The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> In Which I Take Exception To What I Just Said...

In Which I Take Exception To What I Just Said...
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Monday, July 29 2013, 16:28:03 (UTC)
from *** - *** Commercial - Windows NT - Mozilla
Website:
Website title:

...in 1970 I enrolled in the sculpture department at UC Berkeley...it took only one day of classes to tell me I was in the wrong place...later I would go to New York where I studied sculpture for three years at the Metropolitan Museum, in the Assyrian galleries and on my own...but that's another story.

When I walked out on my sculpture classes I enrolled in history courses to have something worthwhile to do. One class was a history of Islam taught by an Arab American Muslim. I did the reading, did all I was asked to do but with a healthy skeptical eye, as any historian would, and this was, after all, in the HISTORY Department. Came the midterm and I flunked, badly. My take was that Muhammad was a decent man, a man who wanted to lift his people out of ignorance and into healthy living and thinking...and like all friends of humanity knew that sound advice, if it came from a God, would be more effective...and so that was the way I interpreted Muhammad's life and teachings.

Not only did I get a resounding "F", but when I saw the teacher about it, as he must have known I would, he acted hurt and was extremely angry. By that point I didn't much care and decided to go to Seattle to live and see about Law School...but I should have taken the matter to the administration for precisely the reason that I was enrolled in the HISTORY, not Theology, Department.

I learned the names and dates of Islam, the teachings and the rest of it...I just didn't believe that these came from any god in the sky...rather I took pains to explain how and why Muhammad came up with these rules as a practical matter, to improve lives and diet and manners and women's condition etc. I used common sense as well as the reading material and lectures...I wasn't ignorant of the subject, just refused outright to buy the THEOLOGY of it all. I would have been wrong had it been the Theology Department....but it wasn't. I knew the religious line, I just had a different interpretation of it...much as Aslan dealt with Jesus, the historical man and not the Christ.

I wish now I had argued my case...it would have been fun. Whenever you can ATTACK a religious person with facts and solid argument, you should go for it...just as Gays came out of the closet and changed society, and religion, so too must rational people come out laugh at and challenge religion.



---------------------


The full topic:



***



Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9