A Tradgedy

[Ruggedtouch]

Bismillah:


Amazing...


It’s totally true that there are many conceptions of God out there, but I would like to know from you <b>which concept of God that you have rejected the most?</b> (please try to be clear and straight to the point)... Please give us specific description of the concept of God that you’ve rejected and makes you an atheist?

Words are concepts given labels, nothing more. In the context of these theistic/atheistic discussion, “faith”, appeals to a god(s), god means a spirit, an entity, a being of involvement and intelligence and so on. Religion means the doctrines and tenets established to adhere to the "rules" of such beings. To me, "gods" are any number of proffered deities, both modern and ancient, who have been selected as "the Supreme Being".


I’ve rejected all conceptions of god(s). Scriptural proofs are in no way any sort of proof at all-- it is from those scriptures that one comes to the belief in the first place, and it is their very veracity that is in question. Your use of the Koran as a vehicle to prove the Koran true is a viciously circular argument, yet you continue with this nightmarish charade.


Again, religious claims are always going to be able to embrace their special pleading status and it really boils down to whether one is willing to make that <i>leap of faith</i> and believe or not. I'm not prone to believing things that have built-in arbitrariness standards-- it's far too simple to misinterpret or to corrupt the data, and to me if it indicates a "supreme being" at all (which it doesn't but for argument's sake let's say it does) it points to a god(s) who must take some sort of delight in willfully confusing us.


Humanity is evolving away from mythologies, that much is clear. Religious beliefs have nowhere near the power and clout they used to, and as science progresses forward, the god of the gaps pleadings get thinner and thinner. Once, god opened every flower, now, he's reduced to being the Universe Winder. One day, that too will be taken away from him as he is merely a myth and always has been. My opinion? Yep. Will it be borne out? Speculatively, everything we've learned so far shows that the theisms are simply poetic perceptions of existence, important for their time, less relevant as we progress and learn the truth about existence. So yes, eventually when we come to the finish line of what is Truth, the natural explanation will reign supreme.


I think theists are painfully aware of this as well, consciously or unconsciously, though they will never admit it.

<b>Clearly you missed my point again..</b>
I know very well that <i>“someone”</i> out there in this huge universe is posting on our forums and his supposed name is 'Ruggedtouch' <b>but that doesn’t proof at all that it is YOU
who is really posting</b>…

As I noted previously (paraphrasing):


<i>your posts fall into the exact same category, and hence you are arguing your own argumentation is unreliable as we have no reason to believe that you</i> are who you claim to be


Not surprisingly, you’ve made no attempt to address this. I wonder why?

I too found your argument silly by rejecting God’s existence where you can see His signs and wonders wherever you go. So unless you prove to me your existence, you have no point at all to reject God Almighty's.

This is a nonsense argument.


What "signs" prove your god(s) existence?


What "wonders" prove your god(s) existence?

Ok, here is one point out of many evidences that the Qur’an comes from no one but Allah the Creator of everything.
The Prophet Muhammad pbuh had an uncle by the name of Abu Lahab. This man hated Islam to such an extent that he used to follow the Prophet around in order to discredit him. If Abu Lahab saw the Prophet pbuh speaking to a stranger, he would wait until they parted and the would go to the stranger and ask him, "What did he tell you? Did he say, 'Black'? Well, it's white. Did he say 'morning'? Well, it's night." He faithfully said the exact opposite of whatever he heard Muhammad pbuh and the Muslims say. However, about ten years before Abu Lahab died, a little chapter in the Qur'an (<b>Surah al-Lahab, Chapter 111</b>) was revealed about him.


It distinctly stated that he would go to Hell fire and will never believe in Muhammad’s pbuh message. In other words, it affirmed that he would never become a Muslim and would therefore be condemned forever. For ten years all Abu Lahab had to do was say, "I heard that it has been revealed to Muhammad that I will never change - that I will never become a Muslim and will enter the Hellfire. Well, I want to become Muslim now. How do you like that? What do you think of your divine revelation now?" <b>But he never did that. And yet, that is exactly the kind of behavior one would have expected from him since he always sought to contradict Islam. </b>


In essence, Muhammad pbuh said, "You hate me and you want to finish me? Here, say these words, and I am finished. Come on, say them!" (Say that there is no god but Allah and I am His Messenger) <b>But Abu Lahab never said them. Ten years! And in all that time he never accepted Islam or even became sympathetic to the Islamic cause. </b>


How could Muhammad pbuh possibly have known for sure that Abu Lahab would fulfil the Qur'anic revelation if he pbuh was not truly the messenger of Allah? How could he possibly have been so confident as to give someone 10 years to discredit his claim of prophethood? The only answer is that he was Allah's messenger; for in order to put forth such a risky challenge, one has to be entirely convinced that he has a divine revelation.


Salam


Wael.

And again, you enter a circular argument (using the Koran to prove the Koran true). That's dishonest, Wael.


I have good and valid reasons for rejecting god(s) existence. He doesn’t exist. You’re the one making claims to this asserted supernatural entity yet you offer nothing to support your claim. Why do you require that everyone just roll over and believe your totally unsupported fabrications?


Clearly, you’re backpedaling on this. The question posed previously remains firmly unanswered:


<i>You are assuming the Koran is the final arbiter of what gods are about and you sure haven't made a single argument proving to me that we should take this assumption as fact. So before you quote chapter and verse, may we please see your proof that the Koran is authoritative on the question of god?</i>


The point is, you can’t. This of course completely uncouples the Koran from being any sort of divine book, which in turn decouples anyone having any idea about what the belief system would be, since the belief system is reliant on the book for its foundation. In other words, the writers of the Koran (and we know they were men), were as knowledgeable as men were at the time it was penned, and there's no knowledge in it that is god-like in nature. This is because it is a wholly human document. It's an illustration of the problem with your approach to belief. Even your own objections you would sweep aside in favor of believing in what makes you feel good. You prefer the feel-good -- even if it's untrue -- rather than the truth, which may be uncomfortable.


While one has the right to believe whatever one wants, the point of this discussion is to illustrate that believing by "feelings" is notoriously unreliable for attaining any truths. Knowledge isn't reliant upon "feelings" -- and in fact feelings often sway us away from truth and knowledge because sometimes the truth is not very comforting.


Knowledge claims rely on critical examination and the compilation of facts. Most people shy away from this, and disdain reason as "cold" and "dispassionate" -- again, this may be the uncomfortable truth, but it is still the truth: <i>Knowledge</i> comes from critical analysis, and not from feelings.


The theist can assert a theistic worldview but has the added responsibility to also show a specific god is the <i>only</i> source of the cohesion of nature. This they do by citing various documents of dubious pedigree, texts that make immutable claims that then are shown to not hold up to much scrutiny, or are clearly wrong, or are flatly contradicted by other texts of equal standing (i.e., other dubious texts that make other immutable claims that are equally shown to fail under even cursory scrutiny, etc.)-- and thus the theist must implement "FAITH".


The atheist is not burdened by this mysterious and unexplainable method of attaining knowledge, because faith is not the same as empirical trust. In the court of Logic, knowledge is knowledge or it isn't. Faith by definition is not knowledge, it is faith-- it is belief despite or regardless of evidence. The moment evidence is applied to faith, and that evidence is shown to support the claim of faith, the claim of faith must lose its status of "faith" and instead become knowledge. Theism cleverly avoids this trap by asserting its claims only and always fall into the category of faith. Well, I for one agree with theists here: They have no knowledge of the truth nor can they by their own standards, they can only have faith. The atheist has the luxury of an empirical consistency that either supports itself repeatedly:


"If I step out the window, the laws of logic indicate I will fall to the ground below. Every time. Without fail."


or fails, thus becoming untrue:


"The world is flat, and the sky is a lid covering it". No, it isn't.


and thus has a monopoly on knowledge. The theist can have knowledge claims (David's tomb is discovered. The Temple mount dates back x amount of millennia, and so on) but of its central tenets the status of knowledge is out of bounds. Not by atheist decree, but by theistic decree.