The Daily Show - Reza Aslan

As is common, absolutely no mention of any faith outside of the 3 Abrahamic ones. It's like we don't exist.
 
Senthil said:
As is common, absolutely no mention of any faith outside of the 3 Abrahamic ones. It's like we don't exist.
Click to expand...
A conversation about Islam between a Jew and a Muslim, I don't get how any non-Abrahamic would pop in the conversation. Of course the issues discussed carry over, Hindus and Buddhists have their terroristic groups and scripture when asked could be used to show themselves correct.

Also to add more to it, this is a 6 min clip... not a lot of time to cover all religious views.
 
It was nice to see a sense of humour in his guest. But I can't really imagine the Today show without people with a sense of humour. My other comment was more about your OP .. 'the nature of humans and religion' . I just think the whole thing is far more complicated than this.
 
Senthil said:
It was nice to see a sense of humour in his guest. But I can't really imagine the Today show without people with a sense of humour. My other comment was more about your OP .. 'the nature of humans and religion' . I just think the whole thing is far more complicated than this.
Click to expand...
My comment was very general, I think they touched on a few points that are interesting, but still it's a 6min comedy segment. I meant nothing more than that I agreed with everything they said. I don't think all religions are the same but in some ways they are, what they said ring universally true to me.
 
I watched it again, more closely. I agreed with the part about scripture being interpreted based on the pre-existing notions of the interpreter. But that only is true for religions that put a really heavy emphasis on scripture. For those faiths or those people who aren't scripture based in the same way, it doesn't hold. For example, I'm far more likely to ask anyone, "What do you think?" rather than "What does the Koran (or Vedas, or Bible) say about this?" I actually do want to know what a person thinks. In my faith it is the very nature or practice to question everything, then observe and make conclusions, not just to go flipping pages of the books.

So had your comment had the word 'Abrahamic' before the word 'religion', it would have made more sense to me.

But yes, it was just a small chunk of the entirety. and quite accurate at that.
 
After watching the Stewart piece, I was led to this one, where the author goes into deep discussion about the facts of Jesus' Jewish heritage, and how it relates to his conversion to the Messiah of the Christian religion. There's been a lot of comments about this debate on this site, and I found this clip enlightening.

 
Senthil said:
For those faiths or those people who aren't scripture based in the same way, it doesn't hold.
Click to expand...
Not sure that's relevant. 'Religion' can be hard to pin down when speaking in such general terms but can't it be defined as an understanding of the nature or reality, mans place in it and his/her correct conduct? This is either stored in text or in a cultural context, no? Everything that is needed to know is there either way, the only difference would be that relying heavily on scripture ensures less divergence across the practitioners. Questioning is good, but that doesn't ensure against unbiased conclusions. That's a hard one we might never overcome.

Senthil said:
In my faith it is the very nature or practice to question everything, then observe and make conclusions, not just to go flipping pages of the books.
Click to expand...
I don't think you would agree and I don't know enough about each religion so I can't comment, but I'm sure questioning individuals in every faith would claim the same. That sort of leads us back to the topic, that we read in what we want.

Will watch that one DA, I first saw Aslan in a FOX News interview and he really impressed me. But I don't know much about him.
 
Devils' Advocate said:
After watching the Stewart piece, I was led to this one, where the author goes into deep discussion about the facts of Jesus' Jewish heritage, and how it relates to his conversion to the Messiah of the Christian religion. There's been a lot of comments about this debate on this site, and I found this clip enlightening.
Click to expand...

Sort of like he said, I don't know that he's talking about something very new. 99% of what I know about Christianity is from a Catholic (some of you can even guess who) and I don't think he would object to much from an academical point of view. Let's hope he has the time to watch and comment. Sure, I know another guy here who consistently point out that Jesus was Jewish in every other post as if that changes anything. Don't know that there has been a lot of debating on it?
 
DA, I hadn't seen that before, I am somewhat of a fan of Mr Aslan. I always liked how he likes to read what is there and comment on it in Christian context, and then explain it from Jewish historical background. I myself share a view with him that there is much that can be learned about truth through the Bible, if it is in its proper context. I once told a friend I follow Islam through the Biblical school (as opposed to Wahabi, Salafi, etc.). That confused him enough that I no longer use that term.
 
Yes I watched both interviews.

There's a lot of interesting stuff there, and really there's nothing new, just scholarly historical research with a sensational title, and that Fox interview which apparently shot the book to the top of the best seller lists.

I had a look round for some peer review critiques, and there I see, time and again, the problem with 'cherry-picking' – that Reza approaches the work with his conclusion (this book is an expansion of his PhD thesis), and then sifts the Scriptural texts to find the evidence supporting his claims. (And ignores contemporary scholarship that challenges his assumptions.) So when Scripture reads as he wants it, it is the truth, when it contradicts his thesis, it's a fiction ... such an arbitrary method of text selection pretty well ensures we can come up with any kind of historical Jesus we like ... so this and that is dismissed as 'unhistorical', as a testimony to faith, not to facts ... but Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, greeted like a king, and His wreaking havoc in the temple, those are not faith testimonies, they're facts, because they support Aslan's thesis.

Regarding the 'historical Jesus' – the simple fact is the Jesus of History cannot be separated from the Jesus of Scripture, because the Jesus of Scripture is the only Jesus we've got. A Muslim writes a book about Jesus and ... well I never ... Jesus isn't a God at all! It was all cooked up by His followers!

His Jesus is an ill-educated, itinerant preacher. Why, because Joseph was a carpenter? I went on a sailing holiday with a man who said he was a window cleaner. Then he saw a boat he wanted to buy. "How many windows do you clean?" I asked him, when he told us the price. "Most of the windows in Chicago," he said. He was the CEO of a rather large and successful company.

Being a carpenter doesn't necessarily mean you're dirt poor and ill-educated. Nor does being a fisherman. It's just one of a number of assumptions that Aslan makes ...

In the end, “Zealot” offers readers not the historical Jesus but a Jesus for our place and time — an American Jesus for the 21st century, and more specifically for a post-Sept. 11 society struggling to make sense of Christianity’s ongoing rivalry with Islam. (Washington Post)
Click to expand...
This is what I contend with, I think, more than any other ... the desire to make Jesus the pin-up of a given fashionable zeitgeist.

And ... just for fun ... something in reference to discussions elsewhere:
In his Epilogue, Aslan describes the council of Nicea as having debated whether Jesus was human or divine. Aslan writes that one group of debaters, consisting of an Alexandrian priest named Arius and his “Arian” followers, “seemed to suggest” that Jesus was “just a man – a perfect man, perhaps, but a man nonetheless”... (Thomas goes :eek: then :mad: then :rolleyes:) ... This is nonsense, straight from the Gospel according to The DaVinci Code... (Review here)
Click to expand...
 
Thanks Thomas, sometimes a person is more believer than scholar. It all goes over my head either way.
 
Senthil said:
I agreed with the part about scripture being interpreted based on the pre-existing notions of the interpreter. But that only is true for religions that put a really heavy emphasis on scripture. For those faiths or those people who aren't scripture based in the same way, it doesn't hold.
Click to expand...
But surely that's the case everywhere. The sacra doctrina of the religious traditions serve at the foundation. Is there a religion that's not scripture based? Isn't Hinduism based on the Vedas?

As for pre-existing notions, that's obvious, I would have thought. What other notions can one have? The answer lies in where and how the person reading Scripture allows the Scripture to speak, rather than assume what the Scripture says, according to their pre-existing ideas or expectations.

Aslan and Ehrman have something in common in that regard. Both claim they began as believers in the inerrancy of the Bible. Both came to realise such is not the case. (I thought it amusing that it was the Jesuits who put Aslan right on that score.) Both seem to have gone from one extreme to the other. I doubt Aslan became a Muslim because of that loss of faith ... as I understand it, Islam puts more faith in Christ than he does.

Senthil said:
For example, I'm far more likely to ask anyone, "What do you think?" rather than "What does the Koran (or Vedas, or Bible) say about this?"
Click to expand...
In the context of a religious dialogue? Really? In my experience that doesn't come up when someone asks me why I think what I think. Again, I would have thought the same thing applies to a Hindu or a Buddhist ... otherwise how do you know what someone thinks has any relevance to the topic under discussion.

A lot of people tell me what's wrong with religion, both generally and specifically. OK, that's their opinion, but is it founded on anything other than opinion? That's the answer I seek when confronted with such arguments.
 
Thomas said:
But surely that's the case everywhere. The sacra doctrina of the religious traditions serve at the foundation. Is there a religion that's not scripture based? Isn't Hinduism based on the Vedas?

In the context of a religious dialogue? Really? In my experience that doesn't come up when someone asks me why I think what I think. Again, I would have thought the same thing applies to a Hindu or a Buddhist ... otherwise how do you know what someone thinks has any relevance to the topic under discussion.
Click to expand...

Maybe 1% of Hindus have ever read anything from the Vedas. Few, other than the Brahmins, understand Sanskrit. We do have scriptures. The Vedas is just the start, and there are many more.

Yes, in the context of a religious dialogue. Of course, because of the differences in east/west I often allude to, there may be no common ground to even have dialogue. For exampl, I'm generally lost on this forum. No experience or language to understand what you guys are debating about.

Here's an Aurobindo (a Hindu scholar) quote that may help. The last sentence is particularly relevant. "On Hinduism as a Law of Life: "Hinduism, which is the most skeptical and the most believing of all, the most skeptical because it has questioned and experimented the most, the most believing because it has the deepest experience and the most varied and positive spiritual knowledge, that wider Hinduism which is not a dogma or combination of dogmas but a law of life, which is not a social framework but the spirit of a past and future social evolution, which rejects nothing but insists on testing and experiencing everything and when tested and experienced, turning in to the soul's uses, in this Hinduism, we find the basis of future world religion. This Sanatana Dharma has many scriptures: The Veda, the Vedanta, the Gita, the Upanishads, the Darshanas, the Puranas, the Tantras … but its real, the most authoritative scripture is in the heart in which the Eternal has his dwelling."
 
Thomas said:
But surely that's the case everywhere. The sacra doctrina of the religious traditions serve at the foundation. Is there a religion that's not scripture based? Isn't Hinduism based on the Vedas?

As for pre-existing notions, that's obvious, I would have thought. What other notions can one have? The answer lies in where and how the person reading Scripture allows the Scripture to speak, rather than assume what the Scripture says, according to their pre-existing ideas or expectations.

Aslan and Ehrman have something in common in that regard. Both claim they began as believers in the inerrancy of the Bible. Both came to realise such is not the case. (I thought it amusing that it was the Jesuits who put Aslan right on that score.) Both seem to have gone from one extreme to the other. I doubt Aslan became a Muslim because of that loss of faith ... as I understand it, Islam puts more faith in Christ than he does.


In the context of a religious dialogue? Really? In my experience that doesn't come up when someone asks me why I think what I think. Again, I would have thought the same thing applies to a Hindu or a Buddhist ... otherwise how do you know what someone thinks has any relevance to the topic under discussion.

A lot of people tell me what's wrong with religion, both generally and specifically. OK, that's their opinion, but is it founded on anything other than opinion? That's the answer I seek when confronted with such arguments.
Click to expand...
Although I probably never will, I'd like to read his book to find out what it actually says. One must realize this is an interview to essentially sell his book and therefore I can only assume some parts are very generally worded for the interview. For instance you mentioned his talk of Jesus (PBUH) being of the uneducated, poor. He was of the poor when he was born. His mother was living amongst priests (and correct me if I am wrong, but she also was training to become a Priestess, which is somewhat baffling given Jewish law generally prohibiting women in positions of authority) Over the years however he (according to Biblical sources) became very well versed in Jewish teachings. I believe that is what he was referring to. Bethlehem wasn't an area the wealthy of the Jews lived, Historically speaking. I don't think Reza Aslan would make a claim that Jesus (PBUH) was uneducated overall, but he very well might have started in an area that by and large was. I wouldn't assume a Muslim would write a book confirming Jesus as God. But his argument in the interview is sound theory from a historical perspective. If one reviews what the oldest scrolls of Mark say, they are inconsistent. Verses change, some are omitted, etc. The other Canonical Gospels have the same issue. So a scholarly approach would be to approach the issue from what is "likely," given the geography and social situations of the time. And his analysis is pretty spot on for 1 possibility. This of course integrates his understanding, same as any Christian scholar. Their personal view will negate certain areas of analysis due to their predisposed ideas. It wouldn't make sense for someone to question something that lines up precisely with their view.

The other issue is comparing Christianity to history. With as many diverse denominations of Christianity, you can make any claim and several groups would be able to stand up and yell "that's not how we believe." while others quietly sit there happy with such explanation. Islam/Christian debates often fall into this trap. Where the Christian debater basically dismisses a generic dogma of Christianity to avoid being proven wrong on a topic. Trinity/status of Jesus (PBUH)/ status of Bible (inerrant/etc.) are often discussed then wiped under the rug when one begins to question them as "noone believes that". In that, people will also be diverse with their ideas of which verses are literal and which are stories. Reading the Bible from an Islamic standpoint puts many points that are debated amongst Christians into a different perspective. 1 being analyzing it from what is generally accepted to be Jewish doctrine that was professed by Jesus (PBUH) (yes shib I'm already covering it). Why one would analyze his teachings any other way than that which he taught from baffles me, yet many of my Protestant Baptist family and friends seem to accept that their analysis is fine even though it contradicts Jewish belief 100%. I'm not making a case for Islam, but rather the complications for anyone outside of Christianity discussing and being accepted anything about Jesus (PBUH), when Christians can't seem to agree amongst themselves.
 
Senthil said:
Maybe 1% of Hindus have ever read anything from the Vedas. Few, other than the Brahmins, understand Sanskrit. We do have scriptures. The Vedas is just the start, and there are many more.
Click to expand...
So how can one know he is practicing correctly is if 1% even begin to consider the text that describes your faith and the rules/laws that regulate it? I'm not dismissing you or your belief but I cannot see myself following something just because of a feeling and someone telling me it is the right thing.
 
BigJoeNobody said:
So how can one know he is practicing correctly is if 1% even begin to consider the text that describes your faith and the rules/laws that regulate it? I'm not dismissing you or your belief but I cannot see myself following something just because of a feeling and someone telling me it is the right thing.
Click to expand...

There is an oral tradition in families of passing down ethics, behaviour by example, grandmothers telling stories of saints or Gods to their grandchildren, a method of community exclusion for poor behaviour, living teachers (village Gurus) to consult, the intuitive understanding of karma, the wisdom of the elders, other scriptures like the Gita, Tirukkural, common sense, the law of the land, and much more. In my own case for example, I can't read Sanskrit, but I've read some verses of translations, and follow the words and teachings of a living Master. So there is much more than the one scripture. Like I've said many times, a very different paradigm. Much of this probably did come in some way from the Vedas, but it's not directly.

Besides all that, the Vedas themselves are extremely vast.

But here's a question. You wouldn't know that murder is wrong if you hadn't read it in the Koran?
 
Senthil said:
There is an oral tradition in families of passing down ethics, behaviour by example, grandmothers telling stories of saints or Gods to their grandchildren, a method of community exclusion for poor behaviour, living teachers (village Gurus) to consult, the intuitive understanding of karma, the wisdom of the elders, other scriptures like the Gita, Tirukkural, common sense, the law of the land, and much more. In my own case for example, I can't read Sanskrit, but I've read some verses of translations, and follow the words and teachings of a living Master. So there is much more than the one scripture. Like I've said many times, a very different paradigm. Much of this probably did come in some way from the Vedas, but it's not directly.

Besides all that, the Vedas themselves are extremely vast.

But here's a question. You wouldn't know that murder is wrong if you hadn't read it in the Koran?
Click to expand...
In my faith we say people are born with this knowledge of right and wrong... further this with the truth that messengers came with law before the Quran, and I would have to say yes I would. I cannot say however that without any direction that I would assume murder is wrong... and we can look at the animal kingdom for that. Chimps have been know to kill several members of it's packs because of jealousy. Lions will murder their brother at times to ensure mating priorities. Morals can be swayed heavily depending on circumstance. without some kind of guidance, your idea of right and mine may be so polar opposite that me killing you and taking your wife might be considered reasonable. Survival of the fittest. That's why laws exist. so that everyone follows the same rules and therefor the vast majority will know where their borders are. Of course there are those who transgress those boundaries... without law how do we know the proper way to handle it. Beyond that, without a finite list of commandments, how would we know what God would will us to do in said instances.

All in all I respect that you have your way and it works for you. I just see too many holes for corruption even when followed "correctly". I realize this is coming from a Muslim and our Public Image isn't very high ATM, but of those who know the Quran, know that it is not possible to do wrong if you are following correctly... not even with modern laxed moral society.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top