Truth seeker

['Abdullah]

Hi Chalky,

Let’s approach this in yet another way. Do you agree that the things we see around us are ‘contingent’ or merely ‘possible’. A contingent thing is something that may either exist or not exist; its nature does not guarantee that it exists. Although all the things we experience directly are indeed contingent, there is also something else that exists necessarily, in other words, whose very nature guarantees that it exists.



Since a contingent thing on its own merit could either exist or not exist, it must have some external cause that made it exist - like ‘tipping the scales’ in favor of its existence rather than its non-existence.

Take me, for instance. I am contingent, meaning that I am the sort of thing that could easily have failed to exist. In fact, at one time I didn’t yet exist, and in the future I will cease existing, that proves I’m not necessary.


So there must have been a cause, maybe my parents, who brought me into existence.

Now the aggregate whole of all contingent things – in other words the physical universe – is also contingent. After all, everything in the universe is contingent, so taken all together as one thing, it too must be contingent. Thus it also needs an external cause, just like I do. Since that external cause has to be outside the whole aggregate of contingent things, it cannot itself be contingent. So it is necessary. Hey my friend, we’ve proven that there is a necessary existent which causes all other things! And this, of course, is God.


To summarize, I am trying to show that when you look around and think, ‘All of this could have failed to exist; why is there something, rather than nothing?’ The answer to the question is that not everything can be contingent; that is, not everything could have failed to exist. There must be something that just has to exist, to explain why everything else has wound up existing. I hope it makes sense.

 

[Eric H]

Greetings and peace be with you chalks75;

I agree that if I found a watch I would say it is designed ... but how would I know what design is ?

The bones in our bodies are just a bunch of levers that can create movement, we have the blueprint as to how our bodies move, so we should be able to mechanically replicate them. Teams of incredibly clever engineers have been trying to make robotic versions of a man, if you see one of these robots, then you will know it is designed. But the best robotic engineers with the most powerful computers can only make a primitive working model of our bodies, the range of movement is poor by comparison.

There is no way blind evolution could do this by random mutation and natural selection, the odds are beyond astronomical. We can send people into space, build huge cruise ships, bridges, buildings, but the human body is more complex than all of these, not to mention our brain. The only answer that makes sense is that God the creator of all that is seen and unseen made us.

In the spirit of searching for a greatest meaning of 'One God'
Eric

 

[chalks75]

Greetings and peace be with you chalks75;



The bones in our bodies are just a bunch of levers that can create movement, we have the blueprint as to how our bodies move, so we should be able to mechanically replicate them. Teams of incredibly clever engineers have been trying to make robotic versions of a man, if you see one of these robots, then you will know it is designed. But the best robotic engineers with the most powerful computers can only make a primitive working model of our bodies, the range of movement is poor by comparison.

There is no way blind evolution could do this by random mutation and natural selection, the odds are beyond astronomical. We can send people into space, build huge cruise ships, bridges, buildings, but the human body is more complex than all of these, not to mention our brain. The only answer that makes sense is that God the creator of all that is seen and unseen made us.

In the spirit of searching for a greatest meaning of 'One God'
Eric

You should not conflate atheism with evolution.

You do not have to accept evolution to be atheist.

All the things you mention , bridges , cruise ships , spaceship etc ... all those things , I know are designed because we designed them , I can meet the designers and watch them design something , then see it built.

Can you offer that kind of confirmation for you designer ... no.
What do all those designers have ?
Parents
Does you designer have parents ?

Complexity is not the hallmark of design , simplicity is .

If we were designed by a god , he could have made a better job of it .

 

[chalks75]

Hi Chalky,

Let’s approach this in yet another way. Do you agree that the things we see around us are ‘contingent’ or merely ‘possible’. A contingent thing is something that may either exist or not exist; its nature does not guarantee that it exists. Although all the things we experience directly are indeed contingent, there is also something else that exists necessarily, in other words, whose very nature guarantees that it exists.



Since a contingent thing on its own merit could either exist or not exist, it must have some external cause that made it exist - like ‘tipping the scales’ in favor of its existence rather than its non-existence.

Take me, for instance. I am contingent, meaning that I am the sort of thing that could easily have failed to exist. In fact, at one time I didn’t yet exist, and in the future I will cease existing, that proves I’m not necessary.


So there must have been a cause, maybe my parents, who brought me into existence.

Now the aggregate whole of all contingent things – in other words the physical universe – is also contingent. After all, everything in the universe is contingent, so taken all together as one thing, it too must be contingent. Thus it also needs an external cause, just like I do. Since that external cause has to be outside the whole aggregate of contingent things, it cannot itself be contingent. So it is necessary. Hey my friend, we’ve proven that there is a necessary existent which causes all other things! And this, of course, is God.


To summarize, I am trying to show that when you look around and think, ‘All of this could have failed to exist; why is there something, rather than nothing?’ The answer to the question is that not everything can be contingent; that is, not everything could have failed to exist. There must be something that just has to exist, to explain why everything else has wound up existing. I hope it makes sense.

I understand .
The problem I have is that you want to determine when the chain of contingent things stop.

As far as I am aware , everything is contingent on the universe.

But you are saying, then the universe itself must be contingent on something.

I don’t know

Maybe the universe has a cause , maybe it does not
Maybe the cause is a god , maybe it’s not.

If you can present some evidence that the universe has a cause , I will believe the universe has a cause ... I still don’t know what that cause is.

Which brings me to another problem I have

Not only do you claim to know that the universe has a cause , you claim to know what that cause is , not only that , you claim that the cause of the universe dictated a book to an illiterate desert dwelling Arab , 1400 years ago.

How did you make the jump from

The universe may have a cause, to Islam ?

I don’t believe your claims , not just yours , I don’t believe the claims of Christians , Jews,Hindus , Buddhists , or any of the 1000s of other religions man invented.

People invent gods ... it’s a fact .
There have always been people convinced these invented gods are real
IMHO
There are no real gods
There are only people that believe gods are real .

 

[Ümit]

You should not conflate atheism with evolution.

You do not have to accept evolution to be atheist.

All the things you mention , bridges , cruise ships , spaceship etc ... all those things , I know are designed because we designed them , I can meet the designers and watch them design something , then see it built.

Can you offer that kind of confirmation for you designer ... no.
What do all those designers have ?
Parents
Does you designer have parents ?

Complexity is not the hallmark of design , simplicity is .

If we were designed by a god , he could have made a better job of it .

yes he could...and he did. Angels....much faster than humans...much powerfull...dont need to feed or rest...always obedient...
but God did not create us out of need...we have another purpose...we do not need to be fast or powerfull.
we only need to use our freedom of will and choose for the good over evil.

 

[Eric H]

Greetings and peace be with you

You should not conflate atheism with evolution.

You do not have to accept evolution to be atheist.

Fair enough, so you also like to deny current scientific theory as well as God. If you choose to deny evolution, then give an explanation for how the skeletal system came to be please.

What do all those designers have ?
Parents

Please extrapolate back to a beginning and tell me how the first parents came to be.

Complexity is not the hallmark of design , simplicity is .

There is little simplicity in cruise ships, they have to be designed in detail.

In the spirit of searching for a greatest meaning of 'One God'

Eric

 

[chalks75]

Greetings and peace be with you



Fair enough, so you also like to deny current scientific theory as well as God. If you choose to deny evolution, then give an explanation for how the skeletal system came to be please.



Please extrapolate back to a beginning and tell me how the first parents came to be.



There is little simplicity in cruise ships, they have to be designed in detail.

In the spirit of searching for a greatest meaning of 'One God'

Eric

I do not deny evolution , I accept evolution
But, my atheism is not dependent on it.
Even if I didn’t accept evolution , I can still be an atheist.

If I cannot offer a explanation for something , that does not make your explanation correct by default.

Cruise ships are as complex as they need to be.
Good design is as simple as it can be and still serve its function.

 

[Physicist]

If I cannot offer a explanation for something , that does not make your explanation correct by default.

Cruise ships are as complex as they need to be.
Good design is as simple as it can be and still serve its function.

Indeed.
The same principle you can extrapolate to entire universe as well.
The principle of minimal absolute complexity.

Absolute complexity is the minimal amount ot information needed to describe closed system.
For example, number pi in decimal form contains infinite number of digits, but can be described as a simple algorithm.

 

[chalks75]

Indeed.
The same principle you can extrapolate to entire universe as well.
The principle of minimal absolute complexity.

Absolute complexity is the minimal amount ot information needed to describe closed system.
For example, number pi in decimal form contains infinite number of digits, but can be described as a simple algorithm.

So would you agree that simplicity, not complexity is a hall mark of design ?

You are making a logical fallacy ,
Claiming that because everything we know of is contingent , then everything is contingent.
“ I’ve only seen black swans , therefore all swans are black “
It does not follow.

Let’s be honest

Neither you nor I know how the universe came to be ,
You have a religious viewpoint
You believe it was a particular version of a particular god.
I do not know , but I do not believe it was a god.
I think gods are a concept created by humans in an attempt to answer these fundamental questions.

Let me ask you this

If you believe there is something in an empty box ... can you make logical deductions about it ?

 

['Abdullah]

I agree that if I found a watch I would say it is designed ... but how would I know what design is ?
I compare it to the things that I know are not designed !

What in the universe is not designed ?

My morality comes from rational thought , and the recognition that I share this world with others and my actions have consequences that affect others.

Another good question and I appreciate that you are constantly thinking. Critical thinking is the key to Islam.

Human beings are intelligent enough to recognize the design features because we design several things on daily basis. What we can do is compare the design in mad made thing to Divine design and see if we can unearth the truth?

Let's start with an example of design of a house. Engineers from several disciplines( Civil, structural, architect, mechanical, plumbing, fire protection etc.) will get together to provide design which should meet local City/County codes. I takes years of education and experience for someone to be able to design and stamp these drawings. This way we understand and appreciate the value of design in our daily lives. No is it possible to built this house without any purpose? Will it make sense to design anything without purpose? Answer is NO. Ask yourself another question, is it possible to built this house without any material? Answer is NO again. Is it possible for this house to come into existence by itself. Answer is NO.

Let's move to the Divine design and take myself for example. Is my design in any way and shape even close to the design of the house? No, it is too complex. Just think every human being have different finger prints. If all human get together, they can't produce a single hair. We came into being from mixing of male and female sperms. From those sperms Allah created me and brought me up to be a 6 feet tall man today. Where did this material came from? Allah unlike us creates things from nothing. If the house we created will have a purpose and designer, it will be silly to think that human beings came into existence without a designer and have no purpose.

Allah is unseen but He is the most obvious truth. Are you only denying Allah because you can't see Him? Are there things in like you have not seen and you still believe? Microwaves, radio waves, electricity etc.?

- - - Updated - - -

I understand .
The problem I have is that you want to determine when the chain of contingent things stop.

As far as I am aware , everything is contingent on the universe.

But you are saying, then the universe itself must be contingent on something.

I don’t know

Maybe the universe has a cause , maybe it does not
Maybe the cause is a god , maybe it’s not.

If you can present some evidence that the universe has a cause , I will believe the universe has a cause ... I still don’t know what that cause is.

Which brings me to another problem I have

Not only do you claim to know that the universe has a cause , you claim to know what that cause is , not only that , you claim that the cause of the universe dictated a book to an illiterate desert dwelling Arab , 1400 years ago.

How did you make the jump from

The universe may have a cause, to Islam ?

I don’t believe your claims , not just yours , I don’t believe the claims of Christians , Jews,Hindus , Buddhists , or any of the 1000s of other religions man invented.

People invent gods ... it’s a fact .
There have always been people convinced these invented gods are real
IMHO
There are no real gods
There are only people that believe gods are real .

The key to this is to realize we have a purpose in this life. every designed thing has a purpose and we are not an exception. What is our purpose, is to find God and live life based on the principles He told us in Quran. Why Quran? I have mentioned in my reply to your posts somewhere else that Quran is a living miracle. It is preserves by memory and in text form even since it is revealed. No one can make a change of even a single letter in Quran because we have millions of memorizers who will catch the change. This is very easy to test and verify without getting into textual preservation of Quran. I believe Prophet Muhammad PBUH was illiterate because Quran says so. First thing in this regard is to witness the miracle of Quran and believe it is a miracle and if it is then it has to be from God and everything in it has to be true.

Do We Need to ‘See’ to ‘Know’?

I have heard the phrase “I’ll believe it when I see it” so many times and it makes absolute no sense. There are countless things that are around even if we can’t hear or see them we know they’re there. You turn on the radio and know you can tune into a variety of stations. You can’t see the radio waves as they are invisible. It’s the same with the law of vibration. You can’t see energy but it’s there. Having absolute faith that you can achieve goals you set your mind to knowing it’s possible will attract positive energy towards you.

It is an everyday experience that when you do not know a thing, you look for somebody who knows it and you repose faith in his word and follow him. If you get ill and you cannot treat and cure yourself, you look for the doctor and accept and follow his instructions without question. Why? Because he is properly qualified to give medical advice, possesses experience, and has treated and cured a number of patients. You, therefore, stick to his advice, do whatever he asks you to do, and avoid whatever he forbids.
Similarly, in matters of law you believe in whatever your legal advisers say and act accordingly. In educational matters you have faith in your teacher or instructor and you accept his instructions as true. When you want to go to some place and do not happen to know the way to it, you ask somebody who knows it and follow the way he points out.

In short, the reasonable course that you adopt in the whole of your life about matters which you do not or cannot know is that you approach one who knows them, accept his advice, and act accordingly. As your own knowledge of that matter or problem is inadequate, you carefully search for one who knows that and then silently accept his word. You take every pain to select the proper person. But after selecting the right man, you accept his advice unquestioningly. This kind of belief is called “belief in the unknown.” For here you have relied upon one who knows, in matters you do not know.
As you probably already know, to manifest something you want, you must first believe that you will have it!

Now the only one who has true knowledge of all unseen in God and He has revealed this knowledge in the guidance He has given to humanity in the form of Quran. If you don't believe it then do your honest research. Read religious book of all religions including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism etc. Truth is not hard to be recognized as long as you are sincere to yourself and once you find this truth then the answer to all these unknown should be very clear because it is from God who knows what we don't know.

We don’t need to ‘see’ in order to believe. Faith is to believe in unseen. Believing in something you can see is called evidence not faith.

 

[matthewjg81]

Bhudists do not have any miracles... They do have some spiritual feats that their monks can do but just about any 'spiritualist' can achieve the same (such as astral projection etc)

Jews and Christians can have miracles but that's because their books were originally divine so they could have some revealed miracles intact in their books, however their religions have been superseded by Gods latest religion of Islam now that's been sent to all mankind

Just see them links posted above, the Quranic miracles are too many and too overwhelming to be anything other than from a divine source

Hi Ahmed, I hope you're doing well today. I'm a new member, and a Christian. There are a LOT of articles on the website you provided, and it would take a long time to look at each. Do you have a top 4 you would recommend a curious person should examine first?

 

['Abdullah]

Hi Fellow American :happy:

Welcome to your search for Islam. Let me know if I can be of any help?

 

[Physicist]

So would you agree that simplicity, not complexity is a hall mark of design ?

You are making a logical fallacy ,
Claiming that because everything we know of is contingent , then everything is contingent.
“ I’ve only seen black swans , therefore all swans are black “
It does not follow.

Let’s be honest

Neither you nor I know how the universe came to be ,
You have a religious viewpoint
You believe it was a particular version of a particular god.
I do not know , but I do not believe it was a god.
I think gods are a concept created by humans in an attempt to answer these fundamental questions.

There is rather a linguistic fallacy in definition of the word "God".
Sentence "Versions of God" has no sense, because to God we assign everything we don't know.

Ancient people had no idea about nature of lightning strikes for example, it was natural for them to assign that to God.

Then, due to people's fantasy, they were imaging irrelevant things, like some man-like creature is sitting on the cloud, gave him name Zeus, for other unknowns they invented another creature and so on. That is wrong indeed and by the way is the most condemned in Islam as Shirk.

All unknowns must be assigned to one God.
Upon discovering more about nature, we are shifting the boundary of unknown and those wrong images come into conflict with new knowledge.
Upon discovering nature of lightnings, some people getting furious and reject knowledge in defending image of the Zeus. Others, abandoning not only Zeus fairytale, but the concept of God at all.

While driving on some road, to answer the question "Who did create this road", you can simply say "This road was created by God",
or you may go into details, that it was made by such and such people working for that company, using such and such equipment produced by another company, which in turn payd royalties for such and such patents, etc. But however detailed is your explanation, you will have to terminate it somewhere.

Let me ask you this

If you believe there is something in an empty box ... can you make logical deductions about it ?

Yes, you can invent infinite number of versions about what is inside but that has no sense, until you have some interaction with that box.

 

['Abdullah]

As for how I determine good and bad , rational thought , people well being is important to me , the society I live in is important to me, it’s the society my kids and grandkids will true up in , so I try to do as little harm and as much good as I can.

If we are to leave this issue of determining good and bad to an individual level, we would see that each person has their individual perception of good and evil, whether this perception is based upon religion, law, culture, or individual contemplation. One might believe that it is perfectly acceptable to commit adultery while another might think it to be wrong. One might believe that it is permissible for them to indulge in narcotics since it is their own body, and others might believe it to be a crime. None would be able to say that anything is right or wrong, and all people would be left to their own devices to believe and practice what they perceive as “correct.”


If we were to implement this belief in society, we would have a community based upon anarchy, where no laws could be legislated nor executed, for law is based upon the principle that certain things are to be good and others are evil. If one were to say that there are certain truths agreed to by all humans which can be used to legislate laws, this statement is true to a certain limit, as we stated that all humans do naturally have a trait to know right from wrong in a limited sense. But as seen, this trait many times becomes perverted through environmental, psychological, or religious factors, in that certain acts which were at one time seen as evil and immoral are later seen as sound and acceptable, and some things which do not accord to human nature are seen to be the keys to salvation. This can be clearly observed in democratic societies which base their laws on the majority. We see that many things which were considered to be outright absurd or immoral are now socially acceptable, to the extent that if one holds a different opinion in regards to the issue, they are seen as outcasts.


For this reason, humans cannot be left to their own accords to legislate what is correct and incorrect. Even in societies of the same religion which have instituted the separation of religion and state, although they are in agreement to those things which they maintained from their religion, they differ greatly in regards to what is deemed correct and incorrect in their societies. What is considered as the legal age of consent to sex in France is considered rape in America. While abortion is legal in one country, it is a crime in another, and when homosexuality is seen as a valid way of life in one society, it is seen as a grave sin in another.


So if we now say that the truth is absolute and one and is not relative to each individual and society, then the next question is what are the morals which make truth manifest and who is to decide them? What are the laws which should be implemented in society? Should they be decided by lawyers and judges who have reached a level of “legal enlightenment”, politicians who usually make decisions for their own benefit or the benefit of their own countries, or philosophers which have come to know the universal truths through their own contemplation? As seen earlier, humans cannot be left to decide these issues, lest there be catastrophic results, as seen today in many societies ridden with numerous ills. The only One who has the right to legislate right and wrong is the One who created us and knows what is best for us, and that is God Almighty. It is God who created the world and it is God who set the scales of justice. It is God who is perfect and it is God who has no faults whatsoever.

 

[manofIslam]

Originally Posted by manofIslam
Dear Chalky,

Well, who do you think created the Universe? Because we believe that God created the Universe.

So why don't you believe in God?




I don’t know how the universe came to be , I’ve not seen any evidence that a god is responsible( by the way calling it a creation assumes a creator)

I don’t believe in gods , because I’ve not seen evidence enough to convince me gods are real.

What I do see, is 1000s of man made gods and religions all making the same sorts of claims , all based on the same way of thinking.

We don’t know how the universe came to be ... there must be a god
We don’t know how life began ... it must be a god
We are afraid of death ... there’s a god that stops you from truly dying.

This kind of thinking is seen throughout cultures all over the world
People invent gods , they build religions around them.

I think ,
If you don’t know something , just say you don’t know.

Admitting you do not know , is the foundation of knowledge




Oh, Chalky! Are you really an Atheist?! Do you really and truly believe that there is no God?!!

 

[Ahmed.]

Hi Ahmed, I hope you're doing well today. I'm a new member, and a Christian. There are a LOT of articles on the website you provided, and it would take a long time to look at each. Do you have a top 4 you would recommend a curious person should examine first?

Them links I provided, 1 has many scientific miracles of Islam in there, you don't have to go through all of them but you can check out a few if you have the time

The second link is a video about a Scholar talking about in what other ways Quran is a miracle. It is an amalgamation of a few videos put together however you can listen to it as much as you prefer . Even a half hour listen will give you some example of those miracles

For shorter and more concise videos, here's a couple of good ones:

https://youtu.be/1eBCa-vw6Ss

https://youtu.be/vOYpjZywUPA

 

[chalks75]

Originally Posted by manofIslam
Dear Chalky,

Well, who do you think created the Universe? Because we believe that God created the Universe.

So why don't you believe in God?




I don’t know how the universe came to be , I’ve not seen any evidence that a god is responsible( by the way calling it a creation assumes a creator)

I don’t believe in gods , because I’ve not seen evidence enough to convince me gods are real.

What I do see, is 1000s of man made gods and religions all making the same sorts of claims , all based on the same way of thinking.

We don’t know how the universe came to be ... there must be a god
We don’t know how life began ... it must be a god
We are afraid of death ... there’s a god that stops you from truly dying.

This kind of thinking is seen throughout cultures all over the world
People invent gods , they build religions around them.

I think ,
If you don’t know something , just say you don’t know.

Admitting you do not know , is the foundation of knowledge




Oh, Chalky! Are you really an Atheist?! Do you really and truly believe that there is no God?!!

No.
There is a subtle difference that you are not grasping.

I do not believe there are gods
Is different from
I believe there is no gods.

I do not believe gods are real
I’ve not seen any evidence that would compel me to believe gods are real.
I’ve not heard any argument that has convinced me that gods are real.

The arguments used by Muslims are the exact same arguments used by Christians , slightly altered to suit their particular version of the god .

 

[chalks75]

Another good question and I appreciate that you are constantly thinking. Critical thinking is the key to Islam.

Human beings are intelligent enough to recognize the design features because we design several things on daily basis. What we can do is compare the design in mad made thing to Divine design and see if we can unearth the truth?

Let's start with an example of design of a house. Engineers from several disciplines( Civil, structural, architect, mechanical, plumbing, fire protection etc.) will get together to provide design which should meet local City/County codes. I takes years of education and experience for someone to be able to design and stamp these drawings. This way we understand and appreciate the value of design in our daily lives. No is it possible to built this house without any purpose? Will it make sense to design anything without purpose? Answer is NO. Ask yourself another question, is it possible to built this house without any material? Answer is NO again. Is it possible for this house to come into existence by itself. Answer is NO.

Let's move to the Divine design and take myself for example. Is my design in any way and shape even close to the design of the house? No, it is too complex. Just think every human being have different finger prints. If all human get together, they can't produce a single hair. We came into being from mixing of male and female sperms. From those sperms Allah created me and brought me up to be a 6 feet tall man today. Where did this material came from? Allah unlike us creates things from nothing. If the house we created will have a purpose and designer, it will be silly to think that human beings came into existence without a designer and have no purpose.

Allah is unseen but He is the most obvious truth. Are you only denying Allah because you can't see Him? Are there things in like you have not seen and you still believe? Microwaves, radio waves, electricity etc.?

- - - Updated - - -



The key to this is to realize we have a purpose in this life. every designed thing has a purpose and we are not an exception. What is our purpose, is to find God and live life based on the principles He told us in Quran. Why Quran? I have mentioned in my reply to your posts somewhere else that Quran is a living miracle. It is preserves by memory and in text form even since it is revealed. No one can make a change of even a single letter in Quran because we have millions of memorizers who will catch the change. This is very easy to test and verify without getting into textual preservation of Quran. I believe Prophet Muhammad PBUH was illiterate because Quran says so. First thing in this regard is to witness the miracle of Quran and believe it is a miracle and if it is then it has to be from God and everything in it has to be true.

Do We Need to ‘See’ to ‘Know’?

I have heard the phrase “I’ll believe it when I see it” so many times and it makes absolute no sense. There are countless things that are around even if we can’t hear or see them we know they’re there. You turn on the radio and know you can tune into a variety of stations. You can’t see the radio waves as they are invisible. It’s the same with the law of vibration. You can’t see energy but it’s there. Having absolute faith that you can achieve goals you set your mind to knowing it’s possible will attract positive energy towards you.

It is an everyday experience that when you do not know a thing, you look for somebody who knows it and you repose faith in his word and follow him. If you get ill and you cannot treat and cure yourself, you look for the doctor and accept and follow his instructions without question. Why? Because he is properly qualified to give medical advice, possesses experience, and has treated and cured a number of patients. You, therefore, stick to his advice, do whatever he asks you to do, and avoid whatever he forbids.
Similarly, in matters of law you believe in whatever your legal advisers say and act accordingly. In educational matters you have faith in your teacher or instructor and you accept his instructions as true. When you want to go to some place and do not happen to know the way to it, you ask somebody who knows it and follow the way he points out.

In short, the reasonable course that you adopt in the whole of your life about matters which you do not or cannot know is that you approach one who knows them, accept his advice, and act accordingly. As your own knowledge of that matter or problem is inadequate, you carefully search for one who knows that and then silently accept his word. You take every pain to select the proper person. But after selecting the right man, you accept his advice unquestioningly. This kind of belief is called “belief in the unknown.” For here you have relied upon one who knows, in matters you do not know.
As you probably already know, to manifest something you want, you must first believe that you will have it!

Now the only one who has true knowledge of all unseen in God and He has revealed this knowledge in the guidance He has given to humanity in the form of Quran. If you don't believe it then do your honest research. Read religious book of all religions including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism etc. Truth is not hard to be recognized as long as you are sincere to yourself and once you find this truth then the answer to all these unknown should be very clear because it is from God who knows what we don't know.

We don’t need to ‘see’ in order to believe. Faith is to believe in unseen. Believing in something you can see is called evidence not faith.

I agree
We do not need to see to believe
I accept gravitational theory , even through I cannot see gravity
I assume you accept the theory of gravity ?

The Quran is just a book , that a small fraction of people attribute special meaning to, it would not matter if every single person on earth memorised it .... that does not make it true , it would not matter if the book wasn’t changed from then to now , that does not make it true.

I do agree that if you do not know something then you should seek the people that have studied these things .... which is why
If I want to know about the universe I will seek out a cosmologist
If I want to know about medicine I will seek out a doctor
If I want to know about life , I will seek out a biologist
If I want to know about mechanics , I will seek out an engineer
If I want to know about forces and movement, I will see out a physicist
If I want to know about gods and religions I will seek out a theologian.

I understand you have religious beliefs , I see no reason to believe yours are any more true that the 1000s of others that people invented over the past 10,000 years .

I see no reason to believe that people living 4000-2000- 1400 years ago, know more that we do now.

Claims of revealed knowledge is a common trait among religions , that , and promises of eternal life

 

[chalks75]

There is rather a linguistic fallacy in definition of the word "God".
Sentence "Versions of God" has no sense, because to God we assign everything we don't know.

Ancient people had no idea about nature of lightning strikes for example, it was natural for them to assign that to God.

Then, due to people's fantasy, they were imaging irrelevant things, like some man-like creature is sitting on the cloud, gave him name Zeus, for other unknowns they invented another creature and so on. That is wrong indeed and by the way is the most condemned in Islam as Shirk.

All unknowns must be assigned to one God.
Upon discovering more about nature, we are shifting the boundary of unknown and those wrong images come into conflict with new knowledge.
Upon discovering nature of lightnings, some people getting furious and reject knowledge in defending image of the Zeus. Others, abandoning not only Zeus fairytale, but the concept of God at all.

While driving on some road, to answer the question "Who did create this road", you can simply say "This road was created by God",
or you may go into details, that it was made by such and such people working for that company, using such and such equipment produced by another company, which in turn payd royalties for such and such patents, etc. But however detailed is your explanation, you will have to terminate it somewhere.



Yes, you can invent infinite number of versions about what is inside but that has no sense, until you have some interaction with that box.

You assign everything you don’t know to “ a god”
Why don’t you just say you don’t know , instead of offering a supernatural explanation.
The term “ a god” becomes meaningless if it just means “ the things we do not know “
But
That’s not all “ a god” means , there has been multiple theologies built around the concept.
Which god is responsible for what ... that depends on who you ask ,and when you ask them.
Gods are a concept that we use to try and explain the things we do not know , you have pretty much confined what I believed.

As for the box ,I agree you can make logical deductions about what’s in the box ...even though it is empty.
The true answer is “ I do not know what, if anything is in the box”
( agnostic)

The same principle can be used in regards to the universe , you don’t know how the universe came to be ,nor do I .
( agnostic)

You assume there is something outside the universe ,so like the empty box ,you can make logical deductions about what you think is there.

If we were to be honest , and leave our beliefs to one side for a moment

We don’t know how the universe came to be.

 

['Abdullah]

I agree
We do not need to see to believe
I accept gravitational theory , even through I cannot see gravity
I assume you accept the theory of gravity ?

The Quran is just a book , that a small fraction of people attribute special meaning to, it would not matter if every single person on earth memorised it .... that does not make it true , it would not matter if the book wasn’t changed from then to now , that does not make it true.

I do agree that if you do not know something then you should seek the people that have studied these things .... which is why
If I want to know about the universe I will seek out a cosmologist
If I want to know about medicine I will seek out a doctor
If I want to know about life , I will seek out a biologist
If I want to know about mechanics , I will seek out an engineer
If I want to know about forces and movement, I will see out a physicist
If I want to know about gods and religions I will seek out a theologian.

I understand you have religious beliefs , I see no reason to believe yours are any more true that the 1000s of others that people invented over the past 10,000 years .

I see no reason to believe that people living 4000-2000- 1400 years ago, know more that we do now.

Claims of revealed knowledge is a common trait among religions , that , and promises of eternal life

You said that if you need to know about religion and gods you will seek out a theologian. I know that's why you are here and I appreciate your sincere search to find the truth. You also said that there are more than 1000 other religions and many of those are invented by man. That is true as well. And this all helps to find our the true religion. For example, let's take Christianity for example. How many versions of Bible they have? Which version of Bible is true? Is there any contradiction is Bible? There are countless if you ask me but you better ask that question to a Christian and I am sure they will agree with what I said. Now compare that to Quran:
1. Quran's is preserved ever since it was revealed to Prophet Muhammad PBUH. In my last post I mentioned how it is memorized through our generations. You probably don't see any value in it but it is one way of preserving the Divine message in the chests if believers. Human beings can change text as we have seen what they did with Bible, but there is nothing one can do when Divine message in preserved in text form as well as in the human memory.
2. There is no version of Quran. Every Muslim, Arabic or non-Arabic reads Quran in Arabic. Translation of Quran is not considered equivalent to Quran but you will see that even translation have great power to convince the people who are searching for truth.
3. There are no contradictions in Quran.
4. Quran agree 100% with all scientific facts (not theories).

These are some of the points which separates Quran and Islam from any other religion. I have two separate threads which you may have seen. One is true religion and other is Logical Proof that Islam is the true religion. I have discussed these in more depth in those threads. Next week I am hoping to start working on few other threads which will be logical arguments to prove God exists and second probably about proofs that Islam is the only true religion. I really hope those threads will help you and many others on this form.