The Muslim mind: Spooky at a Distance?

Submitted by Michael S (United States), Feb 4, 2015 at 08:24

Hi, Waza.

I've heard variations on Kedar's argument -- namely, that the Muslims who hate the West do so out of envy. There is surely an element of this; but it doesn't entirely describe the matter.

Let me posit an alternative explanation, which is also incomplete: The Muslims are justified, in some respects, for looking upon Westerners as sinners and hypocrites. There's no envy there: Why should a Muslim envy someone for being spiritually and morally inferior to him?

I've noted a few times on this blog, that "Europeans" are on a god trip, sincerely believing that they have the answers to all of life's questions. One of these "answers" is justifying homosexuality (which is condemned by the Christian/Jewish Bible), citing "tolerance" (also condemned by the Christian/Jewish Bible) as the rationale.

I was wrong in those posts, in saying that this was a "European" phenomenon. Actually, it is a Northwest European phenomenon: South and East Europeans are generally against homosexuality -- and perhaps less tolerant as well (I haven't researched this last point). On the other hand, South and East Europeans have very corrupt societies, which Northwest Europeans do not have. Corruption (such as accepting bribes), of course, is also condemned in the Bible; so Northwest- and Southeast- Europeans effectively practice different flavors of the same problem: sin.

And the Arabs? Take a look at this UN-generated map of AIDS. AIDS is very prevalent in Christian Sub-Saharan Africa, but virtually absent in Muslim-Arab North Africa and the Middle East. It's also prevalent in Buddhist Thailand and Myanmar, but not so in Muslim Indonesia and Bangladesh. These differences are not due to chance coincidence: One can definitely find a cause-and-effect relationship: AIDS in Christian Africa is spread by condoned sexual practices that are forbidden by the Bible; and a general lack of AIDS among Muslims can probably be attributed to their prudishness.

For every point I bring up about Muslims doing the right thing, of course, someone could come up with a counter-argument. Muslims cut off the hands of thieves, for instance -- something completely contrary to the Bible (It reflects the excesses of Lamech in Genesis, as opposed to the fairness principle of "an eye for an eye"). Again, however, the differences would cause both sides of the religious divide to be puffed up with pride when looking at the other, not enviousl of them (and of course, being puffed up with pride is also condemned by the Bible).

BTW, I just looked up "spooky at a distance", which you mentioned in another post. Those thought experiments are interesting. What occurred to me, is that the distance between the entangled particles is irrelevant: The particles do not transmit information to one another: The information is intrinsic to them. For the same reason, objects are attracted to one another by gravity, even without a physical connection between them (This caused some to wonder in Newton's time): The objects do not "communicating" gravity to one another. Rather, the law of gravity operates in all the objects; it is part of their nature.

This all brings us back to John 1, which states that everything in the universe, as we know it, was made by the word (i.e. a specific piece of information) of God. That "word", in our observable universe, includes all the laws of physics. There is no philosophical reason, moreover, for all matter to obey, say, the law of gravity. It would be philosophically just as valid, to have a universe in which the "law of gravity" worked in the opposite direction, causing things to fly apart. That might not promote life, though, as gravity does -- which is why I say that there is a wisdom behind all the laws we are governed by: a wisdom that facilitates what we know as "life".

Shalom shalom :-)

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