Weakest Link of Islamic Chain

1. We shall begin with the reputation of the Koran for perfection, and then note a serious imperfection, namely that of practical clarity, i.e., exactly what is required to be pleasing to God. Witness the cloud of experts needed to sort things out.*

[* And we are speaking of all things necessary to be pleasing to the Muslim's Allah, from the selection of a successor to Mohammed to the determination of whether a dreamed voice calling for killing an innocent person may be considered as the voice of God.]

2. As a result of this realization we turn to examine this communication by means of two hypotheses to account for this lack of perfection, this lack of clarity. Without impugning Mohammed’s sanity and integrity, we can posit two supernatural sources for such a communication, namely the divine and the demonic.*

[* In other words we respect here Mohammed's claim that he is not the author of his recitations and that they were given to him supernaturally, and either by God or by a demon.]

3. With regard to the divine hypothesis it is possible that the Allah who dictated the communication is of a Mormon sort, namely the highest developed human, i.e., a god who is perfect as he can be, but no more (and less than we can imagine). In that case some confusion would be understandable, i.e., its the best the Allah can do.

[* According to the Mormon story, many planets like the earth are possessed by gods, and these gods were earlier human beings just as we are, and that they were obedient to the god-former-man-like-we-are of the earth and were exalted, as the earth's god had been earlier exalted, and made perfect men, i.e., gods with their own planets and their own populations. Thus the perfection of this god of the earth is a man who is as perfect as a human can be.]

4. With regard to the hypothesis of the demonic being behind Mohammed's dictation here we would expect confusion, a deliberate confusion to hide a sinister act, namely the corruption of the moral core of the human race. We will now develop this thought.

The human being is blessed with the clear knowledge of the moral law and indeed is so fashioned rationally that he produces this law of himself.* Indeed this law is the necessary presupposition that even children make in their early judgments of "fair and unfair." Furthermore this idea is practically compelling on the human through a respect that he has for the law, which is also his makeup, such that if he had no reason not to, he would invariably comply with the law in his life. ** ***

[* This could be expressed in kantian terms about so: we imagine to ourselves a realm of free and rational beings and conceive of a law which would be universally proclaimed spontaneously by each of these beings. I, as any person, would accept two laws: either I am supremely important, or all persons are equally important. Since the absolute importance of the first is contained in the latter (derivatively) and since the first is not universally acceptable, e.g., I Philip am more important than anyone else, we see that the only possible law is the second. This law is the law of free beings, the moral law.]

[** Essentially this explains the "bad conscience" that people experience when they are conscious of having violated some duty.]

[*** Indeed it is only by means of this respect that everyone feels, even scoundrals, that we are able to recognize that we are free in our conduct from the laws of nature. See essay on moral argument for freedom.]

Now since this great respect for the moral law is so rooted in the human soul, it can never be successfully undermined by a direct onslaught, i.e., by commanding immoral acts as a principle,, e.g., what you don’t want your neighbor to do to you, do just that to him, or hate your neighbor like you hate your worst enemy.*

[* Such a frame of heart to take pleasure in the violation of the moral law instead of doing it only reluctantly as the humans tend to do, such a heart would be called diabolical, and no human is diabolical.]

Therefore any ploy to accomplish this would have to be undertaken under cover. A good cover is confusion. If the moral acts of the human could be brought into par and equality with inane acts immediately and then eventually with immoral acts also, the corruption desired by the demon would be complete, and indeed it would even be done unawares. A way to accomplish this subtefuge is to reward indiscriminately any moral acts called for (as a camaflouge) or any inane act called for, and to put the emphasis and focus on the fact that they, indiscriminately, are called for by the dictator (of the communication). In other words, the proper state of mind being is not being aware that some act might be moral, but rather being aware that it is called for, for it would be this attitude of sincere submission to what is called for (regardless of what) that would make it worthy of a divine reward. In this way then people would slowly take their minds off of the morality and focus on the reward, aways remembering to be aware that the act is accompanied by thoughts of compliance to what the demon is calling for. The next step then would be to institute the immoral commands or guidance of the demon and garb them also in reward, which is now the complete arbiter of a person's conduct.*

[* And where "moral" would come to mean "what is commanded by God and leads to reward," i.e., by first learning what is commanded of God you learn what is moral, and not the other way around (which is the natural impulse of the rationally thinking human, namely where moral is understood independently of God {per Genesis 3:22 in the Jewish scriptures, by the way} and indeed comes to be a certain measure for our differentiation between God and a demon. As far as supernatural things go, the demon is quite capable of a convincing show and has been said to appear as an "angel of light."]

But this is precisely what Mohammed has done in his identification, with respect to reward, of giving to the poor and bowing down according to clock and compass, and then in the high esteem given to Abraham for his willingness to slay an innocent person in order to comply with a dream that the Allah is telling him to do this. As a result of the exaltation of Abraham for this willingness the principle is established: Allah may call on a Muslim to commit an immoral act,* and the smart man will comply in the most sincere demeanor possible (due to the resulting rewards and punishments for disobedience).

[* Considering "moral" from the stand point of the rational human, and not as simply another term for " what God has called for and accompanies with punishment or reward."]

5. Accordingly then we see that the confusion in Mohammed’s communication is easily explained by the demonic hypothesis and only with great difficulty by the divine, and then only by demeaning the divine to the level of a Mormon god.

6. A Contrasting Case. Paul’s communication is thoroughly moral due to the supremacy of the moral law (his Law of Love) over all else.* It is so clear and simple that children can understand and respond to it, both in Paul’s day and in our own.** Consequently Paul’s communication is totally at odds with the demonic hypothesis and accords with the divine.***

This draft is a very brief overview of the procedure for the conversion of the Muslim to Paulian Christianity. Clues to the details and justifications are given in an earlier draft which follow this present draft. I am gradually developing the form of a "critique of revelation."

1. By Muslim claim the Koran is perfect, and yet it cannot be universally understood.

2. What are the hypotheses involved? It is either divine or it is demonic. [in either case we grant that it is supernatural.]

3. If it is divine it will also be moral. Islam is a religion which dispenses with morality and subjugates it to the principle of personal happiness.

4. Therefore it does not fit the hypothesis of a divine communication.

5. If it is demonic it will be immoral, even though it may command moral things. Islam commands moral things (like helping the poor) but on a par with amoral things (like fasting) and even immoral things (like slaying an innocent child), and the par being the reward gleaned from abject obedience to the sincerely believed command of the Muslim's Allah.

6. Therefore it fits the hypothesis of a demonic communication.

7. Paul’s writings are imperfect in the sense that he himself participated in the composition (they are not a dictation as in perfect writing as the Koran was purported to be). And yet his practical command is singular, i.e., love all people as neighbors and as much as you love yourself. This makes it completely moral and for that reason then also makes it completely clear, and so much so that children recognize it in their early judgments of "fair and unfair."

8. Therefore with Paul we have evidence for the divine hypothesis and none at all for the demonic.

9. Paul then, under a divine inspiration, would quite naturally come up with a teaching that were clearer than a demonic dictation, no matter how perfect that demon might be, for the major point of the confusion by the demon is to hide the fact that the human is being seduced to give up the moral law,* for the human would not and indeed could not do that consciously, but only through a deception. And so it makes then perfect sense that Paul’s command is so clear and simple--it is the moral law itself. God is pleased by conduct in accordance with the law of love.

[* Indeed the "perfection" of the demon would be demonstrated in his ability to seduce the human to immorality gradually through the confusion of the dictation, designed to camouflage what this goal is, i.e., a confusion and need for experts to "sort it all out."]

10. Question to the Muslim: if you could put off your religious viewpoint for purely academic purposes (theoretical thinking), and would look at the matter as a rational person who believes in God and believes that he has sought contact with humans in a meaningful way, how would you choose here in the cases of Paul and Mohammed? Think as an unbiased rational believer in the existence of God.

Now it’s up to the Muslim to decide. He has to go from here and make a choice

Note: in this way, by the way, the Christian evangelist is spared the trouble of dealing with all the "wonders" of the "Amazing Koran" and the honesty and understanding of Mohammed, for it is here freely admitted that the communication to Mohammed was supernatural, and indeed a supernatural dictation which Mohammed faithfully and accurately receited.

Now on an entirely different tangent (but which comes back to our theme). "Let’s go from here" works for the Christian, and is sort of like a buddhist message. The past does not matter, for we are to go from here. Now. This instant. This is what counts. It’s now. Not then. But now. Do it now. Let the dead bury the dead. Now come alive. Now.

And so it is the Second Chance stuff. Barabbas was not only saved as a human Jew by his conscientious king Jesus, but he was also given a second chance spiritually (and the Greeks say Barabbas became a Christian in the early church). The second chance which is also a guaranteed second chance. That’s big news. A guaranteed second chance. We get a second chance and we give others a second chance, and work to help them succeed, even though that success is in fact guaranteed (for the working to do so is our sincerity, i.e., it is an act of love and so ipso facto, it will be undertaken per the sincerity).

The second chance is represented in the death of Jesus for Barabbas and for all men, and is free for the taking, and the guarantee is represented in the resurrection of Jesus, the power over death itself, the power of guarantee.

The guaranteed second chance is what the Christians offers the Muslim (and all men) and it is free for the taking for all who will believe, i.e., all who sincerely seek to implement the law of love in their lives first and foremost and do so in the knowledge that this sincerely seeking is all that counts, and that all else is provided by God.

The great contribution of the Muslims is the sincerity. Thanks to them it has been preserved from the time of Jesus. They saved it even as they saved the sciences for the good of the world. God has utilized them for his great purposes and is now ready to redeem them along with all people. If the principle of sincerity had been preserved in this purity since the time of Jesus we would never have had to deal with institutionalize churches and priesthoods (though we always need pastors to spur us on and to awaken in us our spurs to love and give second chances), for then we all would understand that we were all after the same thing and only differed on the means to love of neighbor and then also, derivatively, as a love of God.*

[* God does not want this love by fiat, but by spontaneous expression of the human soul, and that only can be achieved when one has first come to love his neighbor as he loves himself.]

And so by means of the Muslim’s keen sense of sincerity we now can switch from looking for what God wants to knowing what he wants in all clarity and simplicity and go about then sincerely trying to implement that.

This leads to the following: men trying to be good loving husbands, and the wives the husbands. the parents the children and the children the parents. employers trying to be good employers and citizens trying to be good citizens, and all people putting universal brotherhood above all else, even above country (although in an orderly and sound and uplifting way), and then needing merely the aid of science in figuring out what is health and unhealthy, for the moral core is already at hand for the utilization of what science provides and suggests.

The union of the Muslims sincerity with the liberty of the Gentile Christian will change the world and make it a fit place to raise children.

End of revised essay.

I happen now to think that the greatest weakness of the Muslim faith, at least the key to open the door to a serious question and investigation (where Islami will most certainly fail), is what Islam vaunts a its greatest strength, i.e., the purity of the Koran, namely: that it is an exact copy, almost like a facsimile, of the book before the throne and gaze of their Allah.

Now with an actual work of God, as Mohammed’s recitations are considered, we expect utter perfection in every regard, e.g., beauty, grandeur and power, and clarity. Now the Koran is generally admitted to be the finest prose in the Arabian language and this is difficult to argue. Presumably it would have to be greater in Arabian than Paul’s 1 Corth 13 and Milton’s ode to his blindness are in English. But such a judgment, being subjective and involving two languages, would be hard to make. But let it be true, and let the Koran even contain some scientific insights far ahead of their experiential discovery and let it even possess great numerologies, and breath of scope and so on, but then let it fail in clarity and it fails completely as the work of God. Now it is possible for God to speak to us in language which is not immediately understandable, and that is the sort of language dealing with matters theoretically. For example the language used might refer to the sky in the way we would refer to a large upside bowl (having, for example, no visible columns) and today we could understand the meaning differently, and this is no problem. The people of Mohammed’s time would have been wowed by the idea of the big ceiling in pretty much the same way that people of today are wowed by the enormity of galactic space. Presently there is a verse which states that mountains keep the surface of the earth from billowing or moving. This is not understandable under present science, but it can come to be understood, and so such vague pieces are not important, for they deal with things only theoretically.

But clarity or confusion with regard to practical matters is another matter entirely, and it is where the Koran fails. I will not doubt that it was perfectly clear at the time, but it is one thing for a human or, say, a demon to write something understandable at one time, but not at a later time. But the Koran is counted by the Muslim as a perfect dictation of God and thus must be held to a higher standard, indeed by the very highest.

But there is great doubt as to whether the practical matters, matters of action, were even clear at the time of Mohammed, or even whether it could have been clear in this regard. People were always having to ask Mohammed what to do. One man is reported to have asked, “should I tie up my camel, or trust Allah.”* People wanted to know if they should kill someone, or do this or that. Regardless of Mohammed’s reply, the fact is that the practical knowledge of the Koran was always problematic. And the fact of confusion is blatantly displayed in the countless multitudes of imans and mullahs and interpretative traditions. The one thing is that is clear is that there is no clarity on exactly what it is that Allah his telling his Muslims they must do in order to be pleasing to him. There is agreement here and disagreement there. This ranges from the inability to find 100% unity among all these experts for the selection of a success to Mohammed (the Caliph) to individual matters, e.g., did a dream voice telling me to slay my wife come from Allah? In a word, we would expect a divine dictation to be clear, with regard to practical matters and especially with regard to what is required to be pleasing to God, to people of the time of Mohammed's recitation as well as people of our own time, or any time. And this is hardly the case, either then or now or at any time.

Now I wish to present another case, one which has some similarities with Mohammed’s case. I am speaking of Paul. Paul presumed to have had an experience with a Jesus-in-the-sky and is reported to have become a transformed person, earlier taking pride in being the most zealous in an active hatred of the followers of Jesus and then coming to be one of them and preeminent among them, the most zealous in promoting Jesus's Way among the gentiles. He spoke theoretically and practically. His theoretical works, e.g., that the signs of God are given in the world about us, is flawed in terms of present day understanding, even though it might have been very clear to people at that time. He expected a return of Jesus very soon and this did not happen, and so in this regard his theoretical is even flawed in terms of accuracy. But when we turn to Paul’s practical teaching we find that the requirements for pleasing God are so simple that even children can understand them, namely to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. Children in Paul’s day understood what this meant and children in our own day understand what this means and there is no need that it be read in the original Greek--it is plain in any language in the world, even sign language. Now it is true that Paul speaks of other practical matters, e.g., divorce and role of women and slaves, but these are based on his own understanding in the application of the supreme Rule of Love. Paul’s works are called inspired, and not a divine dictation. But it is very clear to all the adults who listen to him even once, that it is not Paul who will stand for before Jesus the Judge for one's deeds, but that person alone, and the Lord is understood to understand an individuals understanding in order to peer with him into his conscience to find the reason for the peace.

Let me give an example. When I was about 8, I guess, and friend of mine broke windows in some cars at a junk yard. When confronted by my father and called upon to justify myself, I told him the truth (in my understanding): "but these are junk cars" (= the cars that nobody can use). He understood my truth, and did not punish me although he did instruct me that “junk” cars are actually used again, only piece by piece and not as they originally were.

And with Paul we have the same thing,, regardless of his inspired talk, theoretically and practically, one thing is clear and overriding: there is only a single rule for the Christian, namely the Rule of Love which is to be applied according to one’s best information and understanding (and presumably with an attitude of a willingness to learn new information), and that in doing so the Christian is to look forward to facing God with love and hope and without the least fear of having committed a sin unawares, for there are no unaware sins for the Christians.

With regard to the universal understanding of this rule on the part of all children of all eras we can simply refer to the early demands concerning fairness and unfairness. Everyone can make an objective judgment (of right and wrong) by means of this rule. Indeed once Jesus is reported to have refused to judge between two feuding brothers, for they knew perfectly well what was fair (e.g., let one divide and the other choose). The Jewish scriptures attest to this in Genesis 3:22. This knowledge of good and evil is part of our make up.

And so what Paul has done in his inspired state is to raise up the moral law in the hearts of all people, even the worst, and to declare that this law is also the commandment of God, understood in its extensive dimension as the Rule of Love. And so it is no wonder that the practical teaching of Paul is exceptionally clear, at least with regard to what is pleasing to God. It is no wonder because it has the same foundation as the moral law of universal dignity and importance, which is utilized even by children in their judgment of fair and unfair. And so by using the moral law Paul produces a rule that everyone will know how to implement on their own without the need of any expert.

Now this is getting close to what we would expect in a perfect dictation of God, at least in practical matters of what is needful in order to be compliant with all of the guidance of the Muslim Allah. Paul has produced such clarity that it is clear to all children of all time, and so you would expect, in order to trump the work of any mere human being, Allah would do something more spectacular, like making it also clear to infants. But we don’t get that at all, we get bits and pieces here from this expert and bits and pieces there from that expert and the two will not say the same thing. With Paul, a mere, inspired human, you get crystal clarity due to the restriction of all practical actions to the rule of Love, and with Mohammed’s Allah you get practical confusion as to what he giving as guidance to the humans.

Now the door is open for inquiry (according to this model) and what we want essentially to do is to examine the character of a divine communication, but not the details. We will find that this character is holiness which, for humans, translates into moral principles and conduct. In this examination (presented in the essay on discerning the divine) we will admit supernatural influence on Mohammed’s recitation due to the reputed pre-scientific revelations and the numerology, and so critique his determination that this supernatural influence was from God or from a supernatural demon. We will do the same thing, in all fairness, also with Paul’s writings. By means of this analysis we will discover that the hypothesis which best fits Mohammed’s recitation is the demonic and that best fitting Paul’s writings is the divine (or self composed).*

Now next we need to deal with the confusion of the various bickering dogmas among the Christians and clarity all that in terms of Peterians and Paulians. The Peterians are those Christians, ranging from the Roman Catholics to the Baptist, who believe that in addition to the rule of love there are other rules which must be sought out and complied with in order to be pleasing to God. The rule of love is always supreme, but if there is no conflict, the specific rule of this and that must be complied with, according to the followers of Peter. The Paulians are those for whom there is no other law. Presently, if I had to guess, I would say that the American Episcopal Church is the only Paulians church in the world today, certainly in America and among the significant dominations. For more on this see the essay on the liberty of the gentile Christian.

The point is this: if the Muslim converts he will need to decide if he wants a church which may be embroiled with the same sorts of arguments and bickerings about what is necessary for pleasing God (for one church finds many laws and another finds fewer) that he experienced in Islam, or to be free of all that.

One of the saddest aspects of Islam is the slavish mentality and a desire to be told what to do by an expert. One of the happier aspects of Pauline Christianity, but also the more sublime, is the mentality of the man who makes his own decisions and has no fear of the punishment of God, i.e., perfect peace of mind.

A ready convert should also be told of the unorganized Zaachaen church. The first recorded member was Zachaeus and the second was the thief on the cross. These two people entered in upon the Way of Jesus without any knowledge of Jesus’s atoning death for them, and each doing what his faith and his condition would permit: Zachaeus possessed much and gave much, the thief had little (only his confession of truth) but gave all he had. Both were counted on the way and were acceptable to Jesus and the Church that he established.

A final choice really is a coating for all of the three possibilities above, namely the Nicodemian Christian who followed Jesus secretly. This may be the choice the Muslim convert will be force to take, given his responsibilities and given his dangers in the Islamic community as a convert to Christianity.

Recap: In terms of practical clarity, Paul's communication is superior to Mohammed's; and with regard to the moral analysis Paul's communication does not accord with the demonic hypothesis and does accord with the divine,* while with Mohammed's communication it is just the opposite.