czgibson
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Samee
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Bro, take all the parts of a cpu, and put it on the floor. In a million years, the scene will stay the same. The CPU wont have put itself together.
Compare that complex notion with a human being being created by itself. There is lots of evidence to prove there is a God, the only thing that stops people from believe in God is their minds. Their minds don't want to believe, so they just don't believe.
Mohsin
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Czgison
I myself can't also see how you can't believe in God, everythings just so perfect, we as humans are so complex that it just makes me think i cnt have been created by chance. I've studied Biology at A levels and am now doing medicine in uni, and the more i read and learn about the human body the more i'm like this can't have een a fluke, the smallest of things have a function. How is it that the sun is at the perfect length away from us, one mm further or closer would mean we'd have no life as humans, as seen on other planets. Just the whole concept of male and female is miraculous. If we were originally one cell, or one thing or whatever, then what do you suggest, the male and female just evolved to form two opposite types of people, who yet are attracted to each other, and that their sexual organs have evolved differently, and when these organs come into contact with each other they manage to produce another human, which can be male or female. I know it sounds like simple stuff but I just can't think how evolution led to this happening, a fluke leading to something so complex and perfect almost.
there are so many miracles of islam to prove existence of God, i know you don't believe in a lot of the scientific miracles in the Qur'an, ut there are some like irrefutable ones, like how it mentions bees in the female tense, how it talks about the birth of the baby. One of my textbooks in Medical Uni is written by keith Moore, and i'm sure you've read his comments on what he had to say about the verses regarding embryology after studying it for himself
And then theres the prophecy in the Quran in Surah lahab where it is said Abu Lahab will perish in the hell fire. The thing that makes this prophecy so miraculous to me is that it was said when so many people were revrting to islam, so why would he say to his uncle that you're going to perish in the hell fire rather than wait and see if he converts like everyone else. It was like a suicide trap, all his uncle, Abu Lahab, had to do was pretend to e a muslim, and the Qur'an would have been proved wrong, and yet this prophecy was made, and this just re-emphasisies for me how Muhammed SAW can't have made that prophecy, and it must have been God
What about like Muhammed SAW being mentioned in the Hindu scriptures, by name on more than one occasion, and so many other descriptions of his battles and companions are made, it's just too much.
And then also i just find it really difficult to believe that all these prophetic figures, like Abraham Moses Jesus Muahmmed PBUT,that they all lied and they all were myths, surely theres some foundation to them, somebody holy must have built the Ka'bah all those years ago before Muhammed SAW for a purpose, there must be some truth somewhere, and for me Islam provides the truth so well it just makes so much sense
Also its just there must be a purpose to our lives, it can't be that we're born, die 60 years later, and then that's it, surely a creation so complex and amazing as us has more of a purpose than just this, the evil people who got away in this life surely they should be punished, and similarly the good people who didn't do so well, surely theres something there for them
Alhumdulillah, i just thought i'd add my views as to why i believe in the existence of God and in Islam. I know you're going to have your own views,opinions and replies as to what i've said, but inshallah God willing you should give it more consideration, i know it's not as philosophically challenging as other posts that have been addressed to you, but i believe theres simple proofs to see Gods existence, if you yourself are wanting to find it
hey czgibson
http://www.harunyahya.com/evolution_specialpreface.php
it's in chapter 10 but if you got time please read all of this book, it explains all the flaws in the evolution theory
thanks
http://www.harunyahya.com/evolution_specialpreface.php
it's in chapter 10 but if you got time please read all of this book, it explains all the flaws in the evolution theory
thanks
czgibson
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Greetings Moss,
Thanks for putting your views forward. I think many of them have been mentioned elsewhere, so I'll just take two of the points you've raised.
What about vestigial organs such as the appendix? Or Meckel's diverticulum, which only appears in 2% of the population? These are organs that no longer appear to be useful to us, remnants from our evolutionary past.
Is there any good reason to believe there must be an afterlife, or a sense of supernatural justice, other than your wishful thinking? Just because you would like something to be the case does not mean that it actually is.
Peace
Thanks for putting your views forward. I think many of them have been mentioned elsewhere, so I'll just take two of the points you've raised.
What about vestigial organs such as the appendix? Or Meckel's diverticulum, which only appears in 2% of the population? These are organs that no longer appear to be useful to us, remnants from our evolutionary past.
Is there any good reason to believe there must be an afterlife, or a sense of supernatural justice, other than your wishful thinking? Just because you would like something to be the case does not mean that it actually is.
Peace
Unfortunately, it isn't as useful as you would wish...
Immunity, "Vestigal Organs" and Embryology
And even if they were vestigal, it would be no proof for evolution. What would be more impressing is if you could show some new organ appear through evolution.
mahdisoldier19
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Salam
Like for those who think Air exist yet they cant show it but we know we breath it, Show me Air for those athiests
Like for those who think Air exist yet they cant show it but we know we breath it, Show me Air for those athiests
czgibson
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Greetings,
I'm not saying it's useful. I'm suggesting it's likely to be useless.
Ah, Harun Yahya, the master of straw-clutching. Any scientific findings that oppose his thesis are conveniently ignored. The function of the appendix is a controversial area, so for Yahya to present the lymphatic function as fact is unwarranted. What is not in doubt is that most physiologists believe the appendix to be vestigial.
Of course. Evolution cannot be proven, as everybody knows. However, the presence of vestigial organs and reflexes (such as the goosebump reflex) strongly suggests that humans have evolved.
I'm not sure what you mean here. There are numerous standard tests for the presence of the various components of air. Oxygen relights a glowing splint, for example. I think that's one of the first standard tests you learn about in chemistry lessons.
Peace
I'm not saying it's useful. I'm suggesting it's likely to be useless.
Ah, Harun Yahya, the master of straw-clutching. Any scientific findings that oppose his thesis are conveniently ignored. The function of the appendix is a controversial area, so for Yahya to present the lymphatic function as fact is unwarranted. What is not in doubt is that most physiologists believe the appendix to be vestigial.
Of course. Evolution cannot be proven, as everybody knows. However, the presence of vestigial organs and reflexes (such as the goosebump reflex) strongly suggests that humans have evolved.
mahdisoldier19 said:
I'm not sure what you mean here. There are numerous standard tests for the presence of the various components of air. Oxygen relights a glowing splint, for example. I think that's one of the first standard tests you learn about in chemistry lessons.
Peace
I mean useful as evidence for evolution.
The same could be said about evolutionists? Ever seen Richard Dawkins reviewing books not of his liking?
Then why is it propagated as a fact? When I had about evolution in school, it was taught as an absolute fact. The school books often view evolution as the scientific world view, and bleief in a Creator as superstitious, although they propagate this view in a disscrete way.
I don't know in the other cases, but at least about appendix, there was no certainty that it really was vestigial. Yet, what would be much more impressing as proof for evolution would be if they could show some new beneficial organ developing through random mutations.
I don't think I can disprove the theory of evolution from a scientific perspective, since I do not possess that scientific knowledge. But from my view, what strongly talks against evolution is the evolutionist anger when the theory is questioned. Look at the fanatical frenzy they enter when it is suggested that the puils in school shall also be informed of the flaws in evolution. They zealously supress every criticism raised at the theory, while ensuring that the theory of evolution is a fact and that believers in a Creator are fanatical and superstitious...
czgibson
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Greetings Abu Omar,
No, I haven't, but since he's a scientist I would expect him to back up his views with evidence that's not chosen selectively.
Then your teachers were wrong, plain and simple. They should know it is a theory. It's a strong enough theory to be taken on board as "almost fact", but that's obviously not the same.
Evolution is undoubtedly more dominant a world-view than creationism among scientists, so your school textbooks are right to mention this. As an atheist, I obviously have no problem with textbooks that suggest belief in a Creator is superstitious. If you study History or English Literature in any depth you'll find the same thing.
It has no known significant function, according to a majority of physiologists. It may not be absolutely certain to be vestigial, but it certainly looks as though it is. How about Meckel's diverticulum? That must be vestigial, surely?
I agree, that would be impressive, but these things take time. As far as I know, no new organs have been developed by humans since recorded history began.
When, and by whom? I've seen no evidence of this.
I think you're wrong here. First of all, any self-respecting scientist or science teacher would be only too pleased to have someone point out flaws in their theory. That is what science is all about. Secondly, what annoys evolutionists is the intrusion of creationism into science classes. Creationism is not science; it is religious belief clothed in the terminology of science, and nothing more. It clearly belongs in classes devoted to religious studies, not science classes.
Who does? Do you have any evidence for this? Science is all about raising criticisms at particular theories. That's how new theories are developed.
One more time for the world: evolution has not been proven, and should not be accepted as incontrovertibly true.
Peace
No, I haven't, but since he's a scientist I would expect him to back up his views with evidence that's not chosen selectively.
Then your teachers were wrong, plain and simple. They should know it is a theory. It's a strong enough theory to be taken on board as "almost fact", but that's obviously not the same.
Evolution is undoubtedly more dominant a world-view than creationism among scientists, so your school textbooks are right to mention this. As an atheist, I obviously have no problem with textbooks that suggest belief in a Creator is superstitious. If you study History or English Literature in any depth you'll find the same thing.
It has no known significant function, according to a majority of physiologists. It may not be absolutely certain to be vestigial, but it certainly looks as though it is. How about Meckel's diverticulum? That must be vestigial, surely?
I agree, that would be impressive, but these things take time. As far as I know, no new organs have been developed by humans since recorded history began.
When, and by whom? I've seen no evidence of this.
I think you're wrong here. First of all, any self-respecting scientist or science teacher would be only too pleased to have someone point out flaws in their theory. That is what science is all about. Secondly, what annoys evolutionists is the intrusion of creationism into science classes. Creationism is not science; it is religious belief clothed in the terminology of science, and nothing more. It clearly belongs in classes devoted to religious studies, not science classes.
Who does? Do you have any evidence for this? Science is all about raising criticisms at particular theories. That's how new theories are developed.
One more time for the world: evolution has not been proven, and should not be accepted as incontrovertibly true.
Peace
Issa
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Salaamz everyone,
The great thing about being Muslim is that "if" I were wrong and the atheist is right then I will have lived a happy life believing in something and doing the very best I can to please Allah and when I die I will just be dead. But if he(the atheist) is wrong... well, I had a happy life here and when the end comes I will be happy in Junnah.
Now, that being said. I am not saying that a person who is an atheist can't try to live a "good" life (not killing, raping, stealing, etc.) and I am sure that most they are happy in their beliefs. I don't want anyone to be offended with what I said...
The great thing about being Muslim is that "if" I were wrong and the atheist is right then I will have lived a happy life believing in something and doing the very best I can to please Allah and when I die I will just be dead. But if he(the atheist) is wrong... well, I had a happy life here and when the end comes I will be happy in Junnah.
Now, that being said. I am not saying that a person who is an atheist can't try to live a "good" life (not killing, raping, stealing, etc.) and I am sure that most they are happy in their beliefs. I don't want anyone to be offended with what I said...
Issa
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Salaam Sister,
I think it is because of arrogance. No offense to anyone really. When I thought long and hard about it that is what I came up with. Why should Allah(swt) have to show proof to us? This is what I tell my younger brother ( he is atheist). Who are we to ask for more as He has sent numerous proofs, but yet they say "do some magic" and even if Allah was to do it they would say "that was science not God"...
http://www.missionislam.com/science/scientist.htm
Why a Scientist Believes in God
This article of Mr A. Cressy Morrison, former President of the New York Academy of Sciences, first appeared in the "Reader's Digest" (January 1948); then on recommendation of Professor C. A. Coulson, F. R.S., Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, was republished in the "Reader's Digest" November 1960 - It shows how science compels the scientists to admit to the essential need of a Supreme Creator.
We are still in the dawn of the scientific age and every increase of light reveals more brightly the handiwork of an intelligent Creator. In the 90 years since Darwin we have made stupendous discoveries; with a spirit of scientific humanity and of faith grounded in knowledge we are approaching even nearer to an awareness of God. For myself I count seven reasons for my faith.
First: By unwavering mathematical law we can prove that our universe was designed and executed by a great engineering Intelligence. Suppose you put ten coins, marked from one to ten, into your pocket and give them a good shuffle. Now try to take them out in sequence from one to ten, pulling back the coin each time and shaking them all again. Mathematically we know that your chance of first drawing number one is one in ten; of drawing one and two in succession, one in 100; of drawing one, two and three in succession, one in a thousand, and so on; your chance of drawing them all, from one to number ten in succession, would reach the unbelievable figure of one chance in ten thousand million. By the same reasoning, so many exacting conditions are necessary for life on earth that they could not possibly exist in proper relationship by chance. The earth rotates on its axis at one thousand miles an hour; if it turned at one hundred miles an hour, our days and nights would be ten times as long as now, and the hot sun would then burn up our vegetation during each long day, while in the long night any surviving sprout would freeze. Again, the sun, source of our life, has a surface temperature of 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and our earth is, just far enough away so that this 'eternal fire" warms us just enough and not too much! If the sun gave off only one-half its present radiation, we would freeze, and if it gave half as much more, we would roast. The slant of the earth, tilted at an angle of 23 degrees, gives us our season; if it had not been so tilted, vapors from the ocean would move north and south, piling up for us continents of ice. If our moon was, say, only 50 thousand miles away instead of its actual distance, our tides would be so enormous that twice a day all continents would be submerged; even the mountains would soon be eroded away. If the crust of the earth had been only ten feet thicker, there would be no oxygen without which animal life must die. Had the ocean been a few feet deeper, carbon dioxide and oxygen would have been absorbed and no vegetable life could exist. Or if our atmosphere had been thinner, some of the meteors, now burned in space by the million every day would be striking all parts of the earth, starting fires everywhere. Because of these, and host of other examples, there is not one chance in millions that life on our planet is an accident.
Second: The resourcefulness of life to accomplish its purpose is a manifestation of all-pervading Intelligence. What life itself is no man has fathomed. It has neither weight nor dimensions, but it does have force; a growing root will crack a rock. Life has conquered water, land and air, mastering the element, compelling them to dissolve and reform their combinations. Life, the sculptor, shapes all living things; an artist, it designs every leaf of every tree, and colours every flower. Life is a musician and has each bird to sing its love songs, the insects to call each other in the music of their multitudinous sounds. Life is a sublime chemist, giving taste to fruits and spices, and perfume to the rose changing water and carbonic acid into sugar and wood and, in so doing, releasing oxygen that animals may have the breath of life. Behold an almost invisible drop of protoplasm, transparent and jelly-like, capable of motion, drawing energy from the sun. This single cell, this transparent mist-like droplet, holds within itself the germ of life, and has the power to distribute this life to every living thing, great and small. The powers of this droplet are greater than our vegetation and animals and people, for all life came from it. Nature did not create life; fire-blistered rocks and a salt less sea could not meet the necessary requirements. Who, then, has put it here?
Third: Animal wisdom speaks irresistibly of a good Creator who infused instinct into otherwise helpless little creatures. The young salmon spends years at sea, then comes back to his own river; and travels up the very side of the river into which flows The tributary where he was born. What brings him back so precisely? If you transfer him to another tributary he will know at once that he is off his course and he will fight his way down and back to the main stream and then turn up against the current to finish his destiny more accurately. Even more difficult to solve is the mystery of eels. These amazing creatures migrate at maturity from all ponds and rivers everywhere - those from Europe across thousands of miles of oceans - all bound for the same abysmal deeps near Bermuda. There they breed and die. The little ones, with no apparent means of knowing anything except that they are in a wilderness of water nevertheless find their way back not only to the very shore from which their parent came but thence to the rivers, lakes or little ponds - so that each body of water is always populated with eels. No American eel has ever been caught in Europe, no European eel in American waters. Nature has even delayed the maturity of the European eel by a year or more to make up for its longer journey. Where does the directing iruptilse originate? A wasp will overpower a grasshopper, dig a hole in the earth, sting the grasshopper in exactly the right place so that he does not die but becomes unconscious and lives on as a form of preserved meat. Then the wasp will lay her eggs handily so that her children when they hatch can nibble without killing the insect on which they feed, to them dead meat would be fatal. The mother then flies way and dies; she never sees her young. Surely the wasp must have done all this right the first time and every time, or else there would be no wasp. Such mysterious techniques cannot be explained by adaptation; they were bestowed.
Fourth: Man has something more than animal instinct - the power of reason. No other animal has ever left a record of its ability to count ten or even to understand the meaning of ten. Where instinct is like a single note of a flute, beautiful but limited, the human brain contains all the notes of all the instruments in the orchestra. No need to belabour this fourth point; thanks to the human reason we can contemplate the possibility that we are what we are only because we have received a spark of Universal Intelligence.
Fifth: Provision for all living is revealed in phenomena which we know today but which Darwin did not know - such as the wonders of genes. So unspeakably tiny are these genes that, if all of them responsible for all living people in the world could be put in one place, there would be less than a thimbleful. Yet these ultra- microscopic genes and their companions, the chromosomes, inhabit every living cell and are the absolute keys to all human, animal and vegetable characteristics. A thimble is a small place in which to put all the individual characteristics of two thousand million human beings. However; the facts are beyond question. Well then, how do genes lock up all the normal heredity of a multitude of ancestors and preserve the psychology of each in such an infinitely small space? Here evolution really begins - at the cell, the entity which holds and carries genes. How a few million atoms, locked up as an ultra-microscopic gene, can absolutely rule all on earth is an example of profound cunning and provision that could emanate only from a Creative Intelligence - no other hypothesis will serve.
Sixth: By the economy of nature, we are forced to realize that only infinite wisdom could have foreseen and prepared with such astute husbandry. Many years ago a species of cactus was planted in Australia as a protective fence. Having no insect enemies in Australia the cactus soon began a prodigious growth; the alarming abundance persisted until the plants covered an area as long and wide as England, crowding inhabitants out of the towns and villages, and destroying their farms. Seeking a defence, the entomologists scoured the world; finally they turned up an insect which exclusively feeds on cactus, and would eat nothing else. It would breed freely too; and it had no enemies in Australia. So animal soon conquered vegetable and today the cactus pest has retreated, and with it all but a small protective residue of the insects, enough to hold the cactus in check for ever. Such checks and balances have been universally provided. Why have not fast-breeding insects dominated the earth? Because they have no lungs such as man possesses; they breathe through tubes. But when insects grow large, their tubes do not grow in ratio to the increasing size of the body. Hence there has never been an insect of great size; this limitation on growth has held them all in check. If this physical check had not been provided, man could not exist. Imagine meeting a hornet as big as a lion!
Seventh: The fact that man can conceive the idea of God is in itself a unique proof. The conception of god rises from a divine faculty of man, unshared with the rest of our world - the faculty we call imagination. By its power, man and man alone can find the evidence of things unseen. The vista that power opens up is unbounded; indeed, as man is perfected, imagination becomes a spiritual reality.
Why a Scientist Believes in God
This article of Mr A. Cressy Morrison, former President of the New York Academy of Sciences, first appeared in the "Reader's Digest" (January 1948); then on recommendation of Professor C. A. Coulson, F. R.S., Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, was republished in the "Reader's Digest" November 1960 - It shows how science compels the scientists to admit to the essential need of a Supreme Creator.
We are still in the dawn of the scientific age and every increase of light reveals more brightly the handiwork of an intelligent Creator. In the 90 years since Darwin we have made stupendous discoveries; with a spirit of scientific humanity and of faith grounded in knowledge we are approaching even nearer to an awareness of God. For myself I count seven reasons for my faith.
First: By unwavering mathematical law we can prove that our universe was designed and executed by a great engineering Intelligence. Suppose you put ten coins, marked from one to ten, into your pocket and give them a good shuffle. Now try to take them out in sequence from one to ten, pulling back the coin each time and shaking them all again. Mathematically we know that your chance of first drawing number one is one in ten; of drawing one and two in succession, one in 100; of drawing one, two and three in succession, one in a thousand, and so on; your chance of drawing them all, from one to number ten in succession, would reach the unbelievable figure of one chance in ten thousand million. By the same reasoning, so many exacting conditions are necessary for life on earth that they could not possibly exist in proper relationship by chance. The earth rotates on its axis at one thousand miles an hour; if it turned at one hundred miles an hour, our days and nights would be ten times as long as now, and the hot sun would then burn up our vegetation during each long day, while in the long night any surviving sprout would freeze. Again, the sun, source of our life, has a surface temperature of 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and our earth is, just far enough away so that this 'eternal fire" warms us just enough and not too much! If the sun gave off only one-half its present radiation, we would freeze, and if it gave half as much more, we would roast. The slant of the earth, tilted at an angle of 23 degrees, gives us our season; if it had not been so tilted, vapors from the ocean would move north and south, piling up for us continents of ice. If our moon was, say, only 50 thousand miles away instead of its actual distance, our tides would be so enormous that twice a day all continents would be submerged; even the mountains would soon be eroded away. If the crust of the earth had been only ten feet thicker, there would be no oxygen without which animal life must die. Had the ocean been a few feet deeper, carbon dioxide and oxygen would have been absorbed and no vegetable life could exist. Or if our atmosphere had been thinner, some of the meteors, now burned in space by the million every day would be striking all parts of the earth, starting fires everywhere. Because of these, and host of other examples, there is not one chance in millions that life on our planet is an accident.
Second: The resourcefulness of life to accomplish its purpose is a manifestation of all-pervading Intelligence. What life itself is no man has fathomed. It has neither weight nor dimensions, but it does have force; a growing root will crack a rock. Life has conquered water, land and air, mastering the element, compelling them to dissolve and reform their combinations. Life, the sculptor, shapes all living things; an artist, it designs every leaf of every tree, and colours every flower. Life is a musician and has each bird to sing its love songs, the insects to call each other in the music of their multitudinous sounds. Life is a sublime chemist, giving taste to fruits and spices, and perfume to the rose changing water and carbonic acid into sugar and wood and, in so doing, releasing oxygen that animals may have the breath of life. Behold an almost invisible drop of protoplasm, transparent and jelly-like, capable of motion, drawing energy from the sun. This single cell, this transparent mist-like droplet, holds within itself the germ of life, and has the power to distribute this life to every living thing, great and small. The powers of this droplet are greater than our vegetation and animals and people, for all life came from it. Nature did not create life; fire-blistered rocks and a salt less sea could not meet the necessary requirements. Who, then, has put it here?
Third: Animal wisdom speaks irresistibly of a good Creator who infused instinct into otherwise helpless little creatures. The young salmon spends years at sea, then comes back to his own river; and travels up the very side of the river into which flows The tributary where he was born. What brings him back so precisely? If you transfer him to another tributary he will know at once that he is off his course and he will fight his way down and back to the main stream and then turn up against the current to finish his destiny more accurately. Even more difficult to solve is the mystery of eels. These amazing creatures migrate at maturity from all ponds and rivers everywhere - those from Europe across thousands of miles of oceans - all bound for the same abysmal deeps near Bermuda. There they breed and die. The little ones, with no apparent means of knowing anything except that they are in a wilderness of water nevertheless find their way back not only to the very shore from which their parent came but thence to the rivers, lakes or little ponds - so that each body of water is always populated with eels. No American eel has ever been caught in Europe, no European eel in American waters. Nature has even delayed the maturity of the European eel by a year or more to make up for its longer journey. Where does the directing iruptilse originate? A wasp will overpower a grasshopper, dig a hole in the earth, sting the grasshopper in exactly the right place so that he does not die but becomes unconscious and lives on as a form of preserved meat. Then the wasp will lay her eggs handily so that her children when they hatch can nibble without killing the insect on which they feed, to them dead meat would be fatal. The mother then flies way and dies; she never sees her young. Surely the wasp must have done all this right the first time and every time, or else there would be no wasp. Such mysterious techniques cannot be explained by adaptation; they were bestowed.
Fourth: Man has something more than animal instinct - the power of reason. No other animal has ever left a record of its ability to count ten or even to understand the meaning of ten. Where instinct is like a single note of a flute, beautiful but limited, the human brain contains all the notes of all the instruments in the orchestra. No need to belabour this fourth point; thanks to the human reason we can contemplate the possibility that we are what we are only because we have received a spark of Universal Intelligence.
Fifth: Provision for all living is revealed in phenomena which we know today but which Darwin did not know - such as the wonders of genes. So unspeakably tiny are these genes that, if all of them responsible for all living people in the world could be put in one place, there would be less than a thimbleful. Yet these ultra- microscopic genes and their companions, the chromosomes, inhabit every living cell and are the absolute keys to all human, animal and vegetable characteristics. A thimble is a small place in which to put all the individual characteristics of two thousand million human beings. However; the facts are beyond question. Well then, how do genes lock up all the normal heredity of a multitude of ancestors and preserve the psychology of each in such an infinitely small space? Here evolution really begins - at the cell, the entity which holds and carries genes. How a few million atoms, locked up as an ultra-microscopic gene, can absolutely rule all on earth is an example of profound cunning and provision that could emanate only from a Creative Intelligence - no other hypothesis will serve.
Sixth: By the economy of nature, we are forced to realize that only infinite wisdom could have foreseen and prepared with such astute husbandry. Many years ago a species of cactus was planted in Australia as a protective fence. Having no insect enemies in Australia the cactus soon began a prodigious growth; the alarming abundance persisted until the plants covered an area as long and wide as England, crowding inhabitants out of the towns and villages, and destroying their farms. Seeking a defence, the entomologists scoured the world; finally they turned up an insect which exclusively feeds on cactus, and would eat nothing else. It would breed freely too; and it had no enemies in Australia. So animal soon conquered vegetable and today the cactus pest has retreated, and with it all but a small protective residue of the insects, enough to hold the cactus in check for ever. Such checks and balances have been universally provided. Why have not fast-breeding insects dominated the earth? Because they have no lungs such as man possesses; they breathe through tubes. But when insects grow large, their tubes do not grow in ratio to the increasing size of the body. Hence there has never been an insect of great size; this limitation on growth has held them all in check. If this physical check had not been provided, man could not exist. Imagine meeting a hornet as big as a lion!
Seventh: The fact that man can conceive the idea of God is in itself a unique proof. The conception of god rises from a divine faculty of man, unshared with the rest of our world - the faculty we call imagination. By its power, man and man alone can find the evidence of things unseen. The vista that power opens up is unbounded; indeed, as man is perfected, imagination becomes a spiritual reality.
aZn_pLayGurL
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The 2 MajoR ProOf
1) HoLy QuraaN Paak
aNd
2) tHe SayN *LaiLaHa iLLaHLa***
:wub: uZi :wub:
1) HoLy QuraaN Paak
aNd
2) tHe SayN *LaiLaHa iLLaHLa***
:wub: uZi :wub:
Ahh Pascal's Wager in a Muslim guise. Have you thought, what if you and the atheist are wrong? What if the Catholics are right? Then you have wasted your life here and really annoyed God and so you will burn in Hell forever. But what if you, the atheist and the Catholics are wrong? What if the Jews are right? Then you have wasted your life here and really annoyed God and so you will burn in Hell forever. But what if you, the atheist, the Catholics, and the Jews are wrong? What is the Sikhs are right? Then you have wasted your life here and really annoyed God and so you will burn in Hell forever. But what if you, the atheist, the Catholics, the Jews and the Sikhs are wrong? What if the Buddhists are right? Then you have wasted your life here and really annoyed God and so you will burn in Hell forever.
You see I can do this all day. What you come down to is that there is not just two choices - atheism and Religion. There are dozens of viable options and millions of theoretical options. How do you know your God is the right God given He is not the only God on offer? There are dozens of good reasons for believing. This is not one of them.
It is good to see that Christians and Muslims can sit down and share something in common! A Christian apologetics text on a Muslim site.
The more mathematically minded may have noticed a slight flaw in this reasoning. Suppose you pull ten coins out of your pocket. The chances of getting any given ordered ten (say 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10) is one in ten billion as the good Professor says. But suppose you have done so already. What is the chance, having drawn the ten, that the ten are in that order? Roughly 100 percent. That is, with Earth we do not start out and see ten coin draws, we are here at the end of the ten coin draws and we wonder what are the chances of those ten. A slight difference.
Admittedly that is so. But all that means is that "our" vegetation would not have evolved and some other vegetation, perhaps, would have. Given that the vegetation has evolved over billions of years for this exact planet, is it any surprise it is reasonably well suited for this exact planet?
Except there is the slight fact that we have drawn the coins. We are here. The good Professor could write that piece. Some one can post it. I can comment on it. You are reading this. Given you are in your seat what are the chances the Sun is the right distance away? Roughly 100 percent. Given you are in your chair reading this, what are the chances that the Earth's crust is the right thickness? We know that answer already. If any one of these things were different, we would not be here to see it. We would not have evolved. But we are. So they must be right. The question to ask is why is God so wasteful with the Universe? Why is there no one on Mars?
Science has moved on and provides a fairly good explanation of how life evolved out of the primordial soup.
This is learned behaviour based on the smell of the river. It is amazing, but it is, surely, not hard to work out how it evolved.
Perhaps the good Professor did not notice that those that did not delay the onset of maturity died?
I think the more important question to ask is what sort of God creates a world where this happens - read what the Professor is describing carefully. A wasp paralyses, but does not kill, an insect. It lays an egg inside it, but without killing it. The egg hatches, and the grubs slowly eat the insect from inside. All without killing it until the last minute. Think how it must feel to be eaten from the inside and not being able to move. Charles Darwin said he could not reconcile a Loving and Merciful God with these sorts of wasps. The most you can say is that God knows things we do not. You cannot say this is proof of His design.
Which is not true. Ducks can count to thirteen. If a duck has fourteen or more chicks it will not notice if one goes missing. If it has thirteen or less it will.
And yet again, we are here, contemplating. If we did not have reason, we would not be. Is that a miracle? Think of the billions of billions of stars. Some of these may have life on them. But if they have intelligence we do not know. Awfully wasteful of God really. So many Stars. So few of us.
Actually I do not follow the logic of that so I cannot comment. If anyone knows what he is talking about please let me know.
Nature is, as it happens, wasteful. Fish lay tens of thousands of eggs. Maybe one survives. Corals million and millions. Not that it counts either way.
Well naturally. Evolution would suggest it was so.
Which proves that any intelligence that sits on this planet and contemplates its existence would not be a six foot wasp. Good thing too because I hate those things especially those that eat people from the inside.
The fact that we believe is proof of our belief? That is a neat argument. Can anyone spot the flaw in this logic?
These are seven really bad reasons to believe in God. There are good ones. These are not them.
czgibson
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Greetings,
Your overall point is sound, but I should point out that Buddhists don't believe in god. Buddhism can be described as an "agnostic" religion.
Peace
Your overall point is sound, but I should point out that Buddhists don't believe in god. Buddhism can be described as an "agnostic" religion.
Peace
Depends on your Buddhist. It can so be described, but Asian Buddhism and Western Buddhism are two different creatures.
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