On space for certain I agree with you, though I'd express uncertainty on my part about saying Kant was in line with Leibniz — Moliere

I didn't say their arguments were identical. Leibniz's approach strikes me as closer to Einstein's. Einstein occasionally relies on the reasoning in Leibniz's Law.

This is where I see contradiction and sloppy comprehension. — VagabondSpectre

Since you have yet to comprehend anything I told you, I think we're done.

The gang-rapers tom mentioned specifically justified their actions by referring to the actions of the Prophet. At present, Sunnis have no way to address this issue.

I don't think it would kill you to admit that this is a serious problem. And to my mind, to ignore it is a betrayal of those young girls.

Every turn in the river sure makes its on way down to the sea.

Entrench power? The Republican party is dividing against itself. Paul Ryan is expected to try to find allies among Democrats.

The next Hitler is as likely to come from your country as mine.

Sorry to hear that.

Kant, like Leibniz, ruled out absolute space and time. This is sort of anti-Newtonian. Space is absolute if it can exist independently of objects and so can be said to contain them.

Descartes launched a similar project. Ultimately the will to live conquers skepticism. There's a path in front if you. Put foot to path.

Islam lacks any appeal to reason, or even reasonableness. And the 109 sura that exhort violence towards the infidel, stand in stark contrast to the Sermon on the Mount. — tom

Probably because Arabs weren't afflicted in the reason department. Islam created a fruitful environment for philosophy, math, science, and poetry. Contact with the Muslim world is the reason Europe didn't continue to sink backward culturally during the medieval period.

I don't think he realizes his line of thought is about to get really racist. Or maybe he does.

I'm speculating that what's going on is that people are thinking that if

A. Christianity does have a fundamentally pacifist message, and
B. Islam's origin actually did involve violence and bloodshed on the part of its prime figure, and
C. For various reasons, Muslims don't feel free to stray from the literal,

that this must mean Christianity is morally superior to Islam and by extension, Christians are morally superior to Muslims. And that can't be true, so A, B, and C can't be true.

A,B, and C actually are true. People are trying to conjure facts with which to fight racism and in the process, misconstruing. Maybe it would help to realize that facts are useless against racism, anyway. Love defeats racism. For love can not fight without winning. Love never fails.

To me, the more fascinating question: Jesus and the Prophet have a lot in common. So why did one become a spokesman of peace and the other a military leader?

It's more complicated than that. If you're interested, I found Muhammad Qasim Zaman to be an excellent entrance to the topic. Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age, and The Ulama in Contemporary Islam were both great.

And a book that broadened my puny horizons was Religions of the Silk Road by Foltz.

The problem of induction isn't supposed to make you stop your car in the middle of the highway because you don't know why you believe the road up ahead is going to be there when you move forward.

It's part of a philosophical conversation. It's an "Oh Shit!" moment between British Empiricism and Kant. I actually don't quite understand the significance anybody finds in Kant sans that oh-shit experience.

And this is why good intentions aren't enough to make one an expert. The point tom is about to make regarding Sunnis is correct.

If we can't rely on logic and our knowledge because something might be different five minutes from now, then doesn't that place a major emphasis on our observations - in order to acquire that new knowledge? I mean if we already possessed all knowledge, then what use would our senses have? — Harry Hindu

You could base your faith in contiguity on observation if you have a functioning crystal ball.

I don't understand what you're saying here. Most Muslims are moderate people, just like the rest of us. Perhaps you mean that there aren't prominent Muslims who are widely quoted as being moderate. Well, I live in a town in the north of England, and here and across the north from Liverpool to Manchester and Leeds and up to Newcastle, there are atheists, Christians, Muslims and all sorts mostly living quiet lives. — mcdoodle

Pipes' insight is not an indictment of the behavior of the average Muslim. It's the observation that there is no religious apparatus behind a so-called moderate Islamic viewpoint. That apparatus is like a baby trying to be born.

I don't mean to be pedantic or picky, but I'm not sure what 'contiguity' is supposed to mean in this context. Do you mean 'connection between', 'continuity from' or something else? — John

You put a cup of tea to your lips. You drink it with full confidence that the tea won't change into gasoline on its way down your throat. You're willing to stake your life on contiguity. The question is: why? With this question, British Empiricism bites the dust. Rationalism does as well.

But, to repeat again, I do think we have practical rational justification to believe such a thing and that it is not merely a matter of irrational habit, as Hume claims. — John

If temporal and spacial extension are apriori knowledge about objects, could we relate that in some way to this confidence?

I really don't like Daniel Pipes, but I think he has a point when he says there's medieval Islam and there's Islamism. Moderate Islam is mostly a resident of the imagination.

I was just talking to John about a snake. I was trying to head toward the notion that just as the self must contain undisclosed elements, the world must also. Aesthetic imperative? Somehow we drifted over to wondering what the basis of a certain kind of confidence is.

There was also the issue of the transcendent viewpoint (from which one asks questions about life as if it's a painting.)

I'm a little baffled that you don't seem to know what the problem of induction is.

But is there some "logical" reason to doubt that the past acts as a constraint on future events such that repetition becomes so likely that it approaches the status we grant "a causal law"? — apokrisis

I don't know. Is there?

There is a suppressed premise in you argument - that causation is a matter of direct control rather than indirect limitation. But a pragmatist need only presume that the past weighs heavy on the freedoms of the present and so future outcomes can become reasonably assured. — apokrisis

I didn't present an argument.

Or maybe Bayes? — Brainglitch

Would that give us confidence or just be an expression of our confidence?

Embracing this assumption is a fine, upstanding thing to do. All the cool kids do it. That was never in question.

Again, there's wisdom in pragmatism, assuming contiguity past to future.

The logic is that past experience is the best (in fact the only) guide that is backed up by any systematic reasoning that is consistent with our overall experience. — John

Past experience is an excellent guide, assuming contiguity past to future. But the challenge was to support this assumption.

I'd say, "First Amendment, mf."

I'm just trying to tell you: your characterization of Jesus as a fire and brimstone preacher isn't in the NT. That came later. As for the OT, he (is supposed to have) said that the Law and the prophets can be derived from two rules, one of which is: "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." He said "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

It's pervasively a pacifist message. Vengeance belongs to God, not us. That means a Christian hawk will be at odds with the scriptural Christian message. Likewise, a Muslim who preaches pacifism will be have to deal in some way with the actions of the founder of Islam.

But if a Muslim holyman wanted to preach pacifism... how would he go about doing that? That's the question that puzzled me for several months. How does religious authority work in Islam?

Matthew 5:1-11.

The problem of induction zeroes in on our faith in contiguity past to future. Even if we knew that X has always been true until now, that knowledge would not logically support the conclusion that X will be true five minutes from now.

Logic is not the basis of this faith. Obviously it isn't observation. So what is the basis of it?

But I do think the conclusion is certainly supported by inductive and abductive logic, and that they are not merely matters of habit, as Hume claimed. — John

How would the argument go?

I would simply have us seek comparable depth of understanding concerning major religions before we decide to judge one of them as the worst religion of all. — VagabondSpectre

Christianity is easy for me because I grew up with it. I decided to try to understand Islam better and I ended up reading several books (just trying to piece things together.) I guess I'd say that if you want to defend Muslims from racists, misrepresenting Islam isn't the best way to do that. If the racist in question is Christian, you can just invite him or her to actually be a Christian.

I'm not sure if you are suggesting that the situation is the same with the intimation of unseen landscape in the Mona Lisa as is it when looking at an actual landscape? — John

The actual landscape implies unseen landscape. Belief in the existence of that unseen landscape is not supported by any logic. Problem of induction.

I don't think you've read the New Testament. The prevailing message is love and pacifism.

The more you judge, the harder it becomes to understand. The more you understand, the harder it becomes to judge.

What verse in the NT promotes violence? It's all pretty pacifist.

Comparing the messages of sacred texts, yes, Islam is more violent.

Say you're looking at the Mona Lisa. There's a landscape behind her which implies more landscape which is unseen. Is it reasonable to believe those unseen hills and lakes would be there IF you could see them?

It's not reasonable, it's just an aspect of the concept of world. Isn't implication of the unseen an aspect of garden architecture?

I'm the world looking at itself? But point of view requires separation. Maybe I'm a snake looking at its own tail. The tail is the world.

Cool.

Did you edit that?

The colonial powers of the 19th and 20th centuries are largely responsible for constructing countries that are difficult to govern, — Bitter Crank

That's true. When you take something that grew organically over centuries and replace it with a mangled mess of codified British law and explicit racism, the resulting society may be hyper-conservative.. just trying to hold itself together. Is that what you mean?

So are you saying that the effectiveness of dictatorship is a function of time period (as opposed to culture)?

I think I might agree with that. It's basically a theory of social cycles, right?

In the United States, for instance, we have the world's largest prison population. Our violence towards African American communities is far from bloodless, as well. — Moliere

True. So if we started public executions, do you think the crime rate would go down, or stay the same?