Religion The God Question (continued in Part 2 - link in last post)

god or advanced entity?

  • god

    Votes: 14 40.0%
  • advanced entity

    Votes: 21 60.0%

  • Total voters
    35
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Tichmond Rigers

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Who made the creator?

(head explodes silently....)
The Creator created everything, including time itself. If time does not lapse on Him, He does not have a beginning. The One that has no beginning does not need anyone to bring Him into the state of existence
 
The Creator created everything, including time itself. If time does not lapse on Him, He does not have a beginning. The One that has no beginning does not need anyone to bring Him into the state of existence
Logic fail.
Hoist on your own petard.
Your argument for your God destroys your argument.
Better you just stick to the standard faith without explanation tack.
 

Tichmond Rigers

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Logic fail.
Hoist on your own petard.
Your argument for your God destroys your argument.
Better you just stick to the standard faith without explanation tack.
We are subject to time, so we have a beginning, and time lapses on us. The Creator created time, so is not in need of time. Hence, time does not lapse on Him. Which means that He always existed. The One without a beginning does not need a Creator, because He Eternally existed.

Not that hard to understand.
 

skilts

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We are subject to time, so we have a beginning, and time lapses on us. The Creator created time, so is not in need of time. Hence, time does not lapse on Him. Which means that He always existed. The One without a beginning does not need a Creator, because He Eternally existed.

Not that hard to understand.
Did god tell you this? Do you and it have regular meetings at the bottom of your garden? How are the pixies getting on?
 

bombermick

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Tichmond, I've read the last two pages and you're responsible for my headache.
Why is the Islamic world a piece of s**t nowadays, dominated by the west?
(predicted response, they're not been good Muslims)
But the fundie muslisms are extremists ... right?
 

Tichmond Rigers

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Tichmond, I've read the last two pages and you're responsible for my headache.
Why is the Islamic world a piece of s**t nowadays, dominated by the west?
(predicted response, they're not been good Muslims)
But the fundie muslisms are extremists ... right?
A lot of the Muslims are attached to matters like money etc., and are not united. The west have divided them into countries whereas they used to be an Islamic State.
But the Muslims knew that this was going to happen for over a thousand years because our Prophet foretold this. So, this division actually supports our belief rather than contradicting it. We were told that the non-Muslim nations will be surrounding the Muslims and taking advantage of them like people would surround a banquet - and this is what we see with the west dominating the Muslim countries and entering + leaving as they please

A lot of the fundamentalists that you see suicide bombing are from a deviant sect (or influenced by them), and this sect have a different belief than what we do. We do not consider this sect as Muslims because their belief in God and their practices are completely different. They actually kill Muslims more than what they kill the non-Muslims. To summarise about those people briefly, they have emerged 300 years ago and have been terrorising the Muslims ever since then. They have only recently started to terrorise the non-Muslims.

Evidence? 2 people killed in the Lindt coffee shop siege whereas 141 Muslim children were killed in a school siege in Pakistan.
 

Tichmond Rigers

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Did god tell you this? Do you and it have regular meetings at the bottom of your garden? How are the pixies getting on?
I do not believe that God resides in a place (because God created the place and does not need it), so I do not believe that God would be physically at the bottom of my garden
 

skilts

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A lot of the Muslims are attached to matters like money etc., and are not united. The west have divided them into countries whereas they used to be an Islamic State.
But the Muslims knew that this was going to happen for over a thousand years because our Prophet foretold this. So, this division actually supports our belief rather than contradicting it. We were told that the non-Muslim nations will be surrounding the Muslims and taking advantage of them like people would surround a banquet - and this is what we see with the west dominating the Muslim countries and entering + leaving as they please

A lot of the fundamentalists that you see suicide bombing are from a deviant sect (or influenced by them), and this sect have a different belief than what we do. We do not consider this sect as Muslims because their belief in God and their practices are completely different. They actually kill Muslims more than what they kill the non-Muslims. To summarise about those people briefly, they have emerged 300 years ago and have been terrorising the Muslims ever since then. They have only recently started to terrorise the non-Muslims.

Evidence? 2 people killed in the Lindt coffee shop siege whereas 141 Muslim children were killed in a school siege in Pakistan.
Surely, the best thing you could do would be to disown these mothers? Oh wait ... Are you one of these new age muslims who moonlights as a comedian?
 

Tichmond Rigers

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So many of you keep speaking about how my logic is flawed yet do not provide any arguments against what I have said. Instead, so many of you resort to insults.

I do not see you guys as genuine truth seekers, for the truth seeker would not throw jibes and insults while saying nothing else. For this reason, my discussion with you guys is over.
 
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But miracles defy nature, so would differ from what is normally observed with scientists.

"Miracles" are faith based. I prefer to base my world view on conclusions reached from empirical evidence.

An example would be the flowing of water from between the fingers of the Prophet that was observed over a thousand years ago. This occurrence cannot be explained by science because it is not something that would normally occur.

More likely it never occurred. Similar to Jesus rising literally from the dead.

It is through observation.

By who?

For example, there are miracles that we can observe today. An example would be the prophecy of Prophet MuHammad for instance. He has foretold occurrences that have happened after he died. How do we know that he foretold this? Through documentation.

Such as? Who recorded this? When did they record this? How do we know that they recorded this objectively?

He has told his companions in one instance that there will be sheppards who build high rise buildings. At the time, among the sheppards were the Bediouns, who were desert dwellers.

In the modern days, who are among the Bediouns? The people of UAE. And what are they known for? Building high rise buildings. If you were to tell the people 1,400 years ago that there would be people building high rise buildings in a desert, they would be stumped. So, what did people do? Document this and pass it on to the next generation to see if this will eventuate. And has it? Yes.

This is from the hadith Sahih al-Bukhari is it not? These 'sayings of Mohammed', were collected by the Persian Muslim scholar Muhammad al-Bukhari (819-870), over two hundred years after Mohammed lived.

What’s the definition of high rise buildings? High rise buildings existed at the time of the collection of the Hadith. In Arab Egypt for example the city of Fustat (now part of Old Cairo) housed many high-rise residential buildings, some seven stories tall that could reportedly accommodate hundreds of people. Al-Muqaddasi in the 10th century described them asminarets. This was not long after the assemblage of the Hadith of Sahih al-Bukhari.

Fustat was built by the Muslim general Amr ibn al-As immediately after the Muslim conquest of Egypt in AD 641. At the time of the assembling of the Hadith in which this “prophecy” is mentioned Fustat had a population of approximately 120,000.

And if the prophecy is a sign of the approaching end times, as appears to be suggested by Muslims how do you explain the Tower blocks built in the Yemeni city of Shibam in the 1500s. The houses of Shibam are all made out of mud bricks but about five hundred of them are tower houses which rise five to sixteen stories high, with each floor having one or two apartments. Shibam has existed for around two thousand years. The city had the tallest mud buildings in the world, some more than 30 metres high

And how reliable are these hadiths? Does not the Quran itself say "Nothing have We omitted from the Book"? If so, why should the Hadiths be believed?

A growing number of Muslims have begun to reject the authority of the Hadith in favor of the primary authority of the Quran They cite numerous verses of the Quran (e.g. 6:114, 31:6, 45:6 and 77:50) to support their argument. Some reject all hadith, while others consider the Hadith as having some historical value as secondary source material that may be studied for academic purposes (with rigorous scrutiny,) and those that do not contradict the Quran can be considered useful for certain tasks mandated by the Quran, such as the physical aspect of 'Salat'/Prayer, but both of these groups reject the authority of the Hadith as a source of law. Shiite Muslims believe in a completely different set of hadith than do Sunni Muslims.

Syed Ahmed Khan “questioned the historicity and authenticity of many, if not most, traditions, much as the noted scholars Ignaz Goldziher and Joseph Schacht would later do.” He doubted Hadith compilers’ capacity to judge the character of Hadith transmitters of several past generations involved in oral Hadith transmission, and notes, “it is difficult enough to judge the character of living people, let alone long dead. The muhaddithun [Hadith scholars/transmitters] did the best they could, but their task was almost impossible. His student, Chiragh ‘Ali, went further, suggesting nearly all the Hadith were fabrications.

So your cited prophecies are considered fabrications by many Muslims. Western scholar Joseph concluded that "the Sunna of the Prophet is not the words and deeds of the Prophet, but apocryphal material" dating from later on - possibly hundreds of years later.

Another one he foretold was the widespread of fornication. We all know that non-Muslims and Muslims alike were strict with only having sex after marriage in the past. Even 100 years ago, fornication was not prevalent amongst society, let alone 1,400 years ago.

How do you know that adultery and fornication are on the rise? Is there any empirical evidence for that? Adultery, fornication and other pre-marital sex appear to be as widespread in the past as it is today.

This is a miracle, because he could not have foretold all of this by mere guessing. At the time he mentioned all of this, there was no sign at all that this was going to occur at all, yet we are witnesses to these things actually happening. So, how did he know all of this happened?

It’s likely he didn’t. If he even said it at all.

From narrations of the Companions of the Prophet, and the scholars that came after. The sayings of the Prophet is a complete science in itself (science here does not mean the science that we normally refer to as science nowadays, but rather a systematically organised body of knowledge). The West does not have access to these, but could have if they sought it. It is through this route that we know its occurrence. So, what follows is that anything he comes with is also true.

Science is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. The supernatural aspects of religion do not fall into the realms of science as they cannot be supported by empirical means. If there is a lack of evidence, then it difficult to make any other conclusion that they are little more than figments of the human imagination held to by faith.

There are certain traits that Messengers of God have. They are trustworthy and tell the truth before and after they receive revelation. Why? Because if they told even a single lie, they would not be trustworthy in anything that they were to claim because they may also have lied then.
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Who makes the judgement that the Messengers of God are 'trustworthy'? Those that have a vested interested in promoting the words of their 'prophet'? Is L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology trustworthy? His followers seem to think so.

Hence, the reason why they have such a big following is because those people then who knew Prophet MuHammad (peace be upon him), or Jesus (peace be upon him), knew that they were not liars.
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Well they would say that, to push / promote their own agenda / belief system wouldn’t they.

Not only that, they also had miracles to back them up.
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What miracles?

Not The evidence got to a point that those who reject them are blameworthy for doing so. And this is what is documented and passed on.
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The evidence for such ‘miracles’ is virtually non-existant. Saying that a miracle occurred on the mere say so of people supposedly not regarded as “liars” is flawed.

As said above. The narrations and the time they were narrated and the events surrounding it are documented in books of scholars who specialise in this.
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Which scholars? Can you name some and their evidence?

It is a matter of seeking this knowledge for the individual. I am not going to provide you with these chains today, because that would be jumping a step ahead. A step earlier is first bringing to people's attention that this is a valid evidence in the first place.
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Until you supply details of these ‘chains’, then we cannot ascertain whether the ‘prophecy’ you refer to is supported by any valid evidence, let alone robust evidence.

No. That which has only one route would be considered a weak narration. Generally, the famous ones are mentioned from many different sources, so are therefore considered to be strong.
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As far as I can see the high rise building prophecy has but one source, and that recorded two hundred years after the death of the supposed ‘sayer’. What other sources are there for this ‘prophecy’? Can you list them? After that, we can take an objective look at these numerous sources.

A present day example would be if one person mentioned that they have seen a comet for instance. If no one else mentions this, people would generally ignore this. However, if many people have mentioned the same thing (that they have seen a comet) and use the same description to describe it AND it is reported in such a way that they could not have all conspired to fool others, then this is considered solid evidence that there was a comet, and it would be unreasonable to suggest otherwise EVEN THOUGH you haven't seen the comet yourself. This is how miracles are reported. The famous ones are those that have a strong chain and many sources.
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You mean like Halley’s Comet in 1066? Halley Comet’s return to the inner Solar System has been observed and recorded by astronomers since at least 240 BC. Clear records of the comet's appearances were made by Chinese, Babylonian amnd medieval European chroniclers but were not recognized as reappearances of the same object at the time. In other words these are regular events observed over and over again. Moreover we know that comets are a natural phenomena so a report of a comet especially from different sources over time reporting a natural observable phenomena of course we take it as true

But it rejects that which it cannot disprove.
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Science acknowledges reason, empiricism and evidence. Religion is faith based. Science doesn’t discount anything, but requires the above before acknowledging the truth of any phenomenon or claims that a phenomena exists. To me, faith is almost an admission that the truths of religion are unknowable through evidence and reason and are therefore little or no better than any flight of fancy / figment of the imagination. Indemonstrable assertions such as made in religious texts such as the Bible, Quran and Hadiths require in many cases the suspension of reason.

The sole fact that it rejects that which it cannot disprove shows something. It shows that it is limited.
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Just because human imagination is unlimited, does not mean that ideas conjured by imagination are in fact real.

It cannot disprove an extraordinary occurrence for instance. In order to find out the truth behind this extraordinary occurrence, there needs to be other types of evidences that should be used, because the whole basis of why something is called extraordinary is that it is different from the norm.
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And most likely never actually happened or existed. Certainly there is a a lack of objective evidence that they did.

What science observes is only what is from the norm and focuses on that. Hence, it is limited. Any evidence that it cannot disprove, it rejects, and what it can disprove, it either rejects or accepts
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Science is based on reason, empiricism and evidence. See the definition above. Quite rightly.
 
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Tichmond Rigers

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"Miracles" are faith based. I prefer to base my world view on conclusions reached from empirical evidence.



More likely it never occurred. Similar to Jesus rising literally from the dead.



By who?



Such as? Who recorded this? When did they record this? How do we know that they recorded this objectively?



This is from the hadith Sahih al-Bukhari is it not? These 'sayings of Mohammed', were collected by the Persian Muslim scholar Muhammad al-Bukhari (819-870), over two hundred years after Mohammed lived.

What’s the definition of high rise buildings? High rise buildings existed at the time of the collection of the Hadith. In Arab Egypt for example the city of Fustat (now part of Old Cairo) housed many high-rise residential buildings, some seven stories tall that could reportedly accommodate hundreds of people. Al-Muqaddasi in the 10th century described them asminarets. This was not long after the assemblage of the Hadith of Sahih al-Bukhari.

Fustat was built by the Muslim general Amr ibn al-As immediately after the Muslim conquest of Egypt in AD 641. At the time of the assembling of the Hadith in which this “prophecy” is mentioned Fustat had a population of approximately 120,000.

And if the prophecy is a sign of the approaching end times, as appears to be suggested by Muslims how do you explain the Tower blocks built in the Yemeni city of Shibam in the 1500s. The houses of Shibam are all made out of mud bricks but about five hundred of them are tower houses which rise five to sixteen stories high, with each floor having one or two apartments. Shibam has existed for around two thousand years. The city had the tallest mud buildings in the world, some more than 30 metres high

And how reliable are these hadiths? Does not the Quran itself say "Nothing have We omitted from the Book"? If so, why should the Hadiths be believed?

A growing number of Muslims have begun to reject the authority of the Hadith in favor of the primary authority of the Quran They cite numerous verses of the Quran (e.g. 6:114, 31:6, 45:6 and 77:50) to support their argument. Some reject all hadith, while others consider the Hadith as having some historical value as secondary source material that may be studied for academic purposes (with rigorous scrutiny,) and those that do not contradict the Quran can be considered useful for certain tasks mandated by the Quran, such as the physical aspect of 'Salat'/Prayer, but both of these groups reject the authority of the Hadith as a source of law. Shiite Muslims believe in a completely different set of hadith than do Sunni Muslims.

Syed Ahmed Khan “questioned the historicity and authenticity of many, if not most, traditions, much as the noted scholars Ignaz Goldziher and Joseph Schacht would later do.” He doubted Hadith compilers’ capacity to judge the character of Hadith transmitters of several past generations involved in oral Hadith transmission, and notes, “it is difficult enough to judge the character of living people, let alone long dead. The muhaddithun [Hadith scholars/transmitters] did the best they could, but their task was almost impossible. His student, Chiragh ‘Ali, went further, suggesting nearly all the Hadith were fabrications.

So your cited prophecies are considered fabrications by many Muslims. Western scholar Joseph concluded that "the Sunna of the Prophet is not the words and deeds of the Prophet, but apocryphal material" dating from later on - possibly hundreds of years later.



How do you know that adultery and fornication are on the rise? Is there any empirical evidence for that? Adultery, fornication and other pre-marital sex appear to be as widespread in the past as it is today.



It’s likely he didn’t. If he even said it at all.



Science is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. The supernatural aspects of religion do not fall into the realms of science as they cannot be supported by empirical means. If there is a lack of evidence, then it difficult to make any other conclusion that they are little more than figments of the human imagination held to by faith.



Who makes the judgement that the Messengers of God are 'trustworthy'? Those that have a vested interested in promoting the words of their 'prophet'? Is L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology trustworthy? His followers seem to think so.



Well they would say that, to push / promote their own agenda / belief system wouldn’t they.



What miracles?



The evidence for such ‘miracles’ is virtually non-existant. Saying that a miracle occurred on the mere say so of people supposedly not regarded as “liars” is flawed.



Which scholars? Can you name some and their evidence?



Until you supply details of these ‘chains’, then we cannot ascertain whether the ‘prophecy’ you refer to is supported by any valid evidence, let alone robust evidence.



As far as I can see the high rise building prophecy has but one source, and that recorded two hundred years after the death of the supposed ‘sayer’. What other sources are there for this ‘prophecy’? Can you list them? After that, we can take an objective look at these numerous sources.



You mean like Halley’s Comet in 1066? Halley Comet’s return to the inner Solar System has been observed and recorded by astronomers since at least 240 BC. Clear records of the comet's appearances were made by Chinese, Babylonian amnd medieval European chroniclers but were not recognized as reappearances of the same object at the time. In other words these are regular events observed over and over again. Moreover we know that comets are a natural phenomena so a report of a comet especially from different sources over time reporting a natural observable phenomena of course we take it as true



Science acknowledges reason, empiricism and evidence. Religion is faith based. Science doesn’t discount anything, but requires the above before acknowledging the truth of any phenomenon or claims that a phenomena exists. To me, faith is almost an admission that the truths of religion are unknowable through evidence and reason and are therefore little or no better than any flight of fancy / figment of the imagination. Indemonstrable assertions such as made in religious texts such as the Bible, Quran and Hadiths require in many cases the suspension of reason.



Just because human imagination is unlimited, does not mean that ideas conjured by imagination are in fact real.



And most likely never actually happened or existed. Certainly there is a a lack of objective evidence that they did.



Science is based on reason, empiricism and evidence. See the definition above. Quite rightly.
One thing I find interesting about your post is that you realize that if the miracles are indeed true, then the claim of the Prophets are true. Hence why you try to say that it was not reported from him.

I have not yet learned all of the chains, because there is more essential knowledge that I am required to learn first in order to be a practicing Muslim, which is more important for me. However, my teachers have. Remember, Hadeeth is a complete science and requires years to learn. But I do wish to travel once in my lifetime in order to learn this knowledge myself. Preferably while I am young. I have seen chains of narrations in my lifetime, so I know how it looks like.

You only assume that those miracles didn't happen. Yet, you do not appear to have traveled to see those chains of narrations yourself. The problem is, many scientists are cynical in the authenticity of the reports of the Muslims, yet do not leave the West in order to seek the science of Hadeeth themselves. Another thing is that scientists do not know how careful the Muslim scholars are with the transmission of the Islamic Knowledge, including the science of Hadeeth. In fact, they do not know much about Muslim scholar hood all together. There is a reason why the exact Qur'aan that the Prophet came with is present today in its original, unchanged form. You have to experience how they deal with the information they receive to know this. It is therefore hard to comment on your behalf the authenticity of what I am relating to you.

Anyways, the Muslim scholars give a classification on a source depending on how many chains of narrations it has. The highest level of authenticity is SaHeeh, with Hasan being the next level. Then, there is Da^eef, which is weak. To explain briefly, it either has many differing narrations or has only one source. There is a criteria that a certain person needs to fulfill in order to become a scholar.

Yes, the prevalence of premarital sex has risen. There may not be statistics of who fornicates since people do not do this act openly, but you can get an idea on the approval rates of this. Read this: http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/diversity/13marriage.pdf
In it, it states the following:

"Older people tend to be more conservative than
younger people regarding non marital sex and
most other matters discussed in this chapter. For
example, only a third of those in their twenties disapproved
of casual sex compared to 53 per cent of
those in their forties and three quarters of those in
their sixties. Similarly, just 18 per cent of those in
their twenties disapproved of sex between those
who are attracted but not in love while a third of
those in their fifties and half of those in their sixties
expressed disapproval of sex under these circumstances"

It shows something. The fact that older people have a stronger disapproval rate of sexual intercourse outside of wedlock shows that premarital sex was less common in the past than it is now. I used the terms "fornication is widespread" for a reason. Many people approve of it nowadays. Also, we know that religiosity is declining - especially among Western groups. Many Religions, such as Islam and Christianity disapprove of fornication. If people were more religious in the past, they disapproved of premarital sex. Higher disapproval rate = lower incidences of it occurring.

The comet analogy was just a random example that I thought of and was not specific to any occurrence. If only one person says they saw something and described it, it probably would be ignored. If many people say they saw something from different places and all provided differing descriptions, you may reject it. But if many people say they saw something AND their description of what they saw matched the description of others in a way that they could have not all conspired to fool the people, then it would be foolish to believe otherwise. To explain what I mean, I will give you the following example. Let us say you yourself and your friends and family have never been to China. Many people tell you that China exists. Chinese people come up to you and say that China exists, and say that they have been there themselves. Then they show you footage of China. Your friends and family members suggest that China does not exist. You respond to their allegations by saying that they have shown images of China. Then, they respond to you by saying that they could have taken a photo of another place and passed it off as China. You then said that there are unrelated people who actually went there and came back and have witnessed it with their own eyes. Then, they told you how they all conspired with each other to fool you into believing that China exists when it actually doesn't. This person would be considered stubborn. Why? The existence of China has been reported by many people to the extent that they could not have conspired with each other to fool everyone. So, the people then decided to document the history of China. Let us say that China no longer exists after a short while, and any image captured of it was destroyed along with it. The people who witnessed China found it important enough to document it and their experiences with China, and tell others. Many people end up documenting its existence. A person wishing to dedicate his life around the events of China dedicates his life to documenting and conversing with the people who documented this. They tell him and he writes a book about it. That person then teaches other people about it and his experiences with the people who have seen China. This keeps on for generations. But that is not all. This one person was not the only one to go and speak with the people who were alive to witness the existence of China. There were many others who did this. After a hundred years, a person dedicated to the knowledge surrounding China takes all of these reports and looks at it. He finds many scriptures of the documentation of China through many routes. Not only that, but this man also learned from a person who learned from a person who learned from a person who learned from a person who talked to a person who witnessed the existence of China himself. And his teacher provided a chain of narrations that lists all of the names of the people who narrated this all the way back to a person who experienced China. This man did not only learn from one person with such a chain, but many. Hence, he classified this as a true matter because of the strong chain.
Then, after over a thousand years, (so in the year 3400 let's just say) there are people who deny the existence of China. They say this because they do not see China. But then someone says to them that there has been an authentic chain of narrations that China existed, and that many people specializing in this knowledge have documented it, and have analysed which story or event regarding China is weak and strong depending on the amount of chains it has. Those people who say that China never existed say that anyone could have said anything, and do not bother to search up the chain of narrations and how strong it was. Consequently, they deny and dismiss China's existence - even though in reality it existed.

As you can tell from the above scenario, the people who initially claimed that China didn't exist and the people who came in 3400 and deny that China existed are both unreasonable. The first group are unreasonable because they stubbornly denied the reports of others that have witnessed the existence of China that was reported in a manner that they all could not have conspired together to fool others. The second group of people are unreasonable for denying the existence of China without going off to do some researching for themselves and without realizing how strong the chain of narrations are.

The miracles of the Prophet were reported in this way, and therefore it is unreasonable to suggest that they are not true. Of course, the reports of these miracles and their chain would be the strongest in the place that the miracles occurred (in the Arabian lands in this case), hence the chain should be sought from there.

Scientists do pick and choose what evidence they use, because they only go by what they observe themselves, and deny any evidence of what they do not observe. As I showed you in this scenario, the reports of people can serve as evidence for the occurrence of certain events, because fabrications are not reported in this way. Hence, their evidence against the occurrence of a miracle does not consider all the evidence and is therefore weaker than the evidence for a miracle that was reported in the way that I mentioned. Hence, the argument against the occurrence of a miracle that was reported in the way I outlined is rejected, and its opposite view is taken. The only argument that scientists can use is that it does not occur normally and that they have not witnessed this, but that is the whole point of a miracle. It defies nature. Saying this does not disprove that it had ever occurred. They did not seek the chain of narrations of these miracles and did not study it in detail, hence are blameworthy for rejecting its occurrence.

When I say Prophets were trustworthy people, I also mean before they received Prophethood, or declared that they were Prophets sent to the people. So, people would know their traits and know they are trustworthy people from their experiences with them before Prophethood. Someone being trustworthy is not confirmed by a person's declaration. It is through observation. I would not trust someone just because they say they are trustworthy. People are smarter than that, and that includes the people who lived 1400 years ago.
 
The Creator created everything, including time itself. If time does not lapse on Him, He does not have a beginning. The One that has no beginning does not need anyone to bring Him into the state of existence
I actually have no trouble with this claim other than the 'him' bit.
 
We are subject to time, so we have a beginning, and time lapses on us. The Creator created time, so is not in need of time. Hence, time does not lapse on Him. Which means that He always existed. The One without a beginning does not need a Creator, because He Eternally existed.

Not that hard to understand.
So not buying it. You bending the rules to suit your desired outcome, to fit your woo.
The universe is not subject to time as time was created out of it...individual parts may be but only relative to the parts around them.
Substitute Universe for God and you have exactly the same scenario.

Explain why your god made such an ancient, immense universe for an insignificant number of toadies in an area which amounts to nothing?
You simply want to make yourself feel less insignificant than you think you are without really comprehending how overwhelmingly insignificant you actually are in terms of the universe.
You crave purpose so you create one.

Create a more plausible purpose and get back to me.;)
Cheers and happy Festivus.
 
Oct 17, 2000
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One thing I find interesting about your post is that you realize that if the miracles are indeed true, then the claim of the Prophets are true. Hence why you try to say that it was not reported from him.

At no point did I say that miracles are true. I see no reason to believe in extraordinary events that are not explicable by natural or scientific laws and attributable to a divine agency. There is no evidence for such, other than in the say so of certain human individuals.

I have not yet learned all of the chains, because there is more essential knowledge that I am required to learn first in order to be a practicing Muslim, which is more important for me. However, my teachers have. Remember, Hadeeth is a complete science and requires years to learn. But I do wish to travel once in my lifetime in order to learn this knowledge myself. Preferably while I am young. I have seen chains of narrations in my lifetime, so I know how it looks like.

Yet many criticise the Hadiths. They argue that the Quran is sufficient as guidance: They suggest what is obligatory for man does not go beyond God’s Book. If anything other than the Qur’an had been necessary for religion Muhammad would have commanded its registration in writing, and God would have guaranteed its preservation. Nothing of the Hadith was recorded until after enough time had elapsed to allow the infiltration of numerous absurd or corrupt traditions.

You only assume that those miracles didn't happen.

You assume that they have through very untrsutworthy and flimsy evidence. Little better than Chinese whispers really.

The problem is, many scientists are cynical in the authenticity of the reports of the Muslims, yet do not leave the West in order to seek the science of Hadeeth themselves.

No just scientists. Many Muslims are cynical as well. As I have already outlined above.

Another thing is that scientists do not know how careful the Muslim scholars are with the transmission of the Islamic Knowledge, including the science of Hadeeth. In fact, they do not know much about Muslim scholar hood all together.

Many do. And that does not prevent them challenging the accepted or traditional view of how the Quran and Hadiths were assembled and where some of the stories contained therein may have been included. A list is below.

There is a reason why the exact Qur'aan that the Prophet came with is present today in its original, unchanged form.

That is very disputable. There are considerable scholastic doubts that the modern Quran is 'word for word' exactly the same that was recited by the Prophet Muhammad. It does seem though that the Quran used today is 'word for word' the same Quran that the Caliph Uthman assembled. Uthman, of course ordered that all other Codices or portions of 'revelation material' in circulation that didn't co-incide with his own version be destroyed. There are a number of secular scholars that are examining the sources for the origins of the Quran. Their findings do not always co-incide with the Muslim tradition. They include: Ibn Warraq, Alphonse Mingana, David Margoliouth, Leone Caetani, Theodor Noldeke, Arthur Jeffery, Abraham Geiger, William St. Clair Tisdall, Charles Torrey, John Wansbrough, Andrew Rippin, Nasr Abu Zayd, Michael Cook, Patricia Crone, Gerd R. Puin and Christoph Luxenberg.

Many of these works have attempted to examine the Quran's origins in terms of historical, archaeological and philological evidence, rather than solely relying on Muslim traditions which are often dogmatically-based and lack an objective viewpoint.

Yes, the prevalence of premarital sex has risen.

There is little empirical evidence of this.

There may not be statistics of who fornicates since people do not do this act openly, but you can get an idea on the approval rates of this. Read this: http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/diversity/13marriage.pdf

Approval ratings of pre-marital sex do not measure the amount of pre-marital sex actually taking place.

It shows something. The fact that older people have a stronger disapproval rate of sexual intercourse outside of wedlock shows that premarital sex was less common in the past than it is now.

No it doesn't. All it shows is approval rating. It doesn't show how much was actually taking place.

Higher disapproval rate = lower incidences of it occurring.

That is an assumption which cannot be supported by the evidence.

To explain what I mean, I will give you the following example. Let us say you yourself and your friends and family have never been to China. Many people tell you that China exists. Chinese people come up to you and say that China exists, and say that they have been there themselves. Then they show you footage of China. Your friends and family members suggest that China does not exist. You respond to their allegations by saying that they have shown images of China. Then, they respond to you by saying that they could have taken a photo of another place and passed it off as China. You then said that there are unrelated people who actually went there and came back and have witnessed it with their own eyes. Then, they told you how they all conspired with each other to fool you into believing that China exists when it actually doesn't. This person would be considered stubborn. Why? The existence of China has been reported by many people to the extent that they could not have conspired with each other to fool everyone. So, the people then decided to document the history of China. Let us say that China no longer exists after a short while, and any image captured of it was destroyed along with it. The people who witnessed China found it important enough to document it and their experiences with China, and tell others. Many people end up documenting its existence. A person wishing to dedicate his life around the events of China dedicates his life to documenting and conversing with the people who documented this. They tell him and he writes a book about it. That person then teaches other people about it and his experiences with the people who have seen China. This keeps on for generations. But that is not all. This one person was not the only one to go and speak with the people who were alive to witness the existence of China. There were many others who did this. After a hundred years, a person dedicated to the knowledge surrounding China takes all of these reports and looks at it. He finds many scriptures of the documentation of China through many routes. Not only that, but this man also learned from a person who learned from a person who learned from a person who learned from a person who talked to a person who witnessed the existence of China himself. And his teacher provided a chain of narrations that lists all of the names of the people who narrated this all the way back to a person who experienced China. This man did not only learn from one person with such a chain, but many. Hence, he classified this as a true matter because of the strong chain. Then, after over a thousand years, (so in the year 3400 let's just say) there are people who deny the existence of China. They say this because they do not see China. But then someone says to them that there has been an authentic chain of narrations that China existed, and that many people specializing in this knowledge have documented it, and have analysed which story or event regarding China is weak and strong depending on the amount of chains it has. Those people who say that China never existed say that anyone could have said anything, and do not bother to search up the chain of narrations and how strong it was. Consequently, they deny and dismiss China's existence - even though in reality it existed.

And then we take a look at the empirical evidence for China to determine the validity of such claims. Archaeology, palaeontology, genetics and so on.

Did King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table exist? We have a strong "chain of narration' through the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages that suggests quite possibly. Yet even so we cannot determine the validity of such a claim until empirical evidence is found to support such a claim. Did King David exist? Moses? Joseph? Abraham? Adam?

As you can tell from the above scenario, the people who initially claimed that China didn't exist and the people who came in 3400 and deny that China existed are both unreasonable. The first group are unreasonable because they stubbornly denied the reports of others that have witnessed the existence of China that was reported in a manner that they all could not have conspired together to fool others. The second group of people are unreasonable for denying the existence of China without going off to do some researching for themselves and without realizing how strong the chain of narrations are.

It's not unreasonable to demand empirical evidence to determine the possibility of an historical event or person existing.

The miracles of the Prophet were reported in this way, and therefore it is unreasonable to suggest that they are not true.

It's not unreasonable to demand evidence for extraordinary events that are not explicable by natural or scientific laws and attributable to a divine agency. Otherwise we can only go by no more than faith. And then anything is possible. I might have faith in the Flying Spaghetti Monster for example. There a strong chain of narration there too.

Of course, the reports of these miracles and their chain would be the strongest in the place that the miracles occurred (in the Arabian lands in this case), hence the chain should be sought from there.

Many scholars have indeed travelled to these land in search of the origins of the Quran and the Hadiths.

Scientists do pick and choose what evidence they use, because they only go by what they observe themselves, and deny any evidence of what they do not observe.

Science uses logically self-consistent models or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or social phenomena. It originates from or is supported by experimental evidence. "Miracles" by their very definition are outside the framework of science. They are little more than the figments of human imagination

The only argument that scientists can use is that it does not occur normally and that they have not witnessed this, but that is the whole point of a miracle. It defies nature.

Then we have nothing more than pure faith to go upon for ascertaining the validity of a 'miracle'. And quite frankly that isn't good enough.

Saying this does not disprove that it had ever occurred. They did not seek the chain of narrations of these miracles and did not study it in detail, hence are blameworthy for rejecting its occurrence.

I am certainly not going to accept the validity of a phenomenon on the say so of one eyewitness. Hence I reject the 'miracles' attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, or indeed any other religious figure, from any denomination, who requires me to believe on faith alone.

So, people would know their traits and know they are trustworthy people from their experiences with them before Prophethood. Someone being trustworthy is not confirmed by a person's declaration. It is through observation.

Usually from people who have a vested interest in promoting the 'trustworthiness' of a certain figure.
 
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I am certainly not going to accept the validity of a phenomenon on the say so of one eyewitness. Hence I reject the 'miracles' attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, or indeed any other religious figure, from any denomination, who requires me to believe on faith alone.

Yeah, Hitch always used to ask the very fair question of why the monotheistic God kept insisting on making himself apparent exclusively in obscure little pockets of the Middle East populated by essentially illiterate feuding tribal desert dwellers. Why did he flat out ignore the far more advanced and literate Chinese?

Also begs the question... where are the miracles today? Pissweak. Even the dubious accounts we get today are always in some obscure village in Bum* Nowhere. Why doesn't he do something during the Superbowl?

To quote Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar...

Every time I look at you
I don't understand
Why you let the things you did
Get so out of hand
You'd have managed better
If you'd had it planned
Now why'd you choose such a backward time
And such a strange land?
If you'd come today
You could have reached the whole nation
Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication.
 
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