted with the Qur'an, mostly because I don't see the point. I will not be learning arabic just to debate with muslims, and if you read it in english then according to muslims you didn't read it and your opinion is worthless. Again, I find it far easier to start with establishing science as good/right/approximation of reality/truth (by pointing to evidence like computers), and evolution as scientific, in part because that's the only thing I've ever seen work.

That having been said, Evid3nc3 notes that religion is a network belief, so in a certain sense you are attacking one of the nodes, and that probably has a use (though I tend to see it as a domino cascade, that goes something like "oh well all this means evolution is 'true', which means religious authority X has either been arrogantly ignorant or lying, I should examine the other things X told me because maybe X was wrong about those too", or alternatively believing in evolution makes you into an immediate outcast and you wonder why they have such a violent reaction to "truth"). So perhaps there's room for both of our "methods" to have value.

 

[5810Singer]

@Borrofburi

Creationists of all religions accuse science of being unreliable because it lacks certainty, and they promote their holy books as sources of unchanging certainty.

Even if they do use the argument that God can do impossible things, and made it possible for these miracles to happen then, but they can't happen now......what happened to their unchanging certainty?

These people want to you accept the literal word of their holy books, but at the same time they "cherry-pick" the parts of scripture that they wish to observe, and try to pass the rest off as allegorical.
You catch them on two fronts there, a) how are we meant to respect their demands for us to accept their scripture without question when they reject certain parts of it themselves?
And b) if they can dismiss certain "facts" in scripture as allegorical, then why can't we, and why should we take the word of mere men (IE them) as to which parts of scripture we should or shouldn't take seriously?

BTW I've tried the above, and it works.
A Christian I once knew on-line was airing the "homosexuality is a sin, it says so in the Bible" routine, so I asked him when he last ate a ham sandwich, or prawn cocktail.

He said, "I know where you're going with this, but thankfully my freedom of belief is protected by the American constitution, and so I have the right to select which parts of scripture I use as the tenets of my faith."

To which I said, "First you said that homosexuality is wrong because the Bible says so, but now you're telling me that you take the word of the state over the word of the Bible when it suits you. How am I meant to have respect for, or even understand your position when you take the law of the secular state over and above the law of your own God?"

To which he replied, "I'm going to end this conversation before we have a war," and that was the end of the "debate".

I scored zero points in trying to change his mind.....however the majority of the witnesses to that exchange understood my point, and a number of the Christians who were observing did start to reevaluate their views.



BTW, two thoughts.

1: I don't know about you, but most of the lapsed "believers" that I know have come to atheism as a reaction to the moral hypocrisy of the other practitioners of their faith. Their change of mind has had nothing to do with science in any way.

2: I will get back to you in the omnipotence debate, I've just had a personal issue on my mind.

 

[borrofburi]

Creationists of all religions accuse science of being unreliable because it lacks certainty, and they promote their holy books as sources of unchanging certainty.

Sometimes, and this is one of the reasons why I start with what science is, and why it has value. Few people will argue against the very existence of computers as evidence that science works (some will, and those are usually beyond hope).

Even if they do use the argument that God can do impossible things, and made it possible for these miracles to happen then, but they can't happen now......what happened to their unchanging certainty?

You're thinking of it incorrectly, these were never inalienable truths of how humans can manipulate reality, these were one off situations about how god can manipulate reality. In the same way that jesus can turn water into wine and walk on water but we can't routinely walk on water or magically make water wine, god made the goats striped and made it possible for a man to live in a whale for 30 days. They were one-off miracles, and their unchanging reality is that god can do miracles if he so pleases.

a) how are we meant to respect their demands for us to accept their scripture without question when they reject certain parts of it themselves?

I think you'll be harder pressed to convince a fundy that they reject certain parts of scripture than you will be to convince a fundy that science works. Mostly because most of them will say that jesus fulfilled the law, or some other similar rationalization. I also wonder how this relates to the Qur'an, but I must confess I know very little....

BTW I've tried the above, and it works.

And I've seen the science approach work... Like I said, if religion is a network belief, there's plenty room for both our approaches.

1: I don't know about you, but most of the lapsed "believers" that I know have come to atheism as a reaction to the moral hypocrisy of the other practitioners of their faith. Their change of mind has had nothing to do with science in any way.

Huh, i guess this is evidence that personal experience is not evidence, because a large number of the lapsed "believers" that I know have come to not-believe because they realized evolution *is* a valid and strong scientific theory, and therefore their religious leader was either preaching complete certainty on an issue they were ignorant on (I like to call this arrogant ignorance) or their religious leader was outright lying, either way their religious leader whom they trusted was very very wrong about one thing, so it's time to investigate if they are wrong about other things, like, say, the bible. There are also documents like this, which tell christians it's either their religion or evolution, which doesn't help those christians who have realized the "truth" of evolution.

2: I will get back to you in the omnipotence debate, I've just had a personal issue on my mind.

It's cool, suit yourself.

 

[5810Singer]

You're thinking of it incorrectly, these were never inalienable truths of how humans can manipulate reality, these were one off situations about how god can manipulate reality. In the same way that jesus can turn water into wine and walk on water but we can't routinely walk on water or magically make water wine, god made the goats striped and made it possible for a man to live in a whale for 30 days. They were one-off miracles, and their unchanging reality is that god can do miracles if he so pleases.

And then you can turn to the moral contradictions of the Bible, like "thou shalt not kill", and yet it's OK to kill the inhabitants of Jericho, etc, etc.
And they will counter that it's God's will, and God's law, and we can not question God.
And then you say: "So if God changes his law all the time how can I rely on "divine justice"?"

I think you'll be harder pressed to convince a fundy that they reject certain parts of scripture than you will be to convince a fundy that science works. Mostly because most of them will say that jesus fulfilled the law, or some other similar rationalization. I also wonder how this relates to the Qur'an, but I must confess I know very little....

I don't try to convince fundies, I point out the contradictions of their beliefs in a public forum in the hope that the observers of the exchange will be swayed.

From what I've seen fundies come in three flavours: leaders, enforcers, and followers.
The leaders and enforcers are, in my view, unreachable, so I try to stir dissent in the minds of the followers.

I've seen the science approach work...

I'm not going to comment on the relative merits of the different approaches just now, the reason for that will become clear at the end of this post.

It's my fear that debating fundies on science, particularly when it's a high profile exchange, lends a false veneer of respectability, and credibility to their views.
Just to qualify that, my fear isn't baseless, I have heard many people who were previously undecided on the subject of evolution vs creation saying, "if there's nothing in it how come these scientists are even bothering to debate the issue?"

But like you said, personal experience isn't evidence.

Like I said, if religion is a network belief, there's plenty room for both our approaches.

I realise with crashing embarrassment that my initial post was somewhat didactic, and I mean that in the pejorative sense.
I apologise unreservedly for that attitude, and I'd like to add that I'm in total agreement with your statement immediately above.

 

[borrofburi]

You're thinking of it incorrectly, these were never inalienable truths of how humans can manipulate reality, these were one off situations about how god can manipulate reality. In the same way that jesus can turn water into wine and walk on water but we can't routinely walk on water or magically make water wine, god made the goats striped and made it possible for a man to live in a whale for 30 days. They were one-off miracles, and their unchanging reality is that god can do miracles if he so pleases.

And then you can turn to the moral contradictions of the Bible, like "thou shalt not kill", and yet it's OK to kill the inhabitants of Jericho, etc, etc.
And they will counter that it's God's will, and God's law, and we can not question God.
And then you say: "So if God changes his law all the time how can I rely on "divine justice"?"

There are rationalizations for that, like "thou shalt not kill" is a global statement, kind of like the laws of physics saying "thou shalt not walk on water" that can be modified when god decides to for miraculous purposes. But, in part, my objection stems significantly from my frustration at the impressive ability to rationalize that I am often confronted with. Which, as you point out later, probably stems from me confusing my conversation with the "leader" or "enforcer" as the purpose, as opposed to the follower; though I *feel* that the rationalizations make more sense to the average fundy when they are applied to scripture than when applied to science (this is not evidence, but rather an explanation of myself).

I think you'll be harder pressed to convince a fundy that they reject certain parts of scripture than you will be to convince a fundy that science works. Mostly because most of them will say that jesus fulfilled the law, or some other similar rationalization. I also wonder how this relates to the Qur'an, but I must confess I know very little....

I don't try to convince fundies, I point out the contradictions of their beliefs in a public forum in the hope that the observers of the exchange will be swayed.

From what I've seen fundies come in three flavours: leaders, enforcers, and followers.
The leaders and enforcers are, in my view, unreachable, so I try to stir dissent in the minds of the followers.

This is a similar tactic to how the science approach works, or indeed most debates/disagreements, so yah, good point.

It's my fear that debating fundies on science, particularly when it's a high profile exchange, lends a false veneer of respectability, and credibility to their views.
Just to qualify that, my fear isn't baseless, I have heard many people who were previously undecided on the subject of evolution vs creation saying, "if there's nothing in it how come these scientists are even bothering to debate the issue?"

I would respond that is flawed reasoning, and subject to a problem either way: if scientists do respond then it shows there is merit, but if they don't it's a scientific conspiracy designed to shut out dissent... Also that it's a false premise: maybe scientists are responding because the concept of creationism being taught instead of evolution is fundamentally dangerous to the whole concept of science. I guarantee you scientists would respond if a school tried to start teaching that gravity is the effect of the FSM's noodly appendages, even though there's no merit there. Danger/need to respond is not an indication of merit, but rather the power behind the flawed idea.

But again, I stopped thinking of it as a debate a long time ago, and started thinking of it as a basic science lesson. This is why I start so far back as to explain what the scientific method is, what science does, what fact and theory are, the evidence that shows science works, etc. because it's not a debate, in the same way that I wouldn't debate the theory of intelligent falling, I would instead have to educate them on the fact and theory of gravity, probably by starting out with what science is.

Like I said, if religion is a network belief, there's plenty room for both our approaches.

I realise with crashing embarrassment that my initial post was somewhat didactic, and I mean that in the pejorative sense.
I apologise unreservedly for that attitude, and I'd like to add that I'm in total agreement with your statement immediately above.

I don't know, I think perhaps I misunderstood you. Or perhaps my original response was more "I disagree with your method" than it should have been. I think there's a lot of merit in the science approach, and it's easier, but you have convinced me there is merit in the "bible is contradictory" method, and perhaps it's easier for you to do that (I don't see how, but that means very little).

 

[xman]

Well, I think that the only good coming out of debating a creationist is mental exercise and a brief revision of your scientific knowledge.

It's liek playing chess against somebody who never bothered to learn the rules, keeps moving the knight in a straight line, eats your king and then declares victory

 

[Nogre]

the guy you write it for is highly antagonistic. For these reasons I usually go back to the beginning: what science is, what theory and fact mean, what the fact of gravity is, what the theory of gravity is, what the fact of evolution is, what the theory of evolution is, why the fact of evolution is indeed a fact, etc.

Ah, but you're assuming that when you're arguing, you have to be arguing for the person you're arguing against. I generally frame my rhetoric and arguments specifically to persuade the fence-sitters potentially reading what I write. In fact, once a fundamentalist got sick of the 500-character limit on Youtube and tried to engage me in PMs by giving a big, long explanation of his position. I simply said something to the effect of "Look, let's not kid ourselves. Neither of us is going to convince the other, so the only person benefiting is the fence sitter. I'll explain where I stand and why and clarify, but I'm not going to debate you privately, as it achieves nothing." Everything else I said was just an explanation of where I stand and why. I never did get a response from him on that.