Quote:


If this was generally not the case, how would you know?

What I am suggesting is that you are engaging a logical fallacy. You are only aware of cases where tradition trumps reality, because you ignore or are unaware of the opposite situation.

People generally seek the truth. You can convince yourself otherwise if you spend your life looking for lies, but you would just be lying to yourself.

In this case, it is simply glib to dismiss a real cause of death and suffering in the modern world as inescapable or even legitimate, because the "tradition says it is the tradition".

So people generally seek the truth, but they also generally let "tradition" trump historical fact? Are you getting your generalisations muddled?

You do not need to believe in any absolute truth, attainable or otherwise, to have this discussion Meister.

Quote:


So your point boils down to a convoluted way of saying that Muslims "can" ie are capable of, believing what they believe? What makes you feel the need to point this out?

freediver wrote on Apr 19^th, 2026 at 12:35pm:

To believers in a religious tradition, the tradition yields a 'greater truth'...

Yes, that's right, all people (especially religious believers) can comprehend the concept of a hierarchy of truth... It's what the writers of the trial by Pilate (drawing on Greek Platonic philosophy) were likely referring to when he asked of Jesus, 'What is truth?'

freediver wrote on Apr 19^th, 2026 at 12:35pm:

My point has always been that Muslims, and all religious believers, are capable of believing to be true what religious tradition says is true.

freediver wrote on Apr 19^th, 2026 at 12:42pm:

It is a response to your fixation on the historical accuracy of ancient manuscripts while ignoring the effect that the religious traditions that followed them have on believers.

It's not hard to comprehend, but your fixation on obfuscation makes it hard for you to accept the obvious.

In your defence, if you do not come from an upbringing of religious instruction and established tradition, I can understand why this would be such a revelation to you.

Quote:


Can you quote me?

Do you think that "religious tradition determines what religious tradition is" or however you were trying to put it previously, is a clear way of stating that people are capable of believing the things that they believe?

Quote:


Nothing matters to Islamic religious tradition. It is a vague human construct for you to project whatever you want onto, not a person with an opinion about what matters.

freediver wrote on Apr 19^th, 2026 at 12:56pm:

Religious tradition determines what (religious) truth is.

Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism… is the same in that regard.

freediver wrote on Apr 19^th, 2026 at 2:36pm:

You have a predictable way of deflecting from your ignorance of the existence and the effect of perceived religious truth via religious tradition.

With ancient religions the modern concept of recording history as it happened did not exist.

What did happen universally is that oral traditions began almost immediately after the establishment of the founding person’s authority - usually soon after their death. Those oral traditions persisted often for decades before scribes began to record them. This is largely because the vast majority of ancient peoples were illiterate. The bottom line being that almost everything it is claimed the founder is reputed to have said comes from oral religious tradition, not from scribes quoting them directly.

After that comes the contextualisation of the founders’ reputed philosophy and sayings. In ancient times this was achieved by imagining scenarios by which they came about and creating narratives. That they were not historically accurate or verifiable was of no consequence to the scribe, teacher or reader. What was important was how to apply the teachings to everyday life events. Theses narratives also served to provide backstories to the founders’ lives in contexts that their later followers could comprehend.

Then, over time, there are copied texts, translations, excisings and local embellishments to re-contextualise the stories to suit non-native audiences to the founders and to align the texts to established orthodoxies.

And on it goes… ultimately what remains is religious traditions bearing claimed religious truths that refer to greater truths on, say, the meaning and purpose of life and living or the answering of the great Socratic question: ‘How should we live?’