To Foxhole
Hi,
format_quote Originally Posted by
Foxhole
1)
If the maker can exist yet be uncreated, why can't the universe?
Because we know the universe has certain characteristics that point towards it originating at one point. As For the creator, he does not have those same characteristics, so it is much more plausible for the creator to be uncreated.
2)Wny is an infinite past harder to accept than an uncreated entity?
Because an infinite past creates many scientific as well as philosophical problems. (Think of entropy; or
"The Paradox of the Grand Hotel")
To Thinker
Hi,
And did he also tell them that thunder was a sign of the maker's anger...
So using the same logic as used by Abu Hanifah Rahimullah one could argue that as man once ascribed lightning, famines and plagues to work of God and now science has proved them to be natural events then science will ultimately find proof that all those things we ascribe to be the work of God to be natural and explainable events; it’s the same type of reasoning.
Can I take it that the underlying argument in this is:
"Earlier nations had false believes for things they could not understand, therefore all believes are false."? Isn't that argument flawed because it's a sweeping generalisation? Or was that not what you were driving at?
and that plagues and famine were the maker's way of punishing those that did not worship him?
According to Islam, hardship isn't necessaryly a punishment. It could also be a test. I think the riddle of Epicurus and the problem of evil has been refuted already in the comparative religion section, I don't see how this argument relates to this thread.
And, who made the maker? So where did God come from – the nothingness? There was nothing one day and suddenly God appeared? How is that any easier to believe? You believe that God created the universe because that's what you want to believe, not because it's obvious.
He is uncreated, without a beginning.
So who created Allah, did God just pop up from nowhere, one second there was nothing, then there was God?
If God created the universe, he is outside the universe, thus also outside of time. This "time" is a physical construct. A part of our universe. According to relativity, space and time form a 4D space-time-continuum. According to the standardised theory, (empty) space is a physical construct. Put these two theories together, and it would follow that time also is a physical construct, a part of our universe. Speaking in terms of "
one second and the next" is thus an inappropriate representation.
If you struggle to believe that the complexities of life are simply a developmental process how can you stretch your mind to believe that a God came to be from nothing and came to be with Godly powers!
Well Like I said to Foxhole. We know our universe has a fixed set of rules. Causality, the 4 forces of physics, the fixed constants that determine their ratio's. The reason it's so hard to come to terms with the idea that life and the universe came to be by chance, is because it seems to defy logical thinking. It's not merely because there's an absence of a plausible explanation. It goes farther then that, it's not just the absence but rather the presence of so many indications which show us how unlikely it was for our universe, or for life to come into existence. As for the concept of God, if you believe God created the universe, obviously he wouldn't be bound to the same laws of physics. Therefore all these indications of unlikeliness would no longer apply to God.
Maybe God did come from nothingness and maybe he didn’t but just because you and I don’t know how it all started and cannot (yet) comprehend something coming from nothing doesn’t mean there can only be one possibility – God. That question is just one more question that science will eventually answer.
I agree that neither atheist nor theist can conclusively answer this question. But I don't think we need to in order for the atrophic principle to be a valid argument.
All that aside, I understand that to follow any religion you must accept all the God stories, put those nagging questions to one side and ‘have faith,’
Not Really, Islam, unlike many other religions encourages us to examine and question, invites us to be critical.
what I am struggling to come to terms with is how someone as intelligent, well read and free thinking could promote the boat story as anything more than smoke and mirrors.
Well simple, because despite I grant it's an over-simplification of the atheists p.o.v, the underlying atrophic principle is still a valid argument. So it's not just smoke and mirrors at all.
I suspect that most atheists and agnostics started life as followers of a particular religion and became atheists and agnostic after spending many hours considering the question – does God exist.
Yes, I agree. This was also the reason why, after being raised in a catholic environment, I became an atheist/agnostic (this was before converting to Islam).
It’s much easier to follow the suggestion that God does exist (see Pascal’s wager) and far harder to deny it, not least because if we’re wrong there is the possibility of undesirable consequences on judgment day.
For me it was not a question of easy or hard, but rather a question of what was right/plausible and what was not. On another note, I find that most atheists disbelieve in a very specific view of God. That is to say, the concept of God that they don't believe in, is a concept that I myself as a theist do not believe in either.
If there is a God and I am called to account I will say, “you gave me the intellect and ability to critically analyse the evidence and form a view, I must presume that when you gave me that ability you expected me to use it, I used it and formed the view that your existence was a possibility but unlikely, I also formed the view if you did exist you would judge me well if I acted honestly and was true to my convictions and would be angry with me if I simply followed the lead of others because of fear or because it brought me comfort.”
Well I sincerely hope for your sake that this plea will be sufficient. But if at any point in your life, you rejected the possibility of Islam, not based on the rational thinking you were given, but rather based on emotive inclinations and emotive arguments and a (perhaps subconscious) aversion for Islam, then I would think your plea would be rendered meaningless by that action, would you agree? That being said, do you consider Islam possible, or do you consider it most definitly false? If you consider it most defenitly false, could you tell us why? Also, if you consider Islam possible, given your pleas which you intend to give in order to justify your agnosticism, would you agree you have a responsibility to use your intellect you were given to verify as far as possible whether or not Islam seems to be true?
To Padarok
Hi;
This is a good reasoning for religious people, but it leaves the evidence of the theory of evolution as a good arguement.
Evolution is a theory that aims to explain how life,
after already existing evolved into a larger variety of life. That is to say, it is an attempt to account for the different types of life, not for the existence of life itself. Therefore Darwin coined it "The evolution of species". Meaning how different species evolved. Not how life came into existence.
However, thinking about stuff like this and thinking about evolution, I am changing my way of life as Agnostic now. Though, that does not mean I am leaning towards Islam or any religion in this issue (if anything, towards a kind of... deterministic nihilism). I am simply in the middle and have been, actually.
Depends on how you look at it, I would think you're halfway there ^_^
By the way, I don't know why this is so convincing for Muslims. Atheists see humans as evolved after billions of years and don't fall too easily for the "suddenly put together" argument.
Yeah you're right. The argument over-simplifies the atheist's view of the world. Be that as it may, I still find the anthropic principle which is the gist of the argument here to be a valid argument.
To Azy
Hi;
I can't speak for Clover but in my opinion also the reasoning is faulty.
It's basically a different spin on the watchmaker argument. From our experience we know ships are man-made for a purpose defined by man. You can go to the shipyard and watch them being built. The argument by Hanifa is basically "Aha! So if a ship is so obviously created and controlled by a maker/guide then so is every other complex thing".
Except that we do have experience of animals and plants and other things being created and it's not by some supernatural maker. They reproduce sexually (usually), Mummy and Daddy cat get together and make baby cat.
Well, I'd have to disagree with you there. To take your example of the cats. According to the theist's point of view, these cats <
as many other species> have obviously been designed with the function to reproduce. So their ability to reproduce does not negate that everything complex must come from a design. The design just goes further back, to the first specie in their tree of descent (I believe in evolution of different species, but not in common descent of all existing species). So, although of course this is
"from the theist's p.o.v." it still refutes your argument as it shows that your argument is circular.
I've never seen or heard of a cat appearing out of nowhere or being created from dust or anything else out of a religious creation story, so why would I assume that they are true when there's a perfectly reasonable alternative that I've seen with my own eyes?
Just because we have never witnessed it, doesn't mean it couldn't have happened in the past. Why would Allah subhana wa ta'ala still need to create new cats, when there's already so many around? Secondly, as far as I know there is no perfectly reasonable alternative that answers the anthropic principle. The parts of the theory of evolution that are scientific, is only half the answer. It still doesn't account for existence.
At what point did the maker start existing and what happened to start it?
That question is un-reasonable. As I explained to Thinker in this post, If our universe is indeed created by a creator, obviously that creator is not part of said universe and is not inside the dimension of time. Thus asking us "
at which time" did the creator do this or that makes no sense.
Well I suppose to uncreate would be to dismantle, rather what I mean is 'not created' and I think you know that. Why then do people insist on using 'complexity' as evidence of design? There is no benchmark against which to compare this complexity in order to determine if it is characteristic of creation/design. You might as well skip all the pointless justifications and go straight to "things exist, therefore something with intent and intelligence created them", which is as arbitrary a jump as I can imagine.
I would rather say: "things exist
against all odds, therefore something with intent and intelligence must have created them",
Physicists would disagree and say that nothing is exactly where everything came from.
I don't think so. That is not a scientific explanation. So If any scientists says something like that, he is just expressing his personal believes, and not representing science.
The precursor to our universe is thought to be a dimensionless state of nothing which, through some vacuum fluctuation, cascaded into what we now know as our universe while maintaining a zero-sum energy.
This is all highly speculative, and just one of the thousands of different "semi-scientific" explanations.
To Pygoscelis
Hi;
Infinite regress does appear to lead to absurdities. But it is very debatable which is more absurd:
1. Infinite Regress
2. Spontaneous creation from nothing
3. Magical being who has always existed brought the universe into being with only its thoughts.
3. is an incorrect representation of theists pov. As I have explained to Thinker and Azy, to talk of God in terms of "
always existing" implies God is inside the dimension of time (which he created himself).
Science does not disprove God, we just understand His creation better through it.This I agree with in a sense. Science can never prove or disprove God because God is not falsifiable.
Very true, science is completely neutral in this debate.
God is about faith, not evidence. As Thinker has said, people believe in God because they want to, not because there is objective evidence to.
I disagree, to quote Russell Bertrand:
It would be perfectly possible to be a complete and absolute Rationalist in the true sense of the term and yet accept this or that dogma. The question is how to arrive at your opinions and not what your opinions are. The thing in which we believe is the supremacy of reason. If reason should lead you to orthodox conclusions, well and good; you are still a Rationalist.
Do you require a reward and punishment dynamic handed down from a god in order to live a peaceful and constructive life? I don't think you do. I think you have a moral compass completely independent of this reward/punishment dynamic from your religion.
I have to agree with you on that one, people without faith can still have morality. However, at the same time I must add, people are fallible. So from the Muslim's perspective, if you believe that Islam is perfected by Allah, and the most preferable set of moral rules, then you also believe that the set of rules an atheist would spontaneously form would be inferior to it. I hope you don't find this offensive. I don't mean this in a condescending way. I don't mean by this that atheists have inferior logic or anything like that, just that I don't think a human can ever have the same deep understanding of the world as an omnipotent creator, thus a human can never arrive at the same set of moral rules and guidelines by rational thinking without the aid of God.
My point is that the idea of a always existing all powerful all knowing "God" making the universe out of nothing but itself is just as absurd to many of us as infinite regress.
To me, the God answer seems more plausible, but I guess all we can do here is agree to disagree. I wouldn't have the faintest idea, as how to "
weigh off" one idea against another. If you have a suggestion I'm all ears.
If god turns out to exist and to be as described in the bible or quran I would feel no need to justify myself to him. Nor would I respect his judgment. Sure, if he is all powerful he could torture me for this, but that doesn't make bowing down to such a tyrant noble or good.
Forgive me if I'm placing words in your mouth here, but are you saying that the view of God, portrayed in the Qur'an is that of a Tyrant? Could you back up that claim? I mean, there are indeed verses, which if Isolated might give that (false) perception. But there are so many other verses, which speak of a kind and loving God, one who punishes only those that deserve it because he is the most just. Or would you consider it more just to
not punish those that do deserve it? Surely God does not wrong them but they wrong themselves. I can't see how you would be able to back up your claim of God being a tyrant.