The same God?

Great Debates
61

By SimonX

This is an incorrect analogy. I exist, I can be proven to exist and I can be demostrated to exist with the five senses. Anyone can repeat this experiment to verify it for themselves. Be that as it may, it still does show that every person I meet does have a slightly different version of me in their memory. I am a physical being. Allah, which cannot be sensed, cannot be proven, and cannot be repeatedly verified is claimed to be known by a wide variety of people, all who claim at the same time that this deity is unknowable, yet these same people aways seem to somehow be in tune with his motivations and wishes. This can lead to the dangers of fundamentalism, especially when these people are leaders of men.

You are putting the cart before the horse here. You have yet to A)Demonstrate this being exists. B)Prove he has the characteristics of being dimensionless (whatever that is supposed to mean) and infinite. C) Show how a being which possesses these two characteristics becomes unfathomable to the human mind. Then, I will accept your statements as true. In the meantime, I can conceive of the concept of infinity just fine, thank you.

I am not required to check Cecils’ records as I have a decent working knowledge of the history of various religious texts. I am familiar with the Nicene council for example. The Christian bible was voted into existence by council. The qur’an was also brought into existence by Mohammed. So what? John Smith was one man and created the Book of Mormon, and strikingly similar to your prophet Muhammed, claimed to be visited by an angel whom told him the major religions walked the wrong path, and dictated to him the ‘correct’ version of the holy texts. Please demonstrate the validity of the qur’an over the Book of Mormon.

Prove it, or admit that this is a belief based on faith and not on evidence. Since you make this claim, the burden is on you to prove this statement correct.

I agree. This is not however proof that this being exists, it is only proof that man feels the need to somehow believe in a deity. Man has a natural tendency to believe in a lot of silly ideas, does this make them ALL true?

Here you have repeated your circular reasoning error. God gave you the Qur’an and Mohammed is his prophet. How do you know? The Qur’an told you so. How do you know the Qur’an is inerrant? It says so right inside. Repeating a fallacy does not increase it’s validity.

You are incapable of proving that I cannot produce a surah, as I have not tried to do so. But in any case, this is irrelevant. You assert that Mohammed wrote the Qur’an with divine intervention but you have yet to prove it. Mohammed was not stupid by any stretch of the imagination. He united the various merchants did he not? This takes skill and cunning. Mohamed not only could have fabricated the entire writings that are attributed to him, he could also have had a substantial amount of help, or perhaps he became learned and it was not recorded? Or perhaps he was not as illiterate as you seem to think. The bottom line is, there are many, many reasons I can think of to not only motivate him to write ‘holy texts’, but for him to say they were divinely inspired and maintained. Perhaps you should support your assertions instead of simply making more.

If the Qur’an is so self evident, why do so many people in the world seem NOT to agree with you? In fact, if it is such a miracle, why all the different sects of Islam that cannot agree on the ‘self evidence’ of this book?

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By the way SimonX, thanks for the intellectual exercise. :wink:

63

The relative status of your existence is irrelevant to the distinction between the concept of X and X itself.

When conceptions of The God increase, no new "The God"s come into existence. Still just one. The only thing that increases when notions of The God increase is the number of notions of The God.

To say as you do that a human’s take on The God brings a new god into existence needs extraordinary proof. If it is so difficult to prove the existence of one god it must be many times more difficult to prove the existence of multiple gods.
So your multiple god idea has even more trouble than the truth of the one God.

The God is not unknowable. It pleased The God to make Himself known to us and thus it was so.
Our knowledge of The God is limited by the capacities of human understanding though.

Before you can prove that somethng exists you must describe what a thing is and / or isn’t before you set about to prove its existence. Otherwise how can you show what it is that exists?

I’m not personally familiar with the Book of Mormon, but I certain that the superiority of the Qur’an can easily be established.

The history of the Qur’an has been carefully documented and vetted, more so than any other book in history. You should examine the evidence of the Qur’an itself. It is inimitable and peerless.

The innate tendency to seek The God is the natural tendency toward Islam, (the submission to the will of The God).

I offered the necessity of the revelation of the Qur’an to mankind’s relationship with The God as merely an example and explanation of why even though all people are born Muslim, there are still various religion and non-religions that have sprung up in the world.

The proof of it is the Qur’an. If you’d read it you would see how it transcends mortal capabilities. The evidence is there. You are just refusing to take a look at it.

The Qur’an is self-evidently a miracle. There is no dissension about that.
The various partisans in Islam are divided over issues that would, more or less, fall into the category of politics. The prominent divide, between Shia and Sunni, is about how the succesion of the khalifa, not about the nature of the Qur’an.

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The relative status of your existence is irrelevant to the distinction between the concept of X and X itself.

When conceptions of The God increase, no new "The God"s come into existence. Still just one. The only thing that increases when notions of The God increase is the number of notions of The God.

To say as you do that a human’s take on The God brings a new god into existence needs extraordinary proof. If it is so difficult to prove the existence of one god it must be many times more difficult to prove the existence of multiple gods.
So your multiple god idea has even more trouble than the truth of the one God.

The God is not unknowable. It pleased The God to make Himself known to us and thus it was so.
Our knowledge of The God is limited by the capacities of human understanding though.

Before you can prove that somethng exists you must describe what a thing is and / or isn’t before you set about to prove its existence. Otherwise how can you show what it is that exists?

I’m not personally familiar with the Book of Mormon, but I certain that the superiority of the Qur’an can easily be established.

The history of the Qur’an has been carefully documented and vetted, more so than any other book in history. You should examine the evidence of the Qur’an itself. It is inimitable and peerless.

The innate tendency to seek The God is the natural tendency toward Islam, (the submission to the will of The God).

I offered the necessity of the revelation of the Qur’an to mankind’s relationship with The God as merely an example and explanation of why even though all people are born Muslim, there are still various religion and non-religions that have sprung up in the world.

The proof of it is the Qur’an. If you’d read it you would see how it transcends mortal capabilities. The evidence is there. You are just refusing to take a look at it.

The Qur’an is self-evidently a miracle. There is no dissension about that.
The various partisans in Islam are divided over issues that would, more or less, fall into the category of politics. The prominent divide, between Shia and Sunni, is about how the succesion of the khalifa, not about the nature of the Qur’an.

65

Bad hamsters
Bad hamsters

66

SimonX: Since you’re not familiar with the Book of Mormon, I’ll thank you to shut up about it in this thread.

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How can you seriously discuss attributes of this god or that god when there is no evidence of any god whatsoever? No proof whatsoever.

And as long as god seems only to exist in the minds of those who create him from whole cloth, I suppose god can be whatever you choose. He can be the same god, or a different god, or many different gods or no god or an invisible pink unicorn god…

WHAT THE HELL IS THE DIFFERENCE AS LONG AS WE ARE MAKING GOD WHATEVER WE WISH HIM TO BE?

Or, here is another question for you. Does my invisible friend have the same favorite color as your invisible friend? Ponder that for a bit and you will have achieved as much wisdom as all religious thinkers from all religions over all of time.

Easy as pie. You create him, you name him. You decide what clothes he wears and who his son is and who his favorite NFL team is.

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In what threads may a speak of it?:confused:

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How familiar with the Book of Mormon do I have to be before I can talk about it in this thread?

:confused:

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How come braces_for_impact gets to talk about the Book of Mormon and I don’t?

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Sit down children, uncle jojo’s gonna tell you a story.

It won’t take long so don’t worry. Christians, Muslims, Jews - all are welcome here because I have a message for all of you.

All religions are bogus and this has now been proven by science.

A strong statement, you think. He better have some good evidence for THAT statement, you think. Well, it is a strong statement and I do have good evidence.

Most modern phsycists now accept the idea that parallel universes exist. There are billions of them out there and they are all different to our own. Some are only slightly different and some are radically different.

The existence of parallel universes has been proven in experiment. You fire a photon through a slit in a box and you get different amounts of photons on the opposite wall of the box depending on how many slits you open. This means that something is interfering with the photon and yet nothing can react with light except more light.

This means that the thing that is interfering with the photon in the box must be another photon. But we know there is only one photon in there because we only fired one in. This indicates the existence of “shadow photons” that can, in some way, interact with “real” photons.

The only explanation, according to modern physics, is that these shadow photons must come from parallel universes. And science has also proved that there are a huge number of these universes out there.

In some universes, there is no Christianity. In others there is only Christianity. And there is also every shade in between. The same goes for Islam or any other religion.

So we live in one of those universes that is inbetween but we don’t know what the outcome will be because we don’t know which universe we live in.

This means that ANY and ALL possible outcomes could happen from this point in time. The future may have already been determined by God for each possible universe but that doesn’t matter because we don’t know which universe we live in and therefore we don’t know what God has ordained for this particular universe.

Every possible universe exists which means that there are universes where religion doesn’t exist. Since religion doesn’t exist in some universes then it follows that religion isn’t necessarily what God wants us to do.

Maybe in our universe, God’s plan is for us to overthrow all religions, who knows?

So, my argument is:

Since most modern physicists now accept the existence of parallel universes the only rational scientific conclusion to draw is that all religions are bogus.

NB It may be that scientists are wrong about parallel universes and there is still debate in the scientific community about this, many disagree. But nevertheless I think it is the general consensus amongst most modern physicists.

Even if parallel universes are proved not to exist at some time in the future, my argument remains the same:

The perceived wisdom, right now, is that parallel universes exist and that is therefore the most rational belief for a person to hold. You can only disagree with the theory if you wish to disagree with the world’s top physicists, so you’d better know what you’re talking about.

If parallel universes exist (as we think they do) then all religions are bogus.

72

why do any of you bother to discuss this tripe at all?

It’s like arguing about what J. Gadsby was thinking when he got shot. Or arguing about whether Darth Vader wears boxers or briefs. These are characters invented by humans. THEY AREN"T REAL. One can have a scholarly discussion about what Gadsby may have thought if he were real, or ask whether the Darth Vader character is a briefs or boxers kind of character. But to discuss ACTUAL attributes of fictional characters is a non-sensical venture.

I appreciate SimonX’s intellectual exercise. I used to use a similar one myself, only I used Apollo as my god of choice instead of Allah. (Less confusing that way, because people can safely assume I do not truly worship Apollo.)

It works like this: Average X-tian fundie comes along spewing about this or that verse PROVES this or that statement about god. I simply respond, “That’s not what Apollo has taught me, and since he is the one true god, what he says goes.” Case dismissed.

The ridiculousness of religion is perfectly illustrated by exchanges like the one between Summertime and SimonX-- (I paraphrase) “Jesus is the God. Bible says so.” “No according to the Koran, Allah is The God.” “Cite?” “YOU cite!”

blablablablablalbla-- back and forth it goes-- aren’t you ashamed? Don’t you feel silly? Can’t you see it’s all made up to make you feel better about your impending death? And to explain away things your puny mind can’t understand? I don’t understand these unknowns either, but at least I understand that I don’t understand them rather than make up an Invisible Pink Unicorn to justify my faith and existence.

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L:) L

pretty silly

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This is most certainly news to me. When did everybody decide this sci-fi theory was the case? I’d never heard about it being proven at all…

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So that I may have discourse with you while you discuss “this tripe.”

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Simon: Braces “gets to talk about” it because he merely asked you a question. Your answer was that not only did you not know anything about it but you could prove something about it.

Jojo: I’m still waiting on that mountain of evidence.

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<<The Koran says that Jesus wasn’t crucified but someone else who looked like Jesus was crucified instead.

yesss…and the evidence for this statement is…?>>

The holy film “Life of Brian”.

<<To say as you do that a human’s take on The God brings a new god into existence needs extraordinary proof. >>

For that I would cite Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods.

Hey, if we’re citing stories, any good story will do. And if we’re dealing with gods, how do we know that belief does not create a god?

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. . . how do we know that belief does not create a god?
I mean, there’s no evidence against it.

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Yllaria: I think you’d enjoy reading P. C. Hodgell’s God Stalk. The story begins on “the Feast of the Dead Gods.”

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The library request has been entered. Thanks, Monty.