truthseeker63's Corner in Comparative religion

Peace,

Does this sound like a God to you...

http://www.beconvinced.com/archive/e...20Christianity



( They are unbelievers who say, “God is the Messiah, Mary’s son.” Say: “Who then shall override God in any way if He desires to destroy the Messiah, Mary’s son, and his mother, and all those who are on earth?” ) - [Quran 5:17]

format_quote Originally Posted by truthseeker63

I have heard Christians say God has hands feet eyes therefor he looks human and can become human i think this is false but what does Islam say ?

In Islam, we believe God has what He has affirmed for Himself in the Qur'an. He has told us that He has hands with which He created and fashioned Adam, He has a face, and He has eyes. We affirm whatever Allah affirmed for Himself, and stay silent about what He did not mention in His Book of Guidance about Himself.

However, His attributes are not in any way similar to the creation.


Furthermore, if someone said that this is anthromorphosism - they are wrong. Because we affirm that Allah has hands [as He said], yet we do not say it is like a human Hand. It would only be anthromorphosism if we said Allah's hand is a human hand.

Similarly, if you said that a human has a face, it is not the same face of a bird. Although you call both faces by the same term; Face.



Allah says;

لَيْسَ كَمِثْلِهِ شَيْءٌ ۖ وَهُوَ السَّمِيعُ الْبَصِيرُ

There is not anything like Him (whatsoever), and He is The Ever-Hearing, The Ever-Seeing.

[as-Shuraa 42:11]

So we affirm what Allah attributed for Himself, without distorting the meanings of what He said.


This is much easier to believe, unlike other philosophies i.e. Sikhs who say that God is formless and just a pile of Energy. Rather - God is real, and the believers will see Him in Paradise, and He will infact talk to them and reward them by allowing them to look at Him out of His mercy for them.

They worshipped Him in this life without seeing Him, so He will reward them by letting them see Him.



See this amazing video for more details on the Amazing meeting with Allah according to the teachings of Prophet Muhammad;

A meeting with Allah;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEnDe_23II4

format_quote Originally Posted by truthseeker63

I have heard people say that Zoroastrianism started Monotheism is this wrong ?

Zoroastrianism believes in 2 Gods; one God of good [Ahura Mazda], one of Evil [Angra Manyu]. That means these 2 gods are competing always, so they do not believe in Monotheism. The funny thing is that if these 2 Gods existed, they would have destroyed the universe by now through their disagreements. However, the Universe is constantly in motion and harmony so that us -the creation- live in peace and goodness, except when other humans do evil - through which it is human fault and not God's fault.


In Islam, we believe ALL the Messengers' of God - from Adam, to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, to Jesus, to Muhammad (peace be upon them all), and 124,000 Prophets' of God called mankind to serve the One God, our Creator and Provider, and God gave them guidelines for mankind to follow through which they would be successful in this life and the next. Which shows that Islam has always been Monotheistic and pure. Islam means 'submission to God' and a Muslim is 'one who submits to God'.



Peace.

I agree with you.

Dear Truthseeker,

You're absolutely right that there is a common Designer.Most of the mammals have similar organs.But this is not a proof that they have the same origin.Here is an article by Scholar Fethullah Gulen about evolution.It's worth to read:

" It would be difficult to find another theory which, like Darwinism, has been battered and defeated so many times, and yet the corpse of it revived artificially again and again. Some scientists still defend it to the hilt; others discredit it altogether, asserting that holding to it is sheer delusion. It seems that, in the academic scientific world, Darwinism will keep conference agendas busy for some time yet, and thousands more articles and books will be written on it, and the debates persist.

The collapse of communism as an ideology and as a political force has made it more obvious than it was before that "East" and "West" was a geographical, not a cultural divide. It was and is right to think of the experiment in Russia and its former satellite states as a variation within Western culture, not an opposition to it. The strictly Western attitude to religion, derived from Rousseau and Renan, was to see it as a socially necessary myth, a delusion that provided a sort of cultural and social cohesion to collective life but which had no more basis in reality than do dreams. The strictly Eastern (Communist) attitude, founded upon explicit rejection of religion and explicit acceptance of materialism, naturally favored Darwinism (which entails the same rejection) and gave to it more deliberate and institutional support than in the West. But in the broader view, modern Western culture as a whole is closely predicated on the assumptions of Darwinism, and those who, in Muslim countries, wish to promote Western culture, continue, in universities and educational institutions generally, to pass off Darwinism as established scientific truth and, by implication, to represent religion as unscientific and false. Inevitably, some of this poison is effective on pliable young minds: many of them begin to believe (though far fewer continue to believe) that religion is not conformable to human reason, and that, as an explanation of the origin of species, Darwinism is still the best that independent human reason can do.

I will not go into the details of the evolutionary hypothesis, but within the scope of brief question and answer, I will touch upon some of the major points.

According to Darwin, life originated on earth from simple, single celled organisms giving rise to multi cellular organisms through a process of gradual change, along with random mutations, over millions of years. According to more developed forms of evolutionary theory, the foundation of all living things is amino acids within water, which later somehow got formed into single celled organisms, like the amoeba, and these organisms interacting with each other and the immediate environment over uncalculated billions of years, gradually or by sudden jumps evolved into the great variety of complex multi cellular animals. Then the invertebrates gave rise to aquatic vertebrates, i.e., fish, which evolved into amphibians which gave rise to reptiles; later, some reptiles evolved into birds, while others evolved into mammals culminating in the evolution of humankind.

The hypothesis is typically argued on the basis of a few incomplete pieces of fossils, though, so far, the actual fossil record has failed to endorse that view. To our knowledge, no scientific hypothesis except this one was ever sustained on the basis of so many, and so important "missing links." What the scientists have discovered through observation proves the opposite of the evolutionary theory true: in spite of having many varieties, bacteria have not evolved into anything different and higher though they adapt very quickly; in whatever variety they exist, cockroaches and insects have been living as they are for almost 350 million years. Fruit flies have remained fruit flies for millions of years; arthropoda, sponges, and sea crabs today are exactly as found in fossils from rock formations formed 500 million years ago; snakes, lizards, mice, and many other species, have not evolved into any other different species; nor have horse's hooves or human feet evolved into something different. Man is, as we put it, exactly the same as he was created on the first day.

There are no examples of the transitional organisms that the theory requires, such as, for example, an animal that has evolved its front legs partly (but not yet wholly) into wings in readiness for the transition to bird like flight. And, unsurprisingly, there is not even a theoretical explanation, given that such transitions are supposed to take thousands of generations to complete. How the partly evolved animal could survive in what kind of environment—lacking four "good" legs, and still not equipped with two good legs and a pair of wings.

Many arguments give the erroneous example of the evolution of the horse from a small dog like mammal with five toes to the large modern horse with one toe or hoof. In fact, the evolutionists have no evidence for that claim. Nowhere in the world have they found a series of fossils to demonstrate such an evolutionary order. It remains entirely hypothetical, suppositional. They talk about an animal which lived in the past and claim that it was the ancestor of the modern horse; but they cannot establish any necessary connection between the modern horse and that animal: the only need for that connection is the need to illustrate the theory, which the illustration is supposed to establish. This is the very opposite of reliable scientific argument and procedure. We shall say that God created such an animal at that age which later on became extinct, and it no longer exists now. Why do we need to connect these two species? Even today horses of different sizes and breeds co exist in our age.

Scientists found bees and honey from millions of years ago. The bee produced honey and the honeycomb in the same way as it does today, using the same geometrical measures, 100 million years ago. So, for that whole expanse of time neither the bee's brain and physiological structure nor the way it produces honey have changed.

What of the evolution of humankind? It is especially badly argued and ill founded. Some scientist discovered some bones, or even just the tooth of an ape, and posited (that is, guessed) the rest—the body posture, flesh, skin, hair, features, etc., of the evolved "human."

Piltdown Man is a good example to famous scientific hoaxes related with evolution. The supposed discovery near Piltdown, England, of an ape like fossil ancestral to modern humans, was reported in 1912. The discovery included fragments of what were later proved to be a modern human cranium and the jawbone of an ape. For many years the Pildown man fossil was a subject of anthropological controversy. In 1953, scientific analyses proved the fossil a forgery.

Evolutionists used to mention the coelacanth, a fish abundant 400 million years ago, as a link between the fish and the land animals because of its limb like fins. It was theorized that the coelacanth lurched onto the land in search of food, staying there longer and longer until—about 70 million years ago—it disappeared from the fossil record. To their surprise, local fishermen caught several dozen coelacanths off the coast of Madagascar in 1938. The caught fish were exactly like their ancestors, perfectly adapted to their deep sea environment and showing no signs of evolution. The coelacanth has been quietly dropped by many text books from the list of evidences of evolution, because it became the symbol of the non evolution of organisms, rather than of their evolution.

Evolutionists also claim that the organisms evolve through random mutations. While new cells are being formed, if the genetic code, normally identical in all the cells of an organism, is copied differently or mistakenly, mutations occur. Such a change, which is claimed to bear evolutionary fruit gradually over a long period, may be caused by a number of external agents, such as geography and climate, even planetary influences such as changes in the sun's or earth's rotation, or by radiation, chemical pollution, etc. The argument is that non lethal mutations which reproduce successfully (that is, adaptively to changes in immediate environment) function like sudden jumps in the progress of evolution and give rise to species variation.

However, recent work in genetics and biochemistry has shown conclusively that mutations are all but always harmful, even lethal, the cause of many physiological disorders. In any case, they could not give rise to a magnitude of change of an order to generate a new species, to make a dog a horse, or an ape a human. For such an order of change to occur randomly and then to become successfully established would require a period of time many times in excess of the highest estimate for the age of the universe.

For years, much research has been done on pigeons, dogs and flies. Though some physiological changes do occur within the same race of animals (there are different breeds of dog and pigeon, for example), such adaptive evolution within species is no evidence for evolution of species. All the extensive research done for years on Drosophila yielded nothing but Drosophila, and the research proved that Drosophila remains as it is.

Hybrid varieties are obtained by artificially crossing two species, such as horse and donkey, but the resultant hybrid (mule) is typically sterile. After long research, scientists have recognized that it is not possible to progress from one species to another. There are some insurmountable, impassable, barriers between species. That conforms to ordinary sense, as well as to the known facts and to scientific reasoning. How could such a creature as human, who has an extraordinarily sophisticated brain and is capable of (in any and every stage of civilization) of linguistic and cultural expression, of religious belief and aspiration—how could such a creature have evolved from an ape? It is quite extraordinary that even to speculate that it might be so can be given serious consideration, let alone believed and accepted as conforming to reason!

However, that acceptance of evolution is a major pillar of modern materialism, and of historical materialism in particular, as Marx and Engels insistently pointed out. It is a sort of blind faith, a prejudice, a superstition that the materialists cling to Darwinism of the crudest kind. They insist that absolutely everything be explained by material causes. As for what, by those limited means, they cannot explain, they dare not admit that they cannot explain it so. They can never allow that there must be a supra natural, metaphysical agency that intervenes to make the biological world as it is, so wonderfully abundant, prolific, diverse and, within stable forms, so marvelously adaptive and versatile in response to local environmental possibilities.

The alternative to evolution is design which necessarily leads to the concept of a transcendent and unitary power, the Designer Creator, God. Therein lies the reason for the continuing tyranny of the Darwinist theory: the fear that to acknowledge the Creator will bring down the edifice of an autonomous science, an autonomous human reason. An individual scientist in his or her private capacity may be a believer, a theist, but science itself must be unbelieving, atheistic. It is ironic indeed that to preserve the illusion of independent human reason, the Darwinists (and materialists generally) will defy or ignore the facts, deny and belittle logic and reason. It is to the credit of the scientific community that, in ever greater numbers, individual scientists have found the courage to question and challenge the tyranny of Darwinism in the teaching of the life sciences.

That said, it remains unfortunately true that, some young, pliable minds are vulnerable to the myth of Darwinism simply because it is the official dogma, the staple of all textbooks on the subject everywhere. How true and apt is the Turkish proverb—that a half wit can throw a pearl into a well with ease, and forty wise men struggle in vain to get it out again. Nonetheless, there is solace in the knowledge that a lie, however mightily supported, can have but a short life. The truth of the matter is that the origin of the species, and of the major divisions of species, is not yet understood. Is it too heavy a burden on humility to say: "We marvel, but we do not know"? And we marvel most at, and understand least of all, the origin of intelligent speech, ideation, abstraction, symbolization, culture, love of beauty and variety, consciousness, altruism, morality religion, and spiritual aspiration.

To be sure, Darwin was a great and gifted scientist who must be credited with a mighty contribution to the ordering and classifying of species, and for his work on adaptation; but it should be noted that what he did well and incontrovertibly is to observe accurately and understood intelligently what was there in nature.

Whatever his own intentions, in spite of them, his work, like every reliable advance in observation and explanation, confirms the Divine Architect, the All Mighty Power, Sustainer, Administrator, Who willed the marvelous organization, reliable, systematic, subtly integrated harmony of the operations of nature, and who combined that order with beauty. Whereas what Darwin found increases our faith in God, it led him astray.

How great, sublime, is the Creator. Order, understanding, wisdom are by His gift. Likewise, guidance to faith is absolutely in His grasp."

Dear Truthseeker,

Here is an article by Scholar Fethullah Gulen about slavery.It's long, but worth to read :

" There are historical, social, and psychological dimensions to this question. First, the very word slavery conjures up revulsion, sorrow, and deep disgust, especially when we remember how slaves were treated in ancient Rome and Egypt. Pictures of people building the pyramids, of gladiators fighting each other to the death for the spectators' amusement, and of people bound by shameful yokes and chains around their necks come to mind when we hear that word.
Nearer to our own time, we have the western European variety of slavery. The barbarity and bestiality of this enormous trade beggars all description. The trade was principally in Africans who were transported across the oceans, packed in specially designed ships, and considered and treated as livestock. These slaves were forced to change their names, abandon their religion and language, deprived of all hope for freedom, and were kept for labor or breeding purposes. A birth among them was celebrated as if it were a death.

It is difficult to understand how human beings could conceive of fellow human beings in such a light, still less treat them thus. But it certainly happened. Documentary evidence shows, for example, how shipmasters would throw their human cargo overboard to claim compensation for their loss. Slaves had no legal or other rights, but only obligations. Their owners had the absolute right to dispose of them as they wished—brothers and sisters, parents and children, were separated or allowed to stay together according to the owner's mood or economic convenience.

Centuries of this dreadful practice made western Europe rich from its slave-based exploitation of such commodities as sugar, cotton, coffee. When it abolished slavery, first as a trade and then altogether with much self-congratulation, only the slave-owners were compensated. In other words, the attitudes that made slavery possible remained.

Not many years after its abolition, Africa was colonized by western Europe with consequences for the Africans no less terrible than slavery itself. Moreover, because their attitude to non-Europeans has changed little, if at all, the slaves' descendants continue to live in poor social and political conditions. Those who live amid Europeans remain despised inferiors. Anthropological museums in western European capitals only closed their public displays of bones and stuffed bodies of fellow (but non-white) human beings several decades ago—displays that had been organized by European scientists, doctors, learned people, and humanitarians.

In short, the institution of slavery disgusts the human heart, as do the attitudes of inhumanity that sustain it. If the institution no longer formally exists but the attitudes persist, can we say that humanity has made any progress? This is why colonial exploitation replaced slavery, and why the chains of unbearable, unrepayable international debt have replaced colonial exploitation. Slavery has disappeared, but its inhuman and barbarous structures are still securely in place.

Before we turn to the Islamic perspective on slavery, let's recall a name famous even among western Europeans: Harun al-Rashid. This ruler, who enjoyed such authority and power over Muslims, was the son of a slave. Nor is he the only such example. Slaves and their children enjoyed enormous prestige, authority, respect, and (shall we say it) freedom within the Islamic system, in all cultural, political, and other spheres of life. How was this possible?

Islam amended the institution of slavery and educated masters about slaves. The Qur'an states many times that everyone is descended from a single ancestor (Adam), and that no one is inherently superior to anyone else because of race, nation, or social standing. The Prophet applied these principles in his own life, and his Companions learned them and accepted them as laws and as social norms. The Prophet stated:

"Whoever kills a slave shall be killed. Whoever imprisons and starves a slave will be imprisoned and starved. Whoever castrates a slave will be castrated." [1]

"You are sons of Adam, and Adam was created from clay." [2]

"No Arab is superior to a non-Arab, and no non-Arab is superior to an Arab. No white person is superior to a black person, and no black person is superior to a white person. Superiority is based on righteousness and God-fearing alone." [3]

Because of this compassionate attitude, slaves and those described as poor and lowly were respected by those who enjoyed high social status. [4] 'Umar expressed such respect when he said: "Master Bilal, whom Master Abu Bakr set free." [5]

Unlike other civilizations, Islam requires that slaves be thought of and treated within the framework of universal human brotherhood. The Prophet said: "Your servants and your slaves are your brothers (and sisters). Those who have slaves should give them from what they eat and wear. They should not charge their slaves with work beyond their capabilities. If you must set them to hard work, in any case I advise you to help them." He also said: "None of you should (when introducing someone) say: 'This is my (male) slave' or 'This is my female slave.' Rather, call them 'my daughter,' 'my son,' or 'my brother.'"

For this reason, 'Umar and his slave took turns riding a camel while traveling from Madina to Jerusalem to take control of Masjid al-Aqsa. While he was caliph, 'Uthman had his slave pull his own ears in public, since he had pulled his. The Companion Abu Dharr, applying the hadith literally, made his slave wear one half of his suit while he wore the other half. These Muslims, and many others, showed succeeding generations of Muslims how to treat slaves as full human beings worthy of the same respect, dignity, and justice given to non-slaves.

This constructive and positive treatment necessarily affected the master's attitude. Slaves retained their humanity and moral dignity, and had a place within the master's family. Even when they were freed, not all wanted to leave their masters. Starting with Zayd ibn Harith, this practice became quite common. Although the Prophet gave Zayd his freedom, the latter chose to remain. Masters and slaves were able to regard each other as brothers and sisters because their faith enabled them to understand that differences between people are not permanent. Therefore, neither haughtiness nor rancor were acceptable.

[1] Abu Dawud, Diyat, 70; Tirmidhi, Diyat, 17; al-Nasa'i, Qasama, 10:16.
[2] Tirmidhi, Tafsir, 49; Manaqib, 73; Abu Dawud, Adab, 111.
[3] Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 411.
[4] Muslim, Birr, 138; Jannat, 48; Tirmidhi, Manaqib, 54, 65.
[5] Bilal, one of the earliest Muslims, was a black Ethiopian slave. He eventually was chosen by the Prophet to be the official muezzin (caller to prayer) of the Muslim community. Abu Bakr, one of the pre-Islamic Makkan elite and also an early convert, was the Prophet's political successor and the first of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs. Bukhari, Fada'il al-Sahaba, 23.
In addition, there were strict principles enforced as law, such as: "Whoever kills a slave shall be killed; whoever imprisons and starves a slave shall be imprisoned and starved." Besides sanctions mandating proper treatment, slaves also enjoyed the legal right to earn money and hold property independently of their masters, to keep their religion, and to have a family and family life with the attendant rights and obligations. Along with personal dignity and a degree of material security, Islamic laws and norms allowed slaves a still more precious opening—the hope and means of freedom.

Human freedom is God-given, and therefore everyone's natural and proper condition. Thus to restore a person, either wholly or partly, to this condition is one of the highest virtues. Freeing half of a slave's body is considered equal to saving half of one's own body from God's wrath in the next world. Freeing a slave's whole body is considered equal to saving one's whole body. Seeking freedom for enslaved people is an acceptable reason for engaging in warfare. Muslims were encouraged to enter into agreements and contracts that enabled slaves to earn or be granted their freedom after a certain time or, most typically, on the owner's death. Unconditional emancipation was regarded as most meritorious and worthy in the Hereafter. Sometimes groups of people would buy and free large numbers of slaves in order to obtain God's favor.

Freeing a slave also was the legal expiation for certain sins or failures in religious duties, such as breaking an oath or a fast—a good deed to cancel a moral lapse. The Qur'an orders that a person who accidentally kills a Muslim must free a believing slave and pay the blood-money to the victim's family (4:92). A killing affects both the society and the victim's family. The blood-money is a partial compensation for the latter, while freeing a slave is a bill paid to the community—it gains a free person. To free a living person in return for a death was considered like bringing someone back to life. Both personal and public wealth was used to free slaves. The Prophet and Abu Bakr were known for this practice. Later on, especially during the reign of 'Umar ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz, public zakat funds were used for this purpose.

A possible question: Islam regards slavery as a social evil, regardless of how well slaves are treated or how many rights they enjoy. Therefore, why was it not abolished, as happened with alcohol, interest, gambling, or prostitution? Why did the Prophet condone it?

Until the evil of the European slave trade, slavery was largely a byproduct of war, for the victors normally enslaved the survivors. During Islam's early years, there was no reliable system of exchanging prisoners of war. The available means of dealing with them were execution, placing them in prison, allowing them to go home, or distributing them among the Muslims as spoils of war.

The first option must be ruled out on the grounds of its barbarity. The second is practicable only for small numbers and for a limited period of time, provided that there are enough resources to care for them. This option was used, for prisoners were taken in the hope of ransom payments. Many Makkans held by the Muslims were so satisfied with their treatment that they became Muslims and changed sides. The third option is imprudent in times of war. This leaves, as a general practice, only the fourth option. Islam instituted humane laws and norms for what is, in effect, the rehabilitation of prisoners of war.

While living among Muslims, slaves saw at close quarters the truth of Islam in practice. Many slaves were won over by the kind treatment they received and Islam's humanity, not to mention their access to many of the legal rights enjoyed by Muslims, and, ultimately, by the chance to regain their freedom. Thousands of ex-slaves can be found among the great and famous names in Islam, and their won examples became a norm for future Muslims—imams such as Nafi' (Imam Malik's teacher) and Tawus ibn Qaisan, to name only two.

In general, Muslims considered slavery a temporary condition. Unlike Western civilization, whose values are now so much in fashion, slavery was not an inherited condition that engulfed whole generations in deepening spirals of degradation, despair, and hopelessness. On the contrary, enjoying a status as fundamentally equal to everyone else, slaves in Muslim society could and did live in secure possession of their dignity as creatures of the same Creator. They had access to the mainstream of Islamic culture and civilization—to which, as we have noted, they contributed greatly. In Western societies where slavery was widespread, particularly in North and South America, the descendants of slaves, even generations after their ancestors' formal emancipation, remain largely on the fringes of society, a sub-culture or anti-culture—which is only sometimes tolerated, and mostly despised, by the dominant community.

When the Muslims were secure against foreign conquest, why did they not free all of their former captives or slaves? Again, the answer has to do with existing realities. Those former captives or slaves did not have the personal, psychological, or economic resources needed to establish a secure and dignified independence. Remember what happened in the United States when the slaves were suddenly freed by President Lincoln. Many were abruptly reduced to destitution and homelessness by their former owners (who were compensated) who no longer accepted any responsibility for them. They were thrown, without any preparation, into the wider society from which they had been so long excluded by law.

In contrast, observant Muslim masters who embraced their slaves as brothers and sisters encouraged them to work for their freedom, recognized their rights, helped them support a family, and helped them find a place in society before freeing them. The example that comes to mind is that of Zayd ibn Harith, who was brought up in the Prophet's own household and set free. He married a noblewoman and was appointed commander of a Muslim army composed of many noblemen and Companions. There are many similar examples.

There are two important points to emphasize here: the Muslims' attitude toward slavery, and the condition of slaves in non-Muslim countries. Islam considers slavery an accidental and therefore temporary condition, one that is to be reformed step by step until it almost completely disappears. However, it has been observed that some Muslims, especially rulers, continued to hold slaves. Islam cannot be blamed for this, for it is the individual Muslim's own spiritual deficiency that caused him or her to behave in such a manner.

The other point is that personal habits engender a second nature. When Lincoln abolished slavery, most slaves had to return to their former owners because they had never learned how to take the initiative and choose for themselves. As a result, they could not live as free people. Given this psychological reality, prisoners of war were distributed among Muslims so that one day they could live a true Islamic social life as free people in a Muslim society and enjoy their full legal rights.

Islam sought to abolish slavery gradually. In the first step, it enabled slaves to realize their true human consciousness and identity. After that, it educated them in Islamic and human values, and inculcated in them a love of freedom. Thus, when they were freed, former slaves were equipped to consider all kinds of possibilities related to becoming useful members of the community: farmers, artisans, teachers, scholars, commanders, governors, ministers, or even prime ministers.

Islam attempted to destroy the institution of "individual slavery," and never envisaged or tried "national slavery." So, as a Muslim, I pray to God that enslaved—colonized, oppressed—peoples will enjoy real freedom."