The Koran?

[Mitch Cronin]

Interesting response Greg... and a good one. First question that comes to my mind is whassupwitdis: "I shouldn't stick my nose into this" ??

Cheers,

[Seeker]

Greg:

I think a person's belief's in this area are greatly influenced by their thoughts on Free Will vs Determinism. Essentially, one either believes that God created everything and controls everything and that we're nothing but puppets on a string or that random chance created us and random chance controls our lives.

[GDR]

Interesting response Greg... and a good one. First question that comes to my mind is whassupwitdis: "I shouldn't stick my nose into this" ??

Cheers,

Partly because the thread started out being about the Koran and we're way off topic, and partly because I can see myself getting embroilded in a long discussion and (in spite of being retired) I don't have all that much time.,

[Mitch Cronin]

Seeker,

Since Greg says he hasn't got much time (cough, cough... retirement huh? )... Let me ask you:

Why does it follow that if a God created everything then he must also control everything? Why is it not possible that all those creations then go about their merry business, come what may?

I'm not at all sure what I believe in terms of ultimate supreme being style thought... I tend to lean toward there being no such honcho partly because a lot of religious folk would have me then believe that such a being is actually looking after things... When I look around at how human life on the planet is going, it looks even more like no one's in control than Air Canada does... but does logic dictate the if/then scenario: if a creator - then he's in control? Why?

I've known some fairly religious folks that definitely wouldn't agree with the puppet on a string bit.

Cheers,

[GDR]

Greg:

I think a person's belief's in this area are greatly influenced by their thoughts on Free Will vs Determinism. Essentially, one either believes that God created everything and controls everything and that we're nothing but puppets on a string or that random chance created us and random chance controls our lives.

Hi Seeker

Mitch is right in that I certainly don't agree with the puppet bit. In addition I also don't believe that just because I believe in a Creator that created everything, it doesn't follow that I believe in a creator that controls everything.

I also don't believe that free will and determinism are the only two options. For that matter I don't even see them as necessarily contradictory. I don't particularly hold to this myself but one could say that as God is not limited to our 4 dimensional universe, that He would know for all time what choices we make with the free will that we have been given. This would still leave us with a deterministic world that includes free will.

In the end though believing in everything by random chance, in my view, doesn't make sense of either the physical or the spiritual. As far as the physical goes, the age-old question of why is there something instead of nothing can't be answered. As far as the spiritual is concerned random chance and other physical theories don't make sense when it comes to emotion and altruism etc.

I have no problem in believing that evolutionary theory may very well explain the process that has brought us to where we are today physically, but I do have a great deal of difficulty in believing that it has brought us to the point that we are spiritually.

Of course all of this discussion has been about basic Theism which can encompass all sorts of beliefs including the deistic view that Mitch has described. I think that to make an argument for Christianity you have to look more at the historical record.

Cheers

Greg

[GDR]

I'm not at all sure what I believe in terms of ultimate supreme being style thought... I tend to lean toward there being no such honcho partly because a lot of religious folk would have me then believe that such a being is actually looking after things... When I look around at how human life on the planet is going, it looks even more like no one's in control than Air Canada does... but does logic dictate the if/then scenario: if a creator - then he's in control? Why? 

Cheers,

Hi Mitch

What does it mean to be in control? You had kids. You loved them, nurtured them, raised them to make their own decisions but you never controlled them.

I think that is a fairly accurate metaphor for our relationship with God. I think in the final analysis that you are basing your ideas on a world that is in process. In the end what will matter is the finished product.

I just finished reading a book called "Don't Know Much About Mythology" by Kenneth C. Davis. (A completely secular book) In human history up to, and past the time of Christ, every civilization looked for something beyond their everyday experience. In the years leading up to the time of Christ there were numerous mythologies and all of these mythologies involved a variety of gods that engaged in all sorts of intrigue, incestual relationships, murders, battles etc.

There was however one that differed from all of the others. That was the mythology of the Hebrews. The Hebrew mythology was the only one that suggested limits to human behaviour. Read Leviticus Chap 19. It said things like, do not lie, do not deceive, do not defraud your neighbour, do not pervert justice, do not slander, do not hate, etc. It talks about loving your neighbour as yourself. It spoke against incest and spoke in favour of fidelity. Most if not all of the paganistic beliefs of others involved human sacrifice whereas the Hebrew scriptures abolished the practice.

Let's put all of that in it's cultural context. Various groups including the Egyptians, the Romans and the Greeks dominated the Hebrews. These three societies in particular were far more sophisticated and powerful than this relatively small band of Hebrew nomads that were forever searching for a home. Yet in spite of being dominated by, and living in the midst of, all of these pagan societies the Hebrews espoused a totally different way of living and relating to their God. The question has to be asked "Why". In my view the most logical answer to that is that for whatever reason this group of Hebrew itinerants were actually inspired with something of the mind of God.

There is also a very strong argument to be made to put Christ into a historical context. In my view the person who does the best job of doing that is N. T. (Tom) Wright who is the Anglican Bishop of Durham. He has written a number of books but the best place to start is "Simply Christian". (Google him) I’m running out of time again.

Since the time of Christ the pagan religions of the Romans etc have all died off but the Hebrew faith and its offshoot Christianity are still with us. For that matter so is the other spawn of Judaism; Islam. All of these religions have been, and still are, perverted to serve ungodly human aspirations but that doesn't negate the actual truth. Humans are still just humans and we are all subject to human failings.

Let's go back 2000 years or so ago. The Romans largely dominated the world. They publicly crucified political opponents, and for a family Sunday afternoon they watched people being fed to lions. The world is gradually changing. Most of us yearn, however imperfectly, for justice, love and truth.

As I said at the beginning I believe that we are in process and that it is the end product that is what matters. We'll have a good chat about this in the next life.

Greg

[Seeker]

Hi Mitch:

Well I sure don't claim to have the answers but anyway it seems to me that if you follow the God-created-everything belief to it's logical conclusion that you MUST accept the idea that God controls everything - anything else is a copout. If God (capital "G" out of respect) created You,me, everyone and everything what is left that isn't controlled? Everything is everything. I know some people like to say that God created the universe but doesn't meddle in the day-to-day stuff. What? In any case, this argument doesn't sidestep the point at all; God created the Universe, the laws of physics, all of humanity and all of the chemical processes that influence their interaction with each other. How can you believe that and at the same time believe that you have Free Will? To me it seems you can't have your cake and eat it too; either it's God creates and controls or it's random chance and Free Will.

[Mitch Cronin]

Thanks for that response Greg... I'm off to do some googling now, but first:

We'll have a good chat about this in the next life. 

I look forward to that. ...bring your guitar.

[chockalicious]

This has been a great discussion, nice to see a talk around religion without the rancour.

How can you believe that and at the same time believe that you have Free Will? To me it seems you can't have your cake and eat it too; either it's God creates and controls or it's random chance and Free Will.

My understanding is that one of God's gifts to us is/was free will. He/she sets the paramaters but ultimately humans choose which path to follow.

Regardless of what one believes (I am a snake handler myself I think a civil discussion on touch subjects is never a bad thing.

[Seeker]

This has been a great discussion, nice to see a talk around religion without the rancour.

I think a civil discussion on touch subjects is never a bad thing.

Yes, I agree. As you may have noticed I'm always willing to discuss religion.

About the Free Will thing....If God creates the game and set the rules, that's control.

[Kip Powick]

About the Free Will thing....If God creates the game and set the rules, that's control

Well then can we not assume that he created the game--life-- and did He not set the rules--The 10 Commandments??

Ergo we have "control"........

[Seeker]

Well then can we not assume that he created the game--life-- and did He not set the rules--The 10 Commandments??

Ergo we have "control"........

No, you have the illusion of control. If you believe the God created everything then there's nothing that's outside, ie, nothing that's left for you to control.

[YYC I/C]

Now Dawkins and others think that life could have just happened "by accident" and that all of the questions that I asked above all happened by accident as well.

GDR, from some of my readings of Dawkins works, I don't believe you necessarily have the right interpretation of his arguement. As I understand it, he is not of the view that life happened by accident.....my interpretation is that he does not know how life happened; however, he is not prepared to assume an imaginary being (deity) is responsible. He's just comfortable not knowing.

This has been a great discussion, nice to see a talk around religion without the rancour.

Agreed, it is nice to have an intelligent discussion without the constant attacking.....really refreshing.

[GDR]

GDR, from some of my readings of Dawkins works, I don't believe you necessarily have the right interpretation of his arguement. As I understand it, he is not of the view that life happened by accident.....my interpretation is that he does not know how life happened; however, he is not prepared to assume an imaginary being (deity) is responsible. He's just comfortable not knowing.

I think that we can agree that an Atheist believes that the material universe as we know it is all that exists. Richard Dawkins calls himself an Atheist. He has written a book called "The God Delusion'. He wrote a book called "The Selfish Gene" where he proposed that cultural changes are replicated in something called "memes", something for which there is no scientific evidence.

Here is a part of the quote of Dawkins that I used earlier. "At some point a particularly remarkable molecule was formed by accident."

He categorically states that the original molecule was formed by accident. I think that we can take him at his word and say that he is an Atheist and that he believes there is nothing beyond the material.

Greg

[GDR]

About the Free Will thing....If God creates the game and set the rules, that's control.

I think that it's a lot like government. Governments pass laws thereby setting the rules. I can choose to follow the rules or I can choose to ignore them. God desires that we choose truth, justice and love but we have the choice to choose injustice, lies and hate.

[handyman]

Hi Mitch:

Well I sure don't claim to have the answers but anyway it seems to me that if you follow the God-created-everything belief to it's logical conclusion that you MUST accept the idea that God controls everything - anything else is a copout. If God (capital "G" out of respect) created You,me, everyone and everything what is left that isn't controlled? Everything is everything. I know some people like to say that God created the universe but doesn't meddle in the day-to-day stuff. What? In any case, this argument doesn't sidestep the point at all; God created the Universe, the laws of physics, all of humanity and all of the chemical processes that influence their interaction with each other. How can you believe that and at the same time believe that you have Free Will? To me it seems you can't have your cake and eat it too; either it's God creates and controls or it's random chance and Free Will.

Well, if God was a human I would tend to agree with you but thankfully he doesn't have the faults of us mortals and certainly doesn't have the need to control us.

[Guest rattler]

Re the need to control. In the old testament it appears that he/she did feel the need to control. Lot's wife is but one example.

[DEFCON]

DNA is the molecule of life but it is not life itself.

I can't attach a name to the quote but it was something like, "the complexity of the DNA molecule itself can only be attributed to intelligent design".

As I understand it, scientists now know that body mass drops by 20 something grams at the moment of death? The DNA molocule remains to decay but the force?(soul) has left?

The near death experience may also be one of those things that serves as a bread crumb on the trail of faith?

[Moon The Loon]

...scientists now know that body mass drops by 20 something grams at the moment of death? The DNA molocule remains to decay but the force?(soul) has left?

The near death experience may also be one of those things that serves as a bread crumb on the trail of faith?

Scientists won't touch spirituality with a 10-foot barge pole.

Science and the afterlife do not mix. Never before; never since; who-knows-what-will-come after.

[Kip Powick]

Drop in weight at death -21 grams

........and here is more...make of it what you wish...

bit of a long read but.....

More dialogue on the 21 gram theory

[GDR]

I mentioned the man Francis Collins earlier. Here is an article concerning his recent book.

LONDON: I've found God, says man who cracked the genome

By Steven Swinford

The Sunday Times

June 11, 2006

THE scientist who led the team that cracked the human genome is to publish a book explaining why he now believes in the existence of God and is convinced that miracles are real.

Francis Collins, the director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute, claims there is a rational basis for a creator and that scientific discoveries bring man "closer to God".

His book, The Language of God, to be published in September, will reopen the age-old debate about the relationship between science and faith. "One of the great tragedies of our time is this impression that has been created that science and religion have to be at war," said Collins, 56.

"I don't see that as necessary at all and I think it is deeply disappointing that the shrill voices that occupy the extremes of this spectrum have dominated the stage for the past 20 years."

For Collins, unravelling the human genome did not create a conflict in his mind. Instead, it allowed him to "glimpse at the workings of God".

"When you make a breakthrough it is a moment of scientific exhilaration because you have been on this search and seem to have found it," he said. "But it is also a moment where I at least feel closeness to the creator in the sense of having now perceived something that no human knew before but God knew all along.

"When you have for the first time in front of you this 3.1 billion-letter instruction book that conveys all kinds of information and all kinds of mystery about humankind, you can't survey that going through page after page without a sense of awe. I can't help but look at those pages and have a vague sense that this is giving me a glimpse of God's mind."

Collins joins a line of scientists whose research deepened their belief in God. Isaac Newton, whose discovery of the laws of gravity reshaped our understanding of the universe, said: "This most beautiful system could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful being."

Although Einstein revolutionised our thinking about time, gravity and the conversion of matter to energy, he believed the universe had a creator. "I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details," he said. However Galileo was famously questioned by the inquisition and put on trial in 1633 for the "heresy" of claiming that the earth moved around the sun.

Among Collins's most controversial beliefs is that of "theistic evolution", which claims natural selection is the tool that God chose to create man. In his version of the theory, he argues that man will not evolve further.

"I see God's hand at work through the mechanism of evolution. If God chose to create human beings in his image and decided that the mechanism of evolution was an elegant way to accomplish that goal, who are we to say that is not the way," he says.

"Scientifically, the forces of evolution by natural selection have been profoundly affected for humankind by the changes in culture and environment and the expansion of the human species to 6 billion members. So what you see is pretty much what you get."

Collins was an atheist until the age of 27, when as a young doctor he was impressed by the strength that faith gave to some of his most critical patients.

"They had terrible diseases from which they were probably not going to escape, and yet instead of railing at God they seemed to lean on their faith as a source of great comfort and reassurance," he said. "That was interesting, puzzling and unsettling."

He decided to visit a Methodist minister and was given a copy of C S Lewis's Mere Christianity, which argues that God is a rational possibility. The book transformed his life. "It was an argument I was not prepared to hear," he said. "I was very happy with the idea that God didn't exist, and had no interest in me. And yet at the same time, I could not turn away."

His epiphany came when he went hiking through the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. He said: "It was a beautiful afternoon and suddenly the remarkable beauty of creation around me was so overwhelming, I felt, 'I cannot resist this another moment'."

Collins believes that science cannot be used to refute the existence of God because it is confined to the "natural" world. In this light he believes miracles are a real possibility. "If one is willing to accept the existence of God or some supernatural force outside nature then it is not a logical problem to admit that, occasionally, a supernatural force might stage an invasion," he says.

[Trader]

The Koran states who you CANNOT have sex with - this includes your Mother, Grandmother, daughters, sons, Father, brother, sister. Anyone else is acceptable. Hence the common marriage to first cousins.

Living in the ME one of most striking things that you see/hear is how common it is for men to have sex with one another. The common belief is that if you are the 'giver' you are not homosexual. The 'taker' is and so it is nomal for one or two boys in a school to be raped continuously. As in the West with females they do not report it for fear of being labled homosexual.

In the Arab world woman are second class citizens.

In this part of the world you worry about your boys as much as your daughters!!

[Kip Powick]

The Koran states who you CANNOT have sex with - this includes your Mother, Grandmother, daughters, sons, Father, brother, sister. Anyone else is acceptable. Hence the common marriage to first cousins.

Thank you for answering my initial post

DKP

[DEFCON]

Did anyone ever see the "Ayatollah Khomeini's" interpretation of the Koran? It was published in Playboy back in the late 70's about the time he took power in Iran.

A very interesting and scarey read!

[W5]

Atheist scribes take the gloves off

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news...50-90c7199ebdba

Attack against religion hits the bestsellers list

Rachel Zoll, The Associated Press

Published: Saturday, May 26, 2007

NEW YORK - The time for polite debate is over. Militant, atheist writers are making an all-out assault on religious faith and reaching the top of the bestseller list, a sign of widespread resentment over the influence of religion in the world among nonbelievers.

Christopher Hitchens' book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, has sold briskly ever since it was published last month, and his debates with clergy are drawing crowds at every stop.

Sam Harris was a little-known graduate student until he wrote the phenomenally successful The End of Faith and its follow-up, Letter to a Christian Nation. Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon struck similar themes -- and sold.

There are a lot of people, in this country in particular, who are fed up with endless lectures by bogus clerics and endless bullying," Hitchens said.

Bad behaviour in the name of religion is behind some of the most dangerous global conflicts and terrorist attacks, the atheists say.

As Hitchens puts it: "Religion kills."

Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, a prominent evangelical school in Pasadena, Calif., said the books' success reflect a new vehemence in the atheist critique. "I don't believe in conspiracy theories," Mouw said, "but it's almost like they all had a meeting and said, 'Let's counterattack.' "

The war metaphor is apt. The writers see themselves in a battle for reason in a world crippled by superstition. In their view, Muslim extremists, Jewish settlers and Christian right activists are from the same mould, using fairy tales posing as divine scripture to justify their lust for power.

Rev. Douglas Wilson, senior fellow in theology at New Saint Andrews College, a Christian school in Moscow, Idaho, sees the books as a sign of secular panic. Nonbelievers are finally realizing that, contrary to what they were taught in college, faith is not dead, he says.

Signs of believers' political and cultural might abound. Religious challenges to teaching evolution are still having an impact, 80 years after the Scopes "Monkey" trial. The dramatic growth in homeschooling and private Christian schools is raising questions about the future of public education. Religious leaders have succeeded in putting some limits on stem cell research.

And the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding a national ban on a procedure critics call "partial-birth abortion" -- the first federal curbs on an abortion procedure in a generation -- came after decades of religious lobbying for conservative justices.

"It sort of dawned on the secular establishment that they might lose here," said Wilson, who is debating Hitchens on christianitytoday.com and has written the book Letter from a Christian Citizen in response to Harris.

Indeed, believers far outnumber nonbelievers in America. In an 2005 AP-Ipsos poll on religion, only two per cent of U.S. respondents said they did not believe in God. Other surveys concluded that 14 per cent of Americans consider themselves secular, a term that can include believers who say they have no religion.

Some say liberal outrage over the policies of U.S. President George W. Bush is partly fuelling sales, even though Hitchens famously supported the invasion of Iraq. To those Americans, the born-again president is the No. 1 representative of the religious right activists who helped put him in office. Bush's critics see his Christian faith behind some of his worst decisions and his stubborn defence of the war in Iraq.

"There is this general sense that evangelicals have really gained a lot of power in the United States and the Bush administration seems to represent that in some significant ways," said Christian Smith, a sociologist of religion at the University of Notre Dame. "A certain group of people sees it that way and that's really disturbing."

Mouw said conservative Christians are partly to blame for the backlash. The rhetoric of some evangelical leaders has been so strident, they have invited the rebuke, the seminary president said.

We have done a terrible job of presenting our perspective as a plausible world view that has implications for public life and for education, presenting that in a way that is sensitive to the concerns of people who may disagree," he said. "Whatever may be wrong with Christopher Hitchen's attacks on religious leaders, we have certainly already matched it in our attacks."

Lynn Garrett, senior religion editor for Publishers Weekly, says religion has been one of the fastest-growing categories in publishing in the last 15 years, and the rise of books by atheists is "the flip side of that."

© The Edmonton Journal 2007