Where does God fit in?

format_quote Originally Posted by IsamBitar

Religious people argue that religion is important for society because it provides a guideline and a manual for human ethics. The truth is that morality does not come from religion. For example, many secularists are moral and their morality is based on desire to prevent suffering and try to improve the welfare of other human and sentient beings, whereas religious morality has an additional element to this: sin. A religious person may be "moral" from a selfish point of view – they don’t want to go to hell. Another illustration of how morality does not come from religion is that when you ask a Christian or a Muslim (most of them anyway) about the punishment for breaking the Sabbath or committing adultery, which are both punished by stoning to death, they will say "we don’t do that anymore, we've grown out of it." In other words, they are cherry-picking. This shows how they do not get their morality from their religious scriptures, but from somewhere else: a secular moral philosophy that humans carefully picked up through rational discussion and a humanist consensus.

I didn't ask what religious people think abut their religions and about religious values, I asked you these questions since you want people to educated their children with secular ideology:

Please give me example how secular education for children work?
Where do parents obtain values and instruction for this secular ideology?
What are contained in the secular ideology for children?
what are the values of secular ideology? Where can farmers in Toraja, sulawesi, Indonesia get this secular ideology from to teach their children?

So could you please answer my questions?

format_quote Originally Posted by IsamBitar

Facts are different from theories. You can't call evolution a fact just as much as you can't call gravity a fact. However, relate to my previous posts to see more. If still not satisfied, ask.

There's one big difference between gravity and ToE
gravity is directly observable, while ToE is (at the very least) not directly observable.

format_quote Originally Posted by Jεώel oғ ωïѕdoм

It's ironic how you state you've read the Qur'aan and then you state this 'Wasn't it already hard enough for us?'
ever come across the story of Adam and Eve (as) ?

I was thinking about the same thing too when I read his posts.
Isambitar claimed many things but it does seem he has no idea what he copy pasted from his google search results.

format_quote Originally Posted by IsamBitar

I'd rather call them "critically-thinking free children." I'm sure you wouldn't have a problem with Christians or Jews raising their children secularly and then telling them about the world's religions (and their own) and having them choose for themselves.

I disagree in that parents have a responsibility towards their children to feed, clothe, and house them as well as help them to learn how to provide for themselves. Those with a religious faith also feel a responsibility to help them attain the ultimate success in the Hereafter. I went way out on a limb to choose to become a Muslim while everyone else in my family was a Christian to one degree or another. This choice immediately put a barrier between our hearts because I rejected Jesus as the Son of God and as my personal saviour. A statement conveyed to me showed that this decision put me in a worse standing than a drug-addicted cousin who has disappeared. In a strange twist my son decided when he was 12 to have nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. I had tried my best to share my faith with him, but he has chosen a different path. As the Quran states in 2:256, "There is no compulsion in religion. Verily, the Right Path has become distinct from the wrong path. Whoever disbelieves in Taghut and believes in Allah, then he has grasped the most trustworthy handhold that will never break. And Allah is All-Hearer, All-Knower. Note that this ayat comes immediately after the widely known Ayat al-Kursi that starts "Allah! There is no deity save Him, the Alive, the Eternal..."

OK no problem. Nonetheless, it was Muslim fanatics who terrorised the world in incidents like in the year 2005 only:... And I could go on forever. I don't think you'd argue with me that the main reason for these terrorist attacks are religious indoctrination. It doesn't matter whether you approve of it or not, it IS religious.

I don't disagree that there may have been Muslims who have committed acts of terrorism, but I also know that things aren't always as they are portrayed to be in the media. Have you ever heard of 'false flag'?

Some people like myself have a problem taking things for granted with no evidence to support them. This seems to be absent from your ideology.

I find this statement very ironic as you have no problem accepting ToE in toto with only flimsy so-called scientific evidence to support it. Regarding my faith, I accept my religious beliefs on faith as I have no scientifically provable evidence for the existence of Allah other than my own understanding of biology that another may see as no more than natural processes that came about completely by chance and not by design. As sister BlueBell has said elsewhere, it seems that evolutionists don't have the same sense of awe and amazement in the creation.

May I ask what your field and level of education is?

Yes, I have a Ph.D. in plant breeding and genetics with a minor in molecular biology.

And if we're both wrong we both lose. And strictly statistically speaking, the probability of this is very high.

How can we both be wrong that 1) Allah exists or 2) He does not exist? Or is it wrong that 1) Islam is the Truth or 2) your unstated religion (Judaism?) is the truth.

I don't remember saying anything about raising children with an atheistic view on life. I didn't say children should be told 24/7 that there is no god.

As you seem to be a naturalistic evolutionists (no God involvement), I assumed you are atheist, perhaps you are a Jew. You present an interesting point, but it seems difficult to implement. For myself, I would not have a problem with teaching a teenager about the various world religions and allowing him to make his choice. However, an important aspect of this education would be an acknowledgement that a choice different from the parents will likely alienate them from the family. I know of this from the perspective of both a child and parent.

Are you joking? Please read a little more on the topic from proper scientific journals. Or just Google the number of pieces of evidence for evolution.

No, I am not joking. ToE is a hypothesis that has attained the label of a theory. Regardless, even if ToE was a theory with scientific evidence to support it, I find it extremely unsatisfying to my intellect. Your appeal to authority does nothing for me.

Actually, Charles Darwin was the first person to propose a plausible mechanism for evolution. The idea of evolution has been around since the Arab Golden Age. People like Ibn Khaldun in his Introduction and Ibn Sina were the first to talk about evolution, although they couldn't get far with explaining its mechanism. In fact, Darwin's contemporary, Sir William Draper, called it the Mohammedan Theory of Evolution. Google that term anywhere on the internet and you'll find loads of entries on it.

The first Muslim biologist and philosopher to publish detailed speculations about natural history, the Afro-Arab writer al-Jahiz, wrote in the 9th century. In the Book of Animals, he considered the effects of the environment on an animal's chances for survival, and described the struggle for existence. Al-Jahiz also wrote descriptions of food chains. Al-Jahiz speculated on the influence of the environment on animals and considered the effects of the environment on the likelihood of an animal to survive. For example, Al-Jahiz's wrote in his Book of Animals: "All animals, in short, can not exist without food, neither can the hunting animal escape being hunted in his turn. Every weak animal devours those weaker than itself. Strong animals cannot escape being devoured by other animals stronger than they".

Some of Ibn Khaldun's thoughts, according to some commentators, anticipate the biological theory of evolution. In 1377 Ibn Khaldun wrote the Muqaddimah in which he asserted that humans developed from "the world of the monkeys", in a process by which "species become more numerous" In chapter 1 he writes: "This world with all the created things in it has a certain order and solid construction. It shows nexuses between causes and things caused, combinations of some parts of creation with others, and transformations of some existent things into others, in a pattern that is both remarkable and endless."


These statements from wikipedia talk predominantly about the ascendancy or decline of various existing species. The last statement is speculative and does not reflect Islamic thought but merely speculations of a single Muslim.

Wrong. Evolution makes predictions which should be met in order to strengthen its authenticity. Unsurprisingly, every single prediction made by evolution has been confirmed. Falsifying evolution is easy. You just need a pre-Cambrian fossil mammal and the whole of evolution will collapse. That's just one example.

What predictions have been met? I am unaware of any. I don't necessarily believe that all existing and extinct species were created instantly and were coexistent.

Wrong again. Evolution can be falsified by finding evidence that it is incorrect, and an overwhelming preponderance of evidence that our origins began by other means. Replication does not mean a phenomenon has to be replicated, otherwise we would have very few theories in science, it means that the experiments, calculations and some observations that make up the evidence for evolution have to be able to be replicated. So the theory can indeed be tested. Evolution fits the scientific method perfectly, unless you have a different idea on how the scientific method works.

Scientific method: 1) Question, 2) Hypothesis, 3) Prediction, 4) Testing, 5) Data, 6) Conclusion. What prediction has a scientist made and what tests did he conduct to collect data that supported his conclusion that proved the plausibility of ToE?

I've already shown you how. If that doesn't make sense to you, then look it up further. If that also doesn't make sense to you, then the problem is with you, not science.

No, your statements did not support a gradual increase in fitness of individuals that sequentially acquired the steps of meiosis and they were not satisfying to me. I don't have a problem with science, but I have a problem with fanciful claims without evidence to support them.

Wrong and wrong. Look up people like Professor Kenneth Miller and Professor Francisco Ayala along with many others who believe in God AND accept evolution. Even William Craig, a famous advocate for the existence of God, says that there is no problem with the belief in evolution and God. As for children, I've already explained this above. I hold great respect for you Mr Mustafa, don't make that change by saying such ridiculous statements.

Perhaps we have a differnet view on evolution. I personally don't have a problem with the gradual development of species over time, but I don't see how the process would have occured without Allah directing and controlling the process. I have used an example of 3 rectangular bricks on a beach stacked one on top of the other vertically. In my mind, it is an impossibility that the waves crashing against them and moving sand around would ever result in the bricks being stacked as I found them. My immediate conclusion would be that someone walked on the beach ahead of me and stacked the bricks. The waves must have washed his tracks away. ToE is akin to trying to come up with a theory for how the bricks became stacked by natural processes. I realize that I was once a fertilized egg and that I developed gradually (evolved?) within my mothers womb into an immature human. During that process I resembled the same stage as many different species and could barely be distinguished from them; however, they began as a different fertilized egg with distinctly different potentialities. I could see an analogy with the development of species in a manner that only Allah knows, or perhaps He created them instantly at different times in history.

With the above two posts, this thread can be declared closed.