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Paradise/Heaven Claims Seem Irrational
I would appreciate your insight on the following points concerning the Quranic concept of Paradise:
- Gender and Physical Form
- The Quran mentions hoor and companions with distinct bodily attributes as rewards in Paradise. By reason, if mortal sexual instincts (linked to preservation of species, sensual desire) no longer apply in an eternal realm, one might expect gender and its associated organs to lose purpose or even cease to exist. For example a woman possesses breasts as a means to sustain her child, and just like it all other sexual organs exist in nature for the propagation of species. Our attraction towards a potential partner is entirely operated by unconscious psyche to fulfill it’s purpose of human specie survival.
- How should we understand these descriptions and what is their intended role in the believer’s spiritual motivation?
- Love and Desire
- Schopenhauer has proposed a right ideology in my perspective that love for another serves the preservation of the species; if immortality in Paradise is certain, these instincts and their provocations would be irrational if they exist in that eternal world.
- Objective Rationality
- From an objective, rational perspective, the notion of “beautiful woman as reward” seems to appeal solely to unconscious mortal sexual drives, which ought not to exist post-mortem.(As mentioned earlier about instincts and their underlying purpose)
- How can we reconcile the Quran’s language (which appears to invoke primary mortal desires) with the expectation of a purely spiritual, reason-based understanding of the hereafter?
- Overall Purpose
- What is the ultimate purpose of these sensual descriptions in the broader ethical and spiritual framework of Islam?
- Your guidance on how to approach these questions would be most valuable. JazakAllāh khayr.
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