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Mystical experiences

We have been discussing mystical experiences with Ibrahim Lawson (who defends a sort of Islamic mysticism) and others. Let's sum up a bit: I am sceptical about such experiences for many reasons including these three: (1) It seems to me we have good reason to expect people to report mystical experiences anyway , whether or not any mystical reality exists , because of what we know about human beings, including that: (i) they are prone to all sorts of weird experiences (on a scale ranging from fairly everyday moments of euphoria, etc. to full-blown schizophrenic hallucinations, delusions, etc.). (ii) that they are amazingly prone to the power of suggestion , which can shape what they experience. Why is it that the Romans experienced Zeus, the Norse experienced Thor, and Catholics Mary? Clearly, the power of suggestion is very much involved in shaping these experiences. And once we have acknowledged that, we surely have to take seriously the possibility that in many cases, they are wh...

Ibrahim on rhetoric and sophistry vs. reason

Ibrahim Lawson says here (scroll to end) that, in defending Islam, "The ‘reasoning’ I would use might resemble appeal to evidence and argument but would not be functioning as such, having been uprooted from its empiricist context, so to speak. It would resemble more a rhetorical form of argument or sophistry, which has got itself a bad name in the western tradition. But let’s not forget, the purpose of having an argument is to win; it’s only you rationalists who insist on the use of reason exclusively, and, like good catholics, have declared all other forms of argument heretical. So I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere while the criticism of religious belief is that there is no evidence to justify it and that it is therefore indistinguishable from any arbitrary belief you can invent or indeed, schizophrenia..." STEPHEN RESPONDS: I agree with anticant - " the purpose of an argument is to win" is a quite extraordinary thing to say (note the " the "). ...

A mystical poem

Ibrahim has posted a poem to illustrate the mystical Islamic tradition that he admires. Ibrahim in italics. It's in response to my posting on intellectual black holes (which you should probably read first). My comments follow: IBRAHIM WRITES: I am posting the following as an example of a text from within the Islamic mystical tradition. The author is Muhammad ibn al-Habib, a Moroccan shaykh who died in 1972 (see Wikipedia). It offers a view onto a non-rationalist tradition, which is either nothing but fantasy and imagination (or simple insanity), or an internally coherent and viable worldview shared and practised by millions of adherents past and present – or both. Note the stanza which appears towards the end: “Strip yourselves of all knowledge and understanding”. This is a technique which is referred to in other mystical traditions: “Except that ye be as little children…” and “In pursuit of knowledge, every day something is acquired; in pursuit of the Tao, every day something is ...

Ibrahim Lawson responds to last post

Here's Ibrahim's latest response to the immediately preceding post on religion and intellectual black holes. I think your piece on the ‘madness’ of mystical beliefs is very apposite and highlights the difference between us very well. I would add that the contributor who cites Lois Theroux’s work raises a similar point. I saw the program on white racists and the two girls being brought up to be pop stars singing racist songs who seemed to be quite comfortable with the abhorrent ideology their parents were imposing on them. This raises the quite valid question as to how a committed ‘non-‘, ‘anti-‘, ‘ir-‘ or supra-rationalist such as I may be can justify their own particular brand of ‘mythos’ as the only ‘true’ one having apparently denied any grounds on which this might be done. You suggest that these ‘mythoi’ may be cultural memes that evolve according to some sociological principle until such time as ‘rationalism’ emerges and puts a stop to the process by providing clearly obj...

Religion, and intellectual black holes

[This is partly in response to some excellent comments on the preceding post: The Emperor's New Clothes . Commentators have suggested that appeals to God's mysteriousness and ineffability in order to deal with rational objections can be perfectly legitimate. Possibly, but read on...] Suppose I believe in an evil God. A supremely evil and powerful being. God is hate. Sometimes I even appear to sense this at some deep level of my being. The world seems to me infused with a ghastly, horrific pallor that reflects the infinitely depraved character of its maker (apparently, such horrific visions are not uncommon among some mentally deranged folk). So gripped am I by this vision of the world that I even write poetry about it in attempt to express what it seems to me I have glimpsed of the fundamental character of reality. You, of course, think I must be a borderline nutcase. You point out there’s a great deal of evidence against the existence of such an evil being. Why on earth would...

The Emperor's New Clothes

This is a brief response to the several comments Ibrahim Lawson has made here and here . Ibrahim has been defending Islam by suggesting that Islam is mystical, beyond the reach of reason, etc. Hello Ibrahim The appeal to mystery and the mystical has of course been a bog-standard technique of cultists and other purveyors of snake oil down through the centuries whenever they are accused of talking cobblers. Pointing out that their belief makes no sense provokes such responses as - "But you are arrogantly applying Western-techno-rationality, yet failing to acknowledge its own limits." "It does all make sense - only in some profound way inaccessible to us mere humans." and so on... In this way, the cultists make a virtue of the fact their belief system doesn't make any sense (indeed a logical contradiction in what they believe is considered a plus!) The failure is not theirs for believing a load of patent nonsense, but ours for failing to be humble enough to reco...

The Ibrahim Lawson correspondence

I have had a long dialogue with Ibrahim Lawson, head of an Islamic school, about faith schools. Ibrahim had said on Radio 4 that in any good Islamic school "Islam is a given and never challenged". I said that such schools (Islamic, Christian, or indeed, atheist) should no longer be tolerated. He got in touch... Here are links to the correspondence so far (which has become very spread out). Nov 27th My Original Post, which provoked Ibrahim into getting in touch. Ibrahim's original email to me , which I then posted. The correspondence that followed this initial exchange can be scrolled through here (in reverse order). Note that some of Ibrahim's responses appear not as posts, but as comments on posts. To see the comments on a post, click on "comments" at end of post, or click on the orange title of the post. Scrolling backwards through these posts will give you the gist of the dialogue to date. My latest response to Ibrahim is here .

Latest response to Ibrahim Lawson

[this is part of an ongoing dialogue I am having with the head of an Islamic school]. Ibrahim has recently responded to my last post to him. He thinks our dialogue is running out of steam, and wants to try to move things on… “One last attempt to move things along (or move the goalposts, I am sure some people will think). I am absolutely prepared to admit that I know very little and am wrong about everything I think. With the exception of a sole ___domain: against all human reason and experience, I know as an absolute, incontrovertible certainty that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet and messenger. This CLEARLY puts the whole thing on a totally different basis. How to understand this? Well, that’s precisely the task Islam puts to me. In this, I have found thinking based solely on induction and deduction to be singularly useless, except, via negtiva, in showing where the answer does not lie. Instead, I find this sort of thing a useful place to start:
“If thinking is not...

Question re secularism

Here is a question for you relating to the dialogue we are having with Ibrahim. Justification always has to come to an end somewhere. So, there will be basic beliefs or principles for which no further justification can be given. Why make these foundational principles secular rather than religious?

Reply to Ibrahim Lawson

This is part of an ongoing discussion with the head of an Islamic school, Ibrahim Lawson, focusing on his suggestion that in any good Islamic school "Islam is a given and never challenged". Apologies to Ibrahim for delay in responding. I think this has been a very interesting and useful exchange, myself, and am very pleased Ibrahim has contributed. Certainly I have a somewhat clearer idea of what he believes. Ibrahim says: “I have been trying to suggest that the total chaos of his ‘nuclear option’ might be avoided by appeal to some other criteria of justification than those of the ‘techno-rationality’ (or ‘calculative thinking’ or whatever it might be) of the rational-empirical intellectual tradition characteristic particularly of the European enlightenment up to modern times. Within that tradition, I see no room for religion: it becomes absurd. And I think this cannot be stressed enough.” As I see it, I am not applying some modern Western phenomenon - “techno-rationality”, w...

Ibrahim Lawson' last post

Here's the last response from Ibrahim Lawson. He is responding to this . See link to left for the thread. Dear Stephen et al, I have been away on holiday, but in any case thought that this discussion had petered out. However, since you have replied then I will make one last effort to respond. I have been quite disappointed with the way the discussion has turned out, confirming my doubts about the usefulness of this kind of cyber-conversation as an act of genuine communication. This is partly because the issues are extremely complex to unpack so we end up shouting at each other from our respective entrenched positions. The other reason is the regrettable prevalence of the kind of point-scoring mentality which I suggested characterises debate as distinct from dialogue; perhaps I have been as much to blame as anyone else. I have, though, learned from some of the contributions that my view of religion is evidently even more esoteric than I had previously realised; as such, it is not re...

Catholic schools - Bishops cracking down

According to today’s Observer (p5), the Catholic Bishop of Lancaster, Patrick O’Donoghue (illustrated), has said in a document written for schools in his diocese that: “ Under no circumstances should any outside authority or agency that is not fully qualified to speak on behalf of the Catholic Church ever be allowed to speak to pupils or individuals on sexual or any other matter involving faith and morals ” O’Donoghue also called for any books containing polemics against the Catholic Church to be removed from school libraries. He also maintains schools should reject the promotion of safe or safer sex, as it is based on the (in his view, deluded) theory that condom use can provide adequate protection against AIDS (I discuss this here ). O’Donoghue is one of several “fundamentalist” Catholic Bishops pushing for a much more authoritarian, conservative approach to Catholic schooling. I draw attention to these Bishops as they illustrate the point that it is not just Muslims like Ibrahim La...

Response to Ibrahim Lawson

I struggled a little bit to understand Ibrahim's latest post . In the first part, Ibrahim seems to do exactly what I thought we said we wouldn't do: go nuclear . I have already pointed out why I consider this an intellectually dishonest strategy. But perhaps I've misunderstood. Can Ibrahim explain why he hasn't yet again, just reached for the nuclear button? The second part of his response is a direct response to my arguments for being liberal in our approach to moral and religious education . Ibrahim says (his stuff in italics): Having rehearsed these preliminary ideas, and arrived at the Enlightenment, I would like to turn to your recent postings, and in particular the idea of liberalism. Much of what you recount strikes me as revealing of the almost naïve utopianism of liberal thought, which is characteristic of much similar ‘technological’ thinking. By this I mean the kind of thinking that sets up an idealised, theoretical description of some human situation which ...

Religious education - some recommendations

Is there not a good case for ensuring that every school, state-funded or not, should do the following? 1. have a syllabus that includes periods in which open, philosophical discussion of important moral, cultural, political and religious question takes place. These sessions should be run by educators with some training in running a philosophical discussion. Safeguards should be put in place to ensure that pupils are not subtly (or not-so-subtly) psychologically pressured into not asking certain sorts of question or making certain sorts of point (e.g. about religion). 2. present their pupils with a broad range of different political, moral and religious beliefs and arguments. It’s important alternative points of view are not caricatured or demolished as mere straw men. One way to avoid this is to allow pupils to hear these alternative points of view from those that hold them. Students should get at least some chance actively to engage in discussion with those from other faiths. An...

Ofsted report on Islamia school

Incidentally, I checked the Ofsted report on Ibrahim's school (he is no longer head, it seems). Before I get to the school's report, what is especially interesting is this: There are no national statutory requirements for religious education (RE), other than that RE should be provided. There are non -statutory (i.e. entirely toothless) guidelines, however. They are here . Very waffly, aren't they? What do the require so far as getting children to think critically about their own religion is concerned? Er... um... Maintained schools do have to comply with a locally agreed RE syllabus, determined by the Local Education Authority on advice from a Standing Advisory Council on RE (SACRE) which is comprised of 4 groups of people, each group with one vote, comprising representatives from: (i) religious denominations, (ii) the Church of England, (iii) local teaching reps, (iv) the Local Education Authority (notice membership must therefore be at least 50% religious). The syllabus ...

Ibrahim Lawson: latest response

For those arriving late - this is an ongoing dialogue between myself and Ibrahim Lawson, head of a Muslim school, (and of course, many others), focusing on his remark that "In any good Islamic school, Islam is a given and never challenged". Ibrahim now writes: Stephen, It is good that you have raised the issue of ethics and morality as this brings us closer to the live issues we began with. It was useful to thrash out a few metaphysical matters, albeit superficially, and I fear we must return to this ground sooner or later, even though, in view of recent events in Algeria for example, it sometimes feels as though we are indulging in intellectual speculation as ‘the luxury of the weak’ However, by shifting the focus in this way, we introduce a new element: that of ‘authority’, and associated concepts such as ‘power’ and ‘will’. We can rephrase the non-question “why be rational?” as an inquiry into why we should feel obliged to be rational; what authority does or should ration...

Worry about religious education

Incidentally, that there's something deeply inadequate about religious education as currently provided in schools (Islamic, and other) in this country is suggested by the finding of one recent poll that 36% of young British Muslims believe the appropriate penalty for any Muslim that rejects their faith is... death! "...a significant portion of British Muslims think that such behaviour is not merely right, but a religious obligation: a survey by the think-tank Policy Exchange, for instance, revealed that 36 per cent of young Muslims believe that those who leave Islam should be killed." Daily Telegraph.

Summarizing case against Ibrahim's position

To refocus the dialogue, can we now start commenting here, please... Also, remember the main topic here is whether or not Ibrahim is right to suggest that in any good Islamic school "Islam is a given and never challenged" . Let me summarize my case for getting children to think critically about morality and religion from as young an age as possible: (i) Actually, individuals cannot avoid the responsibility for making moral judgements. They cannot hand that responsibility over to some religious or other authority. Given they cannot hand it over, shouldn't they be encouraged and trained to discharge the responsibility properly? Surely the best way to do this is to confront them with the responsibility and encourage them to think and question. (ii) There's evidence that raising people to think and question, rather than more or less uncritically defer to authority, provides some protection against the sort of moral catastrophes that marred the 20th Century. (iii) There...

Further case against Ibrahim's position

Here's one more reason to encourage people as early as possible to start thinking independently about morality/religion... (again, from my book The War For Children's Minds .) When it’s sensible to trust an authority Deferring to authority isn’t always a bad idea. We do it all the time. No doubt you go to a doctor for a medical opinion, to a plumber for expertise on central heating, to a lawyer for legal advice, and so on. It’s pretty reasonable to take the authority’s word for it in these cases. In fact, modern life demands that we trust the expertise of others. The world is now so complex that any one of us can only properly understand how a tiny bit of it works. We can’t all be experts on plumbing, science, the law, car mechanics, psychology, and so on. We have to seek out others upon whose expertise we inevitably have to rely. So what if you go to an authority on some matter, and they give you bad advice? Who’s to blame, then, if things then go awry? Suppose, for example, t...

Building the case against Ibrahim's position: moral sheep

Here’s another reason why encouraging children to think critically and independently even about moral issues might be a good idea. Again, it’s from my book The War For Children's minds . I’ll summarize my case against the Ibrahim’s view that in any good Islamic school “Islam is a given and never challenged” shortly. Milgram’s Experiment Here’s another reason why raising Enlightened citizens might be a good idea. Humans appear to have a disastrously strong in-built tendency to defer to authority. This was demonstrated particularly vividly by the psychologist Stanley Milgram back in the Fifties. Struck by the way in which concentration camp guards in Nazi Germany attempted to excuse themselves by insisting they were “only obeying orders”, Milgram set out to show that the same could never happen in the U.S. He designed an experiment to establish what strength of electric shock an ordinary American citizen would administer to a stranger if asked to do so by a white-coated authority fig...