Editorial Comment:
As Editor of the Month of TF USA, I have to ask all Muslim Monotheistic Believers to read this comment by Babar Mustafa and let us (Editorial Board) know which statement/s has caused you emotional pain. That statement will be deleted from this comment using Editorial Privileges.
It can be done without getting permission from the writer of the comment Babar Mustafa. You have to write to Editors@ThinkersForumUSABlog.Org
Muslim Monotheistic Believers:
TF USA was initiated by Muslim Believers 5 years ago.
First session of TF USA was in November, 2009. Now TF USA is a registered non-Profit organization supervised by 9 Board of Directors and 6 members of Editorial Board.
TF USA Affiliates include, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Skeptics, Agnostics, Atheists and non-believers.
The purpose of TF USA is to provide an unbiased, fair, balanced intellectual environment where affiliates can participate in intellectual interactions.
Website says on the first page:
“TO ACQUIRE INTELLECTUAL EMPWOERMENT THROUGH EXCHANGE OF IDEAS FOR BETTERMENT OF SELF AND SOCIETY AT LARGE”.
Editorial Board is restricted by strict policy guidelines to post or not post a comment or any article.
Editorial Board is not a monolithic group of people. We disagree with each other all the time. But majority decision prevails. We debate on lot of issues but once the vote is taken we have to abide by majority decision.
This procedure is like any other democratic institution.
nSalik (Noor Salik)
TF editors:
As a “Muslim Monotheistic Believer”, I am writing to voice my strong objection to any attempts to sanitize/delete any posts that allegedly cause Muslims “emotional pain”. The rabid atheist polemic that has become the norm on this forum should continue in its unadulterated form.
One of the goals of this forum should be to provide it’s readers accurate and unvarnished information of how the world actually is.
It has become the reigning orthodoxy in certain circles that believers in general and Muslims in particular have a near-monopoly on close-mindedness and intolerance for dissenting opinions. Furthermore, atheists like to style themselves as paragons of unbiased reason, heroically throwing off the intellectual shackles of their youth and boldly following the evidence wherever it leads.
The posts of this forum expose the utter vacuousness of such assertions. The Muslims on this forum have been unfailingly polite in making their points, and have universally refrained from descending into personal attacks.
The posts of this forum’s 3 resident atheists have been quite different. They obsessively rush to opine on any topic even remotely connected to religion and employ incendiary and inflammatory language with the express purpose of causing offense. Furthermore, they have repeatedly engaged in venomous personal attacks on individual believing members on this forum.
In fact, the TF editors have been sanitizing the atheist contributors to this forum for some time now. For example, one of the 3 resident atheists recently described the Prophet as a “bat-blind illiterate” in a post that was circulated via email. However, in the internet version of this post, this was changed to “illiterate”. Another not long ago launched a bilious screed against Mirza Ashraf and all the other brain-dead believers on this forum before officially announcing he would no longer grace the idiots on this forum with his esteemed presence. (He quietly returned several months later). All of this was censored and kept from the TF members.
Personally, I encourage the 3 TF atheists to continue their current manner of contributing. I enjoy the unwarranted arrogance, the sneering contempt, the earnest attempts at proselytizing (atheist dawah if you will), the decontextualized and anachronistic arguments, the laughably biased and selective presentation of evidence, the superficial pseudo-intellectualism, the sycophantic fawning over each other’s posts, all of it.
Besides, as a Muslim there is an amusing irony in atheists actually validating so many Quranic verses pertaining to the attitudes of nonbelievers and the type of arguments they often make.
As for Muslims whose tender feelings are getting hurt, I would advise them to become more thick-skinned. Pressuring the editors to censor atheists’ posts just provides extra fuel to the narrative that Islam opposes free speech.
Besides, Muslims should expect to be verbally abused, as the following verse from the Quran clearly illustrates…
And you will surely hear from those who were given the Scripture before you and from those who associate others with Allah much abuse. But if you are patient and fear Allah – indeed, that is of the matters [worthy] of determination. (portion of 3:186)
Sincerely,
A.A.
A.A writes in his comment.
<<<<<<>>>>>>>>
Here is a question for A.A.
“How the world actually is” can be correctly understood through ‘scientific process’ or ‘revelationary process’?
Scientific process is Cosmology, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics etc.
Revelation Process is Quraan, Hadith, Old Testament, New Testament, Upnashids – Hindu scriptures, Buddhist scriptures etc.
In case of a conflict between Scientific Process and Revelation Process which one should be accepted?
Marwan
Mr. Majzoob:
I really do not want to get into a detailed discussion on matters such as these on this particular thread, which I was hoping would center solely on the poor behavior of some of the most prolific contributors to this forum.
However, since you asked, I feel compelled to write a short response. I believe science is a tool like any other tool. So for example, a knife is quite useful for cutting up vegetables or stabbing people, but utterly useless when you want to hammer a nail or paint a wall.
In a similar vein, science is spectacularly useful in it’s delineated domains, but utterly useless in many others. Science certainly has nothing to say about the ethics of internet trolling and which groups do it more often, which was the topic I was referring to when I wrote that “How the world actually is” phrase.
As an aside, science also does not, can not, and will never offer even the slightest insight as to why the laws of the universe are the specific laws that they are, how they are maintained, or why the laws and the things governed by these laws even exist. The fact that a large number of intelligent (and even more semi-intelligent) people claim otherwise is a reflection of their ideological commitments more than anything else. As you alluded to in your other post, attributing these things to a non-existent “Mother Nature” is an intellectual shell-game, where the person making the argument implicitly concedes that the existence and order of the universe requires an explanation, then claims that the “cause” they cited is just a figure of speech, and then hopes you are too dumb to realize that attributing something to another thing that does not even exist is completely incoherent.
In case of a conflict between Scientific Process and Revelation Process which one should be accepted?
If the matter is truly one where science can provide a definitive answer, then science should take precedence.
A.A.
Look who is talking. I quote
1.”The rabid atheist polemic that has become the norm on this forum should continue in its unadulterated form.” The rabid one here is also feeble of the mind, evidently.
2. “atheists like to style themselves as paragons of unbiased reason”. Yes certainly, disprove it. Or at least attempt to.Of course its not your cup of tea and its not on your resume.
3.”utter vacuousness of such assertions”. This remark fits AA himself as a glove, right ?
4. Muslims on this forum have been unfailingly polite in making their points, and have universally refrained from descending into personal attacks.”
Wow, never seen Denial of this magnitude. Moronity personified.
5.”unwarranted arrogance, the sneering contempt, the earnest attempts at proselytizing (atheist dawah if you will), the decontextualized and anachronistic arguments, the laughably biased and selective presentation of evidence, the superficial pseudo-intellectualism, the sycophantic fawning over each other’s posts, all of it” Never seen such gibberish babbling. Such writings call for institutionalizing without wasting a minute.
I have, in my time, seen a lot of blundering ignorance and blinding arrogance, but this specimen beats them all. Give him the cake.
TF Affiliates would be best served if they listened to the short lecture of Zafar Khizar which makes forceful comments on the kind of monotheists represented by AA in the following link.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=796380723737799&set=vb.515901875119020&type=2&theater
The editor of the month makes his views clear. The response by Mian Aslam is as expected. I am glad to see that the Thinkers Forum can provide both points of view for readers to respond.
A new comment on the post “” What is enlightenment?-An Islamic Perspective”
Author : Wequar Azeem
Mian Saheb is right. Where is the response to his comment about Mother
Nature’s one and only enforcement of her will, in contrast to the much
acclaimed Omniscient, Omnipresent and Omnipotent Creator who could not
make up His mind to choose one Messenger, once for all, adorned with
verifiable proof, and a one time Message, again once for all, like Mother
Nature,
Wequar Azeem has appreciatively endorsed Mian Aslam on Mother Nature.
I personally didn’t like the expression “Mother Nature”.
An appropriate description will be Universe and Laws of Nature or Universe and physical constants.
Here is a question for Mian Aslam and Wequar Azeem.
Who created Laws of Nature or Physical constants?
Does Universe need a creator?
Marwan Majzoob.
Nobody knows who created Universe, or, whether Universe was created at all, or it came into existence on its own. If it was created, the question will be who created the creator. All these questions are futile because there is no proof that Universe was in fact created by factor X to begin with.
This comment was e-mailed by Mr. Wequar Azeem and is copied/pasted by the editor. IT IS NOT A COMMENT BY SHOEB AMIN.
Mother Nature is a figure of speech.
Whether the Universe needed a creator or not is not known, as of now. If any one claims knowledge (Not just hot air imagination) that Universe was created by an specific entity, then that claim is unfounded, unsupported and not worth paying attention to.
By: Wequar Azeem
Mr. Azeem, you wrote:
Mother Nature is a figure of speech.
I see you went the “figure of speech” route; I figured you would. But earlier you wrote…
Where is the response to his comment about Mother Nature’s one and only enforcement of her will,
Do you routinely attribute things such as having a will and the ability to enforce that will to mere figures of speech? Do other figures of speech (It is raining cats and dogs, I have butterflies in my stomach) also have wills they can enforce?
Whether the Universe needed a creator or not is not known, as of now.
Big Bang cosmology clearly suggests otherwise, but I will concede the point for the sake of argument.
If any one claims knowledge (Not just hot air imagination) that Universe was created by an specific entity, then that claim is unfounded, unsupported and not worth paying attention to.
Okay, this conclusion flows from your premise, since it is not known whether or not the universe needed a creator. But so does another conclusion, which for some peculiar reason you failed to mention. Your conclusion can just as easily be restated as the following…
If any one claims knowledge (Not just hot air imagination) that Universe was NOT created by an specific entity, then THAT claim is ALSO unfounded, unsupported and not worth paying attention to.
It seems that in your zeal to refute theism, you have inadvertently refuted atheism as well! That is odd, considering that is basically all you ever post about. Anyway, I hope that TF members will take your advice to heart and pay no attention to any of your posts from now on.
One more thing. As far as I can tell, this Thinkers Forum is as filled with “autistic” “half-wits and baptized crazies” as it ever was. And the presence of these idiot believers is the EXPLICIT reason you officially left in the first place. So why have you returned? Surely someone as brilliant and erudite as yourself has better things to do?
A.A.
Va Alekum Assalam va Rahmatullah e va Barakaatuhoo !
Must remain polite and civil for pleasure of likely sleeper cells of ISIS and Da’ish. One cannot be too careful these days.
In order to take benefit of the Holy Quran, one has to first establish that Allah SWT is The creator of Universe (not just the puny little planet called Earth), to the exclusion of the Lord of Christians, who allegedly sired Jesus and sent him to preach His Commandments to mankind. Also to the exclusion of Brahma-Ishwar-Vishnu of Hindus, and Yahweh of the Jews and Ahura Mazda of Zoroastrians .Let’s not rattle out names of several other claimants of being the Supremo, and be content by dealing with the few named here. Once the credentials of Allah SWT are established with non-poetic, non-rhetoric, and non-mambo-jumbo blow hot blow cold litany, we can go on to accept the injunctions of Holy Quran as the own words of Allah SWT and accept them as divine and unquestionable. That will bring the debate to a screeching halt, wouldn’t it. Alas that has not been done by AA.
Mother Nature is not transcendental or mystical. Its empirical in all meanings of the term. Does the concept of Allah fall in that category ? In other words, there is no premise constructed to show or allude that Allah created Mother Nature.
What I see here is a couple of horses BEHIND the cart. And I say this because…
“Divine Will is not capricious and arbitrary.(Says who ? Have you established that ? ) It follows the natural laws created by God.(Again, says who…) The limited will of people also follows the divine laws; those who follow these laws will be happy, and those who transgress them will suffer. (What is proof of truth of this statement ?) Divine law instructs people to stay away from fire to save themselves from its harm.(Good to know, but what is the proof its word of Allah ?)
I have a suspicion that AA is too hypnotized and brain-sealed to even follow the thread of establishing first things first. The discussion is headed in the direction of “Murghi ki aik taaNg”. Unless he places some sensible argument, I will find it boring and a mismatch in the levels of logic and reasoning.
Mr. Aslam, thank you for your fabulous post. I was hoping you would start frothing at the keyboard and provide some corroboration for the validity of my accusations, but this was really too generous of you.
And Mr. Azeem, hearty thanks to you as well for providing some sycophantic fawning of your beloved Mian Saheb right on cue! You guys are so sweet to one another! My only disappointment is that the third member of the illustrious TF atheist triumvirate has not yet weighed in.
I noticed neither of you two even bothered to defend yourselves against my charges of obnoxious boorishness, I will take that as an admission of guilt. Instead you tried to change the topic to why there are different religions in the world! Exactly what does the world’s diversity of religious belief have to do with your classic trolling behavior?
Esteemed Mian Saheb, you did make one minor error in your post.
2. “atheists like to style themselves as paragons of unbiased reason”. Yes certainly, disprove it. Or at least attempt to.Of course its not your cup of tea and its not on your resume.
Actually, it IS my cup of tea to disprove atheists’ pretensions of unbiased reason. Not only that, an example of this IS on my resume. A few years ago, I had a run-in with an atheist whose excessive arrogance/ mediocre intellect made it quite easy for me to repeatedly rip apart his feeble arguments. The funniest part of the exchange was that this individual prattled on and on about empirical data without actually understanding what empiricism is! Can you even imagine? Fortunately, his outsized ego spared him from feeling any embarrassment.
I will post some of the edited (the entire thread was 23 pages long) highlights of that exchange for your viewing pleasure.
Yours truly,
Mr. Moronity Personified (a.k.a. Mr. Brainless Jellyfish)
P.S. More thanks for your latest post. Not only did you further lay bare your obsessive intolerance, as an added bonus you displayed the intellectual sloppiness that characterizes all of your posts. My advice to you for next time is that before you write things like “I have a suspicion that AA is too hypnotized and brain-sealed to even follow the thread of establishing first things first” and “Unless he places some sensible argument, I will find it boring and a mismatch in the levels of logic and reasoning”, you should at least ascertain if it was AA who wrote the post!
Thread from 2012….
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
All empirical data shows that both the unitary God Almighty and polytheist gods were conceptualised by men of greater intelligence. God(s) has had numerous names in different regions and different religions since different times in the history of mankind.
According to Islam, the earliest mention of the name of God is found in the Quran sura Baqar 2: “When your Lord said to the angels: ‘I am placing on the earth one that shall rule as My deputy,’ they replied: ‘Will You put there one that will do evil and shed blood, when we have for so long sung Your praises and sanctified Your Name?”
One could go on writing endlessly about the evolution of Belief Systems and why they had been felt as necessary by men of superior intelligence and leadership quality. The intention behind preaching their own thoughts as Words of God was not only to glorify their own position in many different ways, but also to enforce discipline and peace in the communities. The self-ordained Messengers did their best according to the knowledge available till their time. The later advancements in knowledge and scientific discoveries rendered many such words of God ill-conceived and clinically contra-factual. The belief systems were designed and codified to ensure morality, hygiene, physical and mental health, and above all, peaceful co-existence of both the strong and weak, by qualifying Gods of various denominations as Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent etc. The Strong and power-intoxicated was warned that the Omni God was forever watchful and will punish the culprit
for the bad deeds and reward the virtuous with divine blessings in the life after death. The one important thing sacrificed (Considered a small price to pay for the greater good of most) was the intellectual evolution and critical thinking, as those two were the Achille’s heals for the theorisation of the entire Belief-System. The punishment was death. If you questioned the Belief you must die. The infamous blasphemy laws were used to enforce the continuity of the belief system.
With evolution and advancement of critical thinking, the advanced Societies realised that education and seeking of knowledge and consistent probing of the Nature is more important than the God theory. Societies developed Civil Code and Penal Code to keep people on the peaceful path of co-existence. The concept of God(s) is under going slow demise through obsolescence. The only thing slowing it down is the draconian laws of blasphemy and social boycott at the hand of Believers of most denominations. In any case, the majority of believers are so by accident of birth. For example, a muslim born in muslim community is raised to believe in the parent’s belief system. The process of brain-washing starts with the first Azan voiced into the ears of the new-born and re-inforced several times a day by sermons, prayers, rituals of other arkaan-e-Deen throughout the entire life. Deviation from the Path is demonized as Sin and Irtidaad, punishable by slaughter. Its a
My way or High way deal. Without such drastic measures, the critical thinking and seeking of knowledge through empirical verification and validation, would have rendered all organised religions extinct long time ago.
Mian Aslam
Friday, June 15, 2012
Mian Aslam’s Comment on Mirza Sahibs’ Comment:
IMHO the concept of God and worship is deeply anchored in the awesomeness of the Fear of the overwhelming powers of the UNKNOWN. The very first audio-visual powers which presented themselves to mankind were the different manifestations of Nature, and hence they became the initial objects of worship and submission. Later, as time went by and the brain evolved and its capacity enhanced, the stretch of imagination created many more invisible models of the UNKNOWN. God was described in numerous ways like the proverbial blind men described the elephant. The process is still going on in societies where evolution is banned by religious injunctions and dogma. In the mean time the brain kept evolving and getting armed with logic and reasoning and the ongoing exploration of empirically established facts. Many educated and logical brains determined the UNKNOWABILITY of the source of the enormous ” Planned Existence in Eternal Motion of the Universe ” and its
countless contents, of which mankind is an infinitely small and infintely inconsequential part. Most advanced and truly educated brains have gone past the stage of tinkering with the ideas of a classic God or the classic concept of worship and keeping that God in good humor through sumission in a ritualistic fashion. ‘ God’ , ‘ worship ‘, ‘submission’ are concepts obsoleted by advanced societies.
Mian Aslam
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
We know for a fact that most Western societies, especially in western Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand as well as Koreas, China and Japan, have drifted away from organized religions. The residual remains of the religion in daily life of very few families are some mile-stone rituals at birth, marriage and funerals. The daily worship has long gone out of practice. In times of distress, people, by nature, hope against hope, which can be construed as prayer. Mostly done without words. It is seldom verbalized in specific texts as compliant Muslims do. It would quite a stretch to call it worship.
What does Mr. Azeem have to say on this?
Mian Aslam
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
I completely agree with views expressed by Mr Waqar Azeem. Worship is a down-stream product of God-creation. It is not an instinct inherent to humans by birth.
Mian Aslam
Friday, June 22, 2012
Mr Nisar stated the obvious and presented the most common i.e. garden variety of belief in God (Allah) held by the monotheists. What was the purpose of his comment?
Mian Aslam
Sunday, June 24, 2012
It is said that a man open to ideas and looking for empirical verification of those ideas is like a man finding his way forward with a natural eye-sight, whereas a person holding firm a BELIEF is like a blind man groping his ways forward with the help of his/her BELIEF as the white cane or a seeing dog. There are billions of cerebrally blind persons of FAITH and they are quite adjusted with their life of blind brain or suspended intellect. One can be intellectually bold and honest and call a spade a spade, or be diplomatic and extra-sensitive and call them people of BELIEF OR FAITH.
Mian Aslam
Monday, June 25, 2012
Aziz (AA)
I initially had no inclination to offer a post on this topic as most people’s opinions are already set with regards to these types of issues. However, once it became clear that calls to respect the opinions of others had fallen on deaf ears, I felt compelled to comment. And seeing as Mr. Aslam feels it is important to “call a spade a spade”, I figured I would follow in his esteemed path.
The very first sentence in Mr. Aslam’s comments is as follows:
All empirical data shows that both the unitary God Almighty and polytheist gods were conceptualized by men of greater intelligence.
Empirical data is that which is obtained either by direct observation or via controlled experimentation. Is Mr. Aslam suggesting that scientists have succeeded in observing a creation myth germinate in a lab? The overwhelming majority of deities we know of today were conceptualized thousands of years ago. Were these events observed and diligently recorded by trustworthy, impartial observers?? No one has the slightest idea who invented Zeus or Horus or any other god. And even if we did, 5000 year old SAT scores or IQ tests or any other data which might be used to infer their intelligence level is generally hard to come by.
The fact is there is NO empirical data that shows that both the unitary God Almighty and polytheist gods were conceptualized by men of greater intelligence. Is it too much to ask that someone who is quick to compare those who do not bask in the enlightenment of his own empirically based outlook to someone who needs a seeing eye dog to have even a rudimentary understanding of the definition of empiricism?? Simply dressing up one’s completely speculative opinions under the guise of empirically-based irrefutable data does not make it so.
Mr. Aslam’s first sentence regarding Islam demonstrates a similar degree of accuracy.
According to Islam, the earliest mention of the name of God is found in the Quran sura Baqar 2: “When your Lord said to the angels: ‘I am placing on the earth one that shall rule as My deputy,’ they replied: ‘Will You put there one that will do evil and shed blood, when we have for so long sung Your praises and sanctified Your Name?”
In what way can this ayah be Islam’s first mention of the name of God? Certainly not sequentially in the Quran (sura 1 mentions Him in the first ayah, and not chronologically (sura 96 does also). And Islam posits that angels have been worshipping Him from time immemorial, before humans ever existed.
With evolution and advancement of critical thinking, the advanced Societies realized that education and seeking of knowledge and consistent probing of the Nature is more important than the God theory. Societies developed Civil Code and Penal Code to keep people on the peaceful path of co-existence.
”’ God’, ‘ worship ‘, ‘submission’ are concepts obsolete by advanced societies.
Worship is a down-stream product of God-creation. It is not an instinct inherent to humans by birth.
We know for a fact that most Western societies, especially in western Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand as well as Koreas, China and Japan, have drifted away from organized religions.
The preceding sentences are just a few examples of Mr. Aslam presenting a combination of speculative opinions and incomplete information as empirical fact.
It seems to be becoming more common for the non-religious to co-opt nearly all human advancement in science or ethics or technology as their own. That the empirical scientific method received heavy contributions by outwardly Muslim and Christian scholars for centuries is conveniently ignored. So is the fact that the West (generally taken as the paragon of advanced societies) and its legal, economic, and educational institutions were built primarily by believing Christians inspired by their faith over the past 5 centuries.
Of course no one can doubt the rapidly diminishing role of religion in the West over the past 50 years or so, but correlation and causation are two different things. If one person can see the West’s diminishing religiosity as a sign of religion becoming outdated, others may note the West’s diminishing dominance and rapidly accelerating breakdown in family structure as evidence that a hubristic turning away of religion slowly but surely leads to societal decay. One’s biases help determine the pattern that one sees.
Mr. Aslam also included the “Koreas” in his list of advanced societies drifting away from organized religions. This is peculiar, as Christianity has registered explosive growth in South Korea over the past several decades, particularly amongst the well-educated and urban classes. As for North Korea, it hasn’t drifted from organized religion so much as it has imposed atheism as its state’s official ideology. One would think the horrible state of practically all officially atheist countries throughout modern history would give even the most anti-religious person pause before he confidently predicted the obsolescence of religion due to the presence of modern civil and penal codes.
It is also becoming increasingly fashionable to chalk up belief in a higher power or the need to worship due to the exploitation of clerics and man’s fear and weakness in the face of the unknown. Cosmological, teleological, anthropic, and various other philosophic arguments for God’s existence are simply dismissed out of hand.
Every known society throughout human history has people speaking some form of language. Does a rational person conclude that language is an inherent aspect of human nature, or does he conclude that people have been brainwashed to speak so that they can be better controlled by their rulers? Why is religious belief treated differently? The present world, all of recorded history, common sense, and now even scientific data from fields such as neuroscience and evolutionary anthropology all clearly attest that religious belief is an integral, “hard-wired” aspect of human nature as a whole.
So does God exist or doesn’t He? Such arguments have been going on for millennia and will continue to do so, as an airtight argument can never be made either way. But if the purpose and utility of “garden variety” expressions of monotheistic belief can be questioned, this should be equally applicable for garden varieties of stereotypically arrogant and logically flawed expressions of atheism. This is particularly true when the thread was introduced not to solicit ruminations on the origins and future of belief, but to challenge believers to offer reasons on why an omnipotent God wants to be worshipped!
Aziz
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
I am grateful that Aziz opted to provide a mini lecture on “empiricism ” under the assumption of the argument of empirical data disproved the existence of monotheistic or polytheistic god(s) was stated because existence cannot be proved empirically. I would point out that while empirically the existence has not been proved, the existence being a myth is proved empirically. I hope the scope of empiricism, he realizes, includes verifying the absence of classic description of God of any kind. If any god does exist, its existence is assumed only through abstraction and imagination under various heads of speculation called cosmological, teleological, and various other philosophic arguments. I am unaware though of any “anthropic” evidence proving existence of a god. It will be very kind of Aziz if he provided the relevant material.
The actual chronological sequence of Ayas is not known ever since all different versions of Quran, except one finalized and rearranged (editted) by the committee under the third Caliph, were destroyed to retain just one version for posterity. Al-lah was the name of the most respected deity in the polytheistic paganism of Meccans who housed the 365 or so idols of different deities in Kaaba. Those idols also included two idols of supposed daughters of Al-Lah named Laat & Manaat. So Allah, with slight variation in spelling, has existed under pre-Islamic Pagan belief and is not particularly an inventive introduction by Islam. When Islam was first revealed, it evidently was too risky to announce that any god was superior to Al-Lah and hence the prospective converts were led to believe that real Allah was wrongly idolized as Al-Lah ; that all other idols were mere statues and not godly in nature. The first wave of rejection and destruction by the Prophet of
all other idols in Kaaba did not include Al-Lah’s two daughters’ idols which were extinguished some time later after the episode of “Satanic Verses’. Those disputed verses probably prompted Salman Rushdie to borrow the name for his infamous book after those scandalized “Satanic Verses”. It is not really responsible to reject any notion without first doing some basic research.
This is ridiculous bounding on insane. No discovery of any kind and no invention of any kind, took place because of the religion practiced by the discoverer or inventor. How is any religion a factor in any new discovery or invention? It would be laughable if the credit for any discovery or invention is given to the religion of the person involved.
Superficial observations can be, and in this case are, misleading. North Korea being Communistic and Atheistic and South Korea being a virtual colony of USA, was led on to be as religious as possible to counter the communism, exactly in the same way as Pakistanis were systematically planned and funded to be religious extremists to counter the atheistic Soviet influence in Afghanistan during its communist occupation. All those are political maneuvers of a super-power and should not be naively considered as a result of unprompted popularity and spread of religious Faith.
Only religiously inclined people are reluctant to accept that not only formally atheistic societies but also the erstwhile Christian societies, which are now Christian in name only, (as openly acknowledged by members of those societies e.g. Scandinavians), have drifted away from organized religion. That is also true for rest of the Western Europe to slightly lesser degree. Here again, it is empirical and not speculative as alleged by Aziz.
(AA wrote) It is also becoming increasingly fashionable to chalk up belief in a higher power or the need to worship
due to the exploitation of clerics and man’s fear and weakness in the face of the unknown.
This too is a verifiable fact duly established by observation without any contribution from imagination.
(AA wrote) Cosmological, teleological, anthropic, and various other philosophic arguments for God’s existence are simply dismissed.
As they should rightly be.
Mian Aslam
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
I hope the scope of empiricism, he realizes, includes verifying the absence of classic description of God of any kind.
Mr. Aslam is free to hope for whatever he wishes, but his hopes that empiricism has verified the absence of classic description of God of any kind are sadly going to go unfulfilled. The Islamic concept of God is an omnipotent being who has deliberately hidden Himself from direct observation by humans until after their death, but whose presence can be determined through the signs He has placed in His creation. The fact that he thinks that this description (or nearly any other description, for that matter) of God can be empirically disproved just further lays bare his lack of understanding of what empiricism is and what it’s limits are.
I am unaware though of any “anthropic” evidence proving existence of a god. It will be very kind of Dr Aziz Amin if he provided the relevant material.
That is what Google is for.
It is not really responsible to reject any notion without first doing some basic research.
While Mr. Aslam’s Ph.D thesis on the untrustworthiness of traditional Quranic chronology and Arab paganism might be fascinating to some, it remains wholly irrevelant to my original point. He claimed that According to Islam, the earliest mention of the name of God is found in the Quran sura Baqar 2. This is clearly false, as neither the Quran, the hadith, or any Muslim that has ever lived has made (or would accept) such a claim. This would remain the case even if the claim was actually true (which of course, it is not, as the ayah he quoted is about something completely different).
It seems to be becoming more common for the non-religious to co-opt nearly all human advancement
in science or ethics or technology as their own. This notion smells of pure bias.
I am glad Mr. Aslam is beginning to acknowledge his biases!
This is ridiculous bounding on insane. No discovery of any kind and no invention of any kind, took place because of the religion practiced by the discoverer or inventor. How is any religion a factor in any new discovery or invention? It would be laughable if the credit for any discovery or invention is given to the religion of the person involved.
Several short excerpts from Wikipedia…
Astrolabes were further developed in the medieval Islamic world, where Muslim astronomers introduced angular scales to the astrolabe,[10] adding circles indicating azimuths on thehorizon.[11] It was widely used throughout the Muslim world, chiefly as an aid to navigation and as a way of finding theQibla, the direction of Mecca.
According to David King, after the rise of Islam, the religious obligation to determine the qibla and prayer times inspired more progress in astronomy for centuries.[13]
^ King, David A. (2005-06-30). In Synchrony with the Heavens, Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization: The Call of the Muezzin. “And it so happens that the particular intellectual activity that inspired these materials is related to the religious obligation to pray at specific times. The material presented here makes nonsense of the popular modern notion that religion inevitably impedes scientific progress, for in this case, the requirements of the former actually inspired the progress of the latter for centuries.”
If one person can see the West’s diminishing
religiosity as a sign of religion becoming outdated, others may note the West’s diminishing dominance
and rapidly accelerating breakdown in family structure as evidence that a hubristic turning away of
religion slowly but surely leads to societal decay. One’s biases help determine the pattern that one sees. This sounds like the justification for existence of cults and why they should be patronized to decelerate the break-down of family structure.
Simply noting that the decreased religiosity of the West over 50 years could be interpreted by some as the cause of various forms of societal decline sounds like the justification for cults???
Superficial observations can be, and in this case are, misleading. North Korea being Communistic and Atheistic and South Korea being a virtual colony of USA, was led on to be as religious as possible to counter the communism, exactly in the same way as Pakistanis were systematically planned and funded to be religious extremists to counter the atheistic Soviet influence in Afghanistan during its communist occupation. All those are political maneuvers of a super-power and should not be naively considered as a result of unprompted popularity and spread of religious Faith.
Again, even if true, the above comment is irrelevant. Mr. Aslam included the Koreas as examples of countries that have drifted from organized religion as they became more advanced, and that assertion is false. South Korea has become more religious as it has advanced, while North Korea has become less religious as it has devolved.
Only religiously inclined people are reluctant to accept that not only formally atheistic societies but also the erstwhile Christian societies, which are now Christian in name only, (as openly acknowledged by members of those societies e.g. Scandinavians), have drifted away from organized religion. That is also true for rest of the Western Europe to slightly lesser degree. Here again, it is empirical and not speculative as alleged by Aziz.
Of course no one can doubt the rapidly diminishing role of religion in the West over the past 50 years
I wrote the above in my original comment, perhaps Mr. Aslam missed it?
It is also becoming increasingly fashionable to chalk up belief in a higher power or the need to worship
due to the exploitation of clerics and man’s fear and weakness in the face of the unknown. This too is a verifiable fact duly established by observation without any contribution from imagination.
IMHO the concept of God and worship is deeply anchored in the awesomeness of the Fear of the overwhelming powers of the UNKNOWN.
What was just a few days ago Mr. Aslam’s (not so) humble opinion seems to have miraculously transformed into a fact! But given the difficulty in distinguishing what is empirically based and what is not, confusing opinions with facts is not surprising.
Cosmological,
teleological, anthropic, and various other philosophic arguments for God’s existence are simply dismissed.
As they should rightly be.
And on this note, I will excuse myself from further comment. Besides, someone who can with 5 words glibly dismiss the arguments of some of the most impressive and influential philosophers over the course of human history probably has everything figured out on his own!!
Wishing everyone a wonderful day,
Aziz
Dear Members,
Assalam-o-elaikum,
Do any of you have ever thought; Who is Mother Nature? Was she there on the day one or before or Was she evolved because of Darwin’s theory of evolution? Some people think
that those who are shy to admit the existence of God, they put everything they see on Mother Nature:
1.1 Divine Will or the Working of the Laws of Nature
Divine Will is not capricious and arbitrary. It follows the natural laws created by God. The limited will of people also follows the divine laws; those who follow these laws will be happy, and those who transgress them will suffer. Divine law instructs people to stay away from fire to save themselves from its harm. Similarly God instructs us to stay away from the fire of Hell by following His commands. If we obey them, we will be in bliss. If not, we will suffer Hellfire. This is the natural law both in the material and spiritual worlds. As for those who follow the laws, God leads them to guidance just as God grows crops for those who cultivate and sow. As far those who do not follow the laws, God misguides them just as God does not grow crops for those who do not cultivate and sow.
Belief in Qadar can best be explained by what God says in Surah Al-Rahman, “The sun and the moon follow courses (exactly) computed; and the herbs and the trees— both (alike) bow in adoration. And the sky has He raised high, and He has set up the balance (of justice), in order that you may not transgress (due) balance. So establish weight with justice and fall not short in the balance” (Qur’an 55:5-9). In these verses, God is telling people that like the physical laws that control the universe, God has set up moral laws that have adverse consequences if violated. God is, “He to whom belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth: no son has He begotten, nor has He a partner in His dominion: it is He who created all things, and ordered them in due proportions (Qadar)” (Qur’an 25:2).
About, “the much acclaimed Omniscient, Omnipresent and Omnipotent Creator says in the Qur’an about people,
“If it had been your Lord’s Will, they would all have believed, all who are on earth! Will you then compel mankind, against their will, to believe! No soul can believe, except by the Will of Allah, and He will place doubt (or obscurity) on those who will not understand” (Qur’an 10:99-100).
Dr. M A Hafeez