If God exists...

[Wrayun]

Baygham;

Walk into a basic science lab and if you found one practicing musalman in any lab in the world who has made original contribution than come and refute it. Otherwise accept my theory based on case series and with its own predictive model which says it doesnot happen.

So you are telling me that scientists in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, India, Malaysia etc. who are Muslims are not really Muslims? What do you mean original contribution? You want them to discover the G particle without the required economic investments?

For Muslims original contribution to sciences a simple google would do the trick:

Science in medieval Islam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now you are going to bring up the issue of today Muslims and not the 13th century. Well, there are many reasons, religious orthodoxy being one of them but not the major contributing factor. In fact I would argue that religion can play a positive role in advancing a civilization. For example if it wasn't for preaching Christianity and spreading the word of Jesus to the rest of the world the West wouldn't have acquired much of its knowledge, wealth, and resources that it has today. The same with early Muslims and Islam, their expeditions for spreading Islam also made them wealthy, resourceful and a center base for knowledge. However the crusades, mongol invasion and World War 1 gave the Muslim world enough to set them back.

What contributions have the Africans made to science, South Americans, or East Asians? What religions did they follow? Heck almost everyone except the Europeans, what extraordinary contributions have they made before the birth of the industrial age in the West? If you don't take geo-political outcomes, colonialism, and the birth of the industrial age into consideration, basically what you are saying is that the rest of the world is inherently retarded when it comes to the master race Eurpiods. Something that the social darwinists and neo-facists argue.

You hold belief in God responsible, in particular the Islamic faith, for the shortcomings of the present day Muslims without giving any realistic reasons or proof.

This is what Dust is stressing. Simply put, your are scapegoating.

[woor]

Does God exist? Yes (and last time when I was flying and it wasn't a smooth flight I didn't see a lot of atheist there).

Can I prove it to convince you? NO.

[khushal]

Khushal wrora, I changed in watan not in the west. Self defense is not extremism.
I dont go to people and tell them grow a beard, believe in A, B and C or I will do X, Y and Z.
that is extremism. I only want to be left alone, in the sanctity of my self and my home. I will not come to your home and will not dishonor the sanctity of your person.

But that is not what is happening, you want the right to come after me with all the powers at your disposal and if I do the same than I am extremist and you are the savior of Allah.

Say you said follow salafi musalmani with A, B and C. I am not stopping you, go ahead but dont come near me. The moment you touch me its a fight. I am in self defence than,
If on the same token I could say follow my village donkey with E, F and G. Then come to your house, or sanction you in some other way, what will you do.

So its ok with you to kill me by calling me murtad but i cannot even protect myself in self defence that will be extremism. Give me a break. Extremism would be if I go and kill some christen misneries who keep yaping outside but dont come inside. Not taliban they have crossed that line long time ago.

Baygham wrora,

I understand your logic, I agree with you, that no one should be forced to do something against there will. Allah has given us free will, and that is his gift to us, and noone on this earth has any right to take that away from us as long as it does not hurt others. But dont blame Islam for what etremists do. You should think about what happened and why it happened in Afghanistan and pahtunkhwa.
Let me tell you my point of view and you can retort.

When the communists went in to the villages and they started taking the veils of the women by force and they were also being raped. Now that really strikes the psyche of those people in the village. Now those people will lash back, it is a natural reaction. Also those people will attack anybody or anything that is foreign to their way of life because they will associate anything foreign to those people that were making them do things that were against their will. They over react to the threat in an extreme fashion., this is also natural reaction of human beings.

When the afghan government collapsed in Kabul, Huge chaos was the result, where there was looting, women were raped, young boys anad girls were raped, men were killed and tortured in ways that you can not even imagine. When the Taliban came in and brought security to this environment, Naturally they will over react to the situaltion. They are going to bring exreme or strict laws that will not make sense to outsiders but will make sense to the people inside that environment. They told women to stay inside to protect them from being raped, They started making men wear beards because they associated beardless men with the communists, they started forcing people to go to the mosque for prayer because they associated people that didnt pray with the communists, anything they associated with the communists, they would do the exact opposite because their view is the communists brought this horrible trajedy, so they must do everything possible from this to happen again. For example in germany, when world war 2 ended, they passed laws that banned anything associated with the nazi's. They even banned making armed forces because they thought thats what led to fascists bent on world domination. They over reacted. Now over time these authorities will become less and less strict,
Just like the regime in Iran, they are less strict today then they were at the beginning of the revelution.

But what Im trying to convey to you is dont blame Islam for what people do becaue people dont represent Islam, the quran does. People are not perfect, they have free will and they can use that will to do good or to do bad.

[Abu Hurayrah]

Do you believe that every single Muslim understands Islam, as it is meant to be understood?

Every Muslim is obligated to learn Islam. Weather he/she does it and acts upon it, depends on the person. It is already understood and explained by the prophet (peace be upon him) and the later generations.

[khushal]

Do you believe that every single Muslim understands Islam, as it is meant to be understood?

Dust,
I do not beleive every muslim understands Islam the way it was meant to be understood. That is why we have Islamic Scholars, even they disagree on certain points. Every muslim understands the five pillars of Islam but as far as deep understanding goes, some people they dont even have the capacity to understand it. There is a saying a friend told me once. "The Quaran is like the Ocean, the deeper you get into it, the more beautifull it becomes, but some people are not capable to see the beauty that is there."

[khushal]

...then how can you convince me about Him.

Please discuss without referring to any sources. If you need to refer to any source, incorporate it in your answer, but don't simply quote pages of quotes.

Dust,

The foundation of Islam stands on the kalima,"there is no God but God." The first part, "there is no god," basically says nothing exists because if there is no god nothing can exist. The second part "but god," says just that but god "Nothing exists but god."

When someone asks questions about the existance of god, it reminds one of when Decarte tried to rationalize the existence of thyself, when he came up with the notion "I think therefore I am." In Islam Nothing can exist without god, and everything that exist is god. So if thyself exists, then by reasoning god exists because thyself is a part of the existence of god. To confirm your own existence and deny gods existence would be irrational since we and everything that exists are a part of the existence of God.

We as human beings always want to know the origins of everything by refining everthing. For example What makes water, "WATER", the elements of hydrogen(2 parts) and oxygen(1 part) and then we go further and refine hydrogen, what makes hydrogen, "HYDROGEN", and so on and so on. Human beings tend to do this with God also. People ask what makes god, "GOD". refining god to find the origin of god, what is gods beggining and what is gods end. God is the existence of all that exists and the submission to god is what creates and keeps harmany and peace in the mind, body, and soul. God can not have an origin, because something can not come out of
nothing, if an existence is there than an existence was always there.

Think about one of Newtons law of physics, "Energy can not be created nor destroyed but only transferred," telling us the energy was always there, one can not address the origin of the energy because energy can not be created nor can it be destroyed, the energy exists and it always existed. If something exists, it always existed in some form.

You can not refine the oneness and unity of god. We dont have the capicity to explain this or understand this and the quaran tells us this numerious times about how humanities combined wisdom and intellect is like a peice of sand in all the deserts. The quaran avoids the projection of god or the image of god, this is why islam forbids images and idols to be worshipped because that is what leads them stray from Islam's foundamental message that "there is no God but God,"

[Toramana]

Baygham;



So you are telling me that scientists in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, India, Malaysia etc. who are Muslims are not really Muslims? What do you mean original contribution? You want them to discover the G particle without the required economic investments?

For Muslims original contribution to sciences a simple google would do the trick:

Science in medieval Islam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now you are going to bring up the issue of today Muslims and not the 13th century. Well, there are many reasons, religious orthodoxy being one of them but not the major contributing factor. In fact I would argue that religion can play a positive role in advancing a civilization. For example if it wasn't for preaching Christianity and spreading the word of Jesus to the rest of the world the West wouldn't have acquired much of its knowledge, wealth, and resources that it has today. The same with early Muslims and Islam, their expeditions for spreading Islam also made them wealthy, resourceful and a center base for knowledge. However the crusades, mongol invasion and World War 1 gave the Muslim world enough to set them back.

What contributions have the Africans made to science, South Americans, or East Asians? What religions did they follow? Heck almost everyone except the Europeans, what extraordinary contributions have they made before the birth of the industrial age in the West? If you don't take geo-political outcomes, colonialism, and the birth of the industrial age into consideration, basically what you are saying is that the rest of the world is inherently retarded when it comes to the master race Eurpiods. Something that the social darwinists and neo-facists argue.

You hold belief in God responsible, in particular the Islamic faith, for the shortcomings of the present day Muslims without giving any realistic reasons or proof.

This is what Dust is stressing. Simply put, your are scapegoating.

Muslims haven't made any original contribution to science...no higher system of thought or philosophy or mathematical model of the real world, etc...one exception may be algebra...

A number of enlightened persons in early and middle Muslim period had been declared heritic and apostate...few were not even Muslims...

[Wrayun]

Islam hasn't made any original contribution to science...no higher system of thought or philosophy or mathematical model of the real world, etc...one exception may be algebra...

A number of enlightened persons in early and middle Muslim period had been declared heritic and apostate...few were not even Muslims...

I never claimed Islam making any contribution to science. Religious scripture are not books of science, but signs. The point of my post was to show Muslim contribution to science as in followers of Islam. Whether they were heretics, non-believers, that is debatable.

[akbarkhan]

Does God exist? Yes (and last time when I was flying and it wasn't a smooth flight I didn't see a lot of atheist there).

Witty!

[akbarkhan]

Muslims haven't made any original contribution to science...no higher system of thought or philosophy or mathematical model of the real world, etc...one exception may be algebra...

First thing that comes to mind is Ibn Khalaf al-Muradi.

[Dust]

Those of you who say that Muslims have not contributed anything to modern science are very ignorant. If you are going to reject God, find, I agree, you can't see Him. But don't do the same by saying that no Muslim has contributed anything to science. This is absurd and stupid. There are many Muslims who receive their Ph.D. in various fields of science. In fact, about thirty years ago one Muslim won the Nobel Prize for Physics. If I am not mistaken, I think his name was Dr. Abdus Salam.

Come on, fellow Atheists, call a spade a spade.

[Dust]

Dust, your original assumption about baygam is right, He was fed extreme idiology that had no rationality and was told to follow it blindly, and when he came to the west, he turned 180 degrees and became an extremist in another form. He has an addictive personality disorder, he can not live in a world of moderation. He can only be extreme in one way or another, he indulges in everything, he doesnt know when to say this is enough. If you put him in a society with white supremcist, he would be the fist one to lynch a person of color on sight. He can not think for himself but he to be told how to think.

Everytime he post, All I see is the hatred coming out of his heart. There is no logic in that.

I can't help but to agree with you. I have the same feelings, but I just could not put my finger on it.

Baygham, there are many Atheists who do not have a problem with Muslims. I love Muslims. I enjoy their company and their level of discipline. They have contributed a lot towards promoting a clean society. You can't deny this.

[Dust]

Dust,
I do not beleive every muslim understands Islam the way it was meant to be understood. That is why we have Islamic Scholars, even they disagree on certain points. Every muslim understands the five pillars of Islam but as far as deep understanding goes, some people they dont even have the capacity to understand it. There is a saying a friend told me once. "The Quaran is like the Ocean, the deeper you get into it, the more beautifull it becomes, but some people are not capable to see the beauty that is there."

Being an academic I can follow your point. The question that arises: who has the right then to throw people out of the fold of Islam? And why do they do it?

[Dust]

Dust,

The foundation of Islam stands on the kalima,"there is no God but God." The first part, "there is no god," basically says nothing exists because if there is no god nothing can exist. The second part "but god," says just that but god "Nothing exists but god."

When someone asks questions about the existance of god, it reminds one of when Decarte tried to rationalize the existence of thyself, when he came up with the notion "I think therefore I am." In Islam Nothing can exist without god, and everything that exist is god. So if thyself exists, then by reasoning god exists because thyself is a part of the existence of god. To confirm your own existence and deny gods existence would be irrational since we and everything that exists are a part of the existence of God.

We as human beings always want to know the origins of everything by refining everthing. For example What makes water, "WATER", the elements of hydrogen(2 parts) and oxygen(1 part) and then we go further and refine hydrogen, what makes hydrogen, "HYDROGEN", and so on and so on. Human beings tend to do this with God also. People ask what makes god, "GOD". refining god to find the origin of god, what is gods beggining and what is gods end. God is the existence of all that exists and the submission to god is what creates and keeps harmany and peace in the mind, body, and soul. God can not have an origin, because something can not come out of
nothing, if an existence is there than an existence was always there.

Think about one of Newtons law of physics, "Energy can not be created nor destroyed but only transferred," telling us the energy was always there, one can not address the origin of the energy because energy can not be created nor can it be destroyed, the energy exists and it always existed. If something exists, it always existed in some form.

You can not refine the oneness and unity of god. We dont have the capicity to explain this or understand this and the quaran tells us this numerious times about how humanities combined wisdom and intellect is like a peice of sand in all the deserts. The quaran avoids the projection of god or the image of god, this is why islam forbids images and idols to be worshipped because that is what leads them stray from Islam's foundamental message that "there is no God but God,"

I do agree with you very much, that our origin has to be found. Whether it is God or chance, we will never know. Human intellect has a strange barrier, it is called a knee jerk reaction. This reaction will not allow you to venture beyond one's scope of the definition of truth. Unless, of course, someone is courageous.

For me what is strange is that someone could be believing in God, but then if their actions are not in concurrence with someone else's understanding of truth, let us use Islam as as example, that person would face abuse. On this very website, it is Muslims (who believe in God) who are abusing each other. The Atheists are not abusing them. How do you reconcile this?

[eccentric]

...then how can you convince me about Him.

Please discuss without referring to any sources. If you need to refer to any source, incorporate it in your answer, but don't simply quote pages of quotes.

No one is here to convince you that God exist. Of course, it is impossible to prove that God exists. But religions do exist. That is what can be proved. The aim and the concept of religions to bring peace. One of those religions is Islam. And Islam says that Human beings are not able to understand what God is. The brain of Humans can understand limit things. Those things which human brain can't understand is called Ghaib. Only some prophets know something or everything about Ghaib. There is a Hadith which says " Don't think about Creator. Think about His creation." And if God doesn't exist, why many people try to find HIM ? It is because Humans are granted with a very powerfull brain. As Hazart Adam could repeat those words which Allah has told him. All the Angels went to Sajjda. This shows what a precious Living being are we. And this is a sign of Allah which makes you thing about Him, even if you don't want to think about him. That is why questions like those raised in your mind.