What is the best way to convert everyone to your own personal -ism?

[C0ckney]

As cosmology and explanations of natural phenomena make up a trivial portion of most post-bronze age religions, this is pretty minor. Note that the Bible contains basically none of that after the first half of Genesis. After that, God is very much concerned with norms of human behavior and the direction of human history.

Well, for starters, to a hardcore Theravada Buddhist, the phrase 'something intangible within ourselves' is nonsensical, since they believe the self is an illusion and everything is just interconnected energies. I have no idea how the hell they reconcile that with reincarnation, but IIUC some of them don't believe in that either. It's very confusing, and makes the Trinity seem straightforward. I forget what Jains believe, but I think there's no God there either. Confucius makes some vague references to "Heaven," but in general the point of all his endless ritual and ceremony is to create a peaceful and harmonious society on earth. Taoists believe in "The Way," but categorically refuse to elaborate on what it is beyond involving inaction and passivity most of the time. I've even heard that Shinto, despite all the Kami, involves little worship as we understand it. What you've described applies to (some) Hindus and Mahayana Buddhists.

well fair enough. i remeber is tried reading a book on confusionism about 10 years ago. it was utterly impenetrable, though perhaps that was the authors fault.

Do you actually know that last bit? Because seriously, Islam is ferociously comprehensive, Allah sticks a finger in every pie. There are very likely multiple competing Islamic perspectives on history, just like there are multiple competing Islamic everything elses.

yes; but don't take my word for it. try a simple google search for a historical event, let's say the american revolution. type in "islamic view of the american revolutionary war", or "an islamic perspective on the american revolution" or "a muslim interpretation of the american war of independence" or some variant thereof. then do the same search replacing "islamic" or "muslim" with "marxist". you may repeat the experiment with any number of historical events.

the point is while islam (and most religions of that era) have a whole host of rules for everyday life, marxism doesn't care about the fabric of your clothes, whether you meat on a certain day, or what a woman can and cannot do while menstruating (islam has a lot to say about this). it does however provide tools for analysing events and phenomena, in the human world.

I don't get this. What distinguishes personal preconceptions provided by faith from personal preconceptions provided by Marxism? Don't say 'based in science,' most of Islamic culture was formed in the most advanced intellectual climate of its time. You can argue that such viewpoints are irrelevant to the digital age, but you could also say the same for insights from the belly of Industrial-era Europe.

any personal preconceptions are irrelevant, and a religious example would be something like attributing an outcome to divine will, or because those who came off worse had not accept the true word of the prophet. of course marxists aren't free from biases, but the point is that they have tool of analysis specifically provided by marxist thinking to examine events and phenomena; islamic scholars have no such tools provided by islam.

Ditto again. Muhammad occupied a largely analogous position in Meccan society, if not a smidge higher. He was an orphaned member of the ruling clan, without much personal pull, but comfortably well-off from marrying well and sharp business practices. I actually can't think of an instance where poor people came up with the ideas and leadership for a successful revolution.

not one? ok, haiti.

History is the attempt to impose a narrative on a collection of old documents and (if the historians are lucky) some archaeological evidence. Logic and reason are involved, yes, but the same can be said of all but the most rigid fundamentalisms. It, like sociology, economics, and the other so-called social sciences, studies a field where far too much is unknown or uncontrollable for anything like scientific rigor to be applied. Few or none of the conclusions are legitimately falsifiable, which is why they tend to bounce from one ideological slant to the next, as they go in or out of fashion. All this is not to say they're all useless or bad--I enjoy reading history books--but that ain't science.

well, i don't really agree with that. but even if we accept for the sake of argument that economics, sociology etc. are not science in the same way that say physics is, we can at least say that the approaches used in them are very different to those used in religious thinking, or even the academic study of it. this is after all the comparison being made here.

[Jon Miller]

If I may interject, I think that you are discussing the same issue with respect to Marxism as I was with respect to Science (versus Scientism). In both cases it goes by Marxism though.

JM