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Is Atheism based on Logic or Faith?

Why? Because your God is a bully.
RayG

I object to the use of the phrase "your God". If the God which we are discussing does indeed exist, and is the creator of the universe in which we now exist. That would also make him your God (the God of everyone) as well. This is whether you or others choose to acknowledge him or not.

I'm going to also go out on a limb and say that you probably are not being bullied into doing anything that you would rather not do. Right? If there is some unseen force which is forcing you to behave in a manner which you would rather not, then please tell us. *Menacing stares from your mother-in-law excluded.
 
So you are sticking with the idea that a guy who never read, or wrote a book, had a seizure when he was 40 years old, which caused him to become (what many would consider and based on the examples which I have provided) a literary #, and mathematical # genius? OK.

Muhammad the “literary and mathematical genius” is in the eyes of the beholder. Non-believers don’t seem to regard him as such.

And he didn't suddenly become epileptic at age 40, as you misleadingly suggest. Muhammad was known to have symptoms consistent with epilepsy from an early age – his family even thought he was possessed by demons when he was a child.

The evidence is beyond question: Cognitive neuroscience has established that temporal lobe epilepsy frequently produces intense spiritual experiences. Many epileptics are hyper-religious and in Muhammad’s case it would explain his bizarre visions, his obsession with spirituality.
 
And he didn't suddenly become epileptic at age 40, as you misleadingly suggest. Muhammad was known to have symptoms consistent with epilepsy from an early age – his family even thought he was possessed by demons when he was a child.

Can you provide a source for this?
 
I object to the use of the phrase "your God". If the God which we are discussing does indeed exist, and is the creator of the universe in which we now exist. That would also make him your God (the God of everyone) as well. This is whether you or others choose to acknowledge him or not.

Object all you want, the God written about in a book you choose to quote repeatedly, is a bully.

I'm going to also go out on a limb and say that you probably are not being bullied into doing anything that you would rather not do. Right? If there is some unseen force which is forcing you to behave in a manner which you would rather not, then please tell us. *Menacing stares from your mother-in-law excluded.

No, I don't follow the teachings of the work of fiction you seem to adore.

RayG
 
I object to the use of the phrase "your God". If the God which we are discussing does indeed exist, and is the creator of the universe in which we now exist. That would also make him your God (the God of everyone) as well. This is whether you or others choose to acknowledge him or not.

I'm going to also go out on a limb and say that you probably are not being bullied into doing anything that you would rather not do. Right? If there is some unseen force which is forcing you to behave in a manner which you would rather not, then please tell us. *Menacing stares from your mother-in-law excluded.

My own reaction to your statements Mike is that they are based on the assumption that this god called 'your god' which you belief is the king of the universe (or words to that effect) is an idea which is inconsistent with others, and thus it is fair to call it (him?) 'your god' since you are the one exemplifying it (him?).

The idea of god is another matter entirely, although not totally unrelated perhaps but if you trace things back far enough you get the picture that there is more to this than meets the eyes and beside which the idea becomes something which forces an admission that nothing is separate, therefore while something might create something that does not make it 'god' in any specific way.

Thus any specific way is questionable.
 
OK, I get that if you are unfamiliar with Surah 2 then just taking a short ayat and posting it may not make a whole lot of sense to you. You should read the Surah in its entirety.

But referring to God as a bully? How so?

If the passage given strongly implies that the people were afraid of dying *because* of the God in question (he had specifically told them to die with nothing else indicated as a reason for why they were afraid of death, after all), but they ended up not dead in the end because of his fickleness? It would be something like me telling you to die and shoving a bomb down your throat that I decided not to detonate in the end. Saying "Behold my mercy for not killing you when I put you into the danger in the first place" generally doesn't end up with everyone being grateful, as should be fairly obvious.

Don't you think that someone, or some group, would by now have been able to dethrone the work of a illiterate 7th century Arab merchant?

Ignoring the empty repetition of the parts before this, I look at this part and have to wonder how you think that this argument would be convincing to your audience here. The line of argument could be just as easily used for the holy texts in Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and many other faiths and religions and would be equally unconvincing. The reasons for why religions stick around are numerous, especially when the adherents tie them in with politics and create communities that are very strongly biased towards things that they view as tying them together.

So far the best thing we have is "Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick!". I'm sure that even you could produce something more worthy. Maybe even a piece of work which could in fact end this debate for good?

Bearing in mind that not only have you not shown any inadequacies in the Moby Dick reference, you've not shown any inadequacies in the general line of arguments invoked by mentioning it. For example, that if you look hard enough, you can find a lot of seemingly miraculous coincidences that very much were not intended by the author of numerous books. The Moby Dick Assassinations bit only really came into existence because a person specifically made the challenge to find assassinations predicted in Moby Dick, fully expecting that nothing like that could be found in Moby Dick, which would reinforce his belief about things found in the text of the Bible being unique evidence of divine inspiration. Going beyond that, it wasn't even remotely the most relevant link provided in that post to your request, either, as should have been overwhelmingly obvious. In short, you're openly being dishonest here, which is one of the reasons that you are not being treated as credible.

*Additionally, Brendan McKay the website creator for the "Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick!" page also has a link to a "Nineteen in the Quran" page, although rather than evaluate what has been presented in the book, he has decided to leave the page completely blank. The only statement which can be found within this section reads " Sorry, nothing here yet." ROFLLL! What Mr. McKay is doing is metaphorically placing his head in the sand, and trying to pretend as the findings do not even exist.

More likely, like with many projects, especially ones that are done on a person's own time, life got in the way and interest was lost when the immediate aggravating stimuli was removed, and very possibly, other refutations were and are easily available, as appears to be the case. Strange as it might be for you to believe, quite a few people who live in a country with forms of Christianity that are politically active and actively seeking to enforce their beliefs on others and barely touched by Islam... just don't care about arguing against Islam much, because there's little to no personal involvement. The real question again, though, for here, is "Why should we expect claims that follow the exact same highly questionable logic as claims seriously made by others that were utterly debunked when actually examined to be significantly different in the end?"

So far, you really haven't given any solid reasons to do so and your personal credibility has not been demonstrated to be sufficient to give reason to put any weight behind your claims.
 
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So you are sticking with the idea that a guy who never read, or wrote a book,

Is the claim that Mohammad was illiterate actually confirmed through historical evidence, or is it simply speculation?

(Not that it matters either way.)

had a seizure when he was 40 years old,

I'm not the one advancing that claim, I don't have any particular position on whether or not seizures were involved.

which caused him to become (what many would consider and based on the examples which I have provided) a literary #, and mathematical # genius? OK.


What genius? :confused:

Can you list any unbiased experts who consider the Quran to be a work of genius? Can you provide any evidence that the Quran is an exact verbatim record of what Mohammad said, and hadn't been embellished or improved upon during the time that elapsed between the time he supposedly said these things and the time that the Quran was written?

And why are you linking to old posts that didn't convince anyone of anything in the first place?
 
I object to the use of the phrase "your God". If the God which we are discussing does indeed exist, and is the creator of the universe in which we now exist. That would also make him your God (the God of everyone) as well. This is whether you or others choose to acknowledge him or not.
I'm going to also go out on a limb and say that you probably are not being bullied into doing anything that you would rather not do. Right? If there is some unseen force which is forcing you to behave in a manner which you would rather not, then please tell us. *Menacing stares from your mother-in-law excluded.

Luckily the monster is imginary
 
So you are sticking with the idea that a guy who never read, or wrote a book, had a seizure when he was 40 years old, which caused him to become (what many would consider and based on the examples which I have provided) a literary #, and mathematical # genius? OK.

Also if the task is "mediocre" (as you suggest) and not "miraculous" (as I am suggesting), then why hasn't anyone been able to not only reproduce it, or better, one up it?

Very simple. An army of apologists.

(And actually the Quran is not good literature. Just read it in English or some other language ... It's really just vying for the worst possible way to write ever. And in Arabic it is probably just total kitsch.)
 
I just asked you the question, can you give me an alternative to beginning ex-nihilo, or infinite causal regression? Which are both logical dead ends.

The alternative that you are looking for is that something just exists. Unbound by any temporal successions as in first-there-was-nothing-but-then or before-that-there-was.

If this is a problem to you, it ain't to me.
 
Mike, You insist that the quran is perfect, and that this proves that it must be the work of your god. (And let me just say here that, even if your god was a real entity, I would reject it. It is a monster. I would reject it with all my heart, which is instinctively filled with compassion and has been since I was a very young child, because of your god's manifest cruelty. Here, "heart" is a poetic conceit meaning my instinctive consciousness of compassion which arises in the brain I have, which evolved this instinctive morality through the pressures of evolution which produced the highly social human animal.)

Do you understand that one single mistake in the quran is enough to disprove your claim that the quran is "perfect"?

If there is one single mistake, any further quibbling about surahs and verses and scholars is just so much hot air.

The quran states that the moon is further away from the earth than the stars.

You fail.
 
Do you understand that one single mistake in the quran is enough to disprove your claim that the quran is "perfect"?

If there is one single mistake, any further quibbling about surahs and verses and scholars is just so much hot air.

The quran states that the moon is further away from the earth than the stars.

You fail.

Where? Maybe you can provide us with the reference to support your claims?

I usually try and post a link from Quran.com, maybe you can find what you are talking about on there and then give us the link?

Thanks in advance.
 
Where? Maybe you can provide us with the reference to support your claims?

I usually try and post a link from Quran.com, maybe you can find what you are talking about on there and then give us the link?

Thanks in advance.

I suspect the root is similar to the one that I asked about yesterday in a post that you responded to, but failed to address particularly reasonably. WikiIslam's version of describing it is

Moon is Further from the Earth than the Stars
Main Article: A Qur’anic Understanding of the Universe

The Qur'an claims that the moon is located in the middle of the universe and stars are in the nearest/lowest part of the universe. The nearest star to our solar system is 4.24 light years (4x1013km) away and over 100 million times further away then the moon. Clearly the Qur'anic author has no idea that the vast majority of stars in the night sky are billions upon billions of light-years away.

See ye not how Allah has created the seven heavens one above another,
'And made the moon a light in their midst, and made the sun as a (Glorious) Lamp
Qur'an 71:15-16
Surely We have adorned the nearest heaven with an adornment, the stars
Qur'an 37:6

I'm still curious about your response to this and whether you think that the Jews consider Ezra to be just like what Christians consider Jesus.
 
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I suspect the root is similar to the one that I asked about yesterday in a post that you responded to, but failed to address particularly reasonably. WikiIslam's version of describing it is



I'm still curious about your response to this and whether you think that the Jews consider Ezra to be just like Christians consider Jesus.

I've been to wikiIslam and consider it to be one of the worst. Many of the things I've seen on there can easily be debunked by just reading the book. But you have to consider the source, and the idea that they may indeed be biased.

What was the Ezra reference found in the Quran?

And no where does the verses which you mentioned does it say that the moon is located in the center of the Universe? You may be mixing this up with the Bible, where the Catholic church believed to described the Earth as being the center and fixed unmoving "Controversy over heliocentrism".

Quran's description of the Moon
 
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I've been to wikiIslam and consider it to be one of the worst. Many of the things I've seen on there can easily be debunked by just reading the book. But you have to consider the source, and the idea that they may indeed be biased.

I don't have separate experience with WikiIslam, on the other hand and have no issue with accepting that they're likely biased. Still, the claim that you are asking about likely came from an interpretation of those two verses, which was the specific point of reposting that.

What was the Ezra reference found in the Quran?

Surah 9:30. To quote the relevant part of the version from the link that you provided,

The Jews say, "Ezra is the son of Allah "; and the Christians say, "The Messiah is the son of Allah ."

On inspection, I'm not seeing anything in the immediate surrounding context that would affect that Ezra and Jesus are being claimed to be treated the same way or that the Jews treat Ezra as the Son of God instead of simply a respected prophet.

And no where does the verses which you mentioned does it say that the moon is located in the center of the Universe?

Center of the universe? That's true. As noted, WikiIslam is likely biased. The specific pertinent claim, though, is the one that you were asking for a reference to. Namely, that the Quran seems to say that at least some stars are closer to the Earth than the Moon, given the comparison between the moon being set in the midst of the 7 heavens and at least some stars being placed in the nearest heaven specifically.
 
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