Assalamu`alaikum (السلام عليكم) Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh, Brothers and Sisters.
I hope your day is going well today, InshaAllah. =]
Bismi-llāhi ar-raḥmāni ar-raḥīm (بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم)
I'm back sooner than I had intended...noot. :P This is probably going to be a really long post so bear with me, InshaAllah. ^-^
Recently, I began committing myself more towards practicing Islam, and studying it in detail. I've been trying harder to dedicate much of my free time towards applying the knowledge I've gained by putting it into practice. I vowed to allocate small, if not large portions of my day towards expanding my knowledge on Islam and anything I think may be related to my journey with Islam.
As I was attempting to drift into sleep last night, many theological questions were running through my mind. One thought was wrapped around how lately, I had been noticing a group of atheists digressing from cognitive arguments with people who adhere to religion, the concept of God, or creationism by merely stating that they lack intelligence or any form of rationality to reason with their perspective. In my observations of arguments between atheists and theists, I found many atheists simply targeting theists to try and evoke emotional responses by making character judgments about people they hardly knew, their values, their beliefs, etc. and attacking their intellectual capacity to have simple discussions with intellectuals of a "higher caliber."
Recently, I began committing myself more towards practicing Islam, and studying it in detail. I've been trying harder to dedicate much of my free time towards applying the knowledge I've gained by putting it into practice. I vowed to allocate small, if not large portions of my day towards expanding my knowledge on Islam and anything I think may be related to my journey with Islam.
As I was attempting to drift into sleep last night, many theological questions were running through my mind. One thought was wrapped around how lately, I had been noticing a group of atheists digressing from cognitive arguments with people who adhere to religion, the concept of God, or creationism by merely stating that they lack intelligence or any form of rationality to reason with their perspective. In my observations of arguments between atheists and theists, I found many atheists simply targeting theists to try and evoke emotional responses by making character judgments about people they hardly knew, their values, their beliefs, etc. and attacking their intellectual capacity to have simple discussions with intellectuals of a "higher caliber."
This was probably one of the biggest form of cowardice I had ever encountered when it came to debating; arguments were thrown away right off the bat when said superior intellect deemed it was of no use based on a list of logical fallacies. The downfall with their usage of these logical fallacies was that they were almost never used consistently; the definitions of these logical fallacies were specific to certain types of arguments, and there were many times when intellectual superiors deemed an argument logically fallacious by blurting out any sort of "ad (insert Latin word here)," even if it had NOTHING to support the claim that the argument was logically fallacious.
If there's one thing I've learned about debating, it's that the usage of Latin phrases for logically fallacious arguments is just there to make your opponent feel like he/she lacks knowledge or intellectual capacity to understand the phrases (I mean, which average Joe is ever really well-versed in Latin, anyways? I've only known a few people in my life who have dared to tackle such a complicated language). The reality of it is, your argument is quite simple, but it's just sugar-coated with some fancy word to confuse the living heck out of you, and of course, make you feel intellectually inferior. Sometimes, I feel that spending a lot of time learning the art of debating (no matter how conducive and intellectually superior it may make you look), just stops slightly short of retaining knowledge. I believe it teaches, more or less, a lack of complete understanding because the objectives of debating are to basically aesthetically please and give the illusion that one is knowledgeable and superior in intellect while he/she is only well-versed in the intellectual capacity to win arguments, not understand or learn.
There are so many different approaches I can discuss which downright disgusted me, and literally turned me away from dealing with a lot of these self-proclaimed superior intellectual bigots for a while, but in doing so I realized I was distancing myself from entire principles and beliefs of a majority based only on what a small group of people were doing. After a period of contemplating, I decided that completely shunning myself from respectable atheists was simply not fair and I wanted to keep an open mind when it came to interacting with people of different cultures, beliefs, traditions, etc. as long as respect and understanding were mutual grounds for any sort of interaction, be it religious or not.
There are so many common grounds we can strive to understand and accept in each other, and I've seen that debating only tends to bring out the core differences between us, tearing us apart (my conclusions may be a bit religiously-biased, but that's besides the point). The fact that we've managed to turn simple forms of discussions into elementary school bullying (intellectually and emotionally) makes me feel like we have taken strides, only backwards, into venues of hatred, indifference, and intolerance. I certainly do not make it an objective to put down others from the very little knowledge I've gained, especially when I can make beneficial and life-changing contributions to the world with this little knowledge I have and will continue to expand on. Islam has taught me a lot about humbling myself with knowledge and not letting haughtiness and arrogance overtake my learned and innate, inherent abilities.*
I think I've covered as much as I wanted to cover in this post, so I'll end it here. *I am looking forward to inserting a little addendum of quotes by learned and respectable Islamic scholars on this specific topic, but I have to go hunting for them as I lost a whole deal of my saved information after having to reformat my laptop. =( I will probably add that a bit later tonight, InshaAllah
With (luv),
-Simply me
