What would this evidence look like. I think the evidence of a book being divine in origin would be the following:
1.It would claim to be from God
2.It would not contradict itself.
3.It would not contradict reality.
4.It would reveal things to us, which we are not able to know.
5.It would reveal things to us, which we are able to find out later – make predictions.
If these things are true about a book, then I think it should be taken seriously. To the best of my knowledge the Quran matches all of these criteria.
1. seems to be right
2./3. I can't exactly comment on this, because I never read it.
4./5. These predictions are just like those by Nostradamus. There are many ways to interpret them and when there is an event that fits to the prediction someone thinks that it was predicted. (I know that because a muslim in a chat showed me some of these "predictions".)
So science has not ventured into 'the origin of life'? No evolution does not explain the origin of life, but scientists have tried many times to do so. My point is that when scientists claim that life was generated by electricity running through amino acids, or that it evolved from crystals, or any number of the other guesses that science has made towards this end, they might be willing to entertain the possibility of a designer.
You just mentioned two theories. Why should "Intelligent Design" be prefered?
Now I know you haven't been reading my posts. Creationism is a Biblical concept, which insists that every life form was created exactly as it is today, and has never undergone any changes (although I think some creationists accept the idea of evolution within a species), and all this within 6 (24 hour) days. The Quran does not limit 'creation' in this way.
First, the word 'day' in Arabic is 'yawm' and can mean either 'day' or 'period of time', so the earth is not limited in its age as it is in the Bible.
I did read your posts. It's just hard to get used to write "Intelligent Design" instead of creationism. It actually seems that the Quran does limit creation in this way. You say it tells about 'yawns' which can mean day or period of time. But the Bible clearly says 'days' doesn't it? And I think the Quran bases on the Bible and probably in that context yawn means day anyway so I think that the Quran does mean 'days'. The 'period of time' thing is just an excuse to make it fit in reality.
“Verily We created man of potter's clay of black mud altered,” (15:26)
Second, the very idea of evolution is hinted at in the Quran. The fact that God created man out of clay indicates that man's origin was from something inorganic, but that it was God who guided this process. This is exactly what evolutionists claim, that life emerged from matter. They just leave God out.
They don't claim that we are made of potter's clay and mud.
Another claim of evolutionists is that life emerged from the sea, from water.
“Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them, and We made every living thing of water? Will they not then believe?” (21:30)
Here is the origin of the Universe, and life in the same sentence. The Big Bang theory states that the whole universe started as a singularity – one piece. And life formed out of water.
These things may have meant something different to the original Muslims, because they did not have access to the scientific tools that we have today. However, even with our modern knowledge, the verses of the Quran still fit. This is very different from the Bible.
Didn't you just claim that we are made of mud? Now we are made of water?
So the Quran DOES contradict itself!Finally
“What aileth you that ye hope not toward Allah for dignity. When He created you by (divers) stages?” (71:13-14)
Created by stages. That's evolution. Here is a book 1400 years old, explaining evolution in a simple language that anyone can understand. Again, the first Muslims may not even have realized what this meant, but it's remarkably accurate even in light of modern knowledge.
Again, thoses verses can be interpreted in many ways. I think the Quran rather meant the six days of creation. You interpret it exactly this way that it fits to science.
So Hitler is bad but national socialism is good?
No. The point is that any philosophy can be used to commit injustice. But you can't blame the philosophy, you have to blame the people. I don't really know a lot about National Socialism, so I can't say.
What I want to say is that a tool that was created to do bad things surely isn't good. National Socalism was created for killing many people and conquering the whole world. Hitler was bad and national socialism is also bad. Religion was made to control people. So the people who created religion to control people were bad, but why shall their tool be good?
Can you tell me the name of one of these scientists?
I saw a film called “Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed” with Ben Stein. He interviewed several scientists who either lost their jobs, or are unable to get funding for research because they mentioned the 'possibility' of intelligent design. They were not 'creationists' in the biblical sense. I can't remember any of their names off hand. If you want I'll rent it again, and give you some names.
I googled it and found this Wikipedia Website:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed
[6][7] It presents people described as American educators and scientists who believe that there might be evidence of intelligent design in nature, and alleges that they are being persecuted for their beliefs.[8] The film portrays intelligent design as motivated by science, rather than religion, though it does not attempt to explain it on a scientific level, nor does it give any detailed definition of intelligent design. Other than briefly addressing issues of irreducable complexity, Expelled examines it as a political issue.[6][9]
The general media response to the film has been largely unfavorable. It received an 8% meta-score from Rotten Tomatoes. Multiple reviews, including those of USA Today and Scientific American, have described the film as propaganda.[13][14][15] The Chicago Tribune's rating was "1 star (poor),"[16] while the New York Times described it as "a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry" and "an unprincipled propaganda piece that insults believers and nonbelievers alike."[14] One of the few positive reviews appeared in Christianity Today.[17]
However, this article showed me some names. I might do further research to each of them.
We don't know exactly how life came into existence. In school I have not yet been taught any of the many theories, so I think I will never be taught one. So what makes your hypothesis, that a wizard made it without even telling where that wizard comes from, so special that it should be taught as truth?
I don't think it should be taught as 'truth' as you say. But it should be mentioned as a possible explanation. Right now it's being ignored and rejected completely by many scientists.
It is one of the most unlikely 'explanations'. What makes "Intelligent Design" so speacial if even the other explanations aren't taught at school?
Complexy and beauty aren't any evidences for anything. If a jar falls down and you see the way how complex the shards are spread around the floor, do you think that an intelligent being must have aranged them?
I don't think the living cell is anything like a bunch of broken glass. That's a really bad analogy. The ability of a cell to reproduce itself is so utterly complex, it defies logic to explain it as a random process. The DNA is copied, and pasted, then replicated by tiny enzymes inside the nucleus of the cell. The DNA itself is a language, composed of four letters (proteins), which contain about the equivilant of 1 Gigabyte of information.
If a jar broke and spelled out a 1000 page book with it's glass shards, I might begin to suspect that someone or something arranged it.
The 1 Gigabyte of information envolved from very few information.
You are the one who claimes something and must prove it, not vice versa. I already posted a disprove for god (that one with god changing his perfect opinion).
That's my point. Innocent until proven guilty. You can't prove god's existence so there is no reason to claim he exists.
Fair question. I still think that God can neither be proven or disproven by science.
But as humans can influence in that process, god would have to know how humans will act. That contradicts to a very basic claim of your religion, the free will.
The idea that someone knows the future, in this case God, does not remove free-will. We still make the choices we make.
Yes it does. Knowing the future requires determinism. That means everything we will decide is determined by natural laws which means that free will in an illusion!
Feelings are a mixture of hormones and thoughts. What's so special about them?
And you already soid it, I could make my friend take a lie detector test, to prove or disprove whether he really likes me.
But we act on our feelings. We rely on them for so many things on a daily basis. The very concepts of right and wrong are not provable scientifically, but we have courts and judges and governments which seek to protect these concepts.
Did you have your friend take a lie-detector test? If not, how can you prove he's your friend? Don't you need scientific proof to act on things?
You are talking about feelings like they were something unapperceptible. Of course I could make him take a lie detector test, and the fact that I didn't doesn't mean that I couldn't prove that he likes me.
"...but keeps the final decision with the leader"
That sounds like a dictatorship with advisers.
This is not my area of expertise, nor is it related to this forum. But this can be best explained by one saying of Muhammad “...Obedience (to somebody) is required when he enjoins what is good."
This was said in the context of a military expedition, so this applies even at that level. If a dictator is limited to doing only 'good' things, then it's not really a dictatorship at all.
So now you even add a war? Wow, sounds a bit like WW II
Even a 'good' dictator is a dictator. In WW II most of the Germans really thought that the things Hitler did were 'good'.
So what you describe IS a dictatorship!
"I arrest you in the name of the allmighty god!"
"I arrest you in the name of science!"
Which one could make people obey better?
There aren't any 'science police'... yet.
"yet"
The earth is not flat...yet.
Why shall a 'science police' be founded?
I'd most likely think that he uses magic tricks, but first let's come a prophet doing miracles at all
This was a rhetorical question aimed as Tiles. My belief is that the universe itself is enough of a miracle to justify belief in God. A prophet bringing a miracle only serves to enhance that belief.
The only miracle I know of, which is available for us to see, is the Quran. When I say this, I mean that the only explanation for the Quran's existence, that I can see, is that it is from God.
What about an other explanation: It was written by Mohammed?
Moral feelings are made by evolution and selection. Because if we wouldn't have morality and would kill each other humanity wouldn't have survived. What exactly this morality is, is mostly rather acquired. If people get taught you shall not kill, but if god wants you to you must kill, people might kill in the name of their god with good conscience. So there is no absolute morality. But the majority of all people would call that the murderer insane, because his morality differs too much from the common.
Yet we use this idea of 'morality' to make judgments about other people and their religions. If morality is not absolute, it is not scientific, therefore you should not be using it to judge things with. Darwin himself advocated the killing of 'lesser' races of humans... RACES!
You already quoted how I think about morality.
I did not find anything about the claim you made about Darwin in the German Wikipedia article about Charles Darwin. Can you show me the source of your claim?
My point was not to say that we need religion to learn morality. My point was that you have a double standard. You claim that you will only believe in God if I can 'prove' His existence. However, you believe in a morality, and you use this morality to judge your own and other peoples actions, with no 'proof'. If you really believed that you need to 'prove' things in order to act on them, like worshiping God, or like not killing people, then you should not accept any morality at all. There is no 'proof' for morality, so you should reject it, just as you reject God. (I am not actually advising you to do this, I am trying to point out a flaw in your reasoning).
I said that there is no absolute morality but most parts of morality are the same at most of all peoples. Morality is actually just for preservation of the species. If we don't kill each other we will survive. Simple. Of course there is an obvious proof for morality... we fell bad if bad things happen to people. The reason why we fell bad is that it helps preserve the species if we prevent bad things happening to other people.
Well this is just a different mind set, my mind knows that matter couldn't have come into existence by itself.
Why not?? But god could??
Yes, because we know matter to be unintelligent and senseless, while God, by definition, is intelligent and aware. This is intuitive, not fact based, I agree. But God didn't have to 'come into' existence. God is eternal, and created existence. It serves to explain the origins of matter, but I don't think it's really a proof for God.
Why can't matter be eternal but god can? And who arrogates to define god eternal?
It don't serves to explain the origins of matter. If scientists argue why something happens the observe it doesn't serve if someone comes and shouts "A wizard did it! I have no proof but he did it!".
"but I don't think it's really a proof for God." -Right.
Good point Alberto, but scientists are under a lot of pressure from their peers to conform to well accepted theories, any scientist who dares to question evolution for example is risking becoming an outcast and suffering from ridicule as well as ruining their career.
If they don't provide any evidence except saying "Look how beatyful and complex everything is" or "An anciet book says so" it is quite justified to not take them serious.
No I'm not a scientist, I admit, I want to be a COMPUTER scientist, because computer science deals with more applied concepts. I don't like areas of science as much which are subject to people's opinions.
There are no areas of science which are subject to people's opinions. Science is just about finding the truth even if it doesn't fit to an ancient book.
2)You also believe that these particles are not matter at all? But that these particles are something which we don't understand? Well if they are not matter, and if they are something which we don't understand than they are super-natural? They are magic particles?
Regardless I don;t think you understand how that this causes the original problem to shift. Lets pretend that the magic particles are responsible for the matter which we do understand, this only begs the question: Where do the magic particles come from?
They are no magic particles, they are just different that the particles ordinary matter is made of.
Lets pretend that the wizard named God is responsible for the matter which we do understand, this only begs the question: Where do this wizard come from?
Physics and chemistry are based on mainly real facts, but biology, especially evolution, is based upon many facts which cannot be verified. Computer science is also a science which is very much based upon real facts--more so than physics or chemistry. When I first went to school a couple of years ago I was originally interested in biology, but I have since found too much uncertainty in the field, recently I have switched to computer science because I want to program computers, I am also majoring in mathematics so that I can understand 3d graphics programming. I find math and computer science very satisfying because there is little place for people's subjective opinions.
Which facts cannot be verified?
But there is one major error in your posts. You keep talking about math based upon fundamental postulates, but those fundamental postulates are all based upon common sense and intuition, so your entire theory that we must abandon intuition and common sense undermines all the initial postulates of mathematics. Ultimately all of mathematics is based upon common sense and intuition and logic, therefore there is no reason to believe in theories which abandon common sense.
They are based on pure logic.
However in the final analysis of this thread giving yourself some mystery particles which must exist is a convenient way to turn the question of the Universe's existence into a tautology.
It was not ArberoT who claimed that they exist, he just said what science already found out. If you don't believe it, do some research.
And why do they turn the question of the Universe's existence into a tautology??
We have no idea if a God exists or if He doesn't, we also have no idea if there will be processes which God utilizes which we do not yet understand. Maybe God is made of a strange material which we haven't discovered. If new particle theory challenges all our notions of matter we can no longer be certain exactly what matter is, and we can therefore no longer be certain what non-matter is, therefore assuming God is matter or non-matter, and assuming that we understand all the processes of the Universe is presumptous.
have no idea if a god exists or if he doesn't, so there is no reason to claim that he did exist.
Noone said that we know all the processes of the universe but there is science to find out the things we don't know yet. But none of the processes we already know leads to the assumtion of an intelligent designer, so there is no reason to claim that there was one.
There is no empirical evidence for a God nor are there any strong enough inferences.
Not YET it doesn't. But we don't know if any such evidence will ever exist, and assuming that it won't makes no sense to me. We can't possibly know right now, if we jump to conclusions about the existence or non-existence of God we are making assumptions.
Eehm... you jump to conclusions about the existence of god...
Most people simply dont want God to exist because they are afraid of the moral consequences of such a thing. In other words, if hell and God were real everyone would freak out.
Ah the good old scare-strategy
Perhaps it is even the other way round, that you don't want god to not exist because you fear that heaven does not exist?
To me, the physical laws are a sign of God's existence in themselves. Sure, we may discover a source for these physical laws, but this 'cause effect' reasoning will go back to infinity.
Why are these laws a sign for god's existence??
If you think the 'cause effect' goes back to infinity why doesn't god need a cause then?
I still maintain that God is outside of the realm of science and direct human observation. It is a matter for the feelings and intuition. As long as belief in God does not directly contradict reality, I think it is a logical assumption for the cause of the universe, even if is based on feelings and intuition. Just like it's logical to assume that murder is wrong, because I would 'feel' bad if someone tried to murder me.
It's not logical to make an assumption just based on feelings. Saying that the murderer is wrong is based on morality or the laws of your country.
On the other side, the claim has been made by many people that there is a God. While the books about these 'prophets' do have some problems in the details (specifically the Bible), the overall message is pretty clear. That people came with a claim to prophecy, that God had communicated to them, and that there is a higher purpose for the universe.
These people heard of god before that claim. So it's quite likely that they these prophets were imagining or even lying.
I agree that it's not science, but it still remains a plausible explanation for the origin of the universe.
If it's not science why do you want it to be taught it in science lessons?
Belief in a single Creator is not even limited to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Many cultures, from certain Egyptian dynasties, to Native Americans to Aztec religions, and even some Hindu sects, have at some time or another made the same claim - to a single, all powerful creator God.
I have not studied every human culture in detail, but every one I have studied so far, will mention this belief at some point in their history. To me this is a historical evidence to the claim of the Quran, that God has sent a messenger to every 'nation'.
Most of these religions believe in MANY gods. One of these gods is the creator. But maybe there are some religions with more than one creator, but I haven't studied each culture either.
And you claim has sent a messenger to every 'nation'. Well, the Aztec religion you mentioned sayd that their gods wanted many people to be killed for them. These people who were killed didn't even fight against that because the believed that they come in something that is similiar to what you call 'hell' but if they are killed they come into something like a 'heaven'. So if the god you believe in would have sent a messenger to these peoples would they still do that? Ah, and that even disproves your theory about the absolute godly morality. They didn't feel that it is bad to kill people because they thought their god wants them to do so. Having morality is instinctive but what we exactly think is good or bad is acquired.
You're both still missing my point. That not everything requires, or can be judged by scientific proof. Science is limited to what can be observed, and repeated.
You yourselves freely admit this when it comes to morality, and you are willing to judge people based on your subjective morality. You cannot 'prove' that murder is wrong, Yet you 'believe' it is.
Yet, when I use my intuition and feelings to determine whether I believe in God, you claim that I'm a fool, or that my brain fell out.
If you think that God is just about people deluding themselves, that's fine. But you'll have to eventually admit that morality is a delusion too. I don't know what kind of society it is that you'll be living in, but good luck.
Morality is just the differentiation of good and bad. It is supported by feelings like pity. Well, I can say that the murderer is wrong because our society says so. In ancient society this could have been quite normal. As I said what exactly we think what is good and bad is acquired. However that he is right or wrong doesn't make any difference except when he is punished based on the morality of our society. So to say, you are right when you say that morality is kinda delusion.
God does not exist, just because you feel that he exists. That feelings is by the way most propably kinda placebo: You ask yourself whether there really is a god, but you actually believe that he does exist, so you think you feel god's presence.
