From: arash@sunee.waterloo.edu (Arash Jahangir)
Subject: Re: Theistic religions ...
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 09:09:24 GMT

In article <1992Apr6.025001.19864@trl.oz.au> safaei@brahma.trl.oz.au (Farzad Safaei) writes:

O.K, I am going to try here to answer your questions as well as others

>
>>arash@sunee.waterloo.edu (Arash Jahangir) writes:
>>
>>My point remains that once you accept a school of thought in its entirty, you
>>have ended you search.  
>
>First, it is possible that you are giving too much credit to the adherents of
>non-religious schools of thought (provided you meant *religious*
>schools of thought in the above). I don't think that only religious
>people are prone to become dogmatic or exhibit prejudice.
>

I was talking about ALL self proclaiming "complete" schools of thought.  Man
made or otherwise, the results are always the same.  You need to have read my
first to postings to be able to properly fallow the discussion.  This topic
has been on for at least a dozen postings.

>Second, perhaps we comprehend too much in what it means to *accept* a 
>belief system. Accpeting something should not mean to "end my
>search", never to question anything about it and close my mind to
>all other views.

If you think that your beleifs are directly from God, "science of history", 
spirit of the universe, best scientific minds of the world, or for whatever
other reason infalable (the example of God really fits well but I don't want
to give the impression that I am purely picking on religion), then NO you will
close your mind to other ideas since your information cannot possibly be wrong
(in your own openion of course) then the others must be wrong.  I have even met
people that when they clearly faced a logical contridiction they simply said
"well, I know I God cannot be wrong.  I just can't find the error in your 
argument".

>You mentioned the principle of Independent
>Investigation of Truth (which I agree is very difficult to follow
>completely because of human tendencies, but I guess we both consider
>it a worthwhile "limit" to strive for). Does it mean that
>one should not have any beliefs before an exhaustive search for the
>truth has been carried out? And how can you be sure that you have
>reached the culmination of your search? Can you be certain that
>you will reach there during your life-time? 
>And, meanwhile, are you expected to live in a kind
>of void or extreme agnosticism?
>
>I hope you see what I mean. The Indep. Inves. of Truth need not be
>in conflict with accepting a system (albeit as a working hypothesis).
>It IS, however, inconsistent with close-mindedness and "ending
>one's search".
>

Now this point was also made by Kamran (I think) who mentioned that one cannot
go on changing his beleifs everyday.  My answer is that if you choose your 
beliefs carefully you will not have to change them often, but you only have to
be mentally and emotionaly prepared to change them the moment they cease to 
apply.

I understand that no one can approach any subject without some pre-judgement.
My point is instead of learning about your particular religion.  It is better
to start by learning the fundumentals of logic and critical thinking.  Once
you have mastered that you can start studying various philosophies and 
ideologies.  As you learn about different schools of thought (including various
religions)  you will develope an understanding of right and wrong.  Shop around
for ideas.  Choose what you like and realize why exactly you like them.
Discard the ones you deem as impractical, senseless, or for some reason 
unacceptable.  You will find that in a relatively short time (say 10 years)
you have a very mature and well developed sense of logic as well as moral 
fondations.

On the other hand if you somehow convince yourself that a words of a particular
person or group or a community are always right or as close to impecable as
they can be, then when you face a problem you will automatically run to your
trusted source instead of shopping for the best solution you can find.  This
business of shopping around seems to be very time consuming, but in reality it
is not as time consuming as it seems.  For one thing you by the time that you
have well educated yourself in the principles of logic and ethics, you have 
seen the most common problem cases and so your problems are dramatically 
reduced.  For another, since you have educated yourself on the WHYs as oppose
to the WHATs and HOWs, you will able to solve most of your other problems by
yourself.  And finally, for the very few cases that you have not seen before
and you cannot solve by yourself, if they are important to you then you have to
go and shop around for the best solution at least as much as you'd spend time
for buying yourself a car or a house.


Now its time to answer to Zafar.  If I recall correctly our last point of
debate was if we should ask God what it is that he wants us to do or not.  My
point was that we do not need to do so.  If God wants us to do something he
then he has placed the natural inclination for that task in us.  Zafar
mentioned that prayer is good for us but most people avoid it.

The reson most people avoid prayer (IMHO) Zafar, is that it is not clear to
them that it is good for them.  In fact I beleive that the traditional rules
of prayer, at least in Islam since it is the religion I am most familiar with,
is of little use for average person.  I do not mean to insult anybody by that
comment and I have no malice against Islam, so hear me out to the end.  I re-
member one of my teachers was explaining to me how when he was a kid (6 or 8
or whatever years old) his father would wake him up early in the cold mornings
and have him go to the "hoze" (a small pool in the yard) to vozoo, and pray.
This approach is not uncommon.  To begin with I don't think that it psycho-
logicaly leaves a good impression on the kid.  Secondly people have to pray
by saying a preset of words and doing a set of fixed movements which takes 
away all the intimaacy that you are supppose to feel by meditating and talking
to God.  This problem is even worse if your first language is not Arabic since
then you will have a very hard time relating to the words.  Finaly, people are
not taught about the deeper issues of prayer and meditation and how that can
help them in their everyday life.  A few hadith from the prophet on the pluses
of prayer does not cut it.  People need to learn to pray in such a way that 
after the prayer they can FEEL the inner peace that it should bring them.  As
a sign of truth to my statements observe that many of the same people who never
pray, turn to the teachings of Lao Tzu, I Ching, Yoga, Krishna, hypnosis or 
whatever else that teaches them how to meditate.  Meditation is realy a form 
of prayer.  I therefor maintain that if I use common sense and good logic and
identify my needs correctly, I will do every bit as God has wanted me to do
and will develope little prejudism for or against any school of thought or 
its fallowers.

Regards,
 Arash

P.S  Zafar, my example about Hitler does not prove the need for religion. I
     could have just as easily named dozens of religious leaders (some of them
     even true beleivers) who caused similar disasters though not with the same
     intesity.  Beleiving in religion makes no difference with that regards. 
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