Friday August 19, 2005.

The overall approach to the mind of the Muslim.

We will present the saga of Joseph Smith as an fantastic story which we do not believe but which is not easy to refute. We will present the story in a way which draws parallels with the story of Mohammed (and without attacking the Mohammedan tale). Then we will expand the question as to how anyone can recognize God and what made Smith so sure, or Paul so sure or Mohammed so sure (these three all being historically witnessed people, unlike Jesus who did not reach the level of historical evidence, and became known only by biased reports [but which are not for that reason necessarily untrue].

We discover that it is simply impossible for any human to tell by looking that he is witness to infinity. Paul and Mohammed were unable to tell by looking up at the night sky that one star was 1,000,000 times more distant than another.

How then do we recognize a divine command? Assuming there is a God and this God wishes to communicate to us and wishes for us to know that the communication is from him, how could he go about this? For a demon is also a supernatural being who may have created stars and galaxies or who may give the appearance that he did.

Now the answer to this question requires quite a development which must be undertaken. First we find that while we have good reason to trust our own thinking with regard to things of experience, God is not an object of experience but merely of ideas, and right thinking about ideas is not so efficacious with regard to knowledge and recognition as it is about objects of experience. The most we can do is to realize through right thinking that it is possible, but not necessary, that the soul be eternal, and that it is possible, but not necessary, for freedom to coexist with the necessity of nature, and that it is possible, but not necessary, for there to be a God.

This is what right thinking provides in the theoretical realm of trying to develop knowledge of objects. But we can also think right with regard to our conduct and behavior. It is by means of right thinking about conduct that we come up with principles of conduct, rules of skill, counsel of prudence and laws of morality. We discover within us a respect for the laws of morality and for that reason come to realize that we are free beings, thus provided what we sought earlier in right thinking about theoretical matters and were denied, except with the possibility of freedom coexisting with nature.

Further analysis indicates that the moral act has a purpose which is called the highest good where we are individually to work toward a world which is moral and which has a happiness connected to moral worth. This purpose is necessary in order that the moral law not be thought as inane. It calls for God and an eternal soul, and thus we have, as moral postulates, all three, given earlier as ideas, but now certified as necessary ideas.

Now we are prepared to turn to an investigation and analysis of what sort of religion would be suitable for the worship of this God which is given to us as a moral consequence. As one might imagine, the religion will posit the commands of God as being thoroughly conformable to morality, i.e., whatever God says, he will never call upon humans to violate the moral law.

Now we have the means of a negative recognition of God, namely he will never command what would lead us to think we were to do an immoral act. While we cannot know that a demon exists any more than we can know that God exists (although the latter is a morally necessary supposition), we can imagine a demon as a super natural being who differs from God in degree of power (being less) and in terms of the moral law. Hence a demon is not merely some being who will break the moral law, albeit only reluctantly (as is the human, who for this reason is called evil), but rather one who goes out of his way to break the moral law and indeed eagerly and with great delight.

Now we will dismiss the Joseph Smith story (until we come upon Mormons in discussion) and focus on the supposed divine encounters of Paul and Mohammed. We will not make any assumptions and seek to discover how each made his or her decision as to the divine (or demonic?) origin of their reputed visionary encounters, and then at the same time we shall decide as to how they should have proceeded.

Paul, who has every reason to doubt his vision (since it is the vision of the enemy), and so loses his vision (in blindness) but then is convinced when he is given his sight in the name of Christ. The message that is coming to him in the three days of darkness is that Paul should become an emissary of Christ to the gentiles. The only way this could make the least possible sense was if the love that God held for the Jews he also held for all humans, and this would mean that he loved the gentiles in their condition and was calling on them to trust him as gentiles and without having to become Jewish. This would mean that God intended the salvation of all and not just the Jews. And so this means the Jews served as a means for the great mystery, namely they would present the Christ in their midst for all the world to see, and then they would reject him to remain wedded to the lawful deal they had with God, based on the faith of merely ten men in utter concord.

It could have been that we Jews had accepted him and then the gentiles would have had to become Jews. But what God wanted was for the gentiles to become new Adams so that it would be by faith, like that of Abraham who was counted righteous simply for believing. The gentiles now shall be saved as gentiles by simply believing me when I tell them that Jesus died that they might live without fear. My own Jewish faith is in question here, for I declare to these others that if they believe me just as Abraham believed God, i.e., if they believe that Jesus died in order that they might have life in him, then the faith of abraham requires that it be fact. And so it is fact. It is a fact of faith. If these gentiles are not saved because of their belief in the efficacious of Christ for them, then Abraham was not counted as righteous before God, for that is all he did, i.e., believe his voices. But I (Paul) and the voice of the Christ to you gentiles.

But all that can be believed in this way is what corresponds to the universal moral, namely the gentiles are ok because all people are ok. the jews are ok because all people are ok. this is the message of Paul. You can utterly cast aside all reliance on any law and trust entirely to your understanding of a sincere pursuit of truth (in medicines and poisons), because this is the command of God, that we love one another and all. But a command to love is not possible, and so this means that we are to act with love toward all, but the command to love is possible, as such, if it means a miracle of God in a new nature. And so that is what is happening with our faith in Christ Jesus. We trust in Christ and begin acting lovingly and before you know it we are coming to love naturally.

But from our practical interest here, we can say that Paul might easily have been convinced of his message not only because of miracles and signs but also because the ethic of this message corresponded with the love of the moral law that rational religion is in pursuit of and is what it expects of God. Don’t be fooled by light shows. We need to consider what a rational being would expect to hear and understand.

[Abraham fully intended to put his knife through the heart of his son, but then also knew that his son would not be injured by that. That was his understanding and his faith. Today he appears as a lunatic. I am sure that Don Quixote would have rejected any suggestion, from whatever quarter, that he were to commit an immoral act; rather he would begin to doubt either his vision or his own hearing.]

Now this constitutes a strong indication that Paul encountered a heavenly being, because the message constitutes a universal religion (without need of coercion).

Islam will require coercion, because it is based on signs as its authority and these are sensuous as is everything about Islam, and so islam can be thought of as a universal religion only with the elimination of the many who will never be able in conscience to recognize these signs. And so Islam cannot be counted as based on any angelic encounter with Mohammed.

This is supported by the consideration of the essential evil impetus which is innate to Islam and which is radical (= self perpetuating). Islam is an extortionist religion which makes final claim to individualism to the exclusion of communality, the utter exclusion of that, and which identified “moral” with “getting a reward” and where the original mean of moral is encapsulate in the expression that Allah knows best and knows all the consequences unfolding to realize that this is a moral act, and so all those who willingly take part are due a reward (goodness by assumption, one might say, e.g., killing these children is good because of the final result which is known only to Allah).

Therefore an impartial but interested bystander would never want to chose Islam as a religion, for it means a descent into immorality in such a way that it is impossible for anyone to again be able to recognize themselves as immoral, i.e., they will fit the bill of the moral man (obeying God) to the T. Jesus declared such people to offend the Holy Ghost, for they are so sunk in evil that they will be unable even to recognize their evil.

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