I don't remember the answer to this question because you never give one. This is the first time that I can remember you admitting that you don't know that god has a source. If god has a source, then how can he be eternal? Define my parameters for what? A source that backs your interpretation of those passages up? Use any source. I'll be able to check how reliable it is once you've posted it. You've just admitted that you don't know. You don't know the source of god, so you don't know where he and thus we came from. You don't seem to understand why people ask for proof. Think about it.
We'll never know that nuclear fusion works? Wow, have I been misled. Ok, sky wizard it is for me then.
They almost can. They lack a little in terms of moral direction and spiritualism, though. Not for me to say, really. All religions are corrupted over time. I doubt that Buddhism is any different. But if they don't believe in any god, then they are. I understand that you don't think they're making an informed decision about their atheism, though. I've clearly stated that I don't accept the current theories from science about any possible start to the universe, any more than I accept those from theism. Until the evidence suggests that one of them is true, then I'll reject them all.
I've just read a little on nuclear fusion and realise that my way is wrong. I feel so stupid - I wish I hadn't pulled my children out of school and brutally trained them to believe my theory.
Things get lost in person too and you don't get a chance to compose and clarify as much. It can be both a good and a bad thing. Goodnight, TFWNN.
Nothing suggests that there was any design behind it. The supposed futility of a godless existence? I don't agree. If we're actually being watched and this is all a test for some other existence, then this life is truly pointless. Is this supposed to be a rehearsal? Being able to create your own meaning and point in this world is a beautiful thing. Then why believe that one exists?
Then when we die, Angels ask us three questions to our souls - who was your creator? who was the last prophet of God? what faith to you belong to? Or something similar to that.
There's no evidence to suggest that there's any design behind it. Feel free to prove me wrong, though. I haven't said that it is. I just don't think that there's any pre-ordained reason behind it. In which case there is no justice. If god directly communicates with some people but not others and then judges everyone on whether they believe in him or not, then he's clearly not just. So god created us and gave us certain desires and compulsions and then he punishes people for following them? Why give them to us in the first place, then? If he knows everything and he gave us each of our traits, then he doesn't need to test us, because he knows the outcome and he's judging people based upon a characteristic that he's given them himself.
The Quran itself isn't evidence, any more than the Bible or the Torah are. If there's a correlation between something in any of them and reality, then it could be evidence, but it would depend upon what it was. You didn't allude to any of it, but your religion does. According to Islam, Mohammed was visited by the angel Gabriel for his first revelation, for example. That would put him at rather a big advantage when it comes to believing in god, wouldn't it? It's like taking a test and being given the answers, when virtually everyone else doesn't have them. I get it, but I clearly didn't explain myself clearly enough. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? The story doesn't make sense. If Adam and Eve didn't understand good and evil, then how could they know that they were doing anything wrong in the first place? If god is omniscient, then he would know what was going to happen when he placed the tree in paradise, too. He would've selected the traits of the original man and woman, known that they'd eat the fruit and the punished them for fulfilling a situation that was completely of his own creation. But he also chooses who we are, doesn't he? Every decision from the beginning of time would be down to him and he'd know every outcome of every event. We would be predestined to make every decision that we make in life.
Being God is much the same as being a father, leaving power drills and stanley knives about when you have a toddler is not a test for the child, its negligence on the fathers part....
None of the books are reliable unless you have read the original, which I very much doubt. People have only read translations of translations of translations and so on of the Qur'aan, Bible, Torah and any other religious text. So to say that you have read any of them is wrong as with each translation the message changes.
I don't have an agenda, whereas those making this claim clearly do. I'm not going to argue this point with you though, as it's largely irrelevant to me. If it contains the truth, then that truth should hold up to scrutiny. And that doesn't change the fact that god directly communicated with some people and not others. If belief in god is a requirement for entry into heaven or expulsion to hell, then this is clearly unjust. How could god have a final hope, by the way? He could write his name on the moon in neon letters if he wanted to, presumably. I don't think that many people would miss that message. They clearly didn't, as that was the whole point in the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Perhaps the Islamic version of this story differs from the Christian/Jewish one, though. However, if he's created those minds and every other element of existence and he knows the outcome of every event before it has happened, then our free-will is merely an illusion. He would know the influence that every decision that he made about who you were would make upon your life and he would essentially choose it's outcome before it had started. Omniscience, omnipotence and free-will are incompatible. They cannot co-exist. Goodnight, SNIAW.
Goodness me this looks like a fun thread. Well I became an atheist back in 1975 when I was 7 and had to attend a Salvation Army run Sunday School. To me it didn't seem realistic that there was a God that created the world in 6 days and all of mankind descended from Adam and Eve. When all these religious texts/ books were written (The Bible, Qu'ran etc...) well over a thousand years ago life was a lot more of a hardship than it is today and, as a result, people needed to have something to believe in whereby they would know they could end up somewhere better in the afterlife. Also peoples knowledge back then was rather limited (that is not to say they weren't intelligent). However over the last 100 years or so due to leaps in science and improved education has meant that there are significantly fewer people attending church services these days. I know none of that answers the question raised at the start of the thread. In my opinion I believe in the Big Bang Theory and Evolution to explain about life evolving on this planet. Do I possess any evidence to support this? No I don't. I'm not a scientist, I'm a credit controller (well unemployed credit controller). Science is about pushing the boundaries of what we know. Religion (and I can only say what I think about Christianity as I've never read the Qu'ran or other religious texts) hasn't said anything different for 2,000 years or so. If anybody who is religious wants to criticise me for that "obvious" answer would they mind answering this question for me. Who, or what, created God? (When I've popped that question to religious people in the past I've received abuse and been denounced as an agent of evil and actually not received an answer. On that basis I've always taken it that religious people can't handle being questioned/ challenged. Please prove me wrong)
