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

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, nothing in the OT against eggs. . . .

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Here's the thing: if people are putting their values into the religious texts, than the religious texts are FUCKING USELESS (for purposes of morality/values)

[garote]

Lame. His argument is a red herring: The problem isn't the religious text. It's just a book, like any other. The problem is, and always has been, the religious.

He's saying, "those radicals are reading in different values than what we read in."
Well if the Bible, Koran, etc is such a hall of mirrors, then why not just walk away from it? Then you definitely can't be mistaken for "those radicals."

What, something keeping you anchored to it after all? So much for your red herring...

I expect more from Reza Aslan.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

This is the link to the long interview:

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/extended-interviews/8dwtnx/exclusive-reza-aslan-extended-interview

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Reza is pretty funny in this interview. The merry christmas joke was lol. I also agreed with the majority of what Reza says. I take a suspicious exception with his point about scripture being completely malleable. I don't believe the peaceful lesbian feminist has as rich a set of biblical or koranic scripture to justify her viewpoint as has the homophobic anti feminist. You have to ignore so many of those "words on the page" in order to consider them as neutral like Reza seems to be attempting to present. Reza's point about religion being an identity statement is akin to the criticism of American christians that they have a designer religion. His point about granting religion the positives if they are going to embrace the negatives - to credit an omniprescient deity with a beautiful sunset yet avoid laying blame for anything bad - still implies a deity whose creation was created flawed and then commanded to heal itself under duress of eternal suffering for failure to do so. Its an interesting argument that God is cruel, sadistic. (The inherent theistic implications, a cruel god exists, make it a false argument.) A very secular argument on his behalf, I'd say. I wonder if the penalty for apostasy plays into his continued embrace of Islam? Nah, he's an academic. Anyway, to suggest that people take their value to the framework of religion is a very secular observation.

That all said Reza's approach to Jesus is fascinating. He does draw the IRE of the Christian right for his work.


(I love it when he starts speaking slowly.)