dialogue with my friend an atheist?1
-My friend is a man who likes to argue and delights in talking. He thinks that we, naive believers as we are, feed on illusions and miss me pleasures and attractions of this world beguiling ourselves with Paradise and the Houris. He studied in France where he got a Ph.D. degree, consorted with I lippies, and came to disbelieve in everything. He adressed me sarcastically:
-You say that God exists. The chief among your proofs is the law of causation which stipulates that every artefact, creature, or existent must have been brought into being by a maker, creator, or efficient cause : a piece of fabric points to I he weaver, a painting to the painter, an engraving to the engraver. The universe, according to this logic, is the most cogent proof of a Puissant God who created it. Granted that we believe in this creator, aren’t we entitled, according tp the same logic, to ask, “Who created the Creator; who created that God you talk about?”
*** -I replied to him by making clear that his question was Meaningless ,
– There is no dilemma or anything of that sort. You grant that God is a Creator and then you ask about who created Him making Him both creator and created in the same sentence, which is a contradiction. The other side of your question’s meaninglessness is that you imagine the creator as being subject to the laws which govern his creatures. Causation is a law for us who live in space and time. God, who created space and time, is necessarily transcendent in relation to both and it is an error on our part to think that he is bound either by them or by their laws. It is God who created the law of causation and we cannot consider Him as subject to the law He created.In this sophistry of yours you are like those dolls that, seeing they move by springs, imagine that the human who made them must also derive his motion from the action of springs.
-you cannot imagine that God exists in His own Essence with no need of an efficient cause; and this is because you see everything around you in need of such a cause
-Aristotle followed the chain of causality tracing the chair from wood, wood from the tree, the tree from a seed, and the seed from the planter. He had to conclude that this chain which regresses into infinite time must have begun with an ‘uncaused’ cause, a primum mobile in no need of a mover, a creator who has not been created. This is the same thing we assert of God
-it is God that substantiates existence and it would be erroneous to point to existence or the universe as a proof f God. God is the proof which is in no need of another proof. He is the self-evident Truth.
-God says in a Divine Utterance (Hadith Qudsi): “It is I who aids in proving and finding, there is no proof leading to me.”
When a dreamer dreams up a whole reality in a dream, did the dream create the dreamer? Author of reality and the authored reality in question do not require the author be subject to created reality. Joanne Rowling did not have to study wizardry in order to conjure up the reality of Harry Potter. Reality is an expression of its creator, not the other way around. Origins of the creator, especially if attempted to be grasped within the context of a given reality, are impossible – again, explain Rowling’s origins within the context of Harry Potter reality, how far away from Hogwarts did she live, was born, use miles or kilometers if you wish, just answer a simple question: disclose the distance between these two points in standard units of measurement that are consistent with actual maps of our globe. Reality is funny, ha ha, its creator is not of it, but the reality is of the creator. The creator may have “origins”, but they need not conform to the reality’s conventions, may not even qualify for origins in a broader sense.
There are stars and galaxies so far away, that their light won’t even reach us for another 50 million years.This demonstrates that the universe is a runaway reaction of cause and effect relationships rather than a planned result of an intelligent designer who made all of this specifically for insignificant humans living on an insignificant planet orbiting an insignificant star in an insignificant galaxy floating in an insignificant corner of space.Therefore, you and Aristotle and other superstitious nutjobs – cannot make the baseless assertion that this universe was created by a superstitious idea who is strangely occupied by foreskins and sexual behavior.
dialogue with my friend an atheist?2
My friend continued to question me in his sarcastic tone: “Why do you say that God is one? Why shouldn’t there be many gods sharing the ‘work’ among themselves?”
I chose to reply to him not with the aid of the Quran but with the logic he accepts: that of science. My answer was that God is one because the entire universe is built out of one material and according to a unified plan. The ninety two elements in the Mendelev table are built from hydrogen and in the same manner in which stars and suns flame-up in space; namely, by fusion and the emission of atomic energy.
-All forms of life are built of carbon composites – they are all charred when burned – according to one anatomical plan.an anatomy of a frog, a rabbit, a pigeon, a crocodile, a giraffe, and a whale reveals the same anatomical structure in all. The same arteries, veins, cardiac chambers, and bones correspond in all of them. The wing of the pigeon is the fore-leg in . the frog : the same bones with only a slight transformation. The long neck of the giraffe contains seven vertebrae, we find the same number in the hedgehog’s neck. The nervous system in all consists of the brain, the spinal cord, and the motor and sensory nerves. Their digestive apparatus contains the stomach, the duodenum, and the small and large intestines, The genital apparatus has the same components : the ovary, the uterus, the testicles and their Ducts; while the urinary system in all consists of the kidney, the uriter, and the bladder. The anatomical unit in each of these creatures is the cell. Whether we are dealing with plants, animals, or humans, we meet with the same features; they all breathe, breed, die, and are born in the same way.
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So, frogs and giraffes were made by the same god, and spiders and scorpions were made by the same god. But clearly these are two different gods! One sticks seven vertebrae in everything, the other gives everything eight legs. We should call them God 7 and God 8 to distinguish between them.
— My opinion is that it makes me glad I’m not your friend. If my friends tried to tell me absurdities like this I’d probably throw up on them.
dialogue with my friend an atheist?3
My friend mocked the concept of divinity {Robobyya) that we entertain. He wondered at that god who interfered in every thing big or small mastering all creatures and “intimating to the bees to abide in mountains”. No leaf falls but He knows of it and no fruit grows out of its bud but He takes count of it. No female conceives and gives birth without His knowledge. It is He who causes the foot to stumble over a hole and the fly to fall in a plate of food. Even if the phone is dead or the rain d’oesn’t fall or, conversely, if it pours down, He is behind all these events. “Don’t you keep your god busy”, asked my friend, “with too many trivial things under such conception of Him as that?”
-I don’t really understand my friend. Would god, in his opinion, be more of a divinity if He relieved himself of all responsibility and, turning his back to the world he created, left it unattended to destroy itself in conflicts’! Is the true divinity in his estimation that idle, unconscious being who does not hear, see, or respond to his creatures and look after them? It is to be further asked: from what quarter did he know that certain affairs are important and serious enough to so deserve such attention?
-The fly, which appeared to the enquirer so insignificant that it doesn’t matter whether it falls in a plate of food or not, can change history with such an unimportant fall. It could thus infect an army with cholera giving victory to the other side and, consequently, totally altering the course of history. Wasn’t Alexander the Great killed by a mosquito? The most trivial premises can lead to the most serious consequences, whereas the most important beginnings can issue in nothing. The Knower of the Unseen alone realizes the value of everything.
Answers
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
― Epicurus
dialogue with my friend an atheist?4
My friend spoke gloatingly thinking that his arguments would hold me captive by the scruff of my neck.
You say, he argued, that God manages everything in this creation with fate and predestination and that he has preordained our deeds. If this applies to me, for instance, in the sense that all my actions have been preordained by him, why then should I be accountable before him? Don’t give me the usual reply that choices are open before me. Nothing is more preposterous than this lie.
Is it by my choice that a blow of fate descends on me, that death surprises me, or that I can only escape from a pitfall of calamity by committing crime? Why should God force me to do a certain deed and then hold me responsible for it?
If you argue that I am free and that I have a will besides that of God wouldn’t that be considered a kind of polytheism since you are led to admit the multiplicity of wills? Moreover.
– my friend breathed in relief thinking that I have been completely vanquished and that he had only to shroud my creed before the burial. I, however, began to speak in a quiet voice:
– You are victim to certain fallacies. Your deeds are foreknown to God in His Record but they are not preordained for you against your will. They are only preordained in His Prescience just as you may foresee, in the light of your knowledge, that your son will commit fornication and he actually goes on to do it. Have you compelled him to it? Or was it, in fact, a foreknowledge which came true because founded on your comprehension of the situation?
– The freedom we should be discussing is relative and not absolute;The sphere of accountability is the area of Taklif or Divine Injunction. Within this area you are free and your argument should be confined inside its compass. You are free to repress your appetites, to bridle your rage, to resist the promptings of vour ego, to deter your evil intentions, to enhance your benevolent tendencies.
[n this area we are free; and it is in this area that we are liable to account and questioning.-some people understandhuman freedom as meaning a transcendence of Divine Will and a management of affairs independent of God.
transcend His Will .
“If I am so comfortable with my spirituality, why do I take such offense from simple disbelief??? I sure don’t feel threatened by your beliefs…I think what you’re ranting about is tolerance:Tolerance or toleration to tolerate, or put up with, conditionally, also to suggest a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one’s own; freedom from bigotry.With all due respect, you aren’t exacty tolerant either, are you?
dialogue with my friend an atheist?5
My friend resumed his arguing in a derisive note of voice. – How dare you speak of your God as the Perfect, the Omnipotent , the Merciful, the Bounteous, and the Ruthful while He is the creator of all evils in the world: disease, old age, death, earthquakes, volcanoes, microbes, poison, scorching heat, freezing cold, and the torments of cancer that spare neither new-born babe nor decrepit senile. If God is truly Love, Beauty, and Goodness, how then did it come that lie created hatred, ugliness, and evil?
-We say that God is all mercy and goodness. He did not enjoin evil but suffered its existence for a WISe end: God only enjoins justice, amity, charity, forbearance, and benevolence. He only accepts what is good. Why, then, does He suffer the unjust, the murderous, and the thieving to perpetrate their deeds? The answer is that He wanted us to be free; freedom necessitates error; it would be meaningless if it did not allow us the right to trial, error, and right judgment and the unrestricted choice between sin and obedience.
God was quite capable of making us all benevolent by compelling us to obey him. This, however, would have entailed that He deprive us of the freedom to choose,
-Nevertheless, a just and objective consideration of the matter would reveal to us that benevolence is the rule in the universe while evil is the exception. Health is the rule, disease the exception; we spend most of our life enjoying health and are visited by sickness only for a few days
– Could it be possible for us to know health if disease did not occur? it is impossible to know beauty but for ugliness,
-These tribulations are trials by which we know ourselves; they are tests which determine our degrees in the sight of God.this world is but one act of a play that has many; death is not the end of the story but its beginning.
for God alone.
–‘Good. comes from God, evil from ourselves.’ A terse remark, indeed, but what a true view of the entire matter is contained here in a nutshell! God sends the winds and makes the river flow but a greedy captain may overload his ship with people and goods and when it sinks, he curses late and destiny. What is God’s fault here? He sent a benevolent wind and caused the river to flow smoothly but greed and. avarice turned this good into evil.
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it wont work speaking with them unless they have willing hearts and u are saved
God will sometime in the future return his creation back into it’s perfect form when his Son Jesus returns for his people. Jesus came to earth as both God and man to reconcile humanity back to God the Father by his death and resurrection. Jesus received the wrath of God (his father) that we as humans deserved and at the same time the followers of Jesus took on the righteousness of Jesus through grace. By his stripes we are healed and forgiven of all our sins. We only need to repent of our sins and ask Jesus to be our Lord and Savior to receive the free gift of salvation, have all our sins forgiven, and to become one of his people forever. We can receive this wonderful gift of eternal life by surrendering our lives to Jesus……it can’t be earned because our very best efforts/works are incapable pleasing God, but only the shed blood of Jesus on the cross is capable atoning for our sins.
My learned friend started to scratch the top of his head. He was, evidently, thinking hard to find a pitfall that would finish me off this time. He began to speak slowly and deliberately: Very well, what can you tell me about the fate of a person whom the Quran or, for that matter, any other revelation or prophet did not reach? What fault can you lay at him? What, in your creed, will be his fate on the Day of Judgment? I have in mind, for example, an Eskimo in far away polar regions or a negro deep in the jungle. What will befall such a person at t he hands of your ·God on Doomsday?
–I began my answer to him at once:
I shall set your heart to rest with the decisive argument in this question. God said in His Book the koran that He will punish only those whom He warned beforehand through His messengers: The prophets mentioned in the Quran are not all whomGod sent. There are thousands of others about whom we know nothing.
-a closer consideration of the creeds of such primitive negroes reveals that they had messengers and revelations like our own. We know, for instance, that the Mau Mau tribe believes in a God it calls ‘Mogabe’ and describes him as a single being that was neither begotten nor begets and that has no equal or like.
-Isn’t this ‘Mogabe’ almost the same as our own God? From what quarter did· those tribesmen receive such conception unless a messenger and a revelation came to them at some period of their history?
-We similarly know that the Niam Niam people believe in a single divinity they call ‘Mbole’ who, according to their sayings, moves everything in the jungle, visits the evildoers with thunderbolts, and rewards the virtuous with livelihood,blessing, and security.
-The Shilock tribe, we also know, believes in Jok, a single deity whom they describe as both invisible and manifest. He abides in the sky and everywhereand he is the creator of everything.
-The Denkas believe in asingle God, Nialok, whose name literally means ‘he who is in the sky’ or the sublime. By what name other than Islam can we call such creeds?,
-It is well-known that God’s mercy varies in how it is bestowed. There are those born blind and others who enjoy sight. Some have lived in the age of Moses and saw him with their own eyes parting the sea with his staff; others have lived
in the time of Jesus and witnessed how he raised the dead. As r for us, we only know of these miracles by hearing about them. Receiving a report of something is surely not equal to seeing it with the eye; for to see is other than to hear of a certain event. Nevertheless, belief and disbelief do not hinge upon miracles. Obdurate non-believers witness wonders from the prophets sent to guide them but have no more to say of these miraclesthan describing them as ‘fabricated sorcery’.
– Have I thus quietened your fears? Allow me further to add that the most peculiar aspect of your questions in this connection is their deceptive pretense of belief and pity for the poor negro deprived of the light, mercy, and guidance of t he Quran. In truth, they indicate your disbelief in the Quran ,. its light and guidance. They are designed more for inveiglement and subterfuge. They run contrary to your own inner conviction and I can only decribe this attitude as perversity in its quintessence. You are endeavoring to persuade us of an argument of which you personally do not have any proof.
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My learned friend went on to ask us the following question: “Why does God’s mercy vary? Why should God reveal his signs to some while others know of them only through reports?
-We reply to him by observing that revealing miracles to Some may not be a blessing but a temptation. For didn’t God warn the companions of Christ who asked for a table to descend among them from heaven?
·the reason for this warning is that the coming of miracles is always accompanied by an increase in the severity of punishment for those who disbelieve after seeing them. Happy indeed are those who believe from hearing of revelation without witnessing any miracles. And woe to those who see them but persist in disbelieving.
· The Quran you have with you is a witness against you and a warning for you. On the Day of Reckoning it will not be a mercy but the contrary.
-As for the reason why God shows more mercy to some than to others, it is a dispensation he bases upon his knowledge of hearts:
-God’s knowledge of us and of our hearts precedes our creation in the wombs; it goes back to when we were spirits around His ~Throne. Some of us were attracted to His Light and were completely absorbed in it, while others directed their attention away from Him to enjoy the spectacle of the universe (malakoot) shunning the splendour of their Creator. Ever since that time immemorial the latter have deserved the lower degree and were predestined to perdition. Thus said those who ‘see’ (Ahl ei-Moshahada).
What we experience in our short life on earth is not everything that there is. Knowing the wisdom behind every suffering and privation is something that belongs only to the Omniscient. If I were asked why God created the pig in that shape we know, I can only reply that God chose for it a ‘piggish’ form because its nature or ‘self’ is swinish. It was right and just that this animal be created in that shape we are familiar with.
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How do you know? You don’t. You believe. Do you know the Bible is true? No. You believe it. But since anyone can make up any crap they want and call it a religion obviously there’s no clear evidence that indicates that a god is even there. So then if you believe it anyway you’re no longer basing your beliefs on reality. Whatever your reason for believing, it is not knowledge. If it were you wouldn’t call it faith. And if you base your beliefs on something other than knowledge you no longer care about whether or not your beliefs are true to the same degree others do. And that means you’re believing things for reasons that are not as sound as they could be and that means you’re opening yourself up to making irrational decisions. I don’t think that’s a great way to live your life. Two people standing in the middle of a street with a car speeding at them are in totally different positions if one believes that car is real and the other does not. One is more inclined to get out of the way and that person is more likely to survive. That is why you should care about whether or not your beliefs are true. Faith is not a virtue. It’s acceptance of authority. And that should only be done for very good reasons.
My learned friend was perfectly sure of himself as he delivered his bombshell in slowly-pronounced but strongly-stressed words: – How is it that God, the Compassionate and Merciful, punishes us for a transgression committed in a moment of finite time with eternal and infinite torment- ‘In Hell they dwell forever’? Who are we and what is our worth in comparison to God’s greatness to deserve such vengeance?
– Our learned friend’s conceptions are in obvious need of orrection.
-We are not like atoms or specks of dust in the universe. Our standing in the sight of God is not insignificant but considerable. Didn’t He breathe in us of His Spirit? Didn’t lie command the angels to bow for us? Didn’t He promise us the inheritance of the earth and the heavens?
– We have, then, something of God’s Spirit in us. Nor are we atoms or specks of dust in relation to the universe. If we consider our bodies only we may well be like grains in the wide, spacious world. But don’t we contain this universe in and comprehend it with our minds realizing its laws and defining the orbits of its planets and stars?
-Man, then, is of great standing and importance. He comes from the Spirit of God. His deeds necessitate accountability. As for the finite sin in time for which God visits us with infinte torment in eternity, this is simply another fallacy of my friend’s- the self-confident Ph.D.!
-God speaks about those immortalized in Hell-fire: Their guilt, , is not confined to one moment of time. It is, in fact, a permanent feature of their make up that repeats itself at any time.Indeed, if they were returned to a new life they will commit the same transgressions all over again;Their sinning is an innate and enduring attribute of their psyche.
We are definitely not dealing with a transgression limited to a point in time but one that continues through time and after time itself has ended. We are really confronting a psyche that carries within itself its eternal evil. Hence, everlasting torment is only equitable for such soul.
-some of these souls are in reality blazes of envy, grudging, voluptuousness, jealousy, and bitterness; they are flames of wrath, resentment,rebellion, and other animal passions that flare and rage as a veritable fire.
-Such souls can never live at peace or endure just one hour without causing conflict and setting fire to everything that surrounds them, It is a just judgment that Hell be their final abiding place. It will be like placing a thing in its rightful element. If they were admitted to Paradise they would not be
able to enjoy it.
-Men were not all predestined for torment when they were created. God does not punish the believer who has knowledge nl Him; He only visits His torment on the obdurate disbeliever with whom all means of guidance and acquainting with the faith and all explanations of it have failed:
-It is God’s law that these men should taste the minor punishments of this world to be roused from their torpor , If all such approaches fail, with the disbeliever persisting in his attitude, there remains only one option open: to inflict the
promised torments on him so that he may come to know the truth.
Should God neglect those obstinate disbelievers in their blindness and ignorance, He would be unjust- far removed is lie from this. To be led to Hell-fire is a kind of Care for such benighted souls. All God’s actions are merciful.
-He shows the macy of correction and of enlightenment to the benighted in
hell ; and He is merciful with his generosity and blessings to the knowing in Paradise:
-Doesn’t He actually inflict suffering on us in this world? Aren’t old age, sickness, cancer … etc. basic forms of torment? Who created t_he microbe? Aren’t these all
warnings that we are dealing with a God who can torment?
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Why infinite punishment for a finite transgression?
It isn’t merciful or just at all, regardless of any other opinions you may have. It is a contradiction, plain and simple. And also, the whole “innate sin” thing also contradicts free will.
You could start by actually addressing the question instead of preaching about something unrelated that you can’t prove either.
And, I’m laughing at you for it.
This is the face I made while reading your diatribe:
So glad I am an atheist….I have a large,loving family and we contribute to our community…two sons are doctors and I am retired University Lecture….also beautiful grandchildren.Was there a question by the way? Didn’t notice one. Oh yes….my opinion on your dialogue….more like a monologue.
Nice to chat
Atheist
My learned friend continued his argument with a significant look in his eyes:
What do you say to counter those who describe religion ,as .an opium which drugs the poor and oppressed and makes them acquiesce in the injustice and destitution they suffer under, leaving them to dream of Paradise and the Houris while the rich hold tight to their wealth as a right incumbent
from God’s creation of men in various ‘degrees’?
-What, further, can you say in reply to those who believe that religion did not really descend from God but, rather, originated from the ‘earth’ springing from social causes and conditions to be employed as a weapon by one class against another?
-I pointed to him:
Religion means watchfulness, attentiveness, alertness, self-questioning, and the heeding of conscience in every deed, word, or prompting- this is not the way of opium-eaters. The true opium-eater is the materialist who rejects religion because he wants to escape its consequences and responsibilities and who thinks that the moments he lives belong to him so that he goes about doing as he likes believing that there is no watcher, questioner, or resurrection after
death.
-It is also not true that our religion originated from ‘the soil’, from social conditions and causes, to be employed as a weapon in the hand of one class against another and to perpetuate the wealth of the rich and the poverty of the poor. Quite the opposite is true.
– Islam came as a revolt against the rich, the money-hoarders, the exploiters, and the oppressors. It expressly enjoined that wealth should not be monopolized and exchanged among the rich alone but it should be open for all as a right:
-Islam was not revealed to confirm injustice but to declare an unconditional revolt against all the unjust. It came as a sword waging war on tyrants and dictators.
-The existence of differences between people is an axiomatic fact.Differentiation, in fact, is the law of existence as a whole. The wisdom behind it is quite clear. If all men were born with the same bodies, features, and qualities there would have been no need for them to be created in the first place. Itwould have been sufficient for just one ‘prototype-man’ to be created in lieu of the rest.
-Nevertheless, religion did not stand passively in the face of such variance between rich and poor. It instructed that this condition be rectified and described it as a temptation and trial:
-We, as men, shall discover how the powerful, for instance, uses his strength: will he help the weak or employ it to strike, murder, and tyrannize? We shall see how the richman manages his wealth : will he dominate and squander or sympathize and be charitable?
-Religion commanded justice, the redress of wrongs, and equality of opportunities. It raised the torments of the hereafter.
-The Quran came as a golden mean between the Torah, which has been corrupted to become a purely materialistic book with no mention of the Judgment day, and the Bible, which inclined to total asceticism.
-There is no foundation to the charge that belief in religion is the cause of our backwardness while atheism is the secret behind the progress of the west. What is true is that we laggedbehind when we turned our backs to the teachings of our religion.
-The Quran is certainly innocent of imposing any rigidity on men. Everything in our religion accepts development except, of course, the essence of its creed and the core of its Shari’a (Law). God is one and He will not ‘develop’ to become two or three; His status is absolute. Similarly, evil will remain evil while good remains so. Murder will never become a virtue nor will theft change into a blessing or lying metamorphose into an ornament for the good. Apart from these elements, religion is open before thinking, intellectual assays, additions, and development.
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Islamic theology is so stupid that only Scientology beats it.
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My opinion? Same as it was for your dialogue #10?
You’re talking complete and utter boIIocks!
Can you update your current “question” with dialogue #12 now and save me typing this answer out again?
Thanks
My learned friend began the discussion by asking me:
– Don’t you agree with me that Islam’s attitude towards women is reactionary?
He, then, took to counting the proofs of his charge: Polygamy, seclusion at home, the veil, man’s monopoly of the right to divorce, man’s right to beat and desert his wife’s bed, he issue of intercourse with the slave-girls ‘you may own’, man’s famous ‘authority’ (Kowama) over his wife, and, finally, the favouring of males with a double share compared lo that of females when inheritances are distributed.
— The charges this time are many needing lengthy replies. Let us, however, begin at the beginning – before Islam. I think you know perfectly well that Islam was revealed in the midst of a Jahili (barbaric and heathen) environment which
condemned new-born girls to be buried alive while allowing men to marry up to twenty women and to force their slave-girls to prostitution and keep the ‘proceeds’ to themselves. Islam’s licence for men to marry up to four wiveswas, in effect, a kind of restriction not of abandon. Itsteachings saved women from death, servitude, humiliation,and the stigma of shame.
-Are European women in a happier lot now amid the prevailing sexual ‘permissiveness’ and the extra-marital relations that plague most marriages? Weuldn’t it be more honourable for a woman to become a second wife to a person she loves and enjoy all the rights and respect of matrimonyrather than to be a secret mistress stealing pleasure behindclosed doors?In Islam, however, polygamy is only a license almostimpossible to be utilized because it is conditional upon a
proviso very difficult to fulfill :
-As for the charge of seclusion,This is an indication that the ideal position for woman is to be a mother and a housewife completely devoted to her home and children. We can imagine the state of a nation whose women are in the streets and offices while the children are sent to orphanages and nurseries. Would such a nation be in a better condition than one whose women are devoted mothers and housewivesand where the children are brought up under their mothers’ attention Islam, however, is quite aware and tolerant of the reasonsthat oblige women to go out of their homes and seek work.
-As for the veil (Hijab), it is in women’s favour. Islampermitted them to reveal their faces and hands (up to th.ewrists) and enjoined the covering of all other part~ of theirbodies. It is well known that what is forbidden IS always desired,and that concealment of alluring features enhancestheir attractiveness.
-When naked ‘flesh’ abounds on beaches in summer and isavailable for oggling eyes, the bare body loses its lure,novelty and charm becoming an ordinary spectacle thatarouses’ no curiosity.
-Man’s right to divorce is countered on the other side by asimilar right for the woman. She can sue for divorce and get itif she advances sufficient justifications.
-Islam gives certain rights to the muslim wife that wives in Europe, for example, have not attained. She receives a Mahr (obligatory marriage endowment) whereas in Europe she pays a dowry.
-Beating and desertion of the marriage bed are forms of treatment reserved only for the disobedient or rebellious wife.
-We know that psychology divides abnormal behaviour into two kinds. The first is that form of submissiveness scientifically known as ‘masochism’ – the abnormal condition in which a woman finds pleasure in being beaten, tormented, and subjugated. The other kind is the domineering behaviour or ‘sadism’, to put it in psychological jargon. It is that abnormal condition in which a woman derives pleasure from domineering, controlling, subjecting, tyrannizing over,The only way to deal with such a type is to disarm her and render her weapon of hegemony
useless.
-Slavery, then was an established practice before the revelation of Islam. Preceding religions recommended the slave’s loyalty to the master. The Quran came to be the first heavenly revelation to speak about ‘freeing necks’ and about their emancipation.
-We come, finally, to man’s authority over woman. This is fact of life whether in Islamic, Christian, or godless countrie:…In atheist Moscow, the rulers have been men from the days l Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Bolganin to our own time. In France, England (written, of course, before Mrs. Thatcher became prime minister), or any place on earth you care to name it is men who govern, legislate, and invent
-Islam, in fact, did no more than recognize this human rule.This explains why the Quran allotted man double the woman’s share in inheritance: because it is man who spends on the family and who works to support it.
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Is that really your argument?
“Beating and desertion of the marriage bed are forms of treatment reserved only for the disobedient or rebellious wife.”
No-one has the right to beat anyone else, to do so is assault. What happens to disobedient or rebellious husbands? Oh, that’s right, women belong to men not the other way round so husbands cannot be disobedient or rebellious. What a load of intolerant crap!
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Yeah, great.
Many cultures that went before Islam treated women much better that the Koran instructs. Why not at least match those societies?But this is the problem of religions – especially old religions. They are created by the people of that time – and then they get stuck at that point, unable to progress as the society progresses because the words some person who claimed to be a prophet are now Inviolate and Can not Be Changed. Despite that they are refuted by new discoveries, or that societies have moved on.My opinion is that religion, including Islam, is a huge millstone around the neck of humanity, preventing the growth of societies and keeping people ignorant and thinking in stone age/iron age standards rather than moving on to the 21st century information age possibilities.
Edit:
My cousin married a man who converted to Islam. She divorced him rather than live under Koranic law. Yes, European women are far better off in a secular society.What is wrong with nurseries? We evolved to have the children of a tribe looked after by a few people while the mothers worked and gathered food. this is normal. As for the veil – utter bollocks. Why does crap like this only apply to women?
Divorce “sufficient justifications” and there’s the rub! A man need no other justification than his whim. Why this disparity? What is sauce for the gander should also be sauce for the goose.
Almost no one in Europe pays a dowry and more. And again, the misogyny of other societies doe snot excuse the misogyny of your religion.You saying “We know <baseless assertion>” does not make it so. Psychology deals with far more than just masochism and sadism. And they apply equally to men as women. Your rant here is not only baseless but moot. Man’s dominance of women is historical, form when might made right. Intellectually women are men’s equal, and in an information age that is what matters. Europe has had Margret Thatcher, Angela Merkel, and is getting more and more women into political positions. It is still not parity, but again, this is no excuse for Islam to be even worse.Men and women are different. Men have some advantages over women, women have some advantages over men. You can not say that one is superior to the other, just that they are different.You are defending the indefensible, using the typical tactics of apologetics and misinformation. Your arguments are pathetic and you would see so yourself if you stopped trying to defend your religion and instead started looking at the world as is really is, rather than how your religion claims it must be.
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– What evidence can you give to prove that man has aspirit, that he will be resurrected after death, and that he is not just that body that ends in dust?– After a few moments of thinking I began to take the challenge:I fell silent for a minute of deep thinking and then resumed my answer to him: Please, follow my line of thinking. The first indication which aids us in finding evidence for the existence of the spirit is that man has a double nature.Man has two natures. There is firstly an external, apparent, visible nature which is his body.The body is subject to all conditions of health, sickness, fatness, leanness,ruddiness, paleness, vitality, satiety, etc.There is, howev~r, another nature inside man which is totally different from the first in quality. It is characterized by .fixity and permanence; it is above time and space. This nature is what we call ‘reason’It is also the conscience with its judgments and the aesthetic sense.-We may go on to ask: which of the two natures constitute man in reality? Is ‘true’ man the body or the spirit? To know the answer we have to establish which of the two natures governs the other.–The materialists claim that man is just his body which is the controlling nature. This materialistic concept is erroneous. The truth is that the body is servant not master, compliant and not imperious.
Doesn’t our body begin spontaneously from the moment we wake up in the morning to carry out ‘a plan of action’ formulated to the smallest detail by the mind? Who is leader here and who is led? Where is the body’s dominance at the moment of self-immolation when a commando
-It would not be an unbelievable joke to hear that a bridegroom may surprise his bride in the year 2000 to find her taking off her whig, dentures, foam-ruzber breasts, artificial eye, and wooden leg leaving nothing behind
Update 3: but a chassis’ like that of a car where the seats, doors, and upholstery have been removed. The body undergoes extensive replacements without the character being correspondingly affected.
-But what about resurrection? No one has·so far returned from the kingdom of death to tell us what experiences he underwent.All that can be said about resurrection is that it is a relgious fact which both reason and science find probable. Hut why should these two latter find it probable?
for everything returns to where it began or is renewed. God refers to himself in the Ouran
Update 5: as the Originator and Restorer:”You shall return to Him as He
created you.”-Another proof we may cite in favour of the truth of resurrection is the order, accurate to precision,Given this very tightly-woven order how can we imagine that a murderer or an unjust person can escape retribution simply because he has managed to elude the police. The mind finds it justifiable to conceive that this person will necessarily be punished and that there must be another life in which scores are settled
-It remains for us to ask what is the spirit?1 he Spirit is a puzzle about which no one knows anything. whenever the Spirit is mentioned in the Quranthe words ‘of my Lord’s knowledge’ or ‘command’ or others of similar meaning, accompany it:
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My opinion is that your learned friend is remarkably stupid.
‘You speak reverently about conscience’, said my friend, ‘as if it were an absolute entity. It is, however, a social product. It is no more than a copper currency minted and stamped in the forge of social dealings.
-I started to reply calmly:
The truth is that conscience is a light implanted by God in the human constitution. It is an inborn indicat9r, guide, or compass directing us to the truths of life. All that social cultivation has to do in this regard is to polish and refine that instrument. We have evidence to support our view and refute yours. Consider the animal kingdom where no ‘society’ exists.
You find the cat defecating and then turning to cover its faeces with dust. From what ‘feline society’ did it catch this habit? How was it able to distinguish between filth and cleanliness? Likewise, if you catch a cat stealing fish and hit it on the head, it would bend it down fixing its eyes on the ground in a manifest sense of guilt. If the same cat happens to break a vase while playing with the children in the house, it would hurriedly run to hide in fear under a chair realizing that it had
done something wrong.
-the horse’s noble attachmnt to its owner till death the lion’s proud mein and its refusal to attack its prey from behind the camel’s shyness that impels it to stop sexual intercourse with the female if it sensed an observer.
-Moreover, I remind you of that serious incident seen by the spectators at the National Circus . The lion jumped at its trainer, from behind setting its claws in his shoulders and mortally wounding him. Circus officials report that the lion subsequently refused to eat or to leave his cage. It was transferred to the zoo and given a female to entertain it but it attacked its companion and forced it out. It continued to refuse food and, finally, kept biting its guilty hand till it bled
to death.
-Here we encounter an animal that takes its own life in grief and atonement for its crime. From what ‘society’ in the world of lions did it adopt this attitude? Do lion communities hold the devouring of man a crime deserving suicide as a punishment?We confront in this situation a kind of nobility, morality, or conscientious behaviour that we can hardly find in a human.
-There can be no explanation for what we see except that presented by religion; namely, that conscience is a light implanted by God in human nature.
-Our Prophet, peace be upon him, said: ‘That which islawful is clear and that which is prohibited is clear.’
-We are in no need of a ‘Faculty of Shari’a Studies’ to know right from wrong, truth from falsehood, lawful from unlawful. God has placed in the heart of each of us a Shari’ a Faculty and a scale that cannot go wrong. All that is required of us is to purify ourselves of the dross of matter and the pressure of desires so that we can ‘see’, ‘know’, and ‘distinguish’ without leaning on the crotchet of ‘social experience’ but with the aid of God’s light – the conscience:
-God inspired the mystic Muhammad Ibn Abdel-Gabbarwith the phrase: “How can you despair of Me while in your heart is My envoy and speaker.”
-The conscience is an eternal truth. The basic ethical values are similarly fixed. Killing an innocent person will never become a virtue, nor will theft, lying, harming others, vice, lechery, harshness, scurrility, cruelty, hypocrisy, or treachery. All these are moral defects and they will so remain until God inherits the earth and all that is on it.
-Love, mercy, truthfulness, forbearance, forgiveness, and generosity will likewise remain virtues for ever. They will never turn into crimes unless the entire heavens and earth are corrupted and reason is annihilated leaving madness to rule supreme.
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dialogue with my friend an atheist?15
My friend’s eyes had that gleam which characterizes the look of a person preparing to deal a knock-out. His broad smile revealed his teeth and he rubbed his hands in glee as he talked:
– Don’t you observe as I do that your pilgrimage rites are frankly pagan? First of all there is that stone structure you call the Ka’ba to which you cling and then go round. There is also the stoning of the devil, the kissing of the Black Stone, and the occurrence of the number seven in many acts such as circling the Ka’ba, stoning the devil, or hurrying to and fro between Safa and Marwa. This is, surely, a vestige of ancient superstitions about talismanic numbers. There is yet that Ihram cloth you wrap round your naked zodies in preparation for the pilgrimage. Don’t be angry with me if my frankness hurts you; but, as you say, there is no timidity in the pursuit of knowledge.
Having finished, he started puffing the smoke of his cigarette slowly and fixed his eyes on me from behind his glasses.
-I began to reply with equal calm: Don’t you observe with me that according to the laws of matter we studied it is found that the smaller body revolvesround the larger the electron in the atom circles round the nucleus, the moon round the earth, the earth round the sun, the sun round the galaxy, the galaxy round a bigger one, and so on till we ascend to the Absolute Greatest: God? Don’t we repeat the phrase ‘Allah is greater’ (Allahu Akzar) meaning that He is bigger than everything? Hence, and in accordance with the laws of your science, everything should revolve ound Him. You are now, in fact, revolving round Him in spite of yourself along with our solar system. You cannot choose but revolve for nothing is still in the universe but God
– the Sanctuary, the Enduring; He is still whereas everything else is in movement around him. So far for the law of the lesser and the greater which you studied in physics. As for us, we circle around God’s House of our own free will. This House, the Ka’ba, was the first building man devoted to the worship of God. Ever since that time immemorial it has become a symbol and a House of God. Don’t you ‘circle’ the Kremlin revering a certain man entombed there and claiming that he saved mankind. If you know where Shakespeare is zuried, you would race each other to visit his grave in more fervour than we have as we vie for the journey to the tomb of Muhammad, peace be upon him. Don’t you lay a wreath on a stone monument saying that it is a symbol of the unknown soldier? Why, then, blame us for casting a stone at a certain post which we take to symbolize Satan?
-Now for the number seven that moves you to so much sarcasm. Let me ask you, in my turn, why do we have seven tones in the musical scale: Sol, La, C, Do, Re, ~i, Fa? After the seventh tone we return again to the pitch of Sol – always seven tones and not eight or more. The shades of the light spectrum are seven, electrons revolve round the nucleus in seven fields, the embryo completes its growth only in the seventh month and if delivered before that time will be stillborn. The days of the week are seven- among all peoplesand this was reached without any previous agreement. Doesn’t all this signify something? Or is it that all these facts are, for their part, mere talismanic superstitions?
-Let me further ask you: don’t you kiss a letter your beloved sent you? Are you, then, a pagan? Why blame us, therefore, for kissing that Black Stone which our Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, carried in his own robe and kissed? There is no paganism involved at all; for we do not address our devotion and worship to the stones but to the profound meanings, symbols, and memories they evoke.
-The pilgrimage actions are occasions for inducing contemplation, arousing the feelings, and instilling godliness in the heart. The Ihram cloth we wrap round our naked bodies, and which should not be sewn, symbolizes the renunciation of worldly ornament and complete devotion before the Presence of the Creator. It is just the same as our condition at birth and death; for we come to the world
wrapped in a piece of cloth and go out of it in the same attire. Don’t you need formal suits for audiences with kings? We, for our part, say that only such stripping of ornament and donning of this simple robe is appropriate for God’s Majesty; for He is greater than all kings and nothing more befits attendance before Him than absolute humility and the shedding of clothes.
-If you had stood, as I did, on Mount Arafat, one among millions crying ‘Allahu Akbar’, reciting the Quran in more than twenty tongues, calling out ‘labbayka Allahuma labbayk’ (we have answered your call, God), sobbing, and melting in love and longing – you would have shed tears unconsciously and merged in that multitude of men, you would have experienced that sense of reverence and annihilation of self before God, the Magnificent, the Lord of all Being, Who masters everything there is.
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Though he didn’t do a good job justifying himself, much of christianity is borrowed from other religion, or repurposed from non-religious things. Fancy word play doesn’t erase fact.
My friend spoke slowly choosing his words:
– I don’t really want to hurt you, for I know how much you cherish the Quran. I concur with you that it is a worthy book. But why couldn’t it have been compiled by Muhammad himself? It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary if a man as great as
he was should write a book as valuable as the Quran. This, certainly, would be a more logical explanation than the claim that the Quran was revealed by God. We have never observed God in the process of sending anythins down from heaven. We live in an age in which it is difficult to persuade anyone that an angel called Gabriel came down from heaven with a book to reveal it to a certain person.
-I replied in my usual quiet voice :
– On the contrary, we live in an age in which it is completely easy to believe that there are invisible angels and that truths can come to men in inspiration.Our moderns speak nowadays of flying saucers that come from distant planets to land on earth, of invisible rays that can kill, of radio waves that home on to targets to facilitate their destruction, of pictures that are transformed into frequencies in the air and then materialize again as they are received in sets as small as cigarette packets, of cameras that take pictures of ‘ghosts’, of eyes that see in the dark, of a man who walked on the moon.It is no longer an inconceivable thing to hear that God has sent an invisible angel to deliver His revelation to one of his prophets. Gabriel’s existence has, in fact, become a stale fact in our age; it is less strange and amazing than many things we see or hear about every day.
-You ask, ‘Why shouldn’t we say that the Quran has been composed by Muhammad (peace be upon him)?’ The reply is that we cannot do this. With its form, phrases, and even letters, and with the knowledge, science, mysteries, stylistic beauty, and linguistic precision it contains, it is impossible to conceive that any man is capable of composing it. Add to this the fact that Muhammad, peace be upon him, was illiterate; he could not read or write, he did not attend any school, and he did not travel outside the Arabian Peninsula or get acquainted with any civilization. To doubt the source of the Quran, or even just to enquire about it as you do, is indeed impossible in the light of what I have just said. God, in fact,
challenges disbelievers like you who alleged, in the Prophet’s time, that the Quran is of human authorship:
-You ask, ‘Why shouldn’t we say that the Quran has been composed by Muhammad (peace be upon him)?’ The reply is that we cannot do this. With its form, phrases, and even letters, and with the knowledge, science, mysteries, stylistic beauty, and linguistic precision it contains, it is impossible to
conceive that any man is capable of composing it. Add to this the fact that Muhammad, peace be upon him, was illiterate; he could not read or write, he did not attend any school, and he did not travel outside the Arabian Peninsula or get
acquainted with any civilization. To doubt the source of the Quran, or even just to enquire about it as you do, is indeed impossible in the light of what I have just said. God, in fact, challenges disbelievers like you who alleged, in the Prophet’s
time, that the Quran is of human authorship: “Say: ‘Then bring a sura like it, and
call (for help) on all you can besides
God, if you are truthful.”
Jonah, 38.
-Indeed, if we study the Quran in fairness and objectivity, we will completely rule out that Muhammad, peace be upon him, was its author. If, first of all:-
1-author, he would have voiced his cares and grief in it. In one and the same year, his wife, Khadeeja, and his paternal uncle, Abu Taleb, died. They were his only supports in life and the loss he sustained in their departure was incalculable. Yet noword is mentioned in the Quran about them. The Quran also remains silent about the death of Ibrahim, Muhammad’s only son over whom he grieved. The Quran is, in fact, totally separate from Muhammad’s self.
-Sometimes a Quranic verse would come to contradict whatMuhammad has been doing or thinking. At other times, a verse would be revealed to adomnish him.
-Sometimes the Quran commands Muhammad, peace beupon him, to communicate to his followers that which hecould not have possibly said if he had been the author of the Quran:No prophet can, of his own accord, inform his followers thathe does not know what will happen to him and to them or thathe cannot bring benefit or ward off harm either with regard tohimself or to them. They would desert him, if he did so.
2-Secondly, if we examine the style of the Quranic phrase, we will find that it is completely new and unique in its syntax or structure. It is quite different fromanything that came before or since in Arabic literature. We can almost go to the extent
of dividing everything extant in Arabic into poetry, prose, and Quran. This latter is a kind apart neither poetic nor prosaic. For rhythm in poetry is the outcome of meter and
rhyme. This is seen.
3-Thirdly, if we further pursue this line of analysis, we will discover a meticulous accuracy and staggering adequacy: every letter is in its precise place neither advanced nor retarded. You cannot substitute one word for another, nor
put one letter in place of the other. Every word has been chosen from among millions by a very sensitive act of discernment.
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I resumed talking to my friend: Our discussion today of the scientific hints in the Quran may be more stimulating to your ‘scientific’ mind than our previous exchange. Modern astronomy, biology, anatomy, and atomic researches were certainly non-existent when some Quranic verses were revealed more than one thousand four hundred years ago to touch upon natural phenomena (or signs Ayat- as they are called in the Holy Book). These verses deal with the sky, the earth, the stars, the planets, the development of the embryo, and the creation of man in a manner that corresponds to the latest discoveries of the sciences of our time.
-The Quran did not tackle these subjects in the detailed approach of a specialized scientific text. It was primarily revealed as a book of creed, way of life, and legislation. Had it dealt elaborately and expressly with such topics, it would have shocked the Arabs of its time with things they could notcomprehend. It resorted, therefore, to suggestions, hints, and intimations leaving them to be explained hundreds of years later zy the· sciences and discoveries of the future and to manifest their real nature one generation after the other as miracles and signs which prove that the Quran is indeed from the True God.
-God says in His Book:
((“We will show them Our signs in all the regions of the earth and in their
own selves, until they clearly see that this is the truth.””Fussilat, 53)).
-Since those addressed were not satisfied with God’s own testimony to the truth of the Quran, it became necessary that He prove it to them with manifest signs. The Quran continues day after day to uncover more of these amazing signs beforeour astonished eyes.
-It mentioned in unequivocal terms the roundness of the earth employing, in the following verse, the verb Yokawwer (to round) twice to describe how the night and day ‘slide upon’ each other as two halves of a ball: “He causes the night to succeed (Yokawwer) the day and the day to succeed (Yokawwer) the night.” The Troops, 5
-We read, in the Quran, another clear hint to the effect that the mountains ‘swim’ in space which, consequently, implies that the earth moves in space since both it and the mountains are one mass:· rhis means that the mountains which appear solid and inert really ‘float’ in space
-One of the striking things in the Quran is the frequent mention of the ‘simultaneity’ of night and day which co-exist in time from the beginning of creation to its end without each of them preceding the other:
-This clearly hints to the roundess of the earth. Night and day started simultaneously together since the beginning of creation as ‘hemispheres’; if the earth had been flat, day and night would have succeeded each other by necessity. This suggestion is emphasized by another verse which speaks of the occurrence of Doomsday while the earth is, as it ever has been since its creation, passing through night and day at the same time:
-This clearly hints to the roundess of the earth. Night and day started simultaneously together since the beginning of creation as ‘hemispheres’; if the earth had been flat, day and night would have succeeded each other by necessity. This suggestion is emphasized by another verse which speaks of the occurrence of Doomsday while the earth is, as it ever has been since its creation, passing through night and day at the same time:
-We also find significant allusions:
“By the sky with its returning of(rain).”
The Morning Star, 11
-The sky, that is, returns all that rises to it from the surface of the earth back again to that surface : it sends back the water vapour in the shape of rain, it holds rising bodies back by the force of gravity, it bounces back radio signals by deflecting them in the ionosphere, and it similarly deflects infra-red rays back to the earth’s surface warming it at night.
-Consider, for instance, the insight given by the Quran into the embryo’s evolution and its indication that the male spermalone is responsible for the determination of the baby’s sex:
-In the sura of ‘Mary’, God – Exalted He be – narrates how Mary, when in labour, took shelter beside the trunk of a palm-tree wishing that she were dead:
-Why, one wonders, was she called upon to eat of the ripe dates of the palm-tree? The latest scientific study provides the answer: ripe dates contain a styptic substance, oxytocin, which facilitates delivery by astringing the uterus and which helps to prevent hemorrhage after it. Ripe dates contain a laxative material and it is well-known that asperients of plant origin are useful in easing childbirth and making it safe by cleansing the colon.
-Moreover, the Quran is a miracle on another level: it tells of a past that has not been recorded in history and about a future which, at the time of Revelation, has not yet materialized.
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just go to …………1- If you want what is inside mind of any atheist , just go to
http://lyconpolis.weebly.com/publisher/dialogue-with-atheistpdf
http://lyconpolis.weebly.com/publisher/in_the_remembrance_of_the_affairs_of_the_dead_and_doomsday_khilafahbook
http://lyconpolis.weebly.com/publisher/book-of-the-endpdf3-if you want to know about the errors in bible compared to koran , it is very enough
http://lyconpolis.weebly.com/publisher/the-bible-the-quran-and-science-maurice-bucaille
http://lyconpolis.weebly.com/publisher/stories-of-the-koran-by-ibn-kathirpdf
http://lyconpolis.weebly.com/publisher/the-way-to-guidance-by-ibnul-qayyimpdf
http://lyconpolis.weebly.com/publisher/rescuer-from-misguidance
7-the major sins which will throw you in constant hell
http://lyconpolis.weebly.com/publisher/a-brief-illustrated-guide-to-understanding_islampdf
9-The real faith
http://lyconpolis.weebly.com/publisher/a-brief-illustrated-guide-to-understanding_islampdf
9-The real faith
My friend said:
You are in a tight corner today; for you have to prove that the creation of man really occurred in the magical manner pictured by religion: the Creator moulding a piece of clay in His hand and breathing into it and, abracadabra, there is Adam! If you insist on adopting this view you will be sternly contradicted by the science of evolution which says your Adam came into being by a series of evolutions occurring to some animal forms. He is not, in fact, completely separated from his animal ancestry. He is, to be exact, a cousin of the apes sharing with them his seventh ‘grandfather’. The unmistakeable similarity in the details of the anatomical structure of all these life-forms is evidence that they are all members of one family.
-I started to argue with him warming up for a heated scientific controversy: Let me first of all correct your knowledge of the religious (Islamic) view of creation. God, according to that view, did. not create Adam in a ‘hocus-pocus’ manner: here is a lump of 11 clay, breathe in it and, voila, there is the first man. The Quran presents a radically different account of Adam’s creation. In that account, creation occurs in stages, phases, and over an extended time span measured in God’s own scales. The Ouran did not say that man came directly out of clay but that he emerged from a ‘race’ or ‘breed’ (solala) that came from clay:
-At the beginning man was nothing worthy of mention , Man’s creation, then, came in stages: there were stages starting with the creation out of clay which was followed by formation, then fashioning, and, finally, breathing of God’s Spirit into the creature: man. The word ‘then’ us’ed in this context, or the temporal dimension of the entire process, should be understood in relation to ‘divine time’; it could mean millions of years:
-At the beginning, it is clear, there was clay. Then came a race (solala) bred from semen or ‘the despised fluid’. These were the early, humble origins of man or the ‘blank’ insignificant thing spoken of by the Quran. Man was then moulded and fashioned. After that the ‘spirit’ was breathed into him and he was’, thus, endowed with hearing, sight, and ‘heart’ becoming Adam. The first man, therefore, emerged at the end of a series of evolutions and was not made instantaneously in the hocus-pocus style you imagine.
-We read in the Quran: ‘God brought you from the earth like a plant’ (Noah, 17). This is a clear indication that creation was like the growing of a plant with all the evolutionary phases, time.
-those early origins of man from which Adam later evolved and which procreated by means of a ‘despised fluid’ had no hearing or sight or ‘heart’ (in the sense of mind or reason). These faculties evolved later on when the spirit was breathed into Adam in the last stage of his ‘moulding’. Such origins, then, could have been some forms of undeveloped animal life.
-The question we want to pose is whether a primeval cell emanated from that primitive clay and multiplied to yield all those genuses and species of plants and animals including man or whether there were various beginnings: one origin evolving into plants, another developing into such animal branch.
The anatomic similarity among the branches, genuses, and species of the tree of life does not exclude the evolution of each genus from a distinct origin. Such anatomical similarity in all life forms, however, is evidence to the unity of their Maker because they are all fashioned out of one material, in one method, and according to one plan
-Let us review what Darwin wrote in his Origin of Species. The first thing he discovered during his voyage on The Beagle was the identical anatomical plan on which all animal species were moulded. The skeleton, for example, is the same in most vertebrates. The arm in the ape corresponds to the bird’s wing and that of the bat. Every piece of bone in it is matched by another in those wings with slight modifications to suit the function of the member.
The bones in birds are thin, tender, light, hollow, and covered with feathers. The long neck of the giraffe contains seven vertebrae: the same as in man’s and as in the hedgehog’s which is too short to be called a neck. Man’s hand has five fingers and we findthe same quinary formation in apes, rabbits, frogs, and lizards. Pregnancy lasts nine months in whales, apes, and human females, while sucking takes two years in the three”pecies. The tail vertebrae in apes are found merged and telescoped in man’s caudal bone or the coccyx. The tail muscles have changed in man into a solid bottom for the pelvis.The heart with its four chambers and the layout of the body’s arteries and veins are identical in horses, donkeys, rabbits, pigeons, and men
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Now me, I’m a Christian and like many and honestly, the great majority of Christians across the world, I accept evolution. I believe the story of Biblical creation is more of a parable (aka Sacred Myth) than a history. It’s meant to show deeper truths than just history, and at THAT, it excels. The Middle Eastern creation myths are silly taken as history. It is only in the last several hundred years that we Christians in the west have insisted on interpreting them that way. I’m certain their original tellers/writers would be astonished at our childishness.
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-My friend said:
– I don’t pretend to understand how it is possible for the Merciful God – whom you describe as the Ruthful, the Benevolent, the Bounteous, the Oft-Pardoning, and the
Remitter to command His Prophet and ‘close friend’ (khalil), Abraham, to slaughter his son? Don’t you concur with me that this is rather difficult to believe?– It is obvious from the context and events of the story that God’s wish was not for Abraham to slaughter his son. The proof is that no such thing happened. Divine wish was that Abraham should ‘slaughter’ his excessive fondness and love for his son and deep attachment to him. It is impermissible that there should be any clinging in the heart of a prophet for any thing other than God: neither world, nor son or splendour or person.A prophet’s heart should not be attached to any of these things. As is known, Ismail was born to Abraham in his old age and senility. He was, therefore, excessively fond of and attached to him. Hence, God’s trial of His prophet was necessary. What the story narrates supports this interpretation. For when Abraham succumbed to his God’s command and drew his knife to slaughter his son, the commandment came from heaven with the sacrificial lamb.
— My opinion is that this whole dialogue with your atheist friend could have ended at #1 if you would just offer some evidence for all your outlandish claims.But you have no evidence…. so here we all are, suffering at #20….all of us on YA stopped reading these at #2…and this “dialogue” drags on and on interminably.
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I agree 100% with you atheist friend.
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Nor do I believe your ‘atheist friend’ talks like that. In fact, you’re fabricating the whole story, aren’t you? Well, don’t feel guilty about that, there’s plenty of precedent for it in the scriptures.
My friend said:
Look, if there is really a Paradise as you say, I’ll be the first one to enter it. For I am, indeed, more religious than many of those sheikhs of yours with their beards and rosaries.
– What do you mean by ‘more religious’?
I mean I do not hurt anybody. I do not steal, kill, accept bribes, envy others, have grudges, or intend evil for any creature. I have only benevolence in my mind and my sole aim is general good. I wake up and go to sleep with an easy conscience and my motto in life is to reform things as best I can. Isn’t this religion? Don’t you say that the essence of religion is conduct?
– Ah, what you practice is something else called good manners. It is, indeed, enjoined by religion but is not symonymous with it. You are confusing religion with its requirements. Religion has only one meaning; namely, the knowledge of God; to know your God truly and to cultivate a certain conduct and behaviour towards Him. It is to know your God as He is- Supreme, Majestical, Near, Responding, All-Hearing, and All-Seeing. It is to pray to Him kneeling and prostrate in the reverence of creature to Creator. This private dealing between you and God is religion. As for your good conduct towards your fellow men, it is necessitated by religion and is, in fact, a God-oriented behaviour also.
Our Prophet, peace be upon him, said: “Alms reach the hand of God before that of the beggar”. Whoever loves God will equally love his creatures and be charitable to them. If, however, your correct conduct and dealings are confined to men only recognizing and seeing nothing else beside them and this earthly life, you are a complete disbeliever be you ever so well-mannered in your behaviour with them. Indeed, your good manners in this case only prove your sharpness, your sense of propriety, and your tactfulness. They do not prove your religiosity. You simply want to win people, to succeed in life. Your good behaviour is merely a means to worldly gains. This is the bent of most disbelievers.
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dialogue with my friend an atheist ? 21
– What do you think, then, of Abraham’s wonderful miracles such as his entry into fire and exit without being burnt? What have you also to say about the miracles that occurred to Moses when he transformed his staff into a serpent, or when he used the same staff to part the sea, or when he drew out his hand from under his armpit white as lily? Don’t all these ‘miracles’ appear to you as a juggler’s
show in a circus? How can God go about proving His Omnipotence and Greatness by such acrobatics which are, in essence, instances of the irrational and of the contravention of natural order? Don’t you say, in effect, that the strongest proof of God’s Greatness is the order, reason, control, and laws which govern throughout the universe without being violated?
– Your understanding and conception of miracles are erroneous. You see them as juggler’s tricks and irrational violations of law. The truth about them, however, is
something else. Allow me to use an illustration to clarify the matter for you.
If you were destined to travel three thousand years back in time and enter upon Pharaoh in that bygone age with a transistor radio the size of a matchbox in your hand which ‘sings and talks’ all on its own, wouldn’t he and his entire retinue be stupefied and damn the thing as a miracle, a work of magic, an irrational absurdity, or violation of all laws. We know now, however, that there are no sue}) things in the innocent radio set. What actually happens in the transistors is governed by and unfolds according to the laws of electronics. It is, in fact, quite reasonable. It would be more amazing if you were to enter upon the king of Babylon with a television set in your hand showing pictures from Rome; and the Assyrian king would certainly clap his hands in wonder if you turned a plastic disc before his eyes and it started to talk.
Indeed, history records that when some colonialists arrived in Africa in a plane landing in the jungle among a crowd of primitives, the naked negroes fell prostrate on their faces, beat their drums, and sacrificed offerings thinking that God
has descended from his heavens and that what had happened is a violation of all laws.
-Thus, we are never outside the pale of reason or of the ratipnal. What occurred in miracles was not an acrobatic show. The stupefaction of the primitive negroes was due to their ignorance of such laws as governed the flight of the plane. Your own wonder at Moses’s parting of the sea or turning the staff into a serpent, or at Jesus’s raising of the dead, or at Abraham’s harmless stay in fire are all of the same
order as the primitives’ amazement. You imagined that such miracles were irrational juggler’s tricks and violations of law, while, in fact, they all occurred in harmony with divine laws which overrule the laws we are familiar with. Hence, they represent species of order and of the rational, but ones which are above our understanding. By such miracles God is not demolishing order but giving us a glimpse of higher order and laws and of the workings of a Mind too vast for us to comprehend.
Followers of the Baha’i sect have fallen into the same error you committed when they rejected miracles thinking that their acceptance is a contempt and degradation of reason. They resorted, consequently, to rez,interpreting the Quran by inventing other meanings for its words than those apparent. Moses, according to this view, did not really part the sea with his staff but the staff mentioned is the Law which parted or
distinguished the true from the false. Similarly, his ‘spotlessly’ white hand is the symbol of benevolence; Jesus resurrected spirits not bodies and he opened minds not sightless eyes. In this way, those people played the trick of veering off the literal meanings of the Quran to allegorical and figurative interpretations and explanations whenever they met with anything they found inconceivable.
-They took that course of action because they misunderstood the nature of miracles believing them to be, as you also saw them, irrational violations of law and contraventions of order. As a matter of fact, we live now in an age in which miracles,
if they occurred, would no longer be found inconceivable. We have seen science leading us to the surface of the moon. If human science gave us all this power, surely divine knowledge can grant us infinitely more.
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you know all about Hogwarts, right? Well I feel the same way about stories in the bible
– My friend resumed his questioning: What about that ‘Chair of God’ which, you say, is vast enough to contain or comprehend the heavens and the earth? And what about ‘God’s Throne’ which, according to your description, is ‘carried by eight’?
– Your own mind, my friend, an insignificant human as you are in comparison to the universe, can comprehend the heavens and the earth. How can you, then, imagine that God’s Chair will be incapable of containing them? The earth, the sun, the planets, the stars, and the galaxies are ‘carried’ in
space by God’s Power; how can you find it strange, therefore, that the Throne is described as being ‘carried’.
– What is, then, the Chair and the Throne?
– Tell me what the electron is and then I shall tell you what the Chair is. Tell me what is electricity, what is gravity, what is time? In fact, you are not entitled to ask me about the nature of God’s Chair or Throne because you do not know the essence of any single thing. The world is full of mysteries and those two belong to them.
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My friend said with a note of joyous truimph: We may disagree widely and argue for a long time. It is certain, however, that we come off the better from our fight with you. We won the happiness of this world while you emerge only with a few delusions in your heads. What is the use of talking when we have won the lion’s share of this world’s pleasures. We have enjoyed parties to the small hours, drinking, beautiful women, luxurious living and all sorts of pleasures untarnished by the taboos of the forbidden or haram. You, for your part, have only got your fasting, prayers, remembranec of God, and the fear of Reckoning. Who do you think is the real winner?
– I am ready to concede that victory to you, if you have really gained your happiness as you say. If, however, we patiently consider the truth of the matter together, we will find that the picture you draw of happiness- midnight parties, drinking, pleasures unmolested by fear of the prohibition taboo – is truly misery in essence. How is that? Such life is, in truth, slavery to insatiable appetites that are no sooner satisfied than hunger again for more, and if torpor and sluggishness.
Are the embraces of women the right place to find lasting happiness in? We know that affections fluctuate, that passion is volatile, and that beautiful women are seduced by mere words of praise. The stories of lovers tell only of unhappiness which is exacerbated and crowned with greater disappointments if the infatuation ends in marriage. For in that latter estate each party will miss in the other the desired perfections he imagined were there. After the lust is slaked and the desire abates each will come to see the other’s defects blown large as if through a magnifying glass.
What about great wealth? It is merely another form of slavery. The wealthy, in fact, are put in the service of their riches; they are enslaved in the process of aggrandizing, collecting, and guarding them thus becoming their servants in
a reversal of the normal, or at least expected, course of events. What about power and glory? Aren’t they, in essence, pitfalls leading to arrogance and tyranny. The person in power is like a rider on a lion: today he has the reins in his hand but tomorrow he is eaten by the beast that carries him. And are wine, drugs, gambling, lechery, and secret sex umhampered by fear of the unlawful, aspects of happiness?
They are, in truth, but forms of escape from mind, from conscience, from the spirit’s yearning and human responsibility by drowning oneself in the fire of lust and the rabidness of appetites. Is this really a higher style of life or a deterioration back to the hording of apes and the copulation of animals?
-the unbelievers enjoy their life; but this joy is like that of animals. Is it really a form of happiness? This life of lust is only a series of stimulated desires, tensions, consuming hunger, and gorging surfeit. It has no relation whatsoever to true happiness which can only be attained in a state of psychic peace and relief and of spiritual liberation from all kinds of slavery. In its final definition true happiness is a state of peace between man and his soul, the others, and God. This reconciliation, peace, and sense of internal quietude can only be reached through a certian expenditure of effort when man devotes his strength, wealth, and health to the service of others, when he lives in intention and deed a life of goodness and charity, and when his relationship with God is deepened by prayer and reverence reciprocated from the Divine by Help, Light, and Tranquility.
-I looked round me and found that death and dust are absurd and meaningless jests. I saw the universe in which I live precisely and accurately governed with no room for aberration or disorder. If my life was meaningless and destined for nothingness, asthe ‘absurdists’ imagine, why is it, then, that I weep, repent, or feel a burning yearning for truth and justice willing to sacrific my life and blood for such values. I saw the stars moving in their orbs by law; communities of insects talking; plants seeing, hearing, and feeling. I saw that animals have “ethics”; that the human brain, the wonder of wonders, contains more than ten thousand million nerve connections all. working at the same time in a miraculous perfection.
I read the Quran and found in my ears a resonance and rhythm unknown in familiar language. It staggered my mind. It delivers the conclusive word in everything that it touches upon: matters of state, morals, legislation, the universe, life, the self, and society; and that in spite of its being revealed more than one thousand four hundred years ago. The Quran accords with all that science discovered or invented although it was brought to the world by an illiterate bedouin from a backward nation which did not know the light of civilization
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My view? It never happened! I’m feeling remarkably charitable this morning so I’ll leave it at that.
“Suck up to me and be my bïtch or you don’t get into heaven.” It sounds more like domestic abuse.”Do what I say or I’ll beat you to death; but I love you baby <3″
If God has to burn us for eternity, we are indestructible; hell cannot do much harm.
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– Why should we pray? And to whom? I don’t see any point in your -prayers. Why all the various movements of the body, wouldn’t piety of the heart have been sufficient? The point and wisdom of prayers is that the false pride you dwell in be shattered the moment your forehead touches the dust and your heart and tongue join in saying ‘Exalted be-my All.Sublime God’. At this moment you will have finally realized your true position: you are the lower and He is the Supreme. You are dust walking on dust and He is a Being exalted over the seven firmaments. As for your question about the necessity of bodily movements and why wouldn’t heart-felt reverence be enough, let me ask in my turn: why was your body created in the first place? You are not satisfied with oral expressions of love but you desire to kiss and hug. You would mock anyone who is content with heart-felt generosity without giving out aid and money. God created the body so that it may expose what is hidden in your heart. What really fills your heart will overflow to your body. If your piety is sincere, it will show on your body making you kneel and prostrate yourself. If false, it will not go beyond your tongue.
which he can demolish my arguments:– What would happen if all your expectations arc erroneous and you end up, after a long life I hope, in dusty death that has nothing beyond it? I would not have lost anything ! I would certainly have enjoyed as full, happy, and eventful a life as can be. It is you, however, who will lose much if my beliefs are right and my expectations come true. I assure you, my friend, that they are true and that you will have a tremendous surprise.
My opinion?Like all your “dialogues” it never happened!
Why you keep posting this old boIIocks? What are you trying to achieve with these silly stories?
Perhaps you could head over to eBay to sell your nonsense or Alibaba even 😉
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Fyi look up Pascal’s wager. It is ridiculous argument for believing in God and has been refuted.
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You claim that there is no proof that prayer works, and of course you’re right. There’s no proof that prayer works, anymore than there is any proof that I love my wife or you are motivated by honest motives.
We cannot see into each other’s heart. So there is no way to prove what is there. We can report what we experience, but the other is always free to discount it or just resort to some conjecture to explain it away, witness all the explanations trying to show that near death experiences are not real, when nobody can possibly know. Proof is elusive and certitude is an illusion. However, if it works for anyone, then I say, Whatever gets you through the night is just what you need to doHowever, when a person tries to shake up others’ convictions, is this not just a show of insecurity? I suspect it is.
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