Human Nature and Philosophy

Questions: 1. Describe the biblical view of the world and its conception of human nature.2. What does the Bible see as the main source of human discord?3. What is the biblical prescription for human discord? Provide an example.4. What do you see as the main strengths and weaknesses of the biblical view of human nature? 5. Describe the Islamic concept of the world and of human nature.6. What are the causes of human suffering according to the Quran?7. What is the Islamic prescription for the alleviation of human suffering? Provide an example.8. What do you see as the main strengths and weaknesses of the Islamic tradition? 9. Identify two similarities and two differences between the biblical and Islamic traditions.10. The September 11th terrorist attack of 2001 heightened tensions between followers of Islamic religion and Christians and highlighted the disparity in understanding between the two traditions. Describe one or more misunderstandings, from each perspective, that resulted from this event . Provide a brief example of both, either from your own experience or from an example in the news? Answers: 1. The Bible has different views about the world and human nature. It sees every person as a unique individual. It believes that every individual has the right to work according to their initiative, as they are considered the creation of God (Lewis, 2015). It believes that the human beings are in a relationship with one another. They maintain their relationship with their environment, their neighbors and with the complete human community. Most importantly, human beings share a relationship with God. It says that the men, as well as the women, are connected with characters, objects and events surrounding them. 2. According to the Bible, the main source of human discord is the lack or absence of an agreement that leads to incompatibility, strife, or conflict between groups and persons on an element of mutual understanding (Schreiter, 2015). Discord often occurs when there is not a mutual understanding between individuals and this may be caused due to the difference in opinions of the individuals. It may occur when people disagree with what is wrong. On the other hand, people may have a tendency to set out for mischief and that may lead to a negative discord in the eyes of God. 3. The Bible suggests that people should have a mutual understanding among one another (Migliore, 2014).They should never support the bad accord. However, they can take an initiative to settle the good accord, which can lead to positive results. An example of this can be a conflict between a husband and a wife. They may differ in their opinion. However, at the end of the day, they will agree to the same point as both of them are related to each other. The Bible suggests that the human beings should adopt certain measures to understand each other and maintain peace. 4. The Bible says that human nature is something that makes the people uniquely human. The nature of human beings is very different from that of animals. The strengths of this view are that God sees every individual as equal (Arnold Beyer, 2015). It further says that God created the images of the human beings. However, the main weakness lies in the fact that the goodness of human beings was destroyed by the sin of Adam and Eve. It strengthens the fact that satisfaction is the ultimate process by which the development of new nature of human beings takes place. 5. According to Islam, God from clay created humans (Crone, 2015). God further injected the spirit of life into them. God also separated the human beings from the other creations. God has bestowed three divine blesses upon the human beings. They are the power of speech to worship God, the intelligence to differentiate between the real and the fake and the will to choose independently between the two spheres. The Quran states that the human beings do the tasks assigned to them by God. This satisfies God and the human beings benefit from the completed tasks. God is satisfied with them. 6. According to the Holy Quran, human beings suffer due to various causes. Firstly, the natural disasters like famines, earthquakes, lightening; floods cause the human beings to suffer. It may also include the calamities like an epidemic and contagious diseases (Denny, 2015). Secondly, the man made inflictions cause the human beings to suffer. This causes physical as well as mental pain to the human beings. It may also cause death at times. Thirdly, there are intentional or accidental acts of self-inflicted suffering. The sufferings caused to the human beings are mainly because of the mental condition of the individuals. 7. The Holy Quran believes that individuals should submit themselves to the will of God. It further means that peace can only be attained if people perform the activities according to the wishes of God. For example, if an individual delivers himself to the will of God, he can attain salvation. He can satisfy God by delivering to his wishes. The Holy Quran says that human beings have the ability to think and therefore, it is their responsibility to differentiate between the good and the bad. This can help them to reduce their pain and lead a happy and cheerful life. 8. The strengths of Islamic tradition are that it believes that there is continuity in the religious beliefs of the people. They have full faith in their God and they surrender to the will of God to attain salvation and inner peace. The concept of jihad and slavery is a weakness in the religion (Cook, 2015).The individuals sacrifice themselves and others for the cause of humanity and submission to Gods will. Another weakness of the Islamic religion can be not bringing out the inner points of the religious behavior. This may have a negative impact on the human beings (El Fadl, 2015). 9. The main differences between the Biblical and the Islamic tradition are many. Firstly, the biblical tradition believes that there God is defined as a trinity of persons namely Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, Islamic God is known as Allah. Secondly, if the faith is not attained in Biblical tradition, there is no punishment for the accused. However, in the Islamic tradition, the punishment is death for the same. Both the traditions believe that God created human beings. They also believe that the path to attain salvation is by surrendering to the will of God. 10. The 9/11 attacks caused a period of tension between the Biblical tradition and the Islamic tradition. There have been conflicts between the two religions because of the terrorist attacks. They went to Holy war. The people belonging to the Islam community were prohibited from entering the colleges and other institutions. The Christians of the United States of America attacked the people belonging to the Islamic religion. The tension created between the two communities affected the teachings of both the religion. The people did not follow the perceptions of their respective religion and they went to war. References Arnold, B. T., Beyer, B. E. (2015).Encountering the Old Testament (Encountering Biblical Studies): A Christian Survey. Baker Academic. Cook, D. (2015).Understanding jihad. Univ of California Press. Crone, P. (2015). Traditional Political Thought.Islamic Political Thought: An Introduction, 238. Denny, F. (2015).Introduction to Islam. Routledge. El Fadl, K. A. (2015).Islam and the Challenge of Democracy: A" Boston Review" Book. Princeton University Press. Lewis, J. R. (2015). Diabolical Authority: Anton LaVey, The Satanic Bible and the Satanist" Tradition".Marburg Journal of Religion,7(1). Migliore, D. L. (2014).Faith seeking understanding: An introduction to Christian theology. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. Schreiter, R. J. (2015).Constructing local theologies. Orbis Books.