A journey through the philosophical jungle and Is the mercy of God wanting?

This entry is in response to some questions asked by a fellow forum user, before I get to answering the questions, please allow me to rant a bit ( to give you a peep into my journey) about my understanding of the nature of knowledge, the limitation of "reason" and the probabilistic reality we exist in. If you want to skip the rant just jump to the para starting with "Coming to the specific questions". Since you are still reading, let me first confirm the latest round of philosophical conclusions. With all the talk about progress, presumably as a result of man's superior intellect but all we have to show for it is a few gadgets and a relative extension of two out of five senses, sight, and hearing. We are still in entry level on touch and tasting, we can augment our smell to a much higher level but it is still out of reach of ordinary people. I will elaborate a bit more than l will attempt to square off the two main opposite camps in this philosophical jungle and finally offer my take and leave you to decide :) 

As I was saying, the first constraint is time and the second is the rate of input, both come into play when we use our inductive and deductive abilities to broaden our understanding and reach conclusions. There are indicators that perhaps the time constraint will be further tamed beyond the hopping on the plane and arriving thousands of miles away, saving months of our most precious resource, time. The data storage, transmission, and retrieval tools once again are a new time saving related paradigm. These same tools indirectly extend our hearing and sight to be able to communicate beyond our immediate surroundings and further expand the opportunity to raise the level of input in the apparently limited time at our disposal before we "die". The certainty of death we have come to realize is more out of correlation rather than any profound insight. The certainty is the realization that there is a finish line of sorts. Hence, our fascination to find out more, more specifically "is it really the end".

Without getting into an Epistemological debate to determine whether knowledge is empirical in nature or strictly based on a priori reasoning or based on intuition, or indeed solely revealed. Philosophers have been debating it over the last 40 to 50 centuries without a conclusive outcome. The matter becomes a bit clearer once we have reached a certain threshold of understanding; whenever we venture further, evidence begins to point more towards a confirmation bias rather than any further clarification. The eyes see what the mind knows. 5000 years of philosophical gymnastics have concluded that we cannot hope to go beyond proving the existence of our own consciousness, yes just our own and even that when we get to that final stage if ever. We need help.

There are many avenues and all of them lead to either consistency or completeness. Completeness at the expense of consistency and the other way around has been demonstrated by Gödel, not only does it make sense mathematically, it fits in perfectly with the historical debate. Gödel's insight is not a one-off. Max Dehn before him and Alan Turing just after Gödel's work was published share his views. And many after they were able to demonstrate, in a number of disciplines, the problem of "undecidability". Which is that there is no consistent, effective formal system which proves for every question A in a given system that there is a certainty of a "yes" or a "no" answer. In light of this glaring limitation, is it logical to ask for proof of God which by definition is beyond limits or is this a logical fallacy pointing to some other unknown? But can a logical victory be claimed by either side out of this insight? Furthermore dismissing thousands of intellectual on the other side of the fence, irrespective of which side you are on is nothing short of delusion of grandeur.

Now for the face-off between the two camps. Once we are able to train our minds and overcome the comfort of looking for things that make our own reality tolerable, only then we are ready to analyze the Religion versus Secularism war “with some detachment”. It becomes very clear that one side (Religion Team) have answers to everything including the most fundamental of questions. Though most of these answers involve God, never the less they have in their mind and as they would claim even in their souls completed the puzzle of life.

The secularism team may not agree with their answers or indeed their very reality but this one fundamental difference, once again at the risk of dropping the neutrality ball, leaves the secularism team open to the kind of attacks science, reason, and fragmented philosophies cannot defend. Putting aside the limitations of the provability element,  the total disconnect of the secularism team becomes apparent in its resorting to “belief” in declaring that the religion team is wrong,  in the same breath “believe” they are right. The religion team, on the other hand, is able to direct their attack at the fundamental issues that science or logic has not been able to resolve and claim victory on the basis of the respective “explanations” or lack of them as such.

Resorting to a belief that at some future time the puzzle of life will be solved with reason and science is tantamount to heresy if one was to borrow a word from the other camp since it strikes at the very premise of the arguments of there is no God. Ironically, it plays in the hands of the Religious camp since their claim fundamentally is the same.

Whenever these two combating camps attempt to use the opposing camps weapons, the results are often farcical and expose each other to new lines of attack. The Religious authority’s justification of the fundamental issues with dodgy reason-based arguments dilutes their solid faith-based defense. At the same time whenever the secularism team tries to plug the deficiencies with half-cooked theories, the result is the same but in reverse. Poor reasoning and bad faith are equally bad. The solution must by definition lay somewhere in the middle. To determine that "point", we need help from without or at least we should look for it elsewhere.

The issue was spotted and pointed out repeatedly by the skeptics of the wholesale preference of Logos over Mythos. The central difficulty of rationalism has been that once a proof is accepted as the litmus test of believability not only must we prove our claims; we must also prove our proofs, and so on, with no end in sight.

The postmodernist can be credited with exposing the” Philosophy for the sake of Philosophy” but like all revolutions, their battle was against an establishment with no concrete alternative coming out of the process except geographical localization of thought. The elusive universal truth was back to square one. It is interesting to note that the renewed focus on the traditionally Mythos elements of moderation, faith, trust, and dialogue to solve the real problems of the world is gaining speed once again. 

Enter the Quran, (For that matter any Revealed text that can be verified) arguably a 100% verifiable information pack. Most of the Quran is very easily understood and followed but the genius of the Quran truly lies in its non-contradictory content on multiple levels. This claim cannot be emphasized enough. A half decent attempt to study it objectively will have you hooked forever...

Please go here if you want to play with the notion in the form of a test :)

http://lifecheat.blogspot.com/2010/04/so-why-wont-you-do-it.html

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Coming to the specific questions, the second one is detailed in the Quran and the third is a Mickey Mouse issue in comparison to the first, let me just add that the Surahs are not out of order, but that needs a separate write-up, I will just address the issue of the mercy of God here. Allow me to copy paste all three questions:

1. Allah being all-merciful, why's he burn people for eternity, increasing the punishment when they beg for mercy, for no good reason? This is one aspect of the Christos-Islamic god I've never understood. I'd take some pleasure in torturing my enemies for a few days, maybe years, for eternity seems unreasonable to me, no matter how bad they were. The best compassionate believers have told me is "I don't know, but I trust Allah completely and I know He's just and merciful so I'll leave it to Him", which ignores the legitimate question and hopes it'll go away.

2. When it comes to Ramadan and stuff, it's not in the Quran. Are these things even important, or are they like Christmas trees and the Easter bunny- something people cling on to with emotion but have no significance?

3. The bits in the Quran about cutting off even the tips of the enemy's fingers in war. Even in context, they're, well, they seem to speak for themselves, even when read in historical (and therefore unreliable) context & the surah context (though surahs are all out of order anyway, so no one really knows when they were said). What's your take?

If one were to operate on a deal-making or breaking bases, the approach has its advantages but the obvious catch is, one will have to cram up a whole lot of stuff to make the right call every time. In all probability, one would run out of time. What if Pascal had his money on the right horse? We can always gamble and hope to get away with it but that would not be logical. In fact not doing anything (Philosophically) in itself will be a deal breaker. If one were to work on the premise that it’s your eternity that is up for grabs we have to set ourselves a verification process, where the satisfaction level must be an acceptable quotient of the total number of possibilities on offer to the total number possibilities that offer a viable explanation.

In the nonexistence of a perfect "yes" as discussed above, that leaves us with validation and verification, which is used extensively on a daily basis to function as a community, in science and intuitions. It all boils down to how high you want the bar to be before you are satisfied. For my needs, determining the "consistency" of right or wrong has to be the driving force to achieve a Universal standard and avoid total chaos.

I set myself a logical bar with usefulness as an important element. When the validation process starts to approach verification standards set for myself, I stand satisfied. If the same methodology is good enough in Mathematics, the purest of pure science then it is good enough for me. The overriding consideration of imagining "infinity" or "nothingness" (zero) is in its usefulness and not in its proof of existence. Once I was able to grasp this fully, it was straightforward from then onwards.

Before we go forward it is important to point out that people who talk in terms of Your God and My God are clueless to the notion and reality of God. Hence, they are not far removed from those who are quick to substitute terms like unicorn or FSM for God to make a point. Both are merely playing with words.

The premise of Divine Laws appears more useful in resolving the thousands of issues facing humans today than courting the Natural Laws premise. This holds true in spite of the distortions and corruptions of many of the original Divine instructions, a need for a rollback is paramount in order to resolve the numerous criticisms because of the man-made changes to the original code. It is of course up to each individual to decide on the validation standard that will satisfy him/her as discussed. The ultimate goal has to be a balance between the needs of an individual and the needs of the community. If you restrict yourself to gobbling up maximum resources as a be all, then you render your existence to 100% subjective notion and free for all is the only certainty that can be justified from there on.

Coming back to your original questions, let me lay it out for you first then you decide.

Allah says: "Whoso bringeth a good deed will receive tenfold the like thereof, while whoso bringeth an ill-deed will be awarded but the like thereof; and they will not be wronged." Quran 6:160

It all depends on your premise, many of us are blessed in invoking the inbuilt human faculty of belief and with the help of friends and family are perfectly satisfied in the reality of God, for others the satisfaction of the rational part of our being is equally important. However the "video or it does not exist" attitude not only betrays the lack of effort to understand an issue by some but it is a reflection of one's willingness to be duped with ease.

Now if one were to accept this world as a test or more accurately an opportunity to shape one's soul (another premise) then it all makes perfect sense. Once a soul is shaped and qualified to perform a certain task, (partly determined partly undetermined) hence Heaven as a reward makes perfect sense then by the same token if a soul is deliberately corrupted to a certain point of no return then its containment becomes necessary. Hence Hell. The Mercy of God is in the laws of creation.

When playing the game of life so to speak and acting out the "good" and the "evil" this mercy is further quantified in a 10 handicap in your favor.( Quran 6:160 above), couple that with the added provision of God's promise of forgiveness and the 1 is to 10 ratio goes through the roof. After all that, the only way to end up in Hell would be to “choose to lose” while exercising the God-given ability that sets us apart from all other creatures.,"Free will". After understanding the value of free will it's not reasonable to remove it from our conclusions, ever. Furthermore, the importance of our understanding ''free will" also takes care of other questions that are frequently raised about what God should do and shouldn't do. To then turn around and say well God should forgive irrespective of what you do will amount to diluting the value of this very valuable human core in the manifestation of "Free Will" to zero. To still insist on blaming God for free-willed individuals after understanding these principles is absurd.

As I said it's all tied to your premise. If your "belief" is that there is no God then there can be a dozen other scenarios one could speculate on. Good luck with your quest I hope it not restricted to the youtube Universe.

A more accurate translation of the Quranic term Manyyasha would be, "according to His Laws". God has appointed Laws for the running of the Universe and the correct method to look at the will of God is to understand these laws. These Laws are detailed in the Qur’an for all to understand and act out. God in His mercy intervenes whenever He deems fit to further ease our burden.