Re: Does Authorship Knowledge Matter?
Sorry for the delay, I've been doing some stuff,
Bismillah..
Principally, if not exclusively, just making sense I think. In a very specific way in the case of religious teachings; the sort of deeply affecting "makes sense" that can change and dictate the whole way you lead your life. That is why I am a Buddhist, because Buddhist teachings make total sense to me at every level, rational, intuitive and experiential. I assume exactly the same is true of muslims, Christians or anyone else in relation to their own scriptures.
Do you think making sense alone is enough? Different things make sense to different people, it makes sense to some that God would consider homosexuality a sin, to others it does not. What if a single tenet of the religion does not make sense should one then disregard the religion?
True, but in that case you would a good reason to believe the stranger might be dishonest. Same with the gas man; they always present identification so you would be very suspicous of someone who did not.
I think generally in life we withold giving trust before having known the person. If I just meet someone and they ask me, 'do you trust me' I generally would say, if I felt comfortable and honest, 'I dont know you, to be able to say I whether I trust you or not'.
Life experiences don't happen in vaccums as Im sure you'll agree, so when we see a uniform we may trust the individual more than someone without a uniform, but, this trust is not based on nothing, it is based on the knowledge of seeing the individual with a uniform, a symbol of something.
If we had yet to meet the individuals, we would not be able to trust either. This is what I argue for, I have not seen anything with regards to some authors/compilers, so how can I trust them? This coming from a general world view, and even more so when speaking of religion since we know some people fake their beliefs and others are genuinly wrong, so this is why I think it is compulsary to know the individuals, otherwise what can we rely on?
But the 'credentials' thing seems rather irrelevant in the case of religion - indeed it seems usually exactly the opposite was true. What 'religious credentials' did Jesus present, other than his words? Or Mohammed? Neither had a little badge that identified them as God's messengers!
I'm am not speaking with regards to credintials for being a Prophet/God or anything else, I am speaking about the credintials for being honest or reliable. I am not at the stage in this thread of speaking about whether x.y or z was God or anything, rather, I am speaking about whether x.y or z was reliable and honest that when he/she says 'I heard....' that he/she was speaking the truth, even if they were truthfully wrong.
It's a wise policy in relation to student work, certainly. But how do you think people get credibility? On the merits of what they write!
Many 'great ideas' were dreamed up by people with no 'credibility' with their peers prior to doing so. Many never got it until long after they were dead. The credibility comes from the ideas themselves, everyone has to start somewhere. A great example is Einstein.. he had no academic 'credibility' prior to publishing. He got it because his papers were read, they made sense, explained what hadn't been explained before, and could not be refuted. In other words his papers made sense. Any piece of philosophy, religious or otherwise, can be assessed in the same way. By always relying on someone having 'credibility' you are merely letting other people decide whether they are right on your behalf. Good ideas stand on their own merit and are not dependent on who first thought of them.
The key difference here is, reading something with background knowledge and reading something without it. As I said in my example,
I meaning me as a lay man, this is important, why because if I have no background in the field then I cannot seperate and decide the credabilty of something. Whereas scholars can do that with other scholar's work. So yes you are right, scholars do check people's works and new ideas come forth, but this work is checked in the light of certain methods, there is methodology and so forth.
If I do not know nothing about the knowledge being spoken of, then I can neither verify nor falsify.
And thank you for a very interesting debate!
And thank you.
Greetings and peace be with you Al Habeshi;
I have thought of all kinds of ways to say this, but I can’t find a good way to explain what I mean, I pray that I will not offend anyone with my clumsy words.
In a way it is not so important that Prophet Mohammed wrote the Holy Quran, rather it is the belief that it is the word of Allaah (swt).
If Karl Marx had written the Holy Quran in the 1800s it would still be believed if Allaah (swt) was behind it.
I understand, and I agree, the individual concerned is not important, if God wished to inspire anyone, it would not change the fact that the person was inspired. But, the thing Eric is, if God is going to send us a message, and we assume God is Just, he will deal with us in a just way. From this, it would then be the next step that God would not just ask us to believe in authors/compilers we are not aware of, people who could have lied about God, or people who could have made serious errors, because think about it, if this was the case then how could we be sure we are following God? This is why I say it is important to know who wrote what, not because we dictate who God chooses, but because we believe God wouldn't ask us to follow someone we dont know the truthfulness of.
I still struggle to understand as to why the same one God allows so many religious texts to come into existence; attracting millions of followers in all kind of diverse ways.
Somewhere in each text is the message that this is the only way to salvation and every other way is wrong.
If you'll allow me to share why I think this mess has come up, or rather how,
Verily! We have made that which is on earth as an adornment for it, in order that We may test them (mankind) as to which of them are best in deeds. [i.e.those who do good deeds in the most perfect manner, that means to do them (deeds) totally for Allāh's sake and in accordance to the legal ways of the Prophet SAW ]. (Al-Kahf 18:7)
Also, the people of hell will say;
And they will say: "Had we but listened or used our intelligence, we would not have been among the dwellers of the blazing Fire!" (Al-Mulk 67:10)
It is my belief Eric, that Allah, God, had sent forth for mankind evidences, instances where they know, they should not just follow something because of an experience which they might have had which could have been wrong, or because their parents said to, rather, it was upon those individuals, at that time to use their intelligence, to listen to the reasoning, and follow a path, withouth worry in submission and reaching the end.
It is not about people not having had the chance Eric, everyone who will be punished will have had a fair chance and rejected it, whether through insulting God directly, or through following their own ambitions with disregard for using their gift of intelect.
There is a great need that we should all pray for each other, in the hope that we might all achieve salvation.
Yes, for we are all the children of Adam, with, God willing, a common goal, to worship God.
And Allah knows best about everything I have said.
Edit:
Forgot this:
Many parts of the Bible were written by people completely unknown to us.
Therefore, for me as a Christian, the question who wrote the Bible and what their lives were like, cannot be of great importance.
What is
more important is how - given that the 66 books in the Bible were written by numerous different authors over several millenia, people of different backgrounds, different times and circumstances - the Bible remains
amazingly coherent and clear in the message it gives.
Namely that of God's relationship with his people, and his continued revelation to us, finally ending in his direct salvation through Jesus Christ.
That is, to me as a Christian, the true sign of God's divine working in the Bible as the holy book which I believe in.
In comparison to that the authorship (other than God's promise to us that all authors were divinely inspired - see below), seems much less important.
Peace
I was thinking the other night in bed about this concept, i.e. that since so many authors wrote and so forth it seems near impossible for them to have all made a mistake or lied. I was startled, because this is exactly, almost word for word the definition of a mutawatir hadith, a hadith which is transmitted at each level by a number of people so that it indicates that it is impossible for all these individuals to conspire to lie or that they have all made a mistake.
But what arose in my mind with you, what if, there were more normal explanations for why the 40 odd authors did not seem to contradict one another? Would that then drive you to think about authorship?
And Allah still knows best about everything I have said.
