Another Thesis!

It is here! Last week I had the existential experience that gave birth to my thesis topic! I saw bright lights, probably heard angels singing, and definitely felt the "burning in the bosom!"

I had been stressing over my thesis topic and was lost in another world trying to piece something together that would be interesting and unique. I was driving everyone crazy - including my roommate who I was using as a sounding board! She graciously smiled and nodded while I'm sure I made no sense and probably did not speak in complete sentences! I found it impossible to even complete the other reading required for my independent study without knowing the "direction" I was headed. I knew I wanted to do something in the Comparative Religious Ethics field. However, the only two religions I really wanted to focus on were Islam and Secularism. However, I knew I would be intellectually crucified for calling Secularism a religion. I wanted to incorporate Natural Law in somewhere without doing a survey of natural law in various cultures. To say the least, I had thoroughly analyzed myself into a corner!

While I was "in my cave", I kept coming back to a topic I heard Taylor mention months ago. She said, "Hey, wouldn't it be neat to write a thesis on comparing Allah vs. Yahweh in the Islamic and Chiristian Ethical systems?" As the weeks went by, I could not get this idea out of my head. One day, I sat back and thought, "Okay, Amber, hypothetically picture yourself writing on this topic. What would it look like in a thesis?" At that moment, I saw the bright, glowing lights and heard sounds resembling Faure's Requiem all around me! I immediately called Taylor and asked, "So...how married are you to that thesis topic?"
She said, "Well, I'm not really married to it."
"Well, are you dating it then??"
She replied, "No, and I'm not totally positive I will even do a masters in Ethics. I might switch to creative writing."
We both determined, for the sake of my sanity (and her's since she was also subject to my analytical freak-outs), I would take that topic.

So, here it is. I am going to do a comparative religious analysis of the natures of Allah vs. Yahweh and the ethical implications of their natures as meta-ethic justifiability for the normative ethic.

Muslims believe that whatever Allah says is good. In the academic world, this is called "voluntarism." This means that if Allah tells you to kill your brother, it is good because he told you so. An Islamic theologian, Ibn Hazm, writes:

If God the Exalted had informed us that he would punish us for the acts of others...or for our own obedience, all that would have been right and just, and we should have been obliged to accept it.

Yahweh, however, only tells us to do good things. This does not mean that there is this Platonic force called "The Good" that exists above Him. Rather, He has a fixed nature and is unable to contradict that nature. The moral laws are derived from His fixed character and are therefore fixed.

The neat thing about this topic is that it incorporates secularism indirectly. This analysis is what many Secularists are interested in and answers many of the questions they are currently asking. It is especially popular in Europe where Islam is making great headway where Christianity reigned for centuries.

One of the specific questions I will be dealing with is, "Is Yahweh a moral monster?" Christians say Allah is a ruthless and blood-thirsty tyrant unlike the Bible's "God of love." However, many Muslims and Secularists reply by saying, "Have you read your own Old Testament? There is not much different between Allah and Yahweh." I haven't seen this question answered well by the Christian community. I have the privilege of being around wonderful faculty at Southeastern from all areas of study and I am really looking forward to implementing Old Testament study into my Ethics thesis!

My overall hope for this work is to provide a fair analysis of these two religions in order to answer questions that are being asked today. Through the analysis, I know it will be strikingly obvious that these two are not the same gods and that Yahweh is the one true God.

Thoughts anyone??