Peace and blessings of Allah (swt) to all who are on the straight path.
Such as the nature and attributes of All Mighty Allah. They should just be accepted and thought upon with a lot of contemplation and gratitude. Not pulled apart and examined in the same way that people talk about common things.
Remember it is All Mighty The One Who Is Our Only Source of Everything In Life.
Sometimes people discuss things too flippant and common.
naouzobilah mn zalik (may Mighty Allah save us from doing that!)
If we merely contemplate at God and His attributes, we treat Him like a concept, not like a God we have a relationship with. There's a reason why we can recognize attributes in God.
Can you not contemplate aspects of religion without treating God like a concept? You could contemplate many 'divine' acts that we cannot understand, but hold faith in. It would not be treating them like concepts, nor God, more trying to make sense of something we inherently can't understand, as is human nature. One can be respectful whilst being curious. Or am I missing your point?
Contemplation can get you so far. Yes, it could help understanding something. In a way, contemplation can be a form of meditation. But meditation should turn into prayer, not into an philosophical list of descriptions.
One attribute of God is "the Way". If I am on "the Way", I become "the Way" for others as well. Attributes must be a means for a relationship, that I may live in God and God lives in me, and we have communion together.
What it should turn into and what it actually turns into is an issue of the person, not of the act of contemplation, hmm?
Attributes in terms of God can never be truly understood through contemplation, but it's not that they shouldn't be, just that we lack the ability to understand them, because it's so far removed from what we see in human beings and other worldly contingent objects. It's not that we relish in comparing God to humans, more that we can't even begin to imagine or understand the attributes of God, let alone try to theorise the 'mechanics' behind them perfectly. Even use of human terms that seek to explain attributes of God are surely just to convey said attributes to us on a human level, and are an accurate way to convey such ideas, but I don't believe they are adequate, they just 'are'. Can contemplation of attributes of God, be considered perhaps disrespectful, or wrong in some way? I do not think so, unless the intentions are ill, and so long as we understand that we can never truly understand them. What we do with the contemplation, as you said, is indeed the important thing.
I do believe that those who denounce their faith due to contemplation of the idea of God Himself, are doing so because they treat God as a concept. This is because they see Him as one possibility in a long list of separate ideas, due to their own ignorance and misled sense of reasoning. But as I said, the problem is with the person, not the act of contemplation.
