So is your question “if people believe in a benevolent god, then why does shitty stuff happen?”
I think you will find two major answers.
Yeah, but you fix your purity by washing your body, not by behaving well.
Good point. I may well have been wrong.
You’re more or less saying this is a Muslim thing. So we’re showing you it’s not. It’s a religion thing.
Again, that’s common to religion. “I am the Lord your God and you shall have no other gods before me”.
Even better, when a Jewish person hears of someone’s death we traditionally say “Blessed are you God, who is the true judge” (or the judge of truth), which I’ve always found particularly problematic.
The phrase you are quoting is part of the Islamic creed, the first pillar of Islam.
Loosely translated, the entire creed is:
أشهد أن لا إله إلاَّ الله و أشهد أن محمد رسول الله
“There is no God but God (Allah), and Mohammed is His prophet (messenger).”
Since recitation of this creed is at the core of being Muslim (indeed, some believe the sincere recitation of the creed is the entire requisite for becoming Muslim), I wouldn’t think it’s surprising that a Muslim might say this in an extenuating circumstance. It’s essentially a recitation of one’s belief, which is fairly common in any trying circumstance.
*The Shahada can be declared as follows:
“ASH-HADU ANLA ELAHA ILLA-ALLAH WA ASH-HADU ANNA MOHAMMADAN RASUL-ALLAH”.
The English translation is:
“I bear witness that there is no deity (none truely to be worshipped) but, Allah, and I bear witness that Mohammad is the messenger of Allah”*
First of all, I concur with everyone who has docked you points for the silly use of the phrase “evolutionary stagnation” in your OP.
More importantly, you are demonstrating here that you don’t know what Islam is all about. In Islamic theology there is no human free will, no randomness, and no action that is determined or caused by any person, animal, or thing. Instead, God (Allah) has determined everything that ever occurs in the entire cosmos, past, present, and future. Hence in the Muslim view there is no purpose in railing against God or fate or complaining about anything that God has willed. The idea that the Muslim God “doesn’t give a whit” or “is culpable through inaction” is precisely the opposite.
^ So, [true] Muslims are effectively automatons (of their ‘god’) without free will or, thus, responsibility for their actions?
Wow. Some ‘life’ that! :smack:
Well, I guess this theory could go some way to explaining how they can inexplicably fly in the face of very humanity and martyr themselves (and others) in ‘His’ name – i.e., they’re zombies! :eek:
Have you ever heard of a religion called Christianity?
Lots of Christians believe that all things are accomplished according to the will of God.
Hell, go look up Calvinism and get back to us on what a fun freewheeling belief system that is.
The one that mean “a tendency to become as much like me as possible.”
Tris
Leaving aside the word “dumb” I can hardly think anything I would come up with would be less pointless than “god willed it”. Maybe I can go through the stages of grief without the side trip through irrationality.
To elaborate: a rational approach to a tragedy, if it affects you personally, would be to feel your grief. Not feeling your grief causes all kinds of psychological problems. Using religion to mask your grief is no better, in my mind, than turning to excessive amounts of sex or work (as people have also done for the same purpose). Those activities are not necessarily bad for you except insofar as they serve to stuff your feelings.
An anomaly that comes to mind, as I write this, is that it seems like it is in the most religious cultures where the weeping and wailing is most public and pronounced. This is not a scientific observation, and may well be the result of instant confirmation bias, but if religion is such a comfort, why might this be true?
Roddy
