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From : AtheistPreacher
To : The Black Swordsman
Date : 2012-04-05 15:51
Title : Re: Why I am a Muslim and I think it is more rational
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Response Part 1
Okay, I have classes on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday night. Those are done, so it's the end of my academic week, and I have a bit of time to respond to your postings.
Any thoughts on the links I sent you yet, BTW?
The Black Swordsman said:
Most atheists like discussing religion so I want to express to you my beliefs. I do not necessarily want to convert you but rather I want to show you why I believe I am rational in my beliefs. I hope you read my entire post as I have worked hard writing it.
I will indeed read your whole post. As someone studying religious at a multireligious university, it would be rather hypocritical of me to subsequently not engage with someone who is obviously earnest in his beliefs (you are a guy, right?). And I'm glad that you're not setting out to convert -- that usually doesn't work very well.
One point that I want to make about such dialogues that I think is very important to understand. In entering a dialogue, we should seek to *learn* rather than to *teach*. Why? Because if both dialogue partners are convinced that they have "the most truth," then it is unlikely either will listen, because we have no control over how open to our views the other person decides to be. However, we *can* control how open *we* are to the dialogue partner. So if *both* partners seek to enlarge their own faith *first*, entering with the idea that they may learn something, rather than that they have their own wisdom to impart, then it's far more likely that progress will be made.
The Black Swordsman said:
I believe Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Deism, most monotheistic faiths have some truth to them. But Islam has the most.
Why only monotheistic faiths? I myself have a heavy leaning towards Buddhism, which is usually regarded as an atheistic religion. I think there is a great amount of truth in Buddhism. Hinduism as well -- a polytheistic faith -- also has a lot of good things to say. In fact, chances are that any religion that has persisted for hundreds or even thousands of years has some important wisdom to impart.
The Black Swordsman said:
I understand that most atheists aren't atheists because they don't like being good people, like many theists think something like "atheists don't want to follow commandments and want to be selfish not caring about others, that's why" or something along those lines. Like many people are atheists because of the problem with evil and the destiny of the unevangelized etc which are humanistic ideas which I respect.
Indeed. I hold many humanistic beliefs myself.
I should note, however, that specifically on the idea of the problem of evil, I find both Christianity and Islam incoherent. Both assert that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good. But if this were the case, I really don't know why God wouldn't have stopped the Holocaust. If there was ever a time for God to miraculously intervene, that was it.
The process theological answer to this question is simply that God is not all-powerful in the sense that most Christians and Muslims suppose. God's power is persuasive rather than coercive, and bears simiarity to the power the mind holds over a body. My mind may tell me to move my hand, but if my hand is asleep, it may not work. Further, I cannot freely regulate every portion of my body, such as commanding an individual white blood cell to not attack a bacterial invader. Such processes happen without my permission. In this view, God cannot do something, like, for instance, stop a bullet from hitting someone, or catch a falling rock. God's power just doesn't work like that, because God doesn't have a body.
The Black Swordsman said:
The reason I believe in god is because of the Kalam cosmological argument (A Muslim arguement that many Christians have also started using which is basically, nothing can easily exist but rather something does exist and from what we know everything exists for a reason so what is the why of the universe existing?) Many atheists dismiss it and I am ok with that. I also find the fine tuned universe argument compelling and I don't view the multiverse theory or the anthropic principle as good counters to it.
I am not familiar with the Kalam cosmological argument specifically, and I'm afraid I don't think you're explaining it very clearly. But I am very interested in "why" questions, and reasons for being. I talk about this a bit in the
post 26 link from the original PM I sent you.
Continued in Part 2...
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From : AtheistPreacher
To : The Black Swordsman
Date : 2012-04-05 15:52
Title : Re: Why I am a Muslim and I think it is more rational
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Response Part 2
The Black Swordsman said:
The reason I am Muslim is because I believe there are no naturalistic explanations of the Qur'an. 1/5th the Qur'an is about science and NONE of it is false. This is something that cannot be said about other other religions.
I won't respond to all your scriptural examples, not because they aren't interesting, but because they seem to all fall under the point you make in the paragraph above.
Now, I may be misreading you, but what you seem to be saying above, and with all the subsequent examples, is this:
-Only 20% or so of the Qur'an is scientific knowledge, but all of this 20% is true and accurate, unlike in other religions, which contain some falsities and inaccuracies.
-The original scriptural writers had no way to ascertain the truth of all of these scientific claims with the means at their disposal.
-Therefore this knowledge must be divinely inspired, given by God.
-QED, Islam is the true religion.
I do not find this argument particularly compelling. First of all, many of the passages you quoted are taken metaphorically, with the scientific knowledge being read into it after the fact.
In fact, a lot of the examples you give are *really* a strain. For instance, the idea of adding up the words "sea" and "land" in order to get the correct ratio of water to land on the earth. First of all, there is no reason to suppose the scriptural writers meant these things to be correlated, and every reason to believe they didn't. If they wanted to assert that the world was covered 70% by water, they could have said so, but they didn't. Instead, you're performing a painful reading-in of what isn't there. Secondly, the ratio of land to water has changed drastically over the history of the earth, so that no one answer could ever be accurate, anyway.
Secondly, some things which you take to be impressive (such as the 365 days example), were not impressive at all. The Mayans came up with a 365-day calendar long before Muhammad was even born.
The problem with these sorts of arguments overall is that I've seen firsthand just how much they can be twisted so as to be made to justify anything. Christians have similar arguments to justify the Bible.
Example. I asked a guy from Campus Crusade for Christ how Methuselah could live to be 969 years old, as is stated in Genesis 5:27. He explained to me that when God created the world, there really was a firmament (that is, that there was a dome of water, which was the blue sky), and that when the flood of Noah came, the dome broke, flooding the world. And now, since we no longer have the dome of water to protect us, the sun's ultraviolet rays are now killing us before we can live to be 900 years old.
Now, you might think this is a ridiculous argument. I certainly do. But they do not. And I'm betting that if they were given your arguments, they would think yours were as ridiculous as you think theirs are.
The problem with reliance on authority is that the judgment that some text is authoritative must always itself be made by human reason. And if we admit that human reason is fallible (as it seems we must), then we must further admit that we may be wrong in judging a text to be authoritative. It's a vicious cycle that you can't get out of.
Don't get me wrong. I really wish that there was a single book to which I could refer which had answers to all my problems. But life just isn't that easy. No book has all the answers, particularly no book that was written over a thousand years ago. Things change, and life is messy and complicated. And in my view all the energy that's spent justifying old dusty books could be far better spent solving the real problems of life, like feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, tending to the sick. In the time we spend arguing about whether the Bible or the Qur'an is right, couldn't we instead be volunteering at a soup kitchen? Would that not be a more useful activity than instructing people on how their religious beliefs are wrong?
In my view, God is present in some way throughout the entire universe. We are all intimately related to God, and God is intimately related to everything. If that's the case, what need have we of books? Such books are divisive rather than unifying, obstructions to truth rather than helpers to it. The truth pervades the entire universe, and can be found everywhere in nature and in reason.
Continued in Part 3...
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From : AtheistPreacher
To : The Black Swordsman
Date : 2012-04-05 15:53
Title : Re: Why I am a Muslim and I think it is more rational
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Response Part 3
I'll put it another way. Whether or not all the historical events in the Bible or the Qur'an are factually accurate can never be fully determined. They just can't. But even if they could, I don't particularly care about the historical facts. Why? Because my believing or not believing in the bare historical facts doesn't change anything. The events happened, or they didn't. Who cares?
What interests me in religion is what it tells us about meaning in life, and about how to make life better. That's something science can't do. Empirical facts can't tell us why life is meaningful, nor how to make more happy and fulfilled human communities. These things require going beyond the facts to a philosophy of life.
So when I look at a religion, I look for what it can teach me about these things. You say The Qur'an predicted all sorts of scientific truths. Besides me not believing that it actually did, my response would be: Umm, okay. Big "who cares?" I'd rather hear what Islam has to say about what God is like, why life is meaningful, how we can create better societies, etc.
I'll give you an example. I am not at all a Christian, but I appreciate the way that Jesus subverted social norms. The Pharisees were like the powerful religious leaders today. But Jesus told them that they had it all wrong: they kept saying they were right, and they were holy, and they were good, and they had the truth. Jesus told them that was crap, that they should stop being self-righteous and working so hard to prove how great they are, and instead to help the poor and oppressed that they exclude. And then he hung out with all the social outcasts of his day: women, tax collectors, Samaritans, lepers.
Contrary to what conservative Christians today have to say about it, this was really a radical message. And in fact, most Christians today are a hell of a lot more like Pharisees. They trumpet how great it is to be a Christian, hate other religions, hate certain minorities, and aren't interested in what others have to say about God. If Jesus were here today, he'd be telling the Pope and all the Bishops that they were hateful, self-righteous bigots. And then he'd go and hang out with the gays, who, like the above four social outcast groups that I mentioned from Jesus' time, have really done nothing at all to hurt Christians, and yet are hated anyway.
It's these kind of teachings that actually *matter*. They affect how we live our lives *now*.
Continued in Part 4...
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From : AtheistPreacher
To : The Black Swordsman
Date : 2012-04-05 15:54
Title : Re: Why I am a Muslim and I think it is more rational
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Response Part 4
The Black Swordsman said:
Closing thoughts:
Many atheists claim to be skeptics. They don't believe in Miracles. They don't believe in God. Many are naturalistic. Some are Nihilistic. They are skeptical of everything except for the randomness. I am skeptical that I am alive despite the sperm from my dad being the one in a million sperm chosen and my egg being the one in thousands of egg chosen from my mom. The chance of me being born from my parents is very very rare, the same can be said about my dad, my mom, my grandparents and all of their descendants. The chance that this universe contains the 6 physical constants that if they were changed by as little as 1 part in 10^120 (more then the amount of atoms in the universe) we wouldn't be alive. I just want atheists to not think that they are any more or less rational then people of religions. I disagree with this and I believe I am more rational but of course this is my opinion. I also believe I am at least 10 times more skeptical then any atheist but once again atheists probably believe the opposite.
I don't disagree with this. I talk about the same thing in my
post 48 from my original PM.
The Black Swordsman said:
Many people claim that these interpretations that I have done are done about other books like the Bible. I find this untrue as the Bible has many undercutting defeaters like the smallest seed is the mustard seed, insects have 4 leggs etc. Also the book of Mormons says that Native Americans are a lost tribe of Jews and DNA evidence clearly shows that it is not the case. I challenge anyone to find the things I have found in support of their religious doctirne as I provided here and I have not provided even half of it.
Well, as I've already said, I don't find your Qur'anic arguments compelling, any more than I find such Biblical arguments compelling. All of them seem like a real strain... something you wish to see in them, rather than something that's already there.
Moreover, I find modern science to agree much more closely with the Buddhist picture in general than either the Christian or Muslim picture, particularly certain modern developments in physics.
The Black Swordsman said:
I want to close out with one of my favorite Isaac Newton Quotes. All three of these are an except from a single longer quote.
"Atheism is so senseless & odious to mankind"
"Can it be by accident"
"there is a being who made all things & has all things in his power & who is therfore to be feared"
To the first: No, it really isn't. There are perfectly good arguments for being atheist and/or humanist.
To the second: Well, yes, it could be. But I don't really believe so. Then again, my saying that our existence isn't an accident is considerably different from what you mean when you say it. Please see
post 48 from my original PM.
To the third: I could not disagree more. I find this quote repulsive. God is not to be feared, does not sit in judgment, does not have all things in his power, and did not create all things. All of this I believe very strongly. Hopefully
the link to the thread I gave you can explain why.
The Black Swordsman said:
Good luck in life my friend.
To you as well. We need not agree in our religious views to try to be good people.
In any case, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on some of my own postings.
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From : The Black Swordsman
To : AtheistPreacher
Date : 2012-04-05 20:35
Title : Re: Why I am a Muslim and I think it is more rational
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I've skimmed through your main post and read your post 48 a little bit more closely (yet still skimmed). I'm sorry man verbal is my downfall on the MCAT standarized test I scored terribly on the verbal for example
. I am not very grammatically inclined I'm ashamed to say, I learned to read late in life, my mom took me to the doctor because she thought I had autism lol and I always that kid in 3rd grade that when the teacher made read a book outloud in the class, everyone hated because I took forever to read and sound out the words.
Essentially what I got is that people hope for a reason to live including you yourself. I agree with this statement.
I think in a way the idea of an afterlife is something selfish of humans because hey, nobody wants to become nothing
.
Now I'ma break down the my understanding of the Kalam cosmological arguement. Many atheists view it as a God of the Gaps for the "first cause" of the cosmos and all existence.
It is based on these assumptions.
a) Everything that begins to exist has a cause
b) The universe began to exist.
c) Therefore the universe has a cause.
Furthermore there are three ways that the universe (or cosmos) could have began to exist.
1) It came out of nothing
2) It created itself
3) It was created by an eternal being supernaturally.
1) Now, as far as we know nothing comes out of nothing, the only exception to this is some subatomic particles in a quantum vacuum seem to pop in and out of existence. However, this "nothing" is actually a fluctuating field of energy so isn't really nothing.
2) It created itself would imply that it existed and didn't exist at the same time so creates an absurdity. It would be kind of like your mother giving birth to herself.
3) It couldn't have been made from an infinite regress of events because there are no infinities in the real world so it must have been made from something eternal. If it was made by a cause, and that cause was caused, then what caused the cause that caused the cause that caused to cause times infinity. If this goes on for ever then the universe would never be made.
Anthony Flew (which you probably heard of) said either the universe is uncaused or the cause of the universe is uncaused.
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From : AtheistPreacher
To : The Black Swordsman
Date : 2012-04-05 21:29
Title : Re: Why I am a Muslim and I think it is more rational
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The Black Swordsman said:
Now I'ma break down the my understanding of the Kalam cosmological arguement. Many atheists view it as a God of the Gaps for the "first cause" of the cosmos and all existence.
It is based on these assumptions.
a) Everything that begins to exist has a cause
b) The universe began to exist.
c) Therefore the universe has a cause.
Furthermore there are three ways that the universe (or cosmos) could have began to exist.
1) It came out of nothing
2) It created itself
3) It was created by an eternal being supernaturally.
1) Now, as far as we know nothing comes out of nothing, the only exception to this is some subatomic particles in a quantum vacuum seem to pop in and out of existence. However, this "nothing" is actually a fluctuating field of energy so isn't really nothing.
2) It created itself would imply that it existed and didn't exist at the same time so creates an absurdity. It would be kind of like your mother giving birth to herself.
3) It couldn't have been made from an infinite regress of events because there are no infinities in the real world so it must have been made from something eternal. If it was made by a cause, and that cause was caused, then what caused the cause that caused the cause that caused to cause times infinity. If this goes on for ever then the universe would never be made.
Anthony Flew (which you probably heard of) said either the universe is uncaused or the cause of the universe is uncaused.
Yes, I have heard of Anthony Flew, and referenced him a few times in my defense of Hume's arguments against miracles.
But I find the argument you present basically unconvincing.
Out of your three "assumptions," the most important one for this argument is (b):
b) The universe began to exist.
The problem with this assumption is that it assumes the thing it is meant to prove. You can't have an argument that God created the universe if you're just going to assume the universe was created.
Fact is, either 1) God existed eternally and the universe did not, or 2) the universe existed eternally and God did not, or 3) both existed eternally, or 4) neither existed eternally. Which one of those alternatives is correct is largely a matter of faith. I haven't seen an argument yet that's managed to be convincing for any of them. However, my own opinion is for option (4), that God and the universe are mutually dependent and arose together. But the arguments for such a position are necessarily inductive rather than deductive, and it would take a rather long time to explain, nor are creation arguments really a big interest of mine. But David Ray Griffin has a good bit on it in his book
Whitehead's Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy, the section on time in physics specifically.
In any case, if one grants your assumption (b), then I would probably grant (a), and (c) would follow. But I don't grant (b).
As far as the three ways you list of the universe coming into existence, again I don't find the arguments compelling. Saying that the universe couldn't have come out of nothing or couldn't have created itself, and then saying instead that
God didn't come out of nothing and didn't create God's self... it just pushes the absurdity further back. Why is it that God could have existed forever, but not the universe? No reason at all. Both seem equally absurd, yet one must be right. Again, I find Griffin illuminating on this point.
I can also point you to
Part 5, Chapter 2 of Whitehead's Process and Reality, which is basically the seminal work for process theology, of which I count myself a disciple. It starts off on the 5th page of the PDF I've linked to. The chapter is titled "God and the World," and explains how the two mutually fulfill one another. Unfortunately, it is not easy reading. In fact, it's notoriously difficult, although personally I think he's a bit easier than Kant. But maybe I'm biased.
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From : The Black Swordsman
To : AtheistPreacher
Date : 2012-04-05 23:08
Title : Religion
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I am curious what your views on naturalism are?
Like do you believe in free will or is it just an illusion?
Do you believe in the soul or is it just a concept and is fully explained by the brain?
Proving that there is free will or a soul will help the case for religion a lot, proving it false would do the opposite.
Some people use the Hardy–Weinberg principle as evidence for free will.
There are many things still unknown about the brain, however they may be god of the gaps in the sense. Two things that I remember about from taking neurobiology are memories and sleeping.
Scientists have no idea where memories are formed in the brain let alone how they form (there was a paper released recently expressing evidence that they are getting closer in mice).
Believe it or not no one has any idea why things need to sleep. People think it is to "rest" but your metabolism is only down 5-10% when sleeping. People have guesses like it is to fill up your synapses in dendrites but it still a big mystery.
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From : AtheistPreacher
To : The Black Swordsman
Date : 2012-04-05 23:54
Title : Re: Religion
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The Black Swordsman said:
Do you believe in free will or is it just an illusion?
I absolutely believe in free will. In fact, I believe in the freedom of all entities in the universe. A person has freedom, as does a dog, as does an amoeba, as does an electron. They have different degree of freedom, to be sure, but all conform to the settled conditions of the world around them in surprising and unpredictable ways. We cannot predict the way any particular electron will move.
In any case, I could go on about this, but it gets long and complicated fast.
The Black Swordsman said:
Do you believe in the soul or is it just a concept and is fully explained by the brain?
Well, it really depends on what you mean by "a soul." If you mean a supernatural spiritual body that has experiences after death, then no. Not only is there no evidence for such a thing, but I find the implications repulsive. If we're all just waiting to die to get on with our "afterlife," then what we do here in the world doesn't really seem to matter, does it? The heaven-hell concept is even worse, because it reduces this world to the status of merely a test. Talk about dehumanizing... on this view we only do good actions to get a post-mortem reward, and the world doesn't actually matter. It assumes that people are basically bad and need to be rewarded or punished by God for our behavior. But I don't do the right things because God tells me to... I do them because they're right.
And heck, what exactly would we do in the afterlife, anyway? I think it's a basic fact of humanity that we crave a purpose for our existence. What exactly would we accomplish in the afterlife? By most accounts, nothing. No, the action happens here, now, in the world. Why invent another realm of existence? There's no evidence for it, it doesn't make any sense, and just ends up confusing things.
Suffice it to say that I very much believe that when we're dead, we're dead. However, most process theologians would argue that we achieve "
objective immortality," that is, we are remembered perfectly by God. Much as a book doesn't disappear after you read the last page, we don't disappear per se -- we are always books on God's shelf that God will treasure forever. But there is no sequel.
However, if you define the soul as the supreme unified decision-making center of an entity (i.e., our conscious selves), then sure. And in fact, Whitehead talks of souls in this fashion.
The Black Swordsman said:
Proving that there is free will or a soul will help the case for religion a lot, proving it false would do the opposite.
Well, first of all I don't think it's ever going to proven either way. The catch-22 seems to be that the only way to observe a soul surviving death is to be dead. Frankly, I think the idea of a soul surviving death is a pretty silly concept that people hold on to because they're scared of dying, and they want to think their loved ones live on in someplace other than their memory.
And hey, it helps to realize that dead people aren't unhappy just because they don't live on. They don't exist anymore to be happy
or unhappy. I think it's rather egotistical of us to think that "I am SO important that I MUST live on somehow." Umm, actually, no. There have been billions of people, and trillions upon trillions of other living creatures. They all die. It happens. We need to accept that.
But the flip side is that I don't think proving that the brain runs the whole show would mean that there's no God.
The Black Swordsman said:
There are many things still unknown about the brain...
Certainly I acknowledge that there's still a lot of really basic things about the brain we don't understand. Funny you should mention the sleep example, because that question has always fascinated me. I remember the comedian George Carlin doing a bit in one of his routines where he said something to the effect of: "You know, if we didn't need to sleep, and then someone made up the concept in a science fiction story, we'd think it was really weird:
There were these people, and every 16 hours of so, they would just fall unconscious for several hours... and then 8 hours later they're fine! How weird is that!?"
But as I've said, you don't need bring up such things to convince me there's free will. But as far as suggesting that we have a supernatural "soul" that survives death... erm, yeah, not so much.
