Your assessment is inaccurate and it doesn't describe God.
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Question for the Non-Muslims
- Thread starter Gharib
- Start date
Your assessment is inaccurate and it doesn't describe God.
That's a loaded question!
Because i don't agree with the image you have of God?
I didn't force you to come and discuss with me, and i'm not obliged to give you some answers that would please you or give you a relief.
McBell
Admiral Obvious
Really?
How so?
Seems to me that you are merely avoiding answering the question.
See, my point is that belief in god is based solely upon ones faith.
So if even god himself came down and told you your beliefs are false, you are much more likely to dismiss what god himself tells you in favour of the beliefs you have invested so much faith in.
Storm
ThrUU the Looking Glass
Because you won't even discuss it. Contradiction does not a discussion make. You have to share your own thoughts and be willing to consider those of others.
Mr Spinkles
Mr
No problem Tashan, take your time and respond whenever you like. Thank you for your patience (especially patience with my ignorance, in other threads) and friendliness.
That's a good point. Maybe i thought it would be obvious if God stood in front of us, that he is God, because i have a specific definition of God which might differ from yours, but again, it's just a belief. I might be wrong, but i strongly believe that, if that one who would appear to us, is the God of the universe, it wouldn't be hard to figure it out.
If Islam was wrong, then it wouldn't be hard for him to prove i was wrong either, wouldn't he? He is God, after all. But, now that you have mentioned it, there is someone called the Dajjal, if you heard of him, and some call him the anti Christ. Prophet Mohammed warned us about him. He would come and act as God, but he isn't, then Jesus will come and defeat him.
What am i doing here then? i'm discussing it with anyone who is interested to do so. If you want to discuss something, does it has to be according to your terms?
Dirty Penguin
Master Of Ceremony
Why would an omniscient do such a thing?
Am I not already submitting to its will by rejecting him?
Surely if this god is such a great designer, seer, know-er, sustainer of all the worlds then surely whatever I do or don't do was of his design.....right....
McBell
Admiral Obvious
That is my point.
it seems to me that god is much more likely to be something different than what you personally define/picture him.
So it stands to reason that if god shows up and he is not what you believe him to be, you will most likely reject him as god because he does not fit into your preconceived notion of what god is.
Thus the reason I disagree with your statement:
"If God was in front of you, you wouldn't doubt his existance."
I reckon that that depends upon how big a bully you believe god to be.
Seems to me that if God appeared before you and he does not meet your preconceived notion of what god is, then you would dismiss him as the Dajjal (or the anti-Christ were you a Christian).
Think about it for a few minutes....
Would not the Dajjal appear exactly as you have made god out to be in order to convince you that it is really god.
The most interesting thing, IMO, is that if the Dajjal (anti-Christ) shows up, it will be accepted by most people as god simply because it will fit their preconceived notion of what god is.
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Gharib
I want Khilafah back
ok i agree with you on this one. the trinity is a downside to christianity, if they can't get the concept of god right then that kind of tells you something. and you would expect god to have explained it in a way we understand, but from what i see, god hasn't tried explaining it, he's left it to the christians to do it. :help:
in a sense you mean blindly believeing.
well first of all, you must understand that Allah is a creator, he is our creator. asking why we are in this test is like creating a robot and then it turns to you and asks, why did you create me to serve you? Allah is testing us because, unlike the angels, we dissobey Allah. humans in islam who obey Allah are clasified as better creatures than angels. they do not choose to obey, but we do. so we are superior to them. Allah knows the outcome of all this, but he is letting us make the decisions, will we obey and earn our superiority over the angels or not. it's not that we are competing with the angels or anything, but it's about obedience and dissobedience.
he did all those. he spoke to Moses (as) in his own voice, which was coming from all directions. and he sent an angel to all his prophets, he sent Gabriel (as). you are probably saying to yorself, thats not what i meant eselam. i know thats not what you meant, so let me explain what i meant. when Allah (swt) spoke to Moses (as) with his own voice, Moses (as) accepted Allah and his laws. at that time he lost his will to dissobey because Allah actually spoke to him. same thing would happen to all of us if Allah was to speak from the sky to us. we would lose our will, and obey, who would be so dumb to hear god and then say he doesn't exist? same with the angel, he sent Gabriel to Muhammed (saws). once he saw gabriel, he believed, he lost his will and fell into submission because you cannot deny god if he sends you a miracle or if he appears to you. Allah would send his angels in the form of man to his prophets to bring examples to the people. he would send Gabriel (as) to Muhammed (saws) as a very beautiful man, a kind of person that no one had ever seen. he would question the prophet (saws) infront of the people, so that they would listen to the questions and answers and learn their religion. after Gabriel would leave, they asked the prophet who was he, and he would say it was gabriel. the men would rush outside to see him, but he was long gone. so if gabriel was sent in his original form then all those who would see him would undoubtedly believe, just like the prophet.
the reason why i said that god would have to appear generation after generation is because, you for example do not believe in the message of the prophets, why? 2 reasons:
1) you weren't there to witness it
2) unless you witness it, it is impossible and could not be true.
if i said to you Allah sent an angel in it's original form to us in Australia, you would not believe me, why? well:
1) if it was true someone would have recorded it or taken pictures.
Allah is not everywhere at once in the physical sense. what muslims mean by Allah being everywhere at once, is that he sees everything, he hears everything and has perfect knowledge of everything. Allah is not in his creation. in the quran you will find a verse that says, his throne is above the heavens and the earth, and Allah is above his throne, taking into account that Allah is not on his throne, he has no limits. his throne is greater in size than everything else and Allah is greater than his throne. another verse says that Allah is closer to us than our jagular vain, again in the sense of hearig, seeing and knowing all.
yes they do. instead of being honest and saying we do not know, some people go on trying to explain the most dificult thing there is just to impress a non believer when instead they make things worse. but having said that, it is also the non believers who do not believe because they think someone is rationalizing a part of their belief. for example below you have mentioned the miracle of prophet Muhammed (saws) making the night journey. if i speak to you about that, you would look at me like i'm some idiot. then thing is, first you do not accept Allah as the creator of everything, second you do not accept Muhammed (saws) as his messenger, third how are you going to accept the story of the night journey, when firstly you do not accept the core beliefs of islam? all the non muslims i have spoken to, have never asked about whether Muhammed (saws) is really a prophet and how can i prove that, they have all asked and argue about something that does not concern them at this stage of non belief. it's like someone comming up to you and saying you will have beautiful kids one day, when first of all he should be asking you when are you planing to get married. do you sort of understand what i'm saying? you are the first non muslim i have explained this to because most non muslims just debate me not to gain some knowledge or a different perspective, but they just want to win a debate. let me know if what i said is not very clear and makes no sense.
yes. first of all i believe the bible says something about god being limitless, if it does say that, then when god became a man he became limited to that physical body. then to call jesus the son of god and mary the mother of jesus but not the wife of god, then god commited adultery and mary was never a virgine. they really have this all messed up and no one seems to be amking any sense out of it. i doubt even christians understand the tirnity, if they did they would be able to explain it. or they just blindly accept it and convince themselves that there is nothing wrong with it.
Gharib
I want Khilafah back
actually i shouldn't have said that. i believe the fortolled stories of the prophet that would come to happen which i now see happening. but i forgot that first of all you do not accept Muhammed (saws) as a prophet from god, so you would not accept his miracles nor call them miracles for that matter. speaking about a time that has long gone, god sent us his prophets and their messages as miracles, now they may be from a very distand past, but we do know about them, i was kind of reffering to this when i said you would not believe. if you do want a miracle, i can provie one to you.
in africa (talking about our day and age) a child (i think about 3-4 years old) is giving lectures and is teaching the people about islam. no one from close by had anything to do with islam, with the arabic language nor anything else that may be from islam. this child says that at night in his sleep 2 men dressed in white come and take him and they taught him arabic and everything about islam. his parents where the first people to convert when they heard him speak arabic and about islam. his whole town has converted and so many other people by the thousands. would you like to see that kids speach, it is in arabic though with albanian sub-titles. if that is not a miracle to you, then i'm affraid i can't do naything more than that. i would only say may Allah guide you some day.hope you don't mind me saying that.
ok i agree, you do not believe it because you weren't there to see it, so to you it is just a story, just like the three gods in the one god and the one god in the three gods. the trinity is kind of like the three musketiers, all for one and one for all. that makes sense doesn't it. he he
i am sorry if i didn't respond to your point, i do tend to do that quite alot. :foot:
well if jesus died for our sins, then that says that the christian god cannot be forgiving without a cause (ie. jesus had to die in order for god to be forgiving). so what happens to the people that lived before jesus? with the test thing i would again have to say that, we are a creation of a creator. the creator makes his creation for what ever purpose he wants. Allah created us that we may worship him. just like you would create a robot to serve you, taking into consideratin that Allah is not dependent on anything.
ah yes, i remember that. i didn't take much part in that thread, but i did post a few things here and there. technology wise, they were ignorant. thats why the embry thing was clasified as remarkable and a miracle. it was the advancement of technology that led the way to discovering many things. i didn't think you were speaking about them being ignorant in terms of their techonology, i thought just in general.
because you said:
we don't need technology to verify if someone is a prophet from god or not. miracles are something out of the ordinary, i don't see how they could be explained to the full. the greatest miracle given to Muhammed (saws) was the quran.
but they do have some truth in them, for example lets talk about rain. science says that the seas and oceans evaporate and clouds are formed. Allah says that he has appointed angels to make rain, so there is nothing wrong between the 2 examples. Allah uses a cause to explain things. when a peron dies as a result of an accident or of something else, it is easier for us to accetp their death. but when Allah takes the life of someone without anything eing a factor (for example age, an illness etc.) we tend to have a hard time believing it. one could argue that this is an example from god so that we may reflect that a god exists and be reminded of him. so he uses examples to explain things, he uses the example of vaporised water to explain the formation of clouds.
so are you talking about them being ignorant in technology or being ignorant in general for just about everything?
Why do you think the Oracle of Delphi only spoke prophesies in cryptic and strange terms? Why do you think the Oracle did not give clear answers, like "the volcano will erupt at noon in three weeks"? I want you to play the skeptic for a moment and tell me what you think.
but first you must accept that you should not expect exact times like for the volcano. one such example is that 2012 movie about the mayan calendar. no one would believe that untill it actually happened, wich ofcourse isn't. see i don't believe in it because you can't have precise predictions. that is another thing about god and making us believe. if say Muhammed (saws) mentioned specific times about the futre events that would come to happen, which we now see. then everyone would have doubted it, or they would have believed it. if the prophet said i will die at this particular time telling the hour and minute then everyone would believe the other things he said and people would loose their free will again. they would have to believe.
but i understand what you mean, and i would probably say the Oracle spoke in such ways because it was invented by man in the first place and it could not have known anything accurate about the future. does make sense.
Mr Spinkles
Mr
Let's just look at one issue:
No, that's not quite what I said. Of course it is nonsense for someone to say "if I wasn't there to witness it, it is impossible and could not be true". That is why I said no such thing. I believe the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944 happened even though I wasn't there to witness it, for example. Why? Because there's nothing far-fetched about it on the surface and because there is a lot of corroborating evidence. It has nothing to do with me witnessing it, although that would be additional evidence. You yourself do not believe in "the message of the prophets", that's a convenient claim for you to make, but in fact you only believe in a certain version of a small fraction of prophets from a particular part of the world. Go read Manichaean or Zoroastrian or Hindu miracle stories and then explain to me why those scriptures aren't evidence enough to convince you, explain why you can't accept anything "unless you witness it".eselam said:
Mr Spinkles
Mr
These are just your personal opinions and preferences, eselam. I could argue that if God is limitless then he could certainly become a man. To say he couldn't do that would be to limit God. Also, God struck down people but we don't say God committed the sin of murder. Therefore, God could impregnate a married (or unmarried) woman and we would not say he committed the sin of adultery. The Holy Trinity cannot be understood without a lot of prayer and study, and even then, it is difficult for the human mind to grasp. The Trinity can also only be understood by those with the eyes of faith, if you don't put your full faith and trust in Christ, you will never understand God's true nature. And so on.... See, we can play mental games and philosophize and speculate about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. At the end of the day, you can rationalize almost anything i.m.o., as I said.eselam said:
I do experiments and analyze data every day, believe me there are always a million explanations you could dream up and if you work hard enough, you can make your favorite version plausible. This is even true when we are talking about something small, simple concrete, like a PROTEIN molecule. Trust me. When we talk about enormous philosophical abstractions, this is even more true. The problem is there are a million possible explanations and only one reality, so the odds that you will just "reason it out" in your head and arrive at that one in a million correct answer are small. So you have to take the opposite approach, which is to accept many explanations as possibilities, and then try to disprove them all, and see which ones survive best. You have to reserve judgment and restrict judgment on the basis of empirical evidence only. You have to make observations and analyze the facts. After all, there may be a million possible explanations but there is only one set of facts. We don't accept every explanation that can be rationalized, we only accept the simplest explanations that are required to explain the empirical facts. And we don't rush to judgment on things where there are no empirical facts to determine one way or another, because if there is no empirical evidence then you simply cannot know.
Let me give you an example: which makes "more sense", the planets orbiting in circular or elliptical or square-shaped orbits? I am a physicist, and I am telling you NO physicist would argue that square-shaped orbits "don't make sense". They make as much sense as anything. However, such orbits cannot happen because they contradict Newton's laws of motion. We believe Newton's laws, such as Force = mass * acceleration are true, not because they "make sense". A different law like Force = mass-squared * acceleration makes just as much sense. But only one version of Newton's laws are consistent with all of our observations (for planets, anyway).
What "makes sense" to us can be a useful guide, but that is all. At the end of the day we know the planets' orbits are elliptical because of careful telescopic observations and because of Newton's laws, period. Most people thought circular orbits made the most sense, and they did appear circular and they are nearly circular, and perhaps I agree (why ellipses?), but that is not good enough evidence.
Or, take polytheism as another example. You said it doesn't make any sense to have so many gods. To me, many gods makes precisely no more or less sense than a single god, any number of gods is a valid possibility in my mind, the final judge is the empirical evidence. And I suspect one god doesn't make more "sense" to you, if you truly spent as much time thinking about polytheism as you have about monotheism, you are simply more accustomed to monotheism.
So, eselam, I stress this: evidence. Repeatable, observable evidence that does not depend on the observer's cultural or psychological prejudices, i.e. physical evidence, is most reliable.
But the value of empirical evidence is denied and spurned by this whole idea of a "test of faith".
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Mr Spinkles
Mr
Great! Now we are making progress. This is exactly the kind of evidence we need. By all means please post the video, maybe it deserves its own thread.eselam said:
On a side note....
You know, many statues of the Virgin Mary have cried tears of blood. Many cases of this are occurring all the time. Christian pilgrims come from all over to visit these statues, and are healed of their ailments and disabilities. There have also been many cases of what is called Stigmata, where the wounds of Christ as he died on the cross for our sins appeared on certain people, as signs to people of Christ's sacrifice. They bleed from their palms, and feet, where they nailed Jesus, and from their side (where the lanced pierced Jesus), and from their head (where Jesus wore the crown of thorns). Here's a video of one woman who has the stigmata on every Good Friday, it was confirmed by respected UCLA doctors to be a genuine miracle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAaTE_WbDGY Many people have also witnessed the Virgin Mary, for example there was one man who would preach a sermon and then throw a basket of rose petals on the ground, and the petals miraculously formed the image of the Virgin Mary. Many people converted to Christianity on the spot. I personally know a woman who has a PhD who witnessed this miracle, and this sign from God left no doubt in her mind that the Virgin Birth and Resurrection occurred.
But there are other possible explanations. Hoaxes. Misreporting, misconception, exaggeration. These things are common.
Gharib
I want Khilafah back
you make a good point. if you want me to speak of another religion then i can only do it for christianity and maybe a little about hinduism, but i don't know about hinduism all that much to fully explain why i reject that particular belief. i could give you one reason: basically everyone who believes is enlightened can change the scripture and bring forth new teachings of hinduism. if you look at it from their perspective, it kind of makes sense, because they believe man is god while god is man. this is worse than the trinity, i assume you don't want me to continue with that one god in everything and everything in one god. i'm sure you agree with me on this particular example.
with christianity again, they don't have the concept of god straightened out correctly first. so how could i accept this religion when i don't know how many gods there are. it talks about monotheism and polytheism at the same time. but islam and christianity do believe in the same prophets, appart form when it comes to Jesus (as) and Muhammed (saws), same with judaism. have i answered your questions properly?
Malleus_de_Philosophia
Member
From the general belief perspective of Islam, it's basically condemning me for not accepting it or doing what it is and it assumes that it is correct. As with everything, there's a 50/50 chance it's wrong so I'm in a sense being punished for something that may be 50% chance wrong, yet practically, the punishment views itself as 100% right. This is basically intruding on any of my personal beliefs because according to one view (which may be completely wrong), I'm completely wrong and because I'm perceived as being wrong, I'm to suffer endlessly rather than be told what is apparently correct. It's akin to me walking in a park like any normal person and a random guy comes out with a gun asking me if I've adhered to a certain code which has a 50% chance of being wrong. Since I haven't, regardless of what I've done in life, I'm to be tortured and killed, rather than have that man tell me what to do to be correct.
So to me, it's quite offensive because it ignores everything I've done in life as though it's meaningless all because I haven't adhered to one thing. On the other hand, anyone who has adhered to this one thing has a life that's very meaningful and get rewarded for it.
Gharib
I want Khilafah back
yes he could. unlimited power can do the unlimited.
ok very true, but why is it that we have a problem with Jesus (as) being born without a father but we don't have a problem with Adam (as) being born/created without neither of his parents and his wife being born/created only from a father? why isn't this some kind of a trinity? it is very observable that the christians are rationalising in this instance. if they weren't then what about Adam (as) and his wife?? if god was able to create Adam (as) from nothing and says that in the bible then surely god would not need to have a son. how can god have a son, when gods son was dependent on worldy matter? gods son is the child of a mortal and an immortal. also i don't know if christianity teaches whether god is uneque to his creation or not, if that is so, then god has no gender. god created Jesus (as) in the womb of Mary (as) simply by saying BE (islamic perspective)
let me tell you a few things. god and so many other things are unseen, thats why it requires faith to beieve in god. the physical evidence only points to a creator, so to believe in god requires faith not evidence. once you believe in god you will see the evidence that points to him, such evidence will be many things that you see everyday. but see now it doesn't make sense to you nor is it evidence to you, because first you do not believe in god. to you if i started speaking about the evidence that points to Allah, you will say i'm rationalising. for some things, you have to get down and dirty to understand them.
there is a difference between the spiritual world and the material world. for example, our death belongs to the physical and spiritual worlds. we die and science can only talk about what happens to the physical body, it cannot comment on the soul or what happens after we die appart from the body decaying. it cannot talk about the spirituality. i say there is a soul, you nor anyone else cannot prove that there is or isn't. in islam it is said that when it is our time to die, the person sees his soul come out, hence why our eyes are always open and facing upwards. now you may not believe that, unless i had some proof for it, but i can only tell you that it requires faith, there is the unseen and the seen. another example would be our universe. we do not know the borders of this universe. so while we do not have any physical evidence about what exists beyond what we see, we believe there is more to be discovered. it's when you mix faith and evidence that things get ugly.
Gharib
I want Khilafah back
i didn't mean it to be offencive. but let me ask you something.
you do good right. so tell me for whose sake do you do that good and what do you wish to acheive from it? do you give in charity for the sake of the poor people because they are less fortunate?