I am sorry. I seem not to have a clear idea of what I am looking for, precisely. Let me see… When you hear a political speech, it is usually easy to deconstruct all the resources used? The buzzwords. The appeals to emotion, tradition, ridicule. The syntactical construction, alliteration, anaphores. Rythm, pauses. Specific ways the phrases are constructed to transmit a precise feeling. Applause Lights. All those tools… Now, the Qran was written fourteen centuries ago. Surely its rethorical structure can be broken piecemeal and reduced to its elementary components. We live in a reductionist universe, don’t we?
The problem is, I am not familiar with a specific, systematic method of doing this properly and rigoursly, without letting my emotions get in the way. It’s not been much time since I relinquished my old beliefs, and I get really emotional and bothered and confused when reading this stuff again. I don’t like feeling that way. I want to tidy my mind till I feel I have understood the Islam phenomenon utterly and completely. I want to Dissolve The Question.
When I am confronted with a religious apologist I don’t want to only be able to say: “You are wrong”.
I know most people here are more familiar with Bible and Torah analysis, but I thought perhaps some of you could direct me to something that may help me understand what powers my own religion’s texts, how they work on people’s minds, which would help me in Raising The Sanity Waterline if it comes to that.
Nitpick: A tranliteration is duplicating the sounds of a passage to the extent possible in another alphabet. A translation is conveying the meaning to the extent possible.
The problem is, look at your examples. Half of them are terms from rhetoric and literature in general, while the other half are philosophy/psychology/logic. There’s not going to be any reference that covers both halves, because that would not map neatly onto any purpose (even an atheist polemicist with an interest in literary criticism wouldn’t write such a work).
I am genuinely surprised. What about, as I said, the analysis and criticism of political discourse? Surely both fields are highly relevant! And the Qran can be easily said to be a huge speech/manifesto. I remember reading works that did exactly this to the Communist Manifesto, by the way, demonstrating with detail that it was both “full of shit” and “badly written”. While such an acerbic tone as that of that work is unnecessary and even counterproductive as a norm, the content and the method seemed sound and productive.
The problem is, it’s not clear at all what this post is about. Why would such analysis be interesting? What would be the goal or expected result of that?
There are 1.3 to 1.8 billion people in the world who at least profess to believe in this book (I think I have phrased it properly in Lesswrong terms, yes?). This book is claimed to be miraculous and inimitable. Exposure to it is said to be a strong incentive to faith. It is the main miracle Muslims claim God has performed to endorse Muhammed as the Final Prophet.
Reducing it to its final components, understanding the intricacies of its style, how exactly it affects people’s hearts, will disprove that hypothesis. People will be able to say “This is why I feel the way I feel when reading this book. I know how it works.” . Also Atheism will be less unthinkable and people like me will be able to free themselves from the shackles of faith much more easily, and achieve peace of mind, consciousness and heart like I have.
This is why I believe the net expected utility of this exercise is extremely positive, for all of humanity, and for the Muslim world in particular.
Except that none of that is caused by the contents of the book itself; belief is all about community membership. Pointing out the rhetorical techniques that the Quran uses won’t change the minds of any believers; it’ll be perceived as an attack on their community, making them dislike whoever did the analysis and achieving nothing.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees where aesthetic judgments really originate—I just wish you guys would apply insights like this to art that’s popular within your groups.
Modding Raw_Power’s comments up due to taking the right course of action for his epistemic state.
Only if it is presented as such. Wording and presentation can completely change the way a text is percieved. Christianity, end Judaism even more so, are a matter of community and membership. From my experience, there is no such thing in the Islam I know. People don’t meet in the Mosque. They don’t sing in choirs. They don’t organize activities. They come in friday, they pray, they leave, hoping that no-one has stolen their shoes (they remove them before entering and leave them at the entry, you see… though it has just I occurred to me that they could use lockers like in gyms… ). They don’t help each other personally, charity is a state monopoly. Hell, most of the time they don’t even talk to each other. islam is a solitary, individual activity that every one performs mostly on their own. There is a sense of community with the Islamic Nation, at large, but not on an immediate, neighbhorhood scale. It’s the same sort of feeling that being a member of “Western Civilization” elicits.
And the Qran is incredibly central to the Islamic beliefs. It is much more airtight, much more consistent and cohesive than the Bible or the Torah. It is the Constitution, the ultimate reference, the literal Word Of God. Saying or implying that “God is an eloquent speaker and that we have figured out how exquisitely well He has used the Arabic language to leave his ultimate testament to Humanity” rather than “Muhammad was a talentedly manipulative cult leader” is sure not to earn anyone’s ire. It is also sure to provide new venues for the skeptical, inquisitve, curious Muslim’s mind to explore, in the same way that Kant’s demonstration of Religion’s Claim To Be Non Disprovable actually seriously raised the question of the existence of God, paving the way, intellectually, for those of the nineteenth century who decided they could do without it.
And, of course, some Muslims can get touchy about this and overreact, the same way some priests were absolutely infuriated by Kant’s work. Do you think whatever pressures he had to endure made his work not worth the effort?
But they are properties of the text itself, just like the emotion you get from watching the Super Tengen ToppaGiga Drill Breaker is a property of the text (which just happens to be in an audiovisual format). That those properties are heavily dependent on context (the videos I linked to probably won’t provoke much of an emotional response in anyone who hasn’t followed the narrative up until that point, and will probably not have the same effect on someone who is familiar with anime and humongous mecha as on someone who is only familiar with House MD and How I Met Your Mother-type serials: however, they can trigger extreme emotions, up to and including what can only be qualified as nerdgasm, when the right contextual conditions conditions are met) does not mean the properties do not exist in and of themselves.
Notice also that, as Super Robot series and Frank Miller stories (the good ones at least) egregiously demonstrate, repetition and redundance and stock footage are not necessarily incompatible with awesome, and, to a receptive mind, might even strongly and positively correlate.
To think that one day I would illustrate a point about the Qran by comparing it to Gurren Lagann… This reminds me of how funny it was when I tried to explain the premise of Evangelion to my uncles the day they mentioned that according to some Hadith or another Adam was a 40 meter giant. Teh lulz...
If a christian reveres a bone of long-dead person and believes that it has all sorts of magical healing powers, this strange disposition is not caused by some property of the bone itself that makes people believe in its healing powers.
In the previous comment, I argued the possibility and implication of such situation; it’s also not completely out of the question that the text itself has nontrivial probability of brainwashing people even in the absence of the huge social infrastructure currently surrounding it.
There is no point in demonstrating examples where something has an effect on its own perception, we all know such examples exist.
You mean solitary observance? Well, it is mandatory for a Muslim to go to a Mosque on Friday, but since there are usually so many and no-one is going to go all Inquisition over you, you may get very easily get away with not going at all, and even by not praying at all, ever. That is your, private, personal business. However things like fasting are much more social, and you will get in at least some trouble if you eat in public during the day in Ramadan.
About the smaller villages, AFAIK it’s the same thing: private prayer is private. If you want God to give you bad marks that’s your problem. I don’t know how they are about Mosque attendance.
Again, this is all from my perspective as a Moroccan. I heard that from the Arab countries there in the Middle East we’re seen as almost Western.
EDIT: Oh and thank you for your interest. Most of humanity is very misinformed about Islam, including most Muslims. Helping people update their priors there will always be to my benefit… though it’s depressing how it seems the information sharing process is below critical point, so that my efforts never affect more than a depressingly small number of nodes.
No, I meant that I was intrigued by how little socializing is included in going to a mosque, and, I admit, left wondering if there’s a niche for mosques which encourage more contact among worshipers. I also wonder whether people who’ve converted to Islam from religions which more contact and help in congregations push their mosques towards the social structures they’re used to.
Edit: This comment is made based on a misinterpretation of the parent comment; see this response.
There are 1.3 to 1.8 billion people in the world who at least profess to believe in this book (I think I have phrased it properly in Lesswrong terms, yes?). This book is claimed to be miraculous and inimitable. Exposure to it is said to be a strong incentive to faith. It is the main miracle Muslims claim God has performed to endorse Muhammed as the Final Prophet.
You are making the same error in concluding that the book is persuasive as people who conclude that the book is correct or the book is written by a Prophet of God. It could be the focus of affective halo, but hardly its cause. When you point to billions of people experiencing the halo, you are still not establishing causation.
I wasn’t presenting that as evidence of intrinsic qualities of the book, I was simply giving an idea of the magnitude of the humongous mass of people that could benefit from this.
This is why I believe the net expected utility of this exercise is extremely positive, for all of humanity, and for the Muslim world in particular.
I am sorry. I seem not to have a clear idea of what I am looking for, precisely. Let me see… When you hear a political speech, it is usually easy to deconstruct all the resources used? The buzzwords. The appeals to emotion, tradition, ridicule. The syntactical construction, alliteration, anaphores. Rythm, pauses. Specific ways the phrases are constructed to transmit a precise feeling. Applause Lights. All those tools… Now, the Qran was written fourteen centuries ago. Surely its rethorical structure can be broken piecemeal and reduced to its elementary components. We live in a reductionist universe, don’t we?
The problem is, I am not familiar with a specific, systematic method of doing this properly and rigoursly, without letting my emotions get in the way. It’s not been much time since I relinquished my old beliefs, and I get really emotional and bothered and confused when reading this stuff again. I don’t like feeling that way. I want to tidy my mind till I feel I have understood the Islam phenomenon utterly and completely. I want to Dissolve The Question.
When I am confronted with a religious apologist I don’t want to only be able to say: “You are wrong”.
I want to be able to say “You have tried to manipulate me into believing your stuff this way and that way. Your own beliefs stem from this and that emotion, common human mistake, bias, fallacy, mechanism, and those beliefs influence your actions this and that way.”
I know most people here are more familiar with Bible and Torah analysis, but I thought perhaps some of you could direct me to something that may help me understand what powers my own religion’s texts, how they work on people’s minds, which would help me in Raising The Sanity Waterline if it comes to that.
How much of the emotional effect of the Koran would you say comes through in translation?
Like other texts of a similarly poetic nature, it varies a LOT with the transliteration. I might be biaised since I can read it in the original, and Classic Arabic is already so emphatic and hammy on its own even saying “I am going to do my LAUNDRY” sounds as if Dan Green was saying it, so there’s that too...
Nitpick: A tranliteration is duplicating the sounds of a passage to the extent possible in another alphabet. A translation is conveying the meaning to the extent possible.
Thank you. I don’t like to fall into the “You Keep Using That Word” trope/trap.
The problem is, look at your examples. Half of them are terms from rhetoric and literature in general, while the other half are philosophy/psychology/logic. There’s not going to be any reference that covers both halves, because that would not map neatly onto any purpose (even an atheist polemicist with an interest in literary criticism wouldn’t write such a work).
I am genuinely surprised. What about, as I said, the analysis and criticism of political discourse? Surely both fields are highly relevant! And the Qran can be easily said to be a huge speech/manifesto. I remember reading works that did exactly this to the Communist Manifesto, by the way, demonstrating with detail that it was both “full of shit” and “badly written”. While such an acerbic tone as that of that work is unnecessary and even counterproductive as a norm, the content and the method seemed sound and productive.
The problem is, it’s not clear at all what this post is about. Why would such analysis be interesting? What would be the goal or expected result of that?
There are 1.3 to 1.8 billion people in the world who at least profess to believe in this book (I think I have phrased it properly in Lesswrong terms, yes?). This book is claimed to be miraculous and inimitable. Exposure to it is said to be a strong incentive to faith. It is the main miracle Muslims claim God has performed to endorse Muhammed as the Final Prophet.
Reducing it to its final components, understanding the intricacies of its style, how exactly it affects people’s hearts, will disprove that hypothesis. People will be able to say “This is why I feel the way I feel when reading this book. I know how it works.” . Also Atheism will be less unthinkable and people like me will be able to free themselves from the shackles of faith much more easily, and achieve peace of mind, consciousness and heart like I have.
This is why I believe the net expected utility of this exercise is extremely positive, for all of humanity, and for the Muslim world in particular.
Except that none of that is caused by the contents of the book itself; belief is all about community membership. Pointing out the rhetorical techniques that the Quran uses won’t change the minds of any believers; it’ll be perceived as an attack on their community, making them dislike whoever did the analysis and achieving nothing.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees where aesthetic judgments really originate—I just wish you guys would apply insights like this to art that’s popular within your groups.
Modding Raw_Power’s comments up due to taking the right course of action for his epistemic state.
You’re probably right that it won’t have much effect on believers, but I think it could be very useful for people who are deprogramming themselves.
Only if it is presented as such. Wording and presentation can completely change the way a text is percieved. Christianity, end Judaism even more so, are a matter of community and membership. From my experience, there is no such thing in the Islam I know. People don’t meet in the Mosque. They don’t sing in choirs. They don’t organize activities. They come in friday, they pray, they leave, hoping that no-one has stolen their shoes (they remove them before entering and leave them at the entry, you see… though it has just I occurred to me that they could use lockers like in gyms… ). They don’t help each other personally, charity is a state monopoly. Hell, most of the time they don’t even talk to each other. islam is a solitary, individual activity that every one performs mostly on their own. There is a sense of community with the Islamic Nation, at large, but not on an immediate, neighbhorhood scale. It’s the same sort of feeling that being a member of “Western Civilization” elicits.
And the Qran is incredibly central to the Islamic beliefs. It is much more airtight, much more consistent and cohesive than the Bible or the Torah. It is the Constitution, the ultimate reference, the literal Word Of God. Saying or implying that “God is an eloquent speaker and that we have figured out how exquisitely well He has used the Arabic language to leave his ultimate testament to Humanity” rather than “Muhammad was a talentedly manipulative cult leader” is sure not to earn anyone’s ire. It is also sure to provide new venues for the skeptical, inquisitve, curious Muslim’s mind to explore, in the same way that Kant’s demonstration of Religion’s Claim To Be Non Disprovable actually seriously raised the question of the existence of God, paving the way, intellectually, for those of the nineteenth century who decided they could do without it.
And, of course, some Muslims can get touchy about this and overreact, the same way some priests were absolutely infuriated by Kant’s work. Do you think whatever pressures he had to endure made his work not worth the effort?
If effect of Qur’an is not caused by properties of the text itself, then your quest is a failure, no matter the presentation.
But they are properties of the text itself, just like the emotion you get from watching the Super Tengen Toppa Giga Drill Breaker is a property of the text (which just happens to be in an audiovisual format). That those properties are heavily dependent on context (the videos I linked to probably won’t provoke much of an emotional response in anyone who hasn’t followed the narrative up until that point, and will probably not have the same effect on someone who is familiar with anime and humongous mecha as on someone who is only familiar with House MD and How I Met Your Mother-type serials: however, they can trigger extreme emotions, up to and including what can only be qualified as nerdgasm, when the right contextual conditions conditions are met) does not mean the properties do not exist in and of themselves.
Notice also that, as Super Robot series and Frank Miller stories (the good ones at least) egregiously demonstrate, repetition and redundance and stock footage are not necessarily incompatible with awesome, and, to a receptive mind, might even strongly and positively correlate.
To think that one day I would illustrate a point about the Qran by comparing it to Gurren Lagann… This reminds me of how funny it was when I tried to explain the premise of Evangelion to my uncles the day they mentioned that according to some Hadith or another Adam was a 40 meter giant. Teh lulz...
If a christian reveres a bone of long-dead person and believes that it has all sorts of magical healing powers, this strange disposition is not caused by some property of the bone itself that makes people believe in its healing powers.
In the previous comment, I argued the possibility and implication of such situation; it’s also not completely out of the question that the text itself has nontrivial probability of brainwashing people even in the absence of the huge social infrastructure currently surrounding it.
There is no point in demonstrating examples where something has an effect on its own perception, we all know such examples exist.
Thanks for the cultural info. Do you know whether non-communal observance is typical across Islam?
You mean solitary observance? Well, it is mandatory for a Muslim to go to a Mosque on Friday, but since there are usually so many and no-one is going to go all Inquisition over you, you may get very easily get away with not going at all, and even by not praying at all, ever. That is your, private, personal business. However things like fasting are much more social, and you will get in at least some trouble if you eat in public during the day in Ramadan.
About the smaller villages, AFAIK it’s the same thing: private prayer is private. If you want God to give you bad marks that’s your problem. I don’t know how they are about Mosque attendance.
Again, this is all from my perspective as a Moroccan. I heard that from the Arab countries there in the Middle East we’re seen as almost Western.
EDIT: Oh and thank you for your interest. Most of humanity is very misinformed about Islam, including most Muslims. Helping people update their priors there will always be to my benefit… though it’s depressing how it seems the information sharing process is below critical point, so that my efforts never affect more than a depressingly small number of nodes.
No, I meant that I was intrigued by how little socializing is included in going to a mosque, and, I admit, left wondering if there’s a niche for mosques which encourage more contact among worshipers. I also wonder whether people who’ve converted to Islam from religions which more contact and help in congregations push their mosques towards the social structures they’re used to.
Edit: This comment is made based on a misinterpretation of the parent comment; see this response.
You are making the same error in concluding that the book is persuasive as people who conclude that the book is correct or the book is written by a Prophet of God. It could be the focus of affective halo, but hardly its cause. When you point to billions of people experiencing the halo, you are still not establishing causation.
I wasn’t presenting that as evidence of intrinsic qualities of the book, I was simply giving an idea of the magnitude of the humongous mass of people that could benefit from this.
Okay, my mistake (edited the original comment).