A Muslim Facebook friend of mine posts a lot of interesting questions and observations about religion and belief. He’s very non-literalist, but he gets a good many literalist responses. I’ve just been arguing with one such literalist (on a public thread). The literalist said:

It’s a basic rule of interpretation that you can distinguish between the timeless and spirit or divine intent of a verse and the verse’s literal sense.
This is neither apologetics not esotericism. It’s a basic principle of logic.
The quran says to use intellect almost 50 times. You’re supposed to reflect on it with reasoning and analysis.

It is apologetics of course. It’s the classic way to defend all the shitty things in the Holy Books. … Read the rest

The problem of knowing what to submit to is connected to the idea that “god” can stand for a kind of person that is better than the human kind and thus a way to focus aspirations. The connection is that both are about knowledge, or transmission. Unless “god” is purely personal and individual, there has to be some way of connecting “god” and humans. There have to be intermediaries.

And there are intermediaries, but what good are they? What do they know that no one else knows? What do clerics know? What is it about them that makes them reliable intermediaries?

What is there? Is there some thing – some bit of esoteric knowledge, some secret ceremony, some garment, that … Read the rest