[thechat] King Preaches Abstinence to Parading Maidens

[Madhu Menon]

At 05:40 PM 13-09-02, Syed Zeeshan Haider wrote:

>Don't think this way. Think scientifically. Humans vary in nature. If your
>nature is different from most of other men then it's your personal biological
>affair.

Ah, this is what John and I are contesting. You say that my nature is
"different from most of other men", implying that most men lack the ability
to be faithful (referring to my original comment). And I challenge *that*
assertion, and would like to know how on earth such a damning conclusion
can be made of "most of other men" on this planet without any serious or
credible research. Has somebody gone and studied the sexual behaviour of
all the men on this planet to arrive at this unbelievable conclusion? If
they haven't conducted a scientific valid study, any conclusions cannot be
called "scientific" by any stretch of the imagination.

There are millions of men on this planet who are leading happily married
lives without cheating on their spouses or having multiple wives. I don't
know of any study that has studied even a million men (about 0.03% of the
men on this planet) to test this hypothesis.

And please note: I don't have to prove that you're wrong. YOU are the one
who originally called it a "scientific fact". Like I said before, the
burden of proof is therefore on you to show that most men can't be faithful.


>Personally I don't like burqa.

I'm happy to hear that. It is, in my opinion, a primitive custom. So if I
understand you correctly, the people of Saudi Arabia aren't really
following the tenets of Islam? Does that mean they're not true Muslims? Or
is a burqa required by Islam and *you* don't approve of it?



>Madhu, if you study Islamic history in detail then you'll see that Prophet
>Muhammad has given scientific reasons for many Islamic laws.

Well, admittedly, I'm not an Islamic scholar (nor a Hindu one, for that
matter). But I do know that the scientific knowledge in the 7th century
(the Prophet's time) was nothing near what we have today. I'd like to hear
more about some of these scientific reasons. What is the scientific reason
for, say, offering prayers on Friday afternoon?


>Other laws were
>left for us to investigate and research. Islam invites us to study religion in
>scientific way.

Syed, the concepts of religion and science are at odds with each other. I
explained this is in my last mail. Religion (any religion, not just Islam)
calls on people to have faith in something/someone they've never seen,
something/someone who never seems to act consistently in punishment or
reward, and all kinds of other phenomena that cannot be scientifically
proven or even consistently reproduced. So "scientific study of religion"
is an oxymoron.

Religion is based on faith, science is based on evidence. So it would be
interesting to see if you can provide further examples of how the Prophet
used science to tell people how to live their lives.

Regards,

Madhu
(who usually doesn't get into religious debates, but finds the notion of
scientific explanations for religion amusing.)

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Madhu Menon
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