Author: Curt Doolittle

http://www.amazon.com/Omar-Khayyam-Poet-Rebel-Astronomer/dp/0750947152/EXPLAINING A MUSLIM DEVOTEE’S ARGUMENT

(Whats funny is that as I write this i’m berating an ignorant american standing in front of me for a similar error. irony is everywhere.)

I’m going to be generous and suggest the reviewer does not understand what he speaks.

In the western tradition we have three languages: (a) the anglo, roman and greek empirical and historical, (b) the german and french ‘continental’ and rational, and the (c) Catholic Theological under Natural Law.

The Islamic tradition has not gone through either the continental or empirical revolutions, and remains an inspirational and mythical construction. Inspiration and myth are indeed a means of communicating ideas. The continental tries to bridge between the inspirational and authoritarian methods of the theological, and the factual and empirical methods of the empirical.

MANY of the same ideas can be COMMUNICATED and TAUGHT by inspirational/mythological, continental/rational and analytic/scientific means of communication. But it is much harder to error, bias, wish, and deceive in the analytic tradition than in the rational and mythological.

So just as the young need myth and virtue ethics, the mature need history and deontological(rule) ethics, and the wise need science and teleological (outcome) ethics, civilizations require virtues for the ignorant and laboring class, rules for the educated and managerial class, and science for brilliant and leadership classes.

Because the virtuous man, the educated manager, and the brilliant leader influence different numbers of people. The man himself, the manager of men, and the leader of men, require greater precision in their knowledge because they must distill information from larger numbers of people, and distribute instruction to larger numbers of people.

The author of this fine book is speaking in the empirical language of professors, scholars, and leaders of educated men. He is not speaking in the virtues of laborers. Islam is a language of ignorant men because islam has not evolved into a technological society. Christianity was the language of ignorant men before they evolved into a technological society.

Virtues can be expressed in many languages: that which inspires, that which managers require, and that which leaders require. But the truth required of leaders cannot be expressed by mere inspiration.

Islam like christianity, like judaism, like zoroastrianism that Muhammed immitated, is a language for the leadership and management ignorant people herding sheep and cattle.

It worked. But it is not ‘true’ any more than icarus and daedalus are true. They merely teach broad general rules for life. They do not tell us how to transform the universe into a garden of eden.