OK, I accept that you are unable to answer my question. You just continue to run around in circles whilst avoiding my point.
we are going over old ground it seems the 'assumptions' arise from the need to know where we come from, what is the purpose, and what happens next everything suggests a 'creator', we can argue the semantics of what created means, however everything is created/built/changed from one form to another i dont know how to build a rocket, but the person who did does. he/she will have a manual allah created the heavens and earth, and the quran is the manual and i agree all thought is based on previous information, and that information had to come from somewhere the big bang theory is in the quran, i have cited it earlier, however the criterion for reading/understanding is as the quran mentions ie quran,sunnah, sahabah 21:31 is one citation edit, sorry its 21:30. but if you read the whole of 21 (surah anbiya) it provides context etc
evolution doesnt describe where we come from it partly explains how we evolved to what we are now nobody is FORCING anything on anyone, seems like adults having a conversation for the most part to me
maybe there is no point, or even a question? you asked me : 'why the Universe is a "creation" - i.e. A thing that is made (by a creator).' right? I have said that, as you yourself asserted previusly, because 'nothing is CREATED without a CREATOR' pretty bleeding direct response if you ask me
Cowboys From Hell - just shut the up. As an agnostic the easy answer is just to let people believe what they want without spouting such rubbish articles whether you're religious or an atheist. Heck I'd read your post if I wanted to but I know that it's not informative at all and just provocative. Extreme atheism like this and extreme religious maniacs like them are truly unpleasant features of society.
You might not be but the organised religions and the majority of adherents do force their religion on others and always have. Historically through forced conversion and to this day by brainwashing impressionable children. As for evolution - that is the answer. Life forms came about through natural circumstances. It comes back to my point, why insist that human life has to have been a divine plan and that the universe exists in order to give us somewhere to live? That belief is childish and pathetic. Most kids stop thinking the world revolves around them by the time they reach 8 years old, unless of course they are religious in which case they carry on thinking this for the rest of their lives.
Yes, we do appear to be going over old ground. You're making claims without backing them up with evidence. You've assumed that we came from somewhere, rather than evolving from a natural process. You've assumed that life has a specific, pre-set purpose. You've assumed that there's an afterlife. Nothing suggests a creator, at all. If Allah did create the heavens and the earth, then he did a very good job of making it all look like a natural process. Why would he do that? Nothing suggests that thought comes from an external source, either. 21:31? "And we have set on earth mountains standing firm, lest it should shake..." ? Do you mean 21:30? "Did the disbelievers not observe that the heavens and the earth were closed, then We opened them? And We created from water every living thing. Would they still not believe?" Doesn't sound much like the Big Bang to me.
if you read back through the pages (not saying you should) you will see that your first point has been compehensively, in my view, been discussed. there is no compulsion in faith etc Evolution is mention, as i mentioned, in some religions. What we are talking about here is not how some bird 'adapted' or 'evolved' to fit into its surroundings. we are talking about how the earth was formed and how life came into existence. evolution does not answer that in any way or form and the point is that the world 'doesnt' revolve around us
Yes i am glad we agree it is old ground. I do beg to differ on the evidence part. For most of the discussion i have given evidence from scientists, quran, etc. yet your counter argument has been without evidence, and i would suggest a little google based as with science, assumtion is the starting point for most things, its the proving/disproving that makes it theory/fact if you believe creating something out of nothing is a natural process, kudos all thought is based on previous information, the information is gained from external sources I did edit the verse and apologised, also explained the process of reading/understanding which i take it you ignored? are you still using answering islam? not an 'allegation' just curious as there is a site that goes into detail answering their claims. basically into fine detail that would take years on here
You haven't given any evidence at all. You've given the opinions of about three people and some extremely dubious interpretation of Quranic scripture. I don't have a counter-claim, either. My counter is that your supposed evidence is nothing of the sort. There can be no evidence for atheism, as it's not a claim. See, that's where you're wrong. Science doesn't make assumptions, at all. Science looks at the evidence and then tries to work out what that evidence means. Theists look at their conclusion and try to shoehorn the evidence to fit it. I never claimed that anything had been created out of nothing. That's your claim, which is one of the reasons I dismiss it. I've never claimed that anything has ever been created in a literal sense, at all. Yes, humans do gain information from external sources. They don't get thoughts from them, though. I didn't ignore your edit. I didn't see it. I've read Surah 21 in it's entirety. It doesn't add any weight to your claims of the Big Bang theory being mentioned in the Quran, in my opinion. As I've told you repeatedly, I'm not using Answering Islam.
you not accepting evidence is not th esame as not being given evidence keith moore, jaques cousteau etc were evidence, and there was no counter I suggest that you look back and see what the point of the discussion was between me and you that is The 'dubious' interpretations you speak of, have been addressed. I can give you the arabic and the root words, but did not see the point I accept that certain translations/interpretations can lead to the quotes you have used. This also explains why asked you about answeringislam, although you didnt get what i meant regarding that in my last post FYI science is full of assumptions dressed up as theories. none of the current scientific models on the topic at hand are free from assumptions ( or educated guesses) You did claim that matter could have always existed, Thoughts are based on previous information, previous information is external athiesm is a claim without evidence, by saying nothing is there is not evidence. As with science the onus is on the person claiming something to provide evidence athiesm is a bit of a cop out imo
Keith Moore and Jaques Cousteau were not evidence. I've countered both, anyway. Our discussion started over you using what I would call a largely false definition of atheism, as it's interpreted today, if I remember correctly. You're still doing it. For the millionth time, I haven't been using AnsweringIslam. Whenever you make a quote, I check it against sites that offer multiple translations. You're choosing the most favourable ones and normally the same ones that Zakir Naik uses. Science doesn't use assumptions at all. Theistic rhetoric. Anti-science mumbo jumbo. Yes, I did claim that matter could've always existed. I didn't claim that it was formed from nothing. Atheism isn't a claim. How many times do I have to tell you this? Strawman, strawman, strawman. Really, really poor reply.
RE: SNIAW My point about god being uncreated is that it negates the claim that everything needs a creator. It's called special pleading. 'Everything needs a creator, doesn't it?' 'Well what about X?' 'Erm, well everything else needs a creator, then...' See what I mean? I've never known anything to be literally created. You can combined things with other things to turn them into new things, but they're not literally produced out of nothingness. That's a supernatural act, for which there's no evidence, as far as I'm concerned.
you didnt counter moore and cousteau. They were evidence of science confirming something the quran had clarified 1400 years ago. by saying no they didnt isnt countering yes it did, but you obviously have failed to understand what i was saying, I actually gave different definitions of athiesm including yours. you chose to ignore it regarding answeringislam, you are choosing not to read what i said. i will repeat it was not an allegation science starts out with at least three assumptions that aren’t provable, it may be more rational to take science less seriously than religion, which starts out with zero.[3] Before scientists perform any kind of experiments, they start out with these basic assumptions: (1) that the experimental procedures will be performed adequately without any intentional or unintentional mistakes that will impact the results (2) that the experimenters won’t be considerably biased by their preconceptions of what will happen (3) that the random sample is representative of the entire population and that any random sampling that isn’t won’t significantly impact the results (4) that nature has regularity; most if not all things in nature must have at least a natural cause[4] (5) that there is such a thing called Objective Reality (6) and that science at least partly corresponds to that Objective Reality. Therefore, when we think about it more deeply, the foundation of science is actually faith, a term usually used to describe religion, not science. In comparison, theists who claim that God exists and don’t claim to know anything else about God base their belief on one currently true fact: that not everything can be explained by natural means.[5] Because scientists make at least six assumptions and theists make none, it is actually (and ironically) more rational to believe in God than in science. It is actually up to scientists and/atheists to include the existence of God as a scientific inquiry and to use the deductive falsification model to question the existence of such a being. If they set the hypothesis to “not everything can be explained by natural means”, and they successfully showed that everything could be explained naturally, then there would be no need to believe in God anymore. Of course, even if the hypothesis was falsified, it would not mean that God definitely does not exist; it would only mean that a rational basis for believing in God no longer exists. That would be a good enough reason to be in denial of God’s existence – but only if it is clearly demonstrated that everything in the natural world can be explained by natural means.
There is no compulsion in belief but there is plenty of evidence of compulsion and force in recruitment and adherence to religion. Most religions recruit at birth or in infancy and in Islam the crime for apostasy is death. Please tell me where free will for the individual comes into that equation? We as in humans have evolved from simple life forms that themselves were created through natural scientific processes. That is all we need to know. How can anybody religious honestly claim to know anything different? Wanting something like a divine creator to be true is not proof. You keep ignoring my point about the arrogance of the religious mindset in feeling the need to have a divine creation for the universe. Furthermore to suggest that this mindset isn't driven by the need to give your lives purpuse would be an absolute lie. It is this mindset that shows that no argument will ever win a religious person over. The religious value their comforting faith above scientific logic or proof and will always be prepared to do the mental contortions necessary (in their own minds) to debase any arguments that put their own mental comfort zone in danger. That is what is so frustrating to a non-believer. To be endlessly met with "but the Koran/Bible/Torah says this ...".
there in lies the issue, hence my reluctance to reveal my faith/belief etc as soon as you do you get the 'you theists are the same blah blah blah' what you say about answeringislam is true. there is a site dedicated to responding to it too, i cant remember what its called Thats not suggesting PNP is going specifically to that site. Its just his quotations are/were remarkably similar/the same A lot of other sites use the AI site, including the BNP etc, again npt saying anyone on here is using theirs either
the Qur`an refers to apostasy several times (2:217, 3:86-90, 4:137, 9:66, 9:74, 16:106-109, 4:88-91, 47:25-27) and yet does not prescribe any punishment for it you explain that and then we will continue
We both know that whether the Qur'an states the crime or not is irrelevant. Death as a punishment for apostasy is carried it out in many Islamic countries. It is my experience that a great many religious followers only follow those bits of their holy book that they find convenient and are more than happy to bend the message of the book according to their needs. The fact that they fall back on its divine infallibility during religious debates is therefore incredibly ironic.
I clearly did counter Moore and Cousteau, both of which appear to be relying on others to translate the Quran for them, incidentally. Moore's interpretation of the Quran's 'miraculous' description of embryonic development doesn't seem to have been accepted by the wider scientific community. Why is that? Cousteau's supposedly divine insight can be divined by the sense of taste. It's a ridiculous claim, frankly. Your criticisms of science are laughable. You obviously haven't studied the scientific method or it's application. It's also quoted verbatim from a student's paper. http://lyceumphilosophy.com/?q=node/117 The burden of proof is on those making the claim, which is theists. Your attempt to shift the burden of proof shows just how weak your argument is.
