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Oh Em, you are so priceless. Please write a book right now on the subject, I cannot wait to read it and Mel Brooks will be on your doorstep to publish it.Quote:
Originally Posted by emily655321
I being a Jew have never seen such insight! what a girl :lol:
Playing? Maybe "I am that merry wanderer of the night." ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
Interesting point about the gender of god. I always thought that Allah was a masculine word but apparently this is debatable - this from Wiki:
I've got more to say here, but there's been a lot of traffic here since I started the thread, so I need time to digest it all and prepare a response.Quote:
Many linguists believe that the term Allah is derived from a contraction of the Arabic words al (the) and ilah (deity, masculine form) - al-ilah meaning "the god." In addition, one of the main pagan goddesses of pre-Islamic Arabia, Allat (al + ilah + at, or 'the goddess'), is cited as being etymologically (though not synchronically) the feminine linguistic counterpart to the grammatically masculine Allah. If so, the word Allah is an abbreviated title, meaning 'the deity', rather than a name. For this reason, both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars often translate Allah directly into English as 'God'; this also explains why Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians freely refer to God as Allah. However, some Muslim scholars feel that "Allah" should not be translated, because they perceived the Arabic word to express the uniqueness of "Allah" more accurately than the word "god", which can take a plural "gods", whereas the word "Allah" has no plural form. This is a significant issue in translation of the Qur'an.
Watch this space.
Two more supplementary questions.
If God is eternal and unchanging, why did He:
(a) react to the wickedness of the world of Noah, and to Sodom & Gomorrah, with violent destruction? But to later wickedness with Jesus's forgiveness?
(b) originally 'choose' the Jewish people and protect and defend them, while smiting their enemies? But later on (in the person of Jesus) 'choose' the entire world as his people?
Shouldn't one expect a degree of consistency from an eternal, unchanging being?
Not if God is a She. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe
I really don't have anything more to add, and I would just end up repeating myself, because what seems very logical to me, is apparently not at all logical to you. I just don't understand how you can think that your free will is influenced simply by the fact that Allah t. knows the future. If you had the ability to look into the future and you saw everything that will happen, does your knowledge mean that people who acted a certain way were influenced by your knowledge? NO. So, why is it hard to accept that same scenario with God in it? He doesn't influence your free will, He simply KNOWS the future, and by knowing the future, He knows how you will act, because future doesn't exist for Him, as He is not limited by it.Quote:
Don’t assume that I find it hard to understand – I don’t. I simply find it impossible to accept. There is a huge difference. Your explanation is a semantic conjuring trick and not even a convincing one. If he knows what I will write, then what I will write must already exist in his ‘mind’, even before it appears in mine. For me to produce something different from God’s knowledge of what I will write is, therefore, a logical impossibility. How is it therefore possible to say that I have free will? You also manage to make God seem rather menacing – as if he is daring me to reject him. What, according to your religion, will be the consequences for me (in both this life and the next) if I don’t believe?
Why not?Quote:
This is a weak analogy. Firstly, why a child?
Call it social norms. :) We act and respond a certain way when someone says "Thank you". I didn't claim the analogy to be great, but it is nevertheless showing that our knowledge of the future doesn't impact the free will of others.Quote:
Secondly, what sort of a human being can only respond “you are welcome”? Are you sure you don’t mean a telephone answering machine?
Well, that is the difference between you and God. He KNOWS exactly what will happen, because He is the All-Knowing. However, He is not influencing it. I don't know how many times I have to say this. Can others jump in and clafy this? Does this really seem like a tough concept?Quote:
I might expect the child to say, "you are welcome" but that doesn’t mean I know it will.
Knowing and influencing are not one and the same. :DQuote:
Your comparison is not the same as God knowing my every thought and action, unless God simply programs us like robots. That doesn’t seem very much like free will, either.
They are totally irrelevant because Allah doesn't have a gender. As humans, we identify things a certain way, but to understand God, we have to get away from those. However, even if we get away from those abstractlly, linguistically we still have to limit God to what we know. He/She/It is interchageable in the sense that all of them are wrong, and do not describe the nature of Allah s.v.t.Quote:
Would you say that Allah has been endowed with predominantly male, female or neutral gender characteristics? I notice that you don’t use ‘She’ but ‘He’. Are they interchangeable?
What is the contradiction? WE know God only as much as He told us about Himself. We can't know Him more than that, simply because He is above our comprehension. In the holy Qur'an, Allah s.v.t gave us 99 adjectives that describe Him. We know Him through those, but it is not possible to know Him beyond that, because than we would have to be intelectually above Him. The Creator and creation are not one and the same, and it would be a contradiction if they were.Quote:
In the end, we come down to the claim that God is unknowable and that human logic cannot comprehend it/him/her/them. If you are happy with the contradictions I see, then that’s your choice.
This is a Christian belief, so I can't really give you an answer. Muslims do not believe that Jesus came to forgive the humanity, nor that he erased their sins. Allah s.v.t has punished different people over the history of human kind, usually those people were punished because of the greatness of their sins.Quote:
If God is eternal and unchanging, why did He:
(a) react to the wickedness of the world of Noah, and to Sodom & Gomorrah, with violent destruction? But to later wickedness with Jesus's forgiveness?
Again, a belief that Muslims do not accept. Every nation that existed had a Prophet who was sent to them. Allah s.v.t didn't put one nation above another, and the only way that people are compared is based on their faith, meaning that those who are faithful are on a greater level than those who are not.Quote:
(b) originally 'choose' the Jewish people and protect and defend them, while smiting their enemies? But later on (in the person of Jesus) 'choose' the entire world as his people?
Every human being will enter paradise in the end, except those who committed shirk. Shirk means that a person worships something else, other than the One and Only God. Notice that this implies that every human beings worships something, because worship in Islam means putting something above everything else; submitting to it, so even those who claim to not believe in God, believe in other things that become their deity. They may believe to be gods themselves, self-sufficient in a way, or they may resort to following their desires, or money, or power etc. Even if they do not consciencly claim this, their actions will reveal who their gods are.Quote:
You also manage to make God seem rather menacing – as if he is daring me to reject him. What, according to your religion, will be the consequences for me (in both this life and the next) if I don’t believe?
So, every human being who didn't commit this sin, which is the greatest sin in Islam, will eventually enter paradise. Those who die with their sins outweighing their good deeds will be punished with hell, but will enter paradise after they have paid for their sins. Those who die as kafir (people commiting shirk) will spend their eternity in hell.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
But I feel that God's infinite knowledge has nothing to do with free will.Even if he knows my actions prior to them actually occuring,it is still "MY" choice.He is not choosing for me,but being all knowing he is already aware of "MY" actions.It is not a contradiction,because I'm not choosing what he knows.He knows what I'm choosing.It is still "MY" conscious choice.God designed the universe like a clock that has been set,it runs itself and then intervenes only when neccessary."I" am always responsible for "MY" actions.You just don't want to take responsibility for anything,it's much easier for you to say it was God's will.Thats how I see it.
Like I said before I'm only 17 please don't blast my brain into oblivion.
Thanks Ryduce for jumping in. I didn't think it a very hard concept to grasp either, and I don't understand how God's knowledge is in contradiction with our free will...
No, it’s not that it’s logical to you and illogical to me – it’s illogical full stop. It might be acceptable or unproblematic to you but that is not the same.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Amra”
You cannot understand this simple scenario? There are two pens on the table. One is red, the other blue. I decide to pick up one of them. Perhaps I should have used the scenario of a blonde and a brunette in a bar. :brow: God knows which it will be before I carry out the act. So, let’s say for the sake of argument that God knows that I will pick up the red one. I cannot therefore pick up the blue one. What kind of free choice is that? So if God knows the future, I can do nothing that will cause a deviation from that future. Surely, you can see that free will and a foreseen future are logically irreconcilable?Quote:
Originally Posted by “Amra”
No, but then I didn’t create that future. Also, those people can only do what is consistent with the future already written.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Amra”
It’s hard to accept because you use logic up to a point where it can no longer serve you and then you fall back on saying that God is supernatural. You might just as well tell me that you’ve simply got a hunch that God exists.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Amra”
Because you are not comparing like with like. I also think child is a deliberately emotive choice that suggests our relationship with a deity is like that between a parent and a child.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Amra”
No, it isn’t showing that at all. As I said above, the child might be expected to respond in the usual way but that doesn’t mean he or she certainly will. In the case of God’s expectations, we are dealing with an absolute. They are not expectations but knowledge. We can never have knowledge of the future because it doesn’t exist. By definition, it is endlessly deferred. You are freely mixing human expectation with divine, absolute knowledge.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Amra”
Again, it is not a tough concept, merely an illogical one. You seem to assume that by repeating the same point it will eventually become truth. All you are really saying here is that I, a mere human, cannot know but something that isn’t human can. Your argument depends on the existence of a hypothetical being – an omniscient, omnipotent supernatural entity, in which I do not believe.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Amra”
This is the second time you’ve mentioned ‘influence’, which I was careful to omit from my comments. I’m not suggesting that God influences our decisions. I am merely pointing out that free will and omniscience are irreconcilable.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Amra”
If they are all limited and equally wrong, why don’t we hear Allah referred to as she very much? I can’t say that I have ever heard Allah referred to as ‘she’ but many times as ‘he’.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Amra”
People used to say similar things about Eric Clapton in the Sixties. The contradiction is between the idea of omniscience and free will. If God is above my comprehension, then my reason will get me nowhere. Therefore, instead of spending my time wondering about the philosophical aspects of his/her existence, I will direct my attention to the morality of the systems that serve him/her here on Earth. That would take us into territory that would be banned on this Forum. I’ll give you a simple example, though. The idea of original sin is repugnant to me. I believe it was thought up to reconcile the idea of an infinitely merciful God with the death of infants. A newly born child is, as far as I’m concerned, utterly sinless. Yet they nevertheless die. How can God permit this (rhetorical)? The answer -even that defenceless babyis full of sin. Horrible idea.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Amra”
A contradiction by your laws, not mine.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Amra”
I take it that this is yet another assumption that I must accept as objective fact. You know, people who have had a go at religious belief have been castigated by mods a number of times on this Forum since I have been posting. They are criticised for intolerance. To me, the kind of assumptions you are making suggest there is little room for the faithful’s tolerance of me.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Amra”
I’d better get some flame-resistant books ready then because I want no part of such a system. That is my free will and I exercise it.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Amra”
It is illogical simply because you claim so? That's not an argument; it is simply an opinion.Quote:
No, it’s not that it’s logical to you and illogical to me – it’s illogical full stop. It might be acceptable or unproblematic to you but that is not the same.
You need to differentiate certain simple concepts before you make an argument. God is either influencing you, or He is not. He is either influencing your free will, or not. It can't be both. Simply by knowing the future, He is not influencing it in any way. You didn't answer my question regarding this knowledge of future. If you could know the future and would be able to see everything that will happen, do you at the same time have the ability to change it? Does your knowledge of the future affect it in any way? Are the people around you going to act differently simply because you have seen the future? You have to imagine that God knows everything that will happen. In the Qur'an, a lot of times we have verses that talk about the Judgment Day. It says what people will say when they see hell fire, or it tells the story of people talking to each other during Judgment Day. This is because, Allah s.v.t knows already what will happen. The future and the past are concepts known to us, but Allah s.v.t is beyond that. He is not limited by time. However, you confuse predestination with knowledge. Our free will is not affected by His knowledge. He simply KNOWS what will happen, because He is not limited by time. He looks at the past, and the present, and the future as one, not seperate entities. I can see that this may be confusing to you, but if you try to seperate influence from knowledge, you will understand it.Quote:
There are two pens on the table. One is red, the other blue. I decide to pick up one of them. Perhaps I should have used the scenario of a blonde and a brunette in a bar. God knows which it will be before I carry out the act. So, let’s say for the sake of argument that God knows that I will pick up the red one. I cannot therefore pick up the blue one. What kind of free choice is that? So if God knows the future, I can do nothing that will cause a deviation from that future. Surely, you can see that free will and a foreseen future are logically irreconcilable?
He KNOWS the future, we create it. Whatever choices in our lives we make, are because of our free will. God simply knows the future, and hence, knows our decisions.Quote:
No, but then I didn’t create that future. Also, those people can only do what is consistent with the future already written.
Because they are not alike. God and humans are not alike, therefore, the comparison cannot be between equals. And I havent' used child deliberatly because in Islam we don't have that parent/child relationship with God.Quote:
Because you are not comparing like with like. I also think child is a deliberately emotive choice that suggests our relationship with a deity is like that between a parent and a child.
Well, they can only be irreconcilable if there is influence. If there is no influence, then they can coexist without any problems. You need to decide whether or not He influences our free will or not. If He doesn't, then tell me why free will and omniscience are irreconcilable?Quote:
This is the second time you’ve mentioned ‘influence’, which I was careful to omit from my comments. I’m not suggesting that God influences our decisions. I am merely pointing out that free will and omniscience are irreconcilable.
Because we have been taught by the society to use He for God, even though nothing in Islam suggests that. As I stated before, it is an unfortunate linguistic limitation. To avoid that as much as possible, we use Allah s.v.t to refer to God, because that noun doesn't have a gender, or pluarility.Quote:
If they are all limited and equally wrong, why don’t we hear Allah referred to as she very much? I can’t say that I have ever heard Allah referred to as ‘she’ but many times as ‘he’.
The idea of the original sin is not known in Islam. Human beings are born sinless. People do not die because of sin. They die because death is just another part of life. It doesn't happen because of sin, nor does sin influence it. Those who die as children enter paradise without being questioned, because they are considered sinless.Quote:
The idea of original sin is repugnant to me. I believe it was thought up to reconcile the idea of an infinitely merciful God with the death of infants. A newly born child is, as far as I’m concerned, utterly sinless. Yet they nevertheless die. How can God permit this (rhetorical)? The answer -even that defenceless babyis full of sin. Horrible idea
There is no compulsion into the religion. You can practice whatever you like. However, as it is in every society, certain things would be regulated to allow the possibility of life among different people of different beliefs. For example, if you would live in an islamic country, based on shariah, you probably wouldn't be allowed to openly preach about atheism, just like you are not openely allowed to preach about communism in a democratic society. If you consider that intolerance, then that is your right, but every society is intolerant in some way to certain groups.Quote:
To me, the kind of assumptions you are making suggest there is little room for the faithful’s tolerance of me.
And Allah s.v.t already knows it.Quote:
I’d better get some flame-resistant books ready then because I want no part of such a system. That is my free will and I exercise it.
Amra,
If god is unknowable, as you repeatedly say, how do you know that he is neither male, female nor neuter? How do you know that he doesn't influence our choices? How, indeed, can you claim to know anything at all about this god?
"Probably wouldn't"? In many islamic countries, preaching christian religion to muslims is punishable, let alone preaching atheism. I think you are guilty of portraying shariah law as a little more tolerant than it actually is.Quote:
Originally Posted by amra
And I can quite openly 'preach communism' in my democratic society thank you. I wouldn't, but that is because I find it as flawed and ultimately ridiculous as any other dogmatic philosophy, islam included.
Your analogies do not wash here my friend. Please choose them better in future!
I am only intolerant of deliberate obfuscation such as your own in that quote.
I just don't understand why all you people feel so compelled to prove that there is no God.Some people need thier faith because that's all they have.If faith is not a neccessity to you,then you should just leave it at that.Because your not going to enlighten anyone with information that is ultimately irrelevant.People will believe what they want,thus this entire discussion is impertinent and insignificant.There are no answers,and I don't need any,nor do you.Because I have faith,and you don't.That's all this discussion will ever be.
Oh, but I do have faith, Ryduce. I have faith in many things. It's just that none of them are gods.
The true difference is that I question my faiths; I constantly question them. I believe, as did Socrates, that the unexamined life is not worth living. I prefer to be awake, rather than slumber on, hoping for some vague promise of a better life to come. I prefer to look for my better world here; in this world.
Am I wrong to hope to share that vision? Or, at the very least, to show others that it is there to be seen, should they wish to look?
Those of religious belief are to be free to prosyletise and evangelise, I suppose; while we rationalists and atheists must zip our mouths? That is not my opinion.
When the faithful can happily wallow in their beliefs, without pressing them on others, I will do likewise. Until that day, my friend, I consider it my duty to show the world that there is another point of view. While one poor benighted soul stands in a shopping mall, bible, qu'ran, or baghavad gita in hand, preaching to the uncaring, I will preach back.
We both have a right to our beliefs; and we both have a right to expound them.
In the real world, perhaps this is an issue worth taking up. Evangelizing for either side is against the Forum rules, though. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe
I think it's possible that we heretics have done a bit more than our share of that.
You're right Scheherazade, what was I thinking -- I'll think long and hard about the ideas above and hopefully contribute to this "ongoing argument" as you have. Sorry about that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
jon1jt,
My post was not to participate in the discussion but to remind certain things as a Moderator. If you have any issues with the way I moderate, please feel free to PM me.
Oh, by the way, your apology has been accepted!
:p