"the life and sayings of Jesus provided a way into a more liberal interpretation of Christianity"

You left off a bit on the end there. What you really meant to say was that plus "... according to how I think they should be understood."

The life and sayings of Jesus also provide a way into a more conservative interpretation too. What's your reasoning/data to claim that "90%" of it supports the stuff you want to support? The bible really IS sufficiently vague and self-contradictory that pretty much any message you WANT to find, you will. I don't think it's going to be effective to out-fundie the fundies and claim that liberals have the only TRUE interpretation.

A little background first...I studied English Literature, which is a subject where you analyze a text then offer your interpretation based on *evidence* from the text.

So, I could easily study the Bible, the Koran and the Hadith and beat the fundamentalists at their own game. And even if I couldn't beat them 100% then I could keep them at bay or at least on the defensive.

So here's the rub: is it my job to do that (I'm actually an agnostic and more interested in Zen and Taoism)? I don't know but I don't see the moderate religionists stepping up to the plate.

"I could easily study the Bible, the Koran and the Hadith and beat the fundamentalists at their own game"

Tell you what - give it a whirl. Go to the next Phelps hate-fest when they're picketing someone's funeral and beat them at their own game.

Report back here how it goes.

which illustrates the point that it is not about converting the fundies but standing up to them and showing everyone else that there is a different way.

You said that you, armed with your extensive English Literature knowledge, could "beat (them) at their own game."

You've shifted the goalposts quite a bit now.

I still think I could...but it takes courage and leadership.

I'm not a leader, I'm just an anonymous poster on a message board. However, I post my ideas hoping that there are people out there who agree and can do something about it.

True. Very, very true. Were they to do just that, the situation would very quite different.

But for the same reason that trotsky pointed out, that is WHY they do not step up. It is pointless to play that game, for there is no winner when one's "victory" comes at the price of willful ignorance and personal interpretation.

The only way to beat the fundies is to show the world just how absurd and ridiculous those personal interpretations and beliefs really are.

Unfortunately, that method also offends more moderate believers because they too, hold some of those same beliefs, just not to the same degree.

"that method also offends more moderate believers because they too, hold some of those same beliefs, just not to the same degree."

It is in this way that moderate believers enable the fundamentalists - insisting that religious beliefs are special, that they deserve preferential treatment and are just "another way of knowing."

where at least 75% of people take some direction from a holy book of one sort or another.

Politically about 40% of the world's population are conservative, the rest are evenly split between moderates and liberals (they're just approximate figures obviously).

So, it's incumbent on us who have a more liberal view of the world to use whatever evidence supports our view whether scientific, economic, political or religious.

And I really *do* think that the religions back us up more than the conservatives. In fact there's probably a scientific way of analyzing the various texts to see what they concentrate on, then we'll see...

With the exception of religion, I couldn't agree MORE! Times are changing. People are starting to wake up to the fact that religion is no longer a valid source of factual information. And any ideology that promotes fantasy over reality deserves no support whatsoever.




I'm not sure what you mean by that. But the original point is still valid; using liberal interpretations of holy texts is in no way any better than conservative/fundie interpretations. Your short-term results may be better, but the underlying problem remains, which is the unfounded unsupported belief in the supernatural that is directly at odds with reality.

precisely because there are so many different interpretations it actually makes a mockery of the fundie idea of a theocracy.

There was little dogma and no rigid interpretations, as I recall, but more a general sense of right/wrong, particularly in terms of how you treat other people.

I'm not sure what you mean by holistic, however. Could you expand on it?

not just focusing on one part.

Fundamentalists tend to focus on one verse or phrase in their holy book and use that to justify everything.

For example have you ever heard a christian fundamentalist quote the Sermon on the Mount or the Golden Rule? Do they ever quote anything Jesus said or did?

I had the same feeling when I read the Hadith (sayings of Mohammed). Mohammed was like Jesus, he didn't have many material possessions and what he did have he often gave away. He speaks a lot about being humble, giving to charity, even being kind to animals.

This surprised me at the time because it contradicted stuff that even muslims said. For example I've met muslims who don't like dogs for religious reasons, but there are two hadith stories about people being kind to dogs and going to heaven as a result.

Another example is that thieves and prostitutes are mentioned in the hadith, but not as people who deserve to be punished, but as human beings who can be treated with kindness which might help them change their ways.

and not as a fundamentalist.

So, based on my own experience, I agree with what you are proposing here.

There are liberal/progressive congregations and denominations of many different religions that are similar to what you describe. The U/U churches are growing in popularity at least partially because of this, imo.

What would you propose be done to further this?

in your own community is a start IMO.

As to what else can be done, I'll have to think about that...

Islam would be far superior if it followed closer to the teaching of the Muhammad.

Fun fact Muhammad forbid the execution or women for adultery, and said the only solution to adultery was divorce. He also forbid men from making women do what is considered traditional women's work, he is especially famous for the amount of time he spent doing household sewing. Muhammad also forbid the killing of Jewish people and Christians (but Jewish people were on a super special do not kill list.)

If you look at the Sufi sects of Islam you see a region that bears a far closer resemblance to the religion of Muhammad then the modern Wahhabism that has been spreading from Saudi Arabia for the better part of the last century.

Please allow me to introduce myself...I'm a man of neither wealth and taste, but I am an atheist. So when it comes to religion, I don't have a god in this fight.

While I have no formal academic background in Islam, I spent nearly 6 years living in Muslim countries - 2 yrs in Saudi Arabia, nearly 4 yrs in Egypt.

That means I talked to/lived with many different kinds of Muslims, and read a lot about the religion and its history.

The first problem with your approach is figuring out which hadiths are valid/invalid. Islamic scholars have exactly the same problem.

Which may explain why there are more than 30 "schools" of Islamic theology. And that's only in the Sunni branch of Islam. Sh'ia Islam has its own schools\collections of hadiths, incorporating the traditonal sayings of Mohammed plus those of the Imams.

So which ones are "right?"

The hadiths in Thomas Cleary's collection, according to Amazon, were "chosen for their universal appeal." That probably means appeal to Western readers, not necessarily Actual Muslims.

When Actual Muslims today have religious questions, they do things like call in to the wildly popular "Ask-An-Imam" radio/TV shows. These things are about as numerous and popular as Xian televangelists in the USA.

From those shows, they can get an instant fatwa, or religious ruling. But those fatwas - just like Xian interpretations of the Bible - may completely contradict each other.

One of my favorite examples, which happened while I was living in Egypt: someone asked a TV Imam if it was a sin for married couples to be completely naked when they made love. The Imam solemnly pronounced that some hadith somewhere indeed said that was a sin, because modesty. So one spouse should be wearing something during the connubial bliss.

Immediately the Imam got another phone call. From Souad Saleh, one of 2 female professors of Sharia law at Al-Azhar University in Cairo - the world's oldest Islamic college.

She told the Imam that no such hadith existed anywhere. And furthermore, he was "crazy." (Her exact word.)

And yes, it is true that the Koran calls Jews (and Xians) "People of the Book" who should be respected. Yet where I lived - Alexandria - Arabic translations of "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" and "Mein Kampf" were sold at every little news stand. The beautiful old Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in downtown Alexandria, a historic/architectural national treasure, had to be guarded 24/7 by police to protect it from fire-bombing. In 1948, about 75,000 Jews lived in Egypt. Today, maybe 100 are left in the whole country.

Finally, someone brought up the Sufis. Beloved of Western woo-woos because of their mystical bent and their claims of magical powers, etc. etc. (For a hilarious movie about them, see Kate Winslet in "Hideous Kinky" - about a British hippie who drags her long-suffering kids all over the Middle East, looking for Sufi mystics who can teach her to levitate.)

Well, from that most untrustworthy source Personal Experience, I can tell you that a lot of traditional Sunni Muslims don't think much of the Sufis. And trash-talk Sufis at any opportunity...like when I asked about them.

The town of Tanta, Egypt hosts a moulid (birthday bash) every year in honor of the 13th-century Sufi leader El-Sayyed El-Baddawi. Between one and two MILLION people come to that party every year.

According to some of my Egyptian (Sunni) friends, the Sufis dance inside the mosque. (Probably true.) But also strip naked and have orgies. Probably not true. When I was there, G.W. Bush's Ambassador to Egypt attended that party every year with his wife. And they didn't exactly seem like the strip-and-orgy type.

Neither was another famous politician, who reportedly liked to walk in his garden during the cool of the evening, reading with great pleasure the Sufi-inspired poetry he had written as a younger man:

I am drunk with the wine of Thy love, so from such a drunkard
Don’t ask for the sober counsel of a man of the world.

That was the famous liberal, peace-loving, ecumenical-minded fellow, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He ruled Iran strictly according to good old traditional Islamic religious values...as he and his fellow fanatics interpreted those values.

Which it seems to me, is always going to be the problem when you talk about reforming a religion by using its own source material. One reader is going to cherry-pick the stuff like "Love one another" and "All are equal." While that other reader over there is ignoring that stuff and red-lining "treat women like cattle" and "kill all the infidels."

it is always helpful to hear from someone with on-the-ground experience.
Thanks

just as you have to do in any religious document.

when conservative religionists do that, they come up with a conservative interpretation of the "facts" and when liberal religionists do the same thing with the same text, their interpretation is....wait for it...liberal! In other words, humans make "god" in their own image. But all of the "proofing" and textual analysis in the world tells you zero about what "god" really said or meant, and in fact, can't provide even a shred of evidence that any religious text is anything but an entirely human invention. It may give you some interesting historical and cultural insights into human-invented religion, but that's it.

Hell is God's punishment, whereby God is the judge and metes out his punishment in the afterlife.

A lot of fundamentalists (both christian and muslim) conflate themselves with God and think it's their job to judge people and mete out his punishment...but that could be construed as blasphemy, in which case the fundamentalists will probably go to hell themselves!

(For the record, I'm more of a Stoic/Humanist/Taoist who believes it's better to do good out of empathic recognition that we're all human and we're all pretty much the same. I don't see the need for a literal carrot and stick approach).

there wouldn't be religious problems.

Seriously, what good does it do to just accuse another believer of not reading their holy text correctly? S/he will tell you to do the same thing!

And that's not even getting into the strange notion that a loving god who *wants* us to understand it, would allow such contradictory and confusing texts to be the guides we have to follow.

\They need better education, not more religion.