God existing + Miracles in the Quran
Offline Ok, I will make an attempt to discuss the existence of god here + finish off citing some Miracles from the Quran which lend credibility to the existence of god and the truth of Islam.
I will try to organize my thoughts for you guys to effectively respond to them.
1. Let's have a look at the different phenomena in the world. The phenomena at hand here is life and existence as a whole, the most puzzling and magnification phenomena, one that is yet to be fully understood or comprehended ( even by believers in God ).
2. The Answer or explanation to this phenomenon is God, God is the engineer of this universe, though his exact methods are unknown to us his tools can be explained and understood through science ( as God himself orders humans to ponder at his creations and try to grasp how they work ), The existence of God as an overseer and creator of the universe answers countless questions that many have been thriving to answer for ages, the purpose of the universe, the meaning of life and the meaning of death, the afterlife, what is good and what is evil ... etc etc.
3. Even though the matter of God's existence is meant by God to be slightly vague and unprovable by pure science ( hence the existence of faith ), there are many signs and hints at God's existence, even though many argue against it, the sole fact that "the universe is coherent and consistent. That means that everything fits together, like a puzzle" (Nigel's quote) points at a sentient and amazingly powerful being's work at hand, that aside, what other hints and signs are there besides this global and general one you atheists might say ... well let's see.
4. God's existence ties directly into the religions sent by him, all prophets and major religions on earth originated from the same exact source, from the dawn of earth till recently countless prophets and messengers supported with unbelievable miracles and feats delivered god's word, you will say you can't scientifically prove a miracle happened, well .. maybe ... but you also can't scientifically prove that the battle of "Battle of Thermopylae" for example happened ... all you have left from it is peoples' words and some pieces of rusty artifacts, there is no way for sure to know that it really happened since non of us saw it .. you have to accept people's ( historians ) word on it and take it as truth .. logical but not really rational.
5. So are miracles, prophets and their religions, they can't be proved by science, but what's left of them ( people's word, and text books ) could be examined for coherence and constancy using logic ( for example .. many historians confirm Jesus and Mohamed existed as a men, that part can't be denied by anyone... and when tales of their actions and miracles travel and prevail around it must have surely did for a reason ... it can't be proven ... but the existence and perseverance of such tales .. its relation with historical figures and real men, its place inside the collective pool of god-sent religions and how all the tales compliment each other all points at something.
6. A much bigger picture that requires extensive research, effort, an open mind and understanding to grasp ... go ask all those scientists and religions researchers who converted ( who surely - no offense intended - have more knowledge than the sum of all the residents in these forums ) ... why they did !!!?.. you can find countless videos for that .... most of them name coherence, consistency, hints at scientific facts found in religious texts long before proven by science as reasons of why after a long time of study, and research they came to such conclusions .. they didn't sit on their butts browsing up the internet and came up with the non-understandably affirmed conclusion that God doesn't exist so easily .. just like that without an ounce of research or thought.
Examples
Prof. Milan from Czech Republic converted to islam after reading the Holy Quran.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=opRkKwlaBXo
Dr. Jeffrey Lang is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Kansas.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2z73oh...eature=related
7. Another way to point at the divinity of God-sent texts ( Quran, Bible, Torah ) is to examine them for hints and signs that can't be of human origin, in my case it will be the Quran since it is the book i believe is completely unaltered and unchanged since it first came into existence ( as proven by comparison between the oldest copies of it available and the newest prints ), so don't talk to me about he inconsistency in the bible and torah since it is not possible to clearly figure out which parts are unaltered and which are.
In the Quran there are hints that were completely impossible for a man living in a vulgar desert tribe that had nothing to do with science to ever grasp or even remotely think of ( a tribe that before islam spent all its days worshiping statues, drinking gallons wine like water, killing their newborn baby girls for fear they many bring them shame when they grow up, writing poetry which is the only thing they were good at writing, waging war and killing each other randomly for glory and loot )
Here are some crystal clear examples:
" And the mountains as pegs? "
Sura (78) - Al Naba / Verse 7
The images will be presented to illustrate the form of mountains that are described as pickets/pegs or wedges; which were detected only recently, the mind of one person 14 centuries ago couldn't have grasped that the high mountains like the Alps or the Himalayas has roots plunge in lower layers of earth's crust and it is similar to a large extent mountain snow Floating on the water, and that the more high mountain more submersible below the surface, which is why the difference in thickness of the Earth's crust from one place to another, the whole rock crust is only rafts on rocks Cordon because the qualitative weight of rock crust is less than the qualitative weight of the layers below.
http://www.55a.net/firas/ar_photo/7/moun2.jpg
This picture shows the depth of the root of the mountain in the earth's crust, which can be up to 60 meters below sea level, which the Quran called Peg ... it is for additional stabilization of the mountains on the surface of the earth's crust.
http://www.55a.net/firas/ar_photo/7/mount.jpg
Look up the Arabic text, look up the meaning of pegs/wedges, look up info about the mountains and earth's crust, look up all you want but it is pretty much obvious what the verse is pointing at ( God is stating that he created mountains as pegs ... a peg is an object that when used has a part above the ground and the rest concealed underground and is used to fixate things ).
"And you see the mountains, you think them to be still, but they pass away as the passing away of the cloud-- the handiwork of Allah Who has made every thing thoroughly; surely He is Aware of what you do. "
Sura (27) - An Naml / Verse 88
As proven by science, mountains and the whole earth Crust float on lava and is not stationary as it might seem for those living on it, still it is unexplainable how could a man living 1400 years ago in a vuglar desert tribe could have known about the earth crust and mountains floating on top of lava to even be able to compare it to the floating of clouds.
There are other hints if you guys are interested, and you can argue as much as you want that it is open to interpretations .. but sadly you will be only lying to yourself, yes ... there are complex verses in Quran that can be open to interpretations but the examples here are clear as the sun in the sky, and while this in no way proves anything scientifically it is with no doubt a very strong hint that there is a creator to the universe behind its creation and over seeing its progress and every single action we do.
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Do you know what circular reasoning is?
'The most puzzling and magnificent'? That's quite a stretch.
Life is complex and remains enigmatic on some levels, but arguing that we don't have a fairly comprehensive grasp of what life is is rather absurd.
Incorrect. 'God' is not an appropriate answer. 'God' explains nothing, adding only an additional an unecessary level of complexity to the question. If God did it, how did he do it? When did he do it? How do we know that? He can we test that?
If his methods are unknown/unknowable, then the God answer gets us nowhere - and you're being intellectually dishonest and cowardly by insisting that you just somehow 'know' a deity must've done it all.
Sure, you could invoke him wherever you wish, and call that sufficient ('Who cooked this rice?' 'God did!' 'Who made this mess?' 'God did!' etc); but you and I both know better than to call that an 'explanation'.
Meant to be slightly vague? Questions of such huge importance, and the answer we have is meant to be vague?
Fuck that.
Vague answers get us nowhere, yielding no practical applications, failing to further understanding and often causing strife through different interpretations of what they mean.
Furthermore, order is not a definate clue for intelligence. Fairy rings are caused by natural forces. Crystals are caused by natural forces. Animals and plants gestate and mature trough natural forces. Your reasoning is non sequitor.
Yes, some historians agree that Mohammed and Jesus were real people. However, you might note that no serious historian believes that either man performed real magic. Other historians entirely dissent from the view that these men were real people at all (and I tend to agree with them, at least as far as Jesus is concerned). If Mohammed did exist, the consensus is that he was a tyrannical warlord (thus the incitements to war, violence and Jihad in your 'Holy Book'), and hardly a benign prophet.
Most converted for emotional reasons, not scientific ones. A few have 'converted' for financial gain.
Your 'holy book' was written, at best, by a megalomaniacal madman. Sorry to switch-off your rainbow. Shia law is based on a literal interpretation of the Koran, which encourages Jihad aginst infidels, objectification/ownership of women, murder, pillage, enslavement and deception. There are 'hints' that it was written by a divine source? What are they, pray tell?
The verse you quote is so vague that it can be interpreted any number of ways - you just happen to choose an interpretation (and it's a real stretch of one, IMHO) that suggests the book was explaining plate tectonics. If that's what it was getting at, why didn't it give an obvious, detailed description of the mechanisms in question and the forces involved?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Again, just to clarify my quote:
Two jigsaw puzzle pieces fit together because of mathematical necessity, not because they were designed. As Kevin has so eloquently stated, order does not equal design. Order simply means there is an underlying process that gives rise to order.
There are other religious texts that have survived unaltered in meaning since their inception: The Book of Mormon, for instance, or Dianetics, or Scientology (though there is not one definitive text for scientology, as basically it's "Anything L. Ron Hubbard thought he should write" ), or any number of other writings.
As for the historical necessity of Jesus: there's actually quite some debate about whether or not Jesus really existed. I suspect Muhamed was probably a real, single person, but that hardly makes him a prophet, any more than Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard were prophets. Or even Elvis, for that matter.
Aaaanyway, you start with the assumption of God, so of course you will conclude God. In the end, that is your choice; however, forgive me if I remain sceptical of your claims of miracles. Too many claimed miracles in modern time have not held up to scrutiny, but would've been given a pass in earlier, less-rigorous times.
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
Just as a point of fact here, the Koran was not written by one megalomaniacal madman, it was written by several. Mohammed himself was illiterate and wrote nothing, but recited it unto his many bloodthirsty companions with little apparent care for the fidelity of the recording process. Tradition tells us that the Koran that is read today was originally compiled from scratchings on the shoulder blades of oxen and bark and leaves. We need not worry about this of course, for Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, maintains the original and perfect copy in Paradise. This is probably my favorite part of Islam, the fact that the omniscient being with the perfect memory actually keeps written records himself. It seems so pathetic to me for some reason.
"The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men."
--Bertrand Russell
I looked really hard through your post and did not find any miracles.
Points for not capitalizing god or truth.
Nothing but naked assertions here.
God obviously told you he intended to be vague and unprovable. If not this is more naked assertion.
If you want to play this way then you can't prove that the Quran has basis and was recited by your prophet as all you have is people's word for it. Your claim of the Quran is hereby rejected based on your own established guidelines. Therefore in your own words, not rational.
I don't deny that some historians say this, that in itself is but their opinion. Mohamed probably did exist as to Jesus who can tell.
Using this logic then King Arthur pulled a sword from a stone and Robin Hood and his Merry Men robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.
Intelligent people sometimes are deluded just like the rest of us. If not there were countless people who thought the world was flat for generations. Explain their errors.
So you buy into the idea of Jinn or Sprites?
I'll give Mohamed an A for redirecting the violence from his people into countless wars. See Here.
You misinterpret. The point here is the mountains shall disappear as do the clouds. This was an analogy to indicate something that appears as permanent shall not last. Mountains were used as they were quite large and appeared durable. This is also in the Bible. There it talks about mountains passing away and says mountains have foundations.
Your clear examples are not clear.
You promised to show miracles from the Quran to prove credibility and truth. I didn't find any.
Edit *corrected error*
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
Now that is interesting.
I wonder: most contemporary evidence for the existence of a genuine person whom the Koran's Mohammed (what's the appropriate spelling, here?) comes from accounts of his battles; how likely would it be that, in reality, Mohammed was more like a 'mascot' or perhaps even a 'brand name' of sorts - there was no real man, but a collective of enterprising warlords invented this 'prophet' that they could refer to for political leverage of sorts?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
There are no scientific studies of mountains that suggest any structures resembling that first picture. What seems to be the case is that below the base of a mountain, which is typically a very spread-out base, as in the second picture, which looks nothing like a 'peg' or 'wedge, is often a thickened section of continental crust in the form a shallow bulge, on top of the almost solid mantle (nowhere near as liquid as lava). In some places, like in the Himalayas, there actually doesn't seem to be any significant downward bulge, due to the particular nature of the collision of the Indian plate and the Asian plate, and it being relatively recent in geological times, not having had time for it to settle into the mantle.
The actual bulge varies so much and it doesn't reach thru the mantle to anything more solid, so they do not function anything like" pegs".
As I said, it certainly isn't lava. Lava flows up through faults and holes in the mantle to form and feed volcanoes in specific locations. It is a real stretch to compare it to clouds. Now if they had compared it to mats of reeds floating in a swamp that would have been a much better analogy in terms of something they may have known about.
And mountains "pass away" by wind and water erosion, not at all comparable to to the way clouds disappear as the water droplets or ice particles that make them up evaporate. I would have been more impressed if they compared the passing away of mountains to the way a sandstorm might damage a mud-brick building, or the way water poured out on a river bank washes away the sand and mud of the bank.
So no, doesn't really point to any mysterious hints of modern knowledge.
If that's representative of your 'miracles', I am very unimpressed.
The rest of your points have been well addressed by others at this point, so I have better things to do at the moment.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
They're all just fortune cookie style verses anyways, kind of like a theist I was debating with a couple of weeks ago that claimed Genesis is clearly referring to abiogenesis.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
I hope Christians reading this realize that they are not doing anything differently in making the same mistakes.
TO BOTH Muslims and Christians I'd suggest you bone up on the following.
1. Circular Reasoning
2. "True Scotsman" Fallacy
3. Bertrand Russell's Teapot
4. Occam's Razor
5. Law of probability
6. Epicurus's problem with calling god all powerful and all good
7. Thermodynamics does not justify "Poof" logic otherwise Superman can fly with just a leotard and cape.
What theists fail to understand is that the claims are all in the same unfalsifiable naked assertion category as Isis and Thor and just as absurd as Tom Cruise's claim that Jesus came from little green men.
Get back to us when you have God/Allah's DNA. No worries though, we won't hold our breath.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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Life isn't as puzzling as you might think. We are still mostly ignorant about abiogensis (the assembly of the first self-replicating molecules that survived to form the basis of all life on earth), but we have an excellent model of what's happened since then. So, life and existence are not that puzzling.
I think life represents one of the more magnificent aspects of the universe: the combination of various simple, predictable processes resulting in a larger, stochastic process. From life to fractals to the fine structures of the universe itself, the fact that unfathomable complexity is built from simple rules is amazing.
This is all because of the mathematics of the universe: the many relationships between matter and energy.
Hm. This statement (and similar statements by both Chuck and desertwolf9) prompted me to write a long response, The philosophic problems with God. Assuming an infinite, all-powerful God answers no questions at all, as it makes all questions irrelevant. In fact, an all-powerful God makes reality irrelevant.
I hope I've adequately explained why I said this. "Puzzle" might not be the right word, but I was thinking of jigsaw puzzles, which fit together perfectly; not by design, but by mathematical necessity.
Just like that, the universe is ordered and structured and coherent and consistent because of mathematical necessity. God isn't required. Nor is there really room for God.
Not really. You can judge the relative merit of the historian's account (say, the origin of the historian's information), how rigorous the historian's methodology, and evidence presented to support the historian's account, and so on.
All things leave evidence. Even just a couple of rusty artifacts are evidence. If an historical account is accurate, it will be accurately reflected in the physical evidence left behind. History is open to constant revision. Sometimes that revision is based on rigorous, scholarly work, and sometimes the revision is based on wishful thinking or bias on the part of the historian.
The larger the historic event, the more physical evidence is left behind. For instance, in the Battle of Thermopylae, the history of Herodotus has been bolstered by archeological finds. Herodotus might not've been the mosts scholarly or rigorous of historians, but enough evidence has accrued to indicate the battle too place, and the Persians lost a disproportionate number of soldiers.
In contrast to the meager (and often derided) histories of Herodotus, all we have of miracles, prophets, and their religions are people's words, and texts. There is no physical evidence that the books are divinely inspired, any more than we have proof that the Book of Mormon was dictated by an angel. We have absolutely no evidence to support that miracles ever happened.
At least with Herodotus's account of Thermopylae, we have a few rusty artefacts of exactly the right type, at exactly the right place, dated to exactly the right time.
As far as real mean representing prophets: did you know there is a Church of Elvis? It's entirely possible that this church will evolve, and Elvis's legend grow, to the point where Elvis was a Prophet of God.
In any case, Joseph Smith is a more modern prophet. Not many people truly believe he talked to an angel, but the Latter Day Saints has many members.
There are people today who claim to be God, or Jesus. David Koresh, for example, claimed to be Jesus. There is a gentleman named Jesus (pronounced as Hey-Suess) who has ten thousand followers.
Becoming a prophet is not hard. All you need is a group of gullible people, and a little bit of delusion, or a lot of willingness to screw over other people for your own gain.
Why do they surely have more knowledge than any one of us, let alone our combined knowledge? This is an assumption, and not one based on any evidence whatsoever, as far as I can tell. This is a very educated crowd here, with DeludedGod and Bob Spence and Hamby and so on.
I think this illustrates a misunderstanding about atheists.
Believe it or not, many of us have done much research, and given much thought, to the question of the existence of God. You seem to dismiss us simply because we came to the conclusion that God most likely does not exist. I would wager that many of us are more familiar with the Bible than most Christians. (Not so much with the Qu'uran, but that's because we live in a society dominated by overt Christianity.)
Don't assume we are ignorant, just because we disagree with you. That is a terrible mistake.
Here's another possibility: "pegs" in this context is very similar to "roots." Mountains have poetically had "roots" for about as long as poetry has been around. As you said, the vulgar tribe that gave rise to Islam could write poetry.
Or perhaps it refers to the mountains as pegs to the sky?
As mountains really don't have pegs or wedges, as Bob Spence has pointed out, this doesn't indicate unexplainable knowledge. All it indicates is that "holy" books are often written in poetry, or at least with poetic language, and as such, are difficult to interpret, or may be interpreted in so many ways that it loses all direct meaning.
This verse obviously refers to the impermanence of seemingly-permanent things. This states poetically that life is transient, that all things fall to time. This line doesn't refer to the floating of clouds, but to the passing of clouds (that is, the disapperation of clouds), so it cannot be referring to the floating of mountains over magma (which isn't the way it works, anyway, as the magma of the earth is far below the mantle).
These don't represent miraculous knowledge. Miraculous knowedge would've been something like, "And Allah gave to the heaviest materials death by halves, and for some those halves would number 4-and-a-half times ten nine times; and for another, 1 and four of ten-parts times ten ten times. Also, Allah highly recommends not carrying the plutonium near your parts most private, as the radiation could cause mutations most grotesque"
Something along those lines might be considered a bit more specific, and certainly more useful, than "And the mountains as pegs."
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers