Reza Aslan, The Daily Show, May 13, 2015

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Reza Aslan is a religious scholar and writer whose works include "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth" (2013), "How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror" (2009) and "No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam" (2005). Aslan teaches creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. His writing has been published in The New York Times, Slate, The Daily Beast, The Christian Science Monitor and The Washington Post, and he makes frequent appearances on TV and radio shows as a religious and political analyst.He is the founder of Aslan Media and the co-founder of BoomGen Studios.









Full interview @
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/full-episodes/okco56/may-13--2015---reza-aslan

Comments

[garote]

There's a lot we agree on here.

" ... but doesn't that rather illustrate the diversity involved in the interpretation of scripture?"

Yes! It does. Rorschach blot, etc.

"If you want me to condemn irrationality as immoral, even when it's not linked to immoral deeds, then I just can't agree."

I am not asking for that. And I'm not arguing that a poor grasp of reason is a moral or political failing - though I suppose I could. I'm more directly focused on religious texts, and how they are used: as a source of inspiration and justification for one's beliefs/actions. What's my problem with that? It trains the religious to conflate interpretation and rational analysis. So your question is, how can I pass moral judgement on an intellectual failing, separate from any action taken as a result of that process?

I like to think of a religious text as the religious person's version of a handgun. Like a handgun, it is a powerful instrument that can be used for good or ill, depending on the morals of the user and how well they are "trained". One could say that religious moderates undergo thorough "safety training" when they are taught by moderate scholars how to interpret the religious text, and they strive to maintain a just and moral society despite the handicap that all kinds of odd things can be interpreted into existence from a different reading of that text.

There is a slogan regarding handguns that goes, "guns don't kill people, people kill people". Reza Aslan is making the same kind of appeal as the slogan, declaring that "religious texts don't prescribe behavior, people do it via the text."

And yet, the slogan is flawed: The gun clearly helps in the killing, and the convenience of the gun can influence the decision to kill in the first place. I think the same is true for a religious text: There is danger in the convenience of justifying one's actions with it.

In other words, when religious moderates justify their morally upstanding actions by interpreting scripture, they establish and reinforce the practice of justifying anything by interpreting scripture, including anything and everything endorsed by religious extremists. They enshrine that practice - perhaps even literally - and I believe that is quite irresponsible of them.

Just to be clear, I am in no way arguing for something like a ban on any religious text, as some people can (pretty strongly) argue for a ban on handguns. That would be completely counter to my desire to encourage rational thinking, and is one place where this metaphor breaks down. What I am endorsing, is the eradication of an attitude: The attitude that the religious text is divinely inspired, and as such, a selective interpretation of it can be elevated to the status of moral justification, sharing equal status with - or outranking - scientific facts or arguments from ethics.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

"There is a slogan regarding handguns that goes, "guns don't kill people, people kill people". Reza Aslan is making the same kind of appeal as the slogan, declaring that "religious texts don't prescribe behavior, people do it via the text."

And yet, the slogan is flawed: The gun clearly helps in the killing, and the convenience of the gun can influence the decision to kill in the first place. I think the same is true for a religious text: There is danger in the convenience of justifying one's actions with it."

Of course, plenty of things can help with killing; if I stab someone with a kitchen knife then the kitchen knife has clearly facilitated my choice to commit murder. A debate on gun control will then start to talk about the differences between a kitchen knife (not designed as a weapon and possessed of many different moral uses) and a firearm (designed to kill and of comparatively smaller usefulness). I'm not sure that religious scripture folds neatly into that kind of discussion.

"In other words, when religious moderates justify their morally upstanding actions by interpreting scripture, they establish and reinforce the practice of justifying anything by interpreting scripture, including anything and everything endorsed by religious extremists. They enshrine that practice - perhaps even literally - and I believe that is quite irresponsible of them."

I think this is quite a stretch. If religious moderates have any influence on extremists, then I think it's a positive one.

If you want to look at the social factors that breeds extremism, then I don't think that the influence of religious moderates are a significant factor. I'm not even convinced that religion is a key factor either. Here in the UK, extremism amongst young people seems to be more about feelings of alienation and marginalisation amongst young Muslims.

Another example would be 'religious' extremism in Northern Ireland. Although those extremists groups were loosely tied to religion, it seems hard to believe that religion really had a lot to do with it. The factors that caused the rise and eventual settling of extremism in Northern Ireland had little to do with changes in religious belief, practice or the interpretation of scripture.

"What I am endorsing, is the eradication of an attitude: The attitude that the religious text is divinely inspired, and as such, a selective interpretation of it can be elevated to the status of moral justification, sharing equal status with - or outranking - scientific facts or arguments from ethics."

Fortunately, plenty of religious people would agree with you there.

My Religious Studies teacher at college, himself a Baptist (if I remember correctly...) was quite happy to say that scripture is only of the primary sources of Christian theology, with the other two big influences being personal revelation and reason. Whilst I appreciate that trends in Christian thought over in the US may be different, my experience of British Christians is that few would think that you could get 'all the answers' to morality, life and the universe through just sitting down and reading the bible.

[garote]

I think religious scripture folds into that part of the metaphor as well. If we exchanged a religious text that for one that didn't attribute numerous contradictory statements to god, or one that didn't claim to quote god at all, we might be exchanging the metaphorical gun for a metaphorical knife. :D But it's definitely a flawed metaphor, like most metaphors.

I think this is quite a stretch. If religious moderates have any influence on extremists, then I think it's a positive one.

I would be very interested to hear your argument for why a large group of religious moderates, relative to an equally large group of nonreligious people, is a positive influence to extremists.

Here in the UK, extremism amongst young people seems to be more about feelings of alienation and marginalisation amongst young Muslims.

Young Muslims you say? Who is alienating and marginalizing them, and why? The UK is 60% Christian - almost entirely Christian "moderates", I assume. Is that helping matters or hurting them, do you suppose? Or perhaps that's too on-the-nose. Perhaps the point is that it's marginalization and alienation by way of being poor and uneducated? Well, I don't intend to blame religious irrationality for everything. Just for greasing the path to legitimacy for otherwise hard-to-swallow movements.

Another example would be 'religious' extremism in Northern Ireland. Although those extremists groups were loosely tied to religion, it seems hard to believe that religion really had a lot to do with it. The factors that caused the rise and eventual settling of extremism in Northern Ireland had little to do with changes in religious belief, practice or the interpretation of scripture.

Then why do you bring it up? Or, more interestingly, why do you suppose the extremist groups bothered to align themselves with a religion?

"... few would think that you could get 'all the answers' to morality, life and the universe through just sitting down and reading the bible."

Did I say anyone was finding 'all the answers' in a religious text? No. Reza Aslan already made enough of an argument against that, in the posted interview.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

"I would be very interested to hear your argument for why a large group of religious moderates, relative to an equally large group of nonreligious people, is a positive influence to extremists."

The issue is peer influence.

For example; Democrats and Republicans do not tend to exert much peer influence on each other. If anything, the two groups often push away from each other. However, groups within those parties do often exert an influence on each other.

Similarly, no amount of secular atheists like myself are likely to influence the way that various Islamic communities evolve over time. What you need is moderates that exist not only within the same religion but within the same community.

For example, notice how American Christianity evolved in a somewhat alarming and bizarre direction once the religious radicals who sailed off to the Americas were separated from the more settled and 'mainstream' versions of the faith back in Europe (I don't want to white-wash Christianity in Europe, but I think it fair to say that the reason why American Christianity tends to be so much worse is because it was founded out of the radical parts of European Christianity).

"Young Muslims you say? Who is alienating and marginalizing them, and why? The UK is 60% Christian - almost entirely Christian "moderates", I assume. Is that helping matters or hurting them, do you suppose? Or perhaps that's too on-the-nose. Perhaps the point is that it's marginalization and alienation by way of being poor and uneducated? Well, I don't intend to blame religious irrationality for everything. Just for greasing the path to legitimacy for otherwise hard-to-swallow movements."

Anti-Islam sentiment and Islamic extremism are pretty symbiotic; each reinforces the other.

The more xenophobic, racist and Islamophobic Britain gets, the more Islamic extremism it will breed. The more Islamic extremism found in Britain, the more people will acquire xenophobic, racist and Islamophobic sentiment.

"Then why do you bring it up? Or, more interestingly, why do you suppose the extremist groups bothered to align themselves with a religion?"

The British are predominately Protestant. The Irish are predominately Catholic. The IRA did not choose to align themselves with Catholicism but inherited it via an accident of history. It's not as if Catholicism is more obviously aligned with Irish nationalism or Protestantism is more aligned with Unionism.

In fact, religious identities in such situations (and even outside) are often surprisingly independent of religious belief but more a statement of cultural identity. It's surprising just how many Church of England attendees are seemingly completely disinterested in the quesiton of whether there's actually a God and that is seemingly true of many Irish Catholics (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdolFXcNAH4) too. I wish I could find it, but there's a quite amusing bit by the comedian Shappi Khorsandi about young boys in England who are very devout in that they want to check that you're the same religion as them before they try to finger you behind the bikesheds... sometimes 'Muslim', 'Hindu' and 'Christian' are just cultural identities, not religious identities.

When people form 'us and them' groupings then they can latch onto surprisingly irrelevant beliefs, values and policies. In the case of separatism/unionism in Northern Ireland, it's religion. In the case of Southampton and Portsmouth, it's football ('soccer'). In the case of the American left-wing, the attitude towards 'state rights' / 'secession' is completely reverse of the association between left-wing politics and 'devolution' / 'independence' found in the UK. Sometimes, the 'sacred cows' of a community are formed by historical accident rather than any rational justification (http://lesswrong.com/lw/gt/a_fable_of_science_and_politics/).

So, basically, the answer to your question 'no reason that's very relevant to this conversation'.