Are you an atheist? (1 Viewer)

[Mike375]

Please let us know where the "new" factor appears in this discussion.

Doc,

There has been nothing new since the thread started and ditto for similar threads on other forums all over the world

Where this thread is different is it is contained in one thread as opposed fresh breakouts of the subject on other forums.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Where this thread is different is it is contained in one thread as opposed fresh breakouts of the subject on other forums

Yes, computer programmers and designers can sometimes be highly focused, one might venture to say "single-threaded" in their approach to other things. Why not this one?

But you yourself agreed nothing new was offered. Why, then, should you castigate Galaxiom for not changing his mind?

 

[Galaxiom]

You appear to be the same.

The appearance of something is the product of two factors. The objective reality and the subjective perspective. I suggest the problem is your perception. I am fully open to any form of interpretation of reality that is entirely coherent with all observations.

Aziz rasul has repeatedly purported that the Qur'an is backed by science and I have previously demonstrated on this thread that the Qur'an in conflict with observed reality. There is ample evidence in his posts that every thought is underpinned by an unwavering belief in the divinity of the Qur'an.

You should be more respectful of other people's views on this subject and for the simple reason neither side can prove anything.

I have already proved aziz rasul's claims to be wrong both this thread and the Evolution thread.

The world has gone on for too long quietly respecting the right of people to arrogantly hold the bigoted prejudices promoted by all the Abrahamic traditions.

 

[aziz rasul]

Your every consideration starts with this delusion and infects every conclusion that you make.

Your brain is incapable of considering any other possibility.

I have previously debunked your claim that the Qur'an is supported by science. You never engage in debate but simply go away for a while then come back with exactly the same nonsense again.

Why are you so intolerant of my views? Am I not allowed to express my opinion of God’s existence? Read the title of the thread. That’s what the discussion is about. If God exists, and I know He does, of course I am going to repeat myself on this, what else would you expect? You are also consistent in your disbelief. I have given supportive Qur’an verses as proof as I go along. I don’t blindly accept the existence of God in a vacuum. If you don’t agree with the verses, fine. As the Qur’an says

6.1 [All] praise is [due] to Allaah, who created the heavens and the earth and made the darkness and the light. Then those who disbelieve equate [others] with their Lord.
6.2 It is He who created you from clay and then decreed a term and a specified time [known] to Him; then [still] you are in dispute.
6.3 And He is Allaah, [the only deity] in the heavens and the earth. He knows your secret and what you make public, and He knows that which you earn.
6.4 And no sign comes to them from the signs of their Lord except that they turn away therefrom.
6.5 For they had denied the truth when it came to them, but there is going to reach them the news of what they used to ridicule.

I don’t have the luxury of spending full time on this topic that is why I come back when the spirit moves me. There is no hidden agenda on my part. I think I have engaged in the discussion wherever possible. In fact in your responses you haven’t even questioned the Qur’anic verses 23:13-14 in post 5871. If you want a debate, let’s have a genuine debate rather than being upset about my belief in God which is unshakable. If you sincerely don’t believe in God, then why worry about my belief. I am more than comfortable in my belief in God. Your criticism and frustrations in this isn’t going to change anything. What you consider as being ‘nonsense’ is awe inspiring for me.

But...

2. The Qur'an exists because it was written by the hand of a man,

But the verses came from God. What man 1400 years ago could know about a clinging clot? Here are the very first two verses of the Qur’an that were revealed given in chapter 96 (Sūra al-ʿalaq (The Clot))

96.1 Recite in the name of your Lord who created –
92.2 Created man from a clinging clot.

Your complaint about Galaxiom is made while overlooking the hard fact: we are faced with the absence of anything new in this argument. Having something new is one of the few ways of discarding or bypassing historical decisions. Please let us know where the "new" factor appears in this discussion.

I have entered some new stuff over my last 10 posts or so but neither you nor Galaxiom have engaged in it.

 

[aziz rasul]

I have already proved aziz rasul's claims to be wrong both this thread and the Evolution thread.

Have you? That's news to me.

 

[Frothingslosh]

Have you? That's news to me.

Refusal to accept proven facts does not make the facts wrong; instead it simply proves that you're irrational.

Your personal belief is that the Qu'ran is infallible because the Qu'ran tells you it's infallible. That is a logical fallacy, no matter how much you refuse to accept that, and it's no more rational than the assumption that thunder curdles milk.

 

[aziz rasul]

Refusal to accept proven facts does not make the facts wrong; instead it simply proves that you're irrational.

In post 5871 I have shown a proven fact regarding human reproduction and shown Qur’anic verses that agrees with this. How is this irrational?

Last year I was speaking to a retired English teacher who was a atheist and explained the medical process of human reproduction and asked her if she agreed to which she replied Yes. As soon as I told her about the Qur’anic verse, she replied that she didn’t agree to the initial medical process and said she would have to look into it. That to me is irrational.

Your personal belief is that the Qu'ran is infallible because the Qu'ran tells you it's infallible.

Wrong. The Qur’an is infallible because it has shown many times that some of the verses are in compliance with provable science which were unknown when the Qur’an was revealed. No matter how much you refuse to accept that, the truth remains in black and white and you can’t get rid of it. You can deny it but it still remains.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

aziz rasul - as you know, I very FIRMLY believe that it is your right to believe as you do, and I will repeat that now.

As I have also previously stated, when you offer your proofs, we get to review and comment on them. This is, in fact, the basis of modern science since the Renaissance period - peer review of statements and presentations so that others can repeat the tests and confirm or contradict the findings. It is unfortunate that this discussion sometimes seems to be personally directed at you, but there is a fine distinction that is easy to miss and hard to overcome. My rejection of your argument is not intended as a personal affront (and I'm sure that most of us would not find you to be an otherwise unreasonable person). I simply disagree with your interpretation of those passages. I am sad to see that some members are less respectful, but that is on them.

You see the correlation between the Qur'anic verses regarding clinging clots and the way that the blastocyst adheres to the surface of the womb. We atheists and skeptics who look at your words differ from you in one respect. We don't fervently wish for God or Allah (pbuh) to exist. Therefore we have no bias that pushes us to "stretch" our interpretation of those words to match proven reality. I hope you will believe me when I say that to us your interpretation seems to be a big, torturous stretch.

I personally see it as an example of confirmation bias. You really WANT it to be this way, so you SEE it this way as a tenet of your faith. I cannot give you a parallel case from your own cultural history, but I can point out that the Roman Catholic Church condemned Galileo because he dared to suggest that the universe didn't revolve around the Earth. We know now (and so does the RCC) that Galileo's observations were correct and it was (in this case) anti-confirmation bias on the part of the RCC. So letting faith get in the way of scientific observation and struggling to then make observations fit your preconceived ideas? Common to MAN. Not to Islamic Man or Catholic Man. Common to all men. Therefore I don't condemn you for your belief. I see you as human and seeking answers that you believe you have found in your scriptures. I, too, once sought answers in the Bible, but after months of seeking, I realized that nothing was there.

As to how earlier cultures would know about implantation of the blastocyst, they were as curious then as we are now, and at least some scholars could easily have taken a pregnant woman who died of injury, done an autopsy, and noted the presence of that "clinging clot" from your passages. Can you deny this possibility? We know, for example, that ancient Egyptians performed cranial surgery and several other ambitious procedures on people. If they knew that much about the head, do you think they might have known things about women's reproductive structures?

I actually DID review your passages when you offered them and found that they simply did not parallel reality very well. My thought is this: If, as you say, the Qur'an is divinely inspired, do you think Allah (pbuh) might have at least inspired the authors to get it right?

 

[aziz rasul]

Thanks for at least responding and debating the recent points I made.

I hope you will believe me when I say that to us your interpretation seems to be a big, torturous stretch.

The initial 3 stages of reproduction i.e. only a drop of sperm is required, the drop of sperm entering the egg and becoming a clot then the clot implanting is in accurate accordance with what the Qur’an is saying and moreover the verse follows the correct sequence by which this happens. To me there appears to be no stretch required, but that’s my opinion. Not only that coupled with other scientific facts which I have given already in this thread, it is obvious to me that the Qur’an could not have been written by man 14 centuries ago.

When the RCC disagreed with Galileo's observations it was because they had no knowledge or understanding of this and were blindly following their scripture come what may, hence not the same thing. I personally don’t blindly follow the Qur’an but ponder and reflect closely with what it says to me. Non-believers of old did not do this. They simply ignored the truth when it was presented to them.

47:24 Then do they not reflect upon the Qur'an, or are there locks upon [their] hearts?

As to how earlier cultures would know about implantation of the blastocyst, they were as curious then as we are now, and at least some scholars could easily have taken a pregnant woman who died of injury, done an autopsy, and noted the presence of that "clinging clot" from your passages. Can you deny this possibility? We know, for example, that ancient Egyptians performed cranial surgery and several other ambitious procedures on people. If they knew that much about the head, do you think they might have known things about women's reproductive structures?

But how would they know that only a drop of sperm would be required?
How would they know that it is the father who determines the gender of the child and not the mother as was prevalent at the time (53:45-6 And He (Allaah) creates pairs, male and female, from semen emitted.), this is the opposite of bias as the Qur’an went directly opposite to the views held at the time.
Man and woman are mentioned 23 times each in the Qur’an and there are 23 pairs of chromosomes in men and women.
How would they know that the universe began from a tiny particle and rent asunder (21:30), etc. etc.
How come the frequency by which the words water and earth would match exactly to the percentage of water and earth on the planet.
These and other things cannot have been known at the time.
As I said, when you take the cumulative scientific based verses, the conclusion for me is obvious. Let me know what you think? Happy to debate.

I, too, once sought answers in the Bible, but after months of seeking, I realized that nothing was there.

If we had the original pristine Torah and Injil then you may not have had any problems. But since the Torah has been corrupted and the Injil lost, we only have the 10 commandments and the Qur’an intact to study.

I actually DID review your passages when you offered them and found that they simply did not parallel reality very well. My thought is this: If, as you say, the Qur'an is divinely inspired, do you think Allah (pbuh) might have at least inspired the authors to get it right?

But I don’t see where the Qur’anic passages are wrong.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

aziz -

How would they know that the universe began from a tiny particle and rent asunder (21:30), etc. etc.

Various religions use a similar concept. It is no coincidence that the Qur'an echoes some earlier beliefs.

How come the frequency by which the words water and earth would match exactly to the percentage of water and earth on the planet.

This is an example of a stretch for confirmation bias.

But how would they know that only a drop of sperm would be required?

Don't want to burst anyone's bubble, and if you need to brag, do so - but most of the time guys only EMIT a few drops. I at least will admit that I'm not like a bottle of milk. I don't come in quarts.

How would they know that it is the father who determines the gender of the child and not the mother as was prevalent at the time (53:45-6 And He (Allaah) creates pairs, male and female, from semen emitted.),

No, this was known many centuries before that. Consider the temple eunuchs or the harem eunuchs. It was known from pre-Biblical times that the eunuchs could not emit sperm and therefore would not impregnate the women of the harem. That is why they became the guards. If you'll pardon the somewhat whimsical comparison, they decided to let the toothless foxes guard the hen house. And that means they knew it was the men who were responsible for impregnation. This knowledge precedes the Qur'an and therefore I cannot be amazed by its inclusion in any way.

 

[aziz rasul]

Various religions use a similar concept. It is no coincidence that the Qur'an echoes some earlier beliefs.

Can you provide evidence that this was known more than 14 centuries ago?

This is an example of a stretch for confirmation bias.

The point is that if you take all the verses regarding creation with provable science and they match, you can’t say that. With 1 or 2 verses, you could. knowledge of science among the Arabs 14 centuries ago was very limited. To randomly pick and choose the correct science and get them all right, is a S T R E T C H.

Don't want to burst anyone's bubble, and if you need to brag, do so - but most of the time guys only EMIT a few drops. I at least will admit that I'm not like a bottle of milk. I don't come in quarts.

What the verse is saying, is that whatever amount you emit it is a small portion of that that you require and not the whole amount. It is relative.

No, this was known many centuries before that. Consider the temple eunuchs or the harem eunuchs. It was known from pre-Biblical times that the eunuchs could not emit sperm and therefore would not impregnate the women of the harem. That is why they became the guards. If you'll pardon the somewhat whimsical comparison, they decided to let the toothless foxes guard the hen house. And that means they knew it was the men who were responsible for impregnation. This knowledge precedes the Qur'an and therefore I cannot be amazed by its inclusion in any way.

I wasn’t talking about impregnation per say but that the gender of the child is determined by the father and not the mother. Even today in some backward countries, the mother is blamed if she gives birth to a child that the father or others didn’t want. Why would anyone write that the father is responsible against a tide of opinion that was opposite?

 

[Galaxiom]

The point is that if you take all the verses regarding creation with provable science and they match, you can’t say that. With 1 or 2 verses, you could. knowledge of science among the Arabs 14 centuries ago was very limited. To randomly pick and choose the correct science and get them all right, is a S T R E T C H.

It would be remarkable if it were true but it simply isn't so. You perceive them as matching on the slightest resemblance because you are programmed to accept that the Qur'an is infallible and cannot contemplate any other possibility.

For example, where does science concur with the Quran regarding the seven heavens above and the seven Earths below?

"Allah raised up the heavens and supported them". This shows very much a concept of the universe based on Earth as the foundation and no working concept of gravity. Even so far as a flat Earth mentality.

According to Qur'an, the Earth is pegged down with mountains. The reality is quite the opposite. The mountains are pushing up from under the surface.

Qur'an wrong, game over.

 

[aziz rasul]

It would be remarkable if it were true but it simply isn't so. You perceive them as matching on the slightest resemblance because you are programmed to accept that the Qur'an is infallible and cannot contemplate any other possibility.

The resemblance is much more than slight especially when all the verses are taken together. I can’t imagine anyone sitting in the middle of the desert and happening to get all the correct facts of creation enter the Qur’an but missing all the wrong stuff.

The number seven in the Qur’an is a symbolic way of saying ‘many’. Over the past couple of decades we have discovered many Earth like planets.

55:7 And the heaven He raised and imposed the balance.

It depends on what the ‘balance’ means here.

Mountains rest on immense strata that may be ten to fifteen times as deep as the portion remaining on the surface of the earth. There also exist mountains rising from the bottom of seas that also possess substratum. These substrata support the visible portion of the mountains in accordance with the Archimedean principle. These substrata were unknown until a few centuries back, let alone during the time of the Prophet. The simile in the Quran is once again a miraculous statement. A simple internet search would have told you this, which is what I did.

Qur'an will always be right. God is Great.

3:56 And as for those who disbelieved, I will punish them with a severe punishment in this world and the Hereafter, and they will have no helpers.”
3:57 But as for those who believed and did righteous deeds, He will give them in full their rewards, and God does not like the wrongdoers.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Galaxiom and I have attempted to show you that you are allowing your religious bias to color your viewpoint. I repeat this question, which is actually extensible to ANY Holy Book that makes testable claims that contradict the real world.

If the book was divinely inspired, don't you think the presumed originator of the inspiration would at least have gotten it right?

How would they know that the universe began from a tiny particle and rent asunder (21:30), etc. etc.

Various religions use a similar concept. It is no coincidence that the Qur'an echoes some earlier beliefs.

Regarding creation myths, look up any of these as very old cultures with the creation myth.

Cheonjiwang Bonpuri = Korean

Enûma Eliš = Babylonian

Ancient Greek started with the worlds as a uniform place of chaos

Kumulipo = Hawaiian (remember, before they were discovered, they were an isolated island nation way out in the middle of the Pacific)

Among the Mande people of Mali, they used a Seed concept.

Pangu = chinese, using the "cosmic egg" concept.

The Serer people of Senegal had a "mythical egg" concept.

The Tungusic people of Siberia had a "start from chaos" mythos though for them the world was all water, no land.

Unkulunkulu - from the Zulu people, which have a creator who created everything.

Väinämöinen, from the Finland Kaleval, is another "cosmic egg" origin.

Viracocha - is an Incan creator who started from nothing and created everything.

Ancient Egypt had a "creation from the void" mythos.

It is a bit harder to research the actual time in history at which various cultures knew that reproduction was based on sperm-and-egg. I'll have to say I'm working on that one.

 

[aziz rasul]

We know from people like Alexander Friedmann, George Henri Lemaitre and Edwin Hubble to name a few that the universe began from a tiny particle (singularity) which blew apart. Do any of your previous civilisations say these two things in particular? I don't think I have ever heard that the people copied the creation story from of old.

Also just to throw this out there, although this has not been proven yet so time will tell, some scientists like Stephen Hawkings have said that the universe will eventually come to an end by collapsing (referred as the Big Crunch) and eventually becoming a singularity which will then re-explode, hence the occurrence of a new universe. Stephen Hawkings has also said that we are living through a series of big bangs or universes.

The Day when We will fold the heaven like the folding of a [written] sheet for the records. As We began the first creation, We will repeat it. [That is] a promise binding upon Us. Indeed, We will do it. 21:104

Also as I keep saying keep in mind that I am considering all the facts and my conclusion is to get all the science right and miss out the incorrect stuff is stretching coincidence tooooo far.

 

[aziz rasul]

Here are some creation stories of old that weren’t selected and placed in the Qur’an. Comparing with is below, which I have obviously copied and pasted from a web site, shows there were no creation stories that match what actually happened and what is in Qur’an 21:30.

India

The creation myths of India, in keeping with the complexities of Hinduism, range from familiar themes such as dismembered giants and magical eggs to the most delicately expressed doubts as to the possibility of knowledge on such a matter.

In an early story Purusha is a primal man sacrificed by the gods as the act of creation. The sky comes from his head, the earth from his feet, the sun from his eye and the moon from his mind. The four castes of Hindu society also derive from his body - see the Caste system). The birds and animals come from the fat which drips from him during the sacrifice.

A much later Indian story involves the god Brahma. Beginning from nothing, he goes through a lengthy process. First he creates, by thought alone, the waters. In them he deposits his seed, which grows into a golden egg. He himself is born in the egg. After a year, again by thought alone, he splits the egg in two. The halves become, in the usual way, heaven and earth.

But Indian philosophy also produces a less literal response to these eternal mysteries. One of the hymns in the Rigveda speculates on various cosmic forces which might have fashioned the universe. It concludes with a passage of most Sophisticated scepticism, beginning: 'But, after all, who knows, and who can say whence it all came, and how creation happened.'

Greece

The Greeks acquire a vague attachment to a great many different gods during their gradual movement, as a group of Indo-European tribes, into the region of modern Greece. The result is an extremely complex account of how everything began, with deities jostling for a role. Zeus, ruler of the sky, eventually emerges as the chieftain of the gods. It is likely that he is the original god whom the Greeks brought with them. But in the first Greek account of the beginning of the universe, written down by Hesiod in about 800 BC, Zeus arrives late on the scene.

The story begins, like so many others, with a gaping emptiness, Chaos. Within this there emerges Gaea, the earth.

Gaea gives birth to a son, Uranus, who is the sky. The world now exists, earth and heaven, and together Gaea and Uranus provide it with a population, their children. First Gaea produces the Titans, heroic figures of both sexes, but her next offspring are less satisfactory; the Cyclops, with only one eye in the middle of their foreheads, are followed by unmistakable monsters with a profusion of heads and arms. Uranus, appalled by his offspring, shuts them all up in the depths of the earth.

Gaea's maternal instincts are offended. She persuades the youngest Titan, Cronus, to attack his father. He surprises him in his sleep and with a sharp sickle cuts off his genitals, which he throws into the sea.

Cronus frees his brothers and sisters from their dungeon, and together they continue to populate the world. But an inability to get on with their offspring characterizes the males of this clan. Cronus, who has six children with his sister Rhea, eats each of them as soon as it is born.

Once again maternal instincts intervene. To save her youngest child, Rhea wraps a stone in swaddling clothes. Cronus swallows the bundle and Rhea sends the baby to foster parents. He is Zeus. As an adult he overwhelms his father, defeats all the other Titans in a great war, and then settles upon Mount Olympus to preside over a world which has at last achieved a certain calm.

During this, imperceptibly, mankind has arrived on earth - it is not clear how. But men are certainly there, because a free-thinking Titan, Prometheus, smuggles them the valuable gift of fire. These first men are not considered direct ancestors by most Greeks, and there are several versions of how the present race of humans originated.

One is that Zeus, exasperated by Prometheus, sends a flood to drown mankind. Two humans escape in an ark. When the flood has subsided, the oracle at Delphi tells these two to cast behind them the bones of their first ancestor. That ancestor, they reason, is Gaea, the earth. They throw stones over their shoulders, and from each stone a human being is created.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

All of your examples that you deny as being parallel to the Qur'an have the same basic concept - out of emptiness emerges order, by any means consistent with the belief of the storyteller. Whether it is created by fiat or by hatching a cosmic egg or by growing a cosmic seed or by exploding a speck of cosmic dust, they are all the same.

Starting from chaos, some anthropomorphized being creates the universe and the worlds in it and the stars and the animals and plants and ... you get the idea. All the same. And all attempting to make some man-like but divine being the instigator.

To MY mind, the commonality occurred because people didn't know about the quantum universe based on probability. They therefore couldn't understand that a quantum universe does not NEED strict causality for things to happen. Therefore, there is no NEED for a "first cause."

All ancient or modern religions (except Buddhism) require a causative agent. Buddhism is the except that recognizes a basic fact: Sometimes a question has no meaning because of its implications. So while the question can situationally have meaning, sometimes asking "Why" is without meaning. The trick is to know the difference.

To me, folks who use ANY VARIANT of "God works in mysterious ways" or "We are not meant to know the mind of Allah" or equivalent terms has merely placed an interposing figure in front of the REAL response - "We don't know why it happens either." All you do when you use that phrase is couch the answer in mysticism that still doesn't answer the question. And that is where we are with the answers provided by the Bible, the Qur'an, and pick your other favorite holy books.

We laugh at the primitive creation myths of ancient Greece, China, Korea, India, Babylon, the cultures native to North America and South America, and Africa. But somehow we have forgotten to laugh at the primitive creation myths from Islam or Christianity. And PLEASE let's not get started on Scientology. I just had lunch, and hysterical laughter makes me want to hurl.

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

Regarding the Bible I have always been fascinated as to how accurate it's description of the formation of the universe is. I mean the words "Let There Be Light" made even more impressive if you read the short story "The last Question" by Isaac Asimov http://multivax.com/last_question.html ... The accuracy describing the creatures of the sea crawling out onto the land, and many other things which point at more knowledge than you would expect people to have many thousands of years ago. Some people suggest alien visiting the Earth, some suggest that the Earth was inhabited by previous Civilizations which no longer exist. I myself wonder if it's just the simpler explanation of there being an Intellect equivalent to Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton in Every Generation or so. Someone with the massive intellectual capability to suss out the facts from the the limited information available. It is obvious that the various religious books draw their stories from the stories that came before, the written word, the stories narrated and passed down word of mouth through generation to generation. The Old adage there's nothing new Under the Sun is so true when applied to Religious text, which are basically just a rehash of existing texts, stories, myths and legends.

 

[Galaxiom]

Regarding the Bible I have always been fascinated as to how accurate it's description of the formation of the universe is. I mean the words "Let There Be Light" made even more impressive if you read the short story "The last Question" by Isaac Asimov http://multivax.com/last_question.html ... The accuracy describing the creatures of the sea crawling out onto the land, and many other things which point at more knowledge than you would expect people to have many thousands of years ago.

The Biblical creation myth has flowering plants appearing before the fish in the ocean. This is reverse to the sequence in the fossil record.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Asimov's "The Last Question" is a must-read for any programmer or science-fiction fan.