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Sat 5 Mar, 2011 12:26 am
What is the definition of God?" For a person to say there is no God, he should know what is the meaning of God.
If you think that existence as a whole has no purpose and achieves nothing, then it follows that whatever you do in life achieves exactly nothing as well - your life would contribute no value to existence.
The core of all value and purpose to existence is commonly known by the name Allah or God. He is the ultimate purpose to existence and the achievement of what is morally good equates to getting closer to Him. Allah is more than we can ever fully understand but in order to have morally good thinking it is essential to believe in Allah in some sense whatever name we use for Him.
This opinion implies that the human being has a natural tendency to seek out something to worship and that there is a natural feeling that this object of worship must possess greatness.
The fact that pagan societies always worship a plurality of beings – never restricting themselves to worshipping, for example, one mountain or one star – is an indication that man, in reality, naturally seeks an overwhelming Higher Power and compensates for this by taking a collection of deities. This shows that he feels a need for a power outside of his natural environment that he can turn to when all the material powers around him fail.
This religious sense has achieved a great importance in the intellectual life of man, whereby the world of the unseen has become part of what man can believe in for his practical life instead of merely belonging to the world of imagination and fancy.
Disbelievers have purposes in their lives such as collecting money and property, indulging in sex, eating, and dancing. But all these purposes are transient and passing ones. All these purposes come and go, go up and down. Money comes and goes. Health comes and goes. Sexual activities cannot continue forever. All these lusts for money, food and sex cannot answer the individual's questions: so what? Then What?
However, Islam saves Muslims from the trouble of asking the question, because Islam makes it clear, from the very beginning, that the permanent purpose of the Muslim in this life is to obey Allah in order to go to Paradise in the second life
@nssan,
Do you think Allah really cares which foot you enter and leave the toilet with?
Mustahab and Makrooh Acts
@mesquite,
The only Pollytheist on A2K is Dyslexia, Im almost certain of that, but I could be wrong. HOW MANY OTHER POLLYTHEISTS ARE OUT THERE??
Nope. Not me. I am polyester.
If the purpose of life is to obey (god{s}) Allah with the ultimate goal of living forever in the afterlife, what kind of purpose is that? Why would one want it? Doesn't such a goal negate the living that goes on right here and now? A Zen approach is to live here in the moment and let what happens after death take care of itself. I like that much better than living a miserable, groveling life, in hope of teasing out a spot in heaven, where the groveling presumably continues forever. Being an atheist frees me up to make the most of my life. I don't really care what will happen after I die.
@nssan,
You've defined and described atheists to the convenience of your facile and puerile argument. Coming from a theist, that's no surprise.
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I'm polyglot, and the girls just love it!
@nssan,
Silly silly person the belief in some stupid non-existed god who will punish you forever if you do not follow irrational rules is not a requirement in caring about others matters beside personal pleasures.
I am an out and out atheist and I care about the welfare of my family, friends, the future even after I no longer exist of my nation state and the human race as a whole.
Drinking in a heavy manner and collecting great wealth does not turn me on and all the wealth in the world for example would not even cause me to allow harms to my pets let alone human love ones. Sex is surely enjoyable and must more so with someone I have an emotional bonded with.
You had a very truly low opinion of mankind if the only thing causing the "good" aspect of human nature is an irrational fear of some big bad daddy in the sky.
@nssan,
Quote:He is the ultimate purpose to existence and the achievement of what is morally good equates to getting closer to Him
.
Even assuming that such a god exist why the "hell" should his existence define my morals in any way or in any manner?
My moral code is build into me by my evolution as an intelligent pack animal, interacting with the now existing culture and people that surrounded me.
I cannot also see why I would have any great desire to be close to him or even gratefully to him as if he had created the universe it would have been for his reasons and to meet his needs.
Somehow, your positions and statements seem to lack logic.
@nssan,
Quote:Islam saves Muslims from the trouble of asking the question
Is that why their modern contributions to human knowledge (as measured say by number of Nobel prize winners) is relatively negligible ?
@fresco,
Quote:Is that why their modern contributions to human knowledge (as measured say by number of Nobel prize winners) is relatively negligible ?
Kind of unfair to picked out the Muslim faith , as standing in the way of human progress for both the reasons that members of that faith in the past have greatly increased human understandings and at the very same time period Christians was blocking such activities by means of torture.
The current sad state of Muslim cultures in this regards likely have more to do with other factors then just the faith.
@BillRM,
I was careful to to write "
modern contributions". Many earlier contributions, say to astronomy and mathematics are understandable as serving the koranic pre-occupation with determining precise dates of religious significance.
But of course it would be ridiculous to argue that "religious faith" of any sort cannot be an impediment to "scientific" enquiry. And Islam is not just a "faith", it is a way of life which embodies a chauvinistic and fundamentalist attitude to the authority of "holy writ". With such a dominant group psychological attitude it can hardly be called "unfair" to say that Muslims might have trouble communing with the concept of a scientific "working hypothesis".
@fresco,
Relatively? I'm genuinely perplexed. Have any Muslims won Nobel prizes? I'm not disputing it, i really don't know. (And can't be arsed to look it up myself.)
Modern is an excellent qualifier. In the glory days of Islam, they preserved for us a great deal of knowledge which had become arcane in the west (we had the texts, but they were buried in monastic libraries and were unknown to the laity). They also were a conduit to the West for the knowledge of the East--notably, the mathematical genius of India, and, sadly, gun poweder from China.
I'm a polygraph: This is bullshit.
A
R
T
@edgarblythe,
polyester?
Can I assume that you EB are you personally flame resistant?
@fresco,
I had forgotten about the peace prize. However, there are some Muslims listed, and it doesn't matter (to me at least) if one is a Punjabi and another an Egyptian. Also, "Muslim in name only" does seem a rather snarky comment.
@fresco,
Quote:But of course it would be ridiculous to argue that "religious faith" of any sort cannot be an impediment to "scientific" enquiry. And Islam is not just a "faith", it is a way of life which embodies a chauvinistic and fundamentalist attitude to the authority of "holy writ". With such a dominant group psychological attitude it can hardly be called "unfair" to say that Muslims might have trouble communing with the concept of a scientific "working hypothesis".
Your theory fail because if it was true it would had been working from day one of that faith/culture and there would never had been a scientific flowering that last a thousand plus years under Islam.
The West only have less then half that time period where it had gain the lead over Islam and there is nothing to indicate that lead could or would not be reverse in the future.
@BillRM,
Okay. You explain the current discrepancy then.
@fresco,
Quote:Okay. You explain the current discrepancy then.
I had shown a thousand years hole in your logic that the cause of the current short fall in science of the middle east compare to the West is unlikely to have any connection with Islam however that placed me under no obligation of any kind to find or offer a theory for a root cause for this current shortfall.
With or without another theory your theory on it face does not hold water.
In order to defense your theory, in my opinion, you would need to explain why the hell for a thousand plus years the areas under Islam control was ahead of the West when the religion and the outlook on life is roughly the same as it is now.
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