In Chapter 21 of the Book of Genesis we are told how the division between Jews and Arabs (later Muslims) came about. Hang tough for this is a complex story. Because he and his wife Sarah had waited unsuccessfully for a child, Abraham had taken a slave wife in order to have a son. He chose Hagar and they had a son Ishmael. God looked after them.
Then when his wife Sarah gave birth to Isaac, Abraham wanted to send Hagar and Ishmael away, but God spoke to him saying that he would make two great nations from these sons of Abraham (Genesis 21:13). “I will make a great nation of the slave girl’s son too, because he is your child as well”. So, Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael on their way and God directed them through the wilderness of Beersheba to that of Paran, just North of the Sinai peninsula. Ishmael became an archer and married a woman from Egypt. As time went bye Ishmael’s people came to dwell in the Arabian desert East of Egypt.
So, as it happened, Abraham’s son Ishmael became the progenitor of the Arabian people, who eventually embraced Islam as their religion. Now, fast forward to the early chapters of Exodus where we find that after his escape from Egypt, on the run for having killed an Egyptian, Moses had married Zipporah the daughter of one Jethro, a Median priest. Jethro soon became Moses’ right-hand man in sorting out the socio-political complexities of leading thousands of people out of Egypt toward the promised land. (Exodus 18: 1-27).
As it turns out, these Midian people are the descendants of Ishmael, and thus Moses was now married to a woman who was a descendent of Ishmael. Thus the nations of the two sons of Abraham have actually been united. In fact, Zipporah, Moses’ wife actually circumcised Moses’ son and Jethro became Moses’ father-in-law. One can now see the close relationship these two nations, and eventually, these two religions, have in common.
So when we come to modern times it is a shame to see what a difficult time these two peoples have had understanding one another. Indeed, actually, the Muslims accept the Hebrew scriptures, the Christian “Old Testament”, as authoritative to some degree as their own Quran. In a sense, then, the Jewish religion is the forerunner of Islam. Yet today these two faiths are constantly at war.
I myself find much of the Islamic faith weak and misleading, but I do think it is important for people of every faith to find ways to come together and work toward greater mutual understanding and respect. At the same time, it does not seem realistic to hope for this. I have tried honestly to read and understand the Quran but must admit that much if not most of it seems shallow and dogmatic, as of course does much of both the Jewish and Christian scriptures.
Nonetheless, I do believe that it is important for all of us to recognize and respect the faith of other people, as hard as this may be to do.

Materialism (Democritus, Epictetus, and Lucretius) Idealism (Berkeley)

Democritus (c. 400 BCE) was a pre-Socratic thinker who claimed that reality is composed exclusively of infinitesimal indestructible “Atoms” (in Greek the word ‘atom’ literally means “unbreakable”) thus his theory was called “Atomism” These tiny “seed-like” particles exist in a cosmic “void” and move around according to forces that arrange themselves into various patterns, but none are ever lost or destroyed. This idea became the basis for modern physics and chemistry. We have no extant writings of Democritus.
Later on a Roman thinker Epictetus (c. 100 CE) based his Stoic ethical theory on the theory that reality is comprised of a single entity, namely matter but his entity is identical with Divinity, a view called Pantheism. Epictetus’ metaphysics differed markedly from that of Democritus in his claim that the universe or Realty is Divine.
A Roman poet Lucretius wrote “On the Nature of Things” in praise of Epictetus worldview. The basic claim of Materialism is that material reality is all there is. All mental, emotional, and “spiritual” realities reduce to it and are fully explainable according to its principles of its processes. It is difficult if not impossible to construct an experiment or argument to prove or disprove this view. The issue is: can mental and or emotional or “spiritual reality be “reduced” to or explained (completely determined) by physical reality?
There is a “free will” argument that in my opinion shows that they cannot be so reduced. It goes like this – and is called “Truth’s Debt to Freedom.” Focusing on the meaning of “determined by” one can ask if the claim that all things are entirely determined by physical forces is “true”. If that claim itself is really fully and completely determined by physical forces what does it mean to claim that it is “true?” The notion of truth is lost in the shuffle here because if the claim itself, that all things are determined, is entirely explained and determined by physical forces, then it makes no sense to claim that it is “true.” If the person espousing the idea of determinism has no choice but to do so and, vice versa, then the notion of “truth” is meaningless. Determinism is incoherent or false.

Idealism – Plato, et al and George Berkeley

We’ve elsewhere already considered Plato’s complicated version of this point of view. Bishop George Berkeley’s version is absolutely unique. Bertrand Russel claimed that while it is impossible to disprove Berkeley’s theory, no one takes it seriously. Berkeley began with Locke’s simple approach to human perception. Simple ideas arrive through our sense and impress themselves on the “blank tablet” of our minds. We then, according to Locke, compound these simple ideas, and so on. Locke admitted that we have no direct idea or knowledge of where these ideas come from. He said they come from “something we know what we not what.”
Berkeley first argues that the distinction that Locke and we make between our sensations and the external reality (things, etc.) is both impossible to make (show me something external to my sensations) – we cannot separate our sensations from what they are supposed to be “of”. We never experience “material” reality at all – only our sensations. The notion of “external reality” is both bogus and unnecessary. Our “ideas” of things is all we have is and all we need. Secondly, Berkeley argued that what holds our experiential perceptual world together is not some “mystical” physical world but God’s active mind. God is the cosmic source of all our ideas and “sense” perceptions – the cosmic Mind that creates and structures our experiential reality. We think God’s thoughts after Him –literally. Reach to touch the back of your chair which you cannot see and God makes sure your hand’s sensations feel it. And so on for all our experiences of the so-called “physical world.” Reality is comprised entirely of Ideas, in God’s mind and ours. And Berkeley argued that this constitute a “proof” of God’s existence as well. God’s mind must exist to explain everything else. Reality is entirely “mental”, God’s mind and our “sensations” are all that are real.