In response to Hawking's new stated position on God

[Argamemnon]

If you believe in the cosmos then you believe in God. As the old Greek ancients said the time before God was the chaos. God gave order to the universe creating the cosmos. So without God there would only be eternal chaos.

Modern science has disproved materialism. The Big Bang proves God's existance because everything was created out of nothing. Something can not come out of nothing.

 

[Argamemnon]

as I don't think the two mix, especially the supernatural with science. So my stated position is that I see nothing wrong with cause and effect but I am also aware there are what I called cracks in the idea and so there are areas were I simply don't know.

Don't forget that scientists are human beings who are influenced by their personal views and ideologies and cultural backgrounds. Most people tend to blindly believe scientists only because they are able to utter some unpronounceable words.

 

[Zafran]

Don't forget that scientists are human beings who are influenced by their personal views and ideologies and cultural backgrounds. Most people tend to blindly believe scientists only because they are able to utter some unpronounceable words.

Salaam

good point - most of us have to have faith in these scientists and what they say is actually true even though we ourselves are probably not qualified to find out. The same applies with Religion.

peace

 

[Hugo]

Modern science has disproved materialism. The Big Bang proves God's existance because everything was created out of nothing. Something can not come out of nothing.

It is best if you read the whole thread and if you do you will see that this may not be the whole story

 

[Hugo]

Don't forget that scientists are human beings who are influenced by their personal views and ideologies and cultural backgrounds. Most people tend to blindly believe scientists only because they are able to utter some unpronounceable words.

Why single out scientist here, we are all influenced by personal views and ideologies and Muslims or anyone else is not exempt, you I guess believe blindly all things Muslim?

 

[IAmZamzam]

Don't forget that scientists are human beings who are influenced by their personal views and ideologies and cultural backgrounds.

Most people tend to blindly believe scientists only because they are able to utter some unpronounceable words.

And because they're trained professionals and therefore anyone who disputes ANYTHING they say is therefore either an ignoramus or a know-it-all. You see this in all walks of life, including if not especially in Islam, wherein anyone who questions a scholar is treated like they're at least as much a heretic as if they had questioned one of the prophets of Allah. Apparently anyone who has degree in something (or the equivalent) is an infallible deity among men. Whereas in reality every branch of academia is taught on the (frequently false or fallacious) premises of particular biases common to the profession and therefore treated as a natural part of it. Think about it: how often have you ever seen a textbook in your life that wasn't biased or slanting about something? Or an intellectual profession where the general philosophy behind it all in the modern zeitgeist is not taught as being beyond reproach? So it is with scientists. They are taught what is perfectly reasonable yet what also must not be mistaken for an automatic way of reaching truth, that they must be secular in their work. And therefore it proves nothing that something starting with secular premises comes to a secular conclusion. Indeed, it is inevitable.

Other people, among the nontheistic and the nonreligious, automatically believe scientists because they don't think and therefore automatically presume science to be the natural, default, automatic, unavoidable replacement of religion. Just because everyone else of the sort they see does and, once again not thinking, they presume that it's therefore a package deal. I even saw someone or other (another guy at infidels.org whose name I don't remember through the mists of time--I'm sure you could do a search there if you had to) say that he would define atheism not as the disbelief in God but as the belief in science as the final word.

 

[IAmZamzam]

Try not always to be so sure of yourself especially when you think about what others might say or do or belive.

What are you even talking about?! I didn't accuse you of believing anything.

I know nothing of any ghost in my machine and all I ever do or at least try to do is separate what is scientific from what is lets call it supernatural as I don't think the two mix, especially the supernatural with science.

Separate it? When had it not been separated in your discourse with me? Even my still-ignored opening post explicitly explicitly established the separation already. I speak only of reason.

So my stated position is that I see nothing wrong with cause and effect but I am also aware there are what I called cracks in the idea and so there are areas were I simply don't know.

We've been over this already. The only "cracks" are jumps to conclusions at worst and probabilistic fallacies at best: "We haven't yet found a cause = there is no cause." Bah. There have always been, and always will be, things in this world whose causes we don't know. It happens to us even in our own lives most every day. That is no reason to doubt cause and effect itself.

Just as an example, if I were say looking at the authenticity of Biblical or Qu'ranic text then my position is that I have to shut out of my mind any notion that these are or might be from God because to do so is to pre-judge the issue and impose a view that cannot be verified. So instead I take the scientific route and can carbon date the papers, looking at the form of writing, the ink used, the thickness of the ink, history of transmission and so on.

What happened to separating science and the supernatural?

I might also use textual criticism or compare it with literature of the time.

If by all means. In fact, it is not a bad means at all to prove the divine inspiration of the Koran.

But ALL I am doing is grounded if that is the right word in establishing that the text is authentic from the period and I offer no opinion one way or the others as to its putative supernatural author. This of course does not mean I will not treat it from a personal point of view as God given but I MUST separate out that from what can be established in terms let's call it material evidence.

Yet material evidence is all you’ve been going on with from the start. In fact, you’ve talked about rather little else.

 

[Insecured soul]

If you believe in the cosmos then you believe in God. As the old Greek ancients said the time before God was the chaos. God gave order to the universe creating the cosmos. So without God there would only be eternal chaos.
God creating order out of the chaos is called the creation of the cosmos. So if you don't believe in God you must believe the creation never happened and we are still in a state of chaos. Which is impossible as a state of chaos means totally unstable atomic bonds, time and space random mayhem, all waves of energy totally random total disorder on all levels. So we could not exist in that state. So God must exist but I suppose the argument could be what exactly is God? I think we can't really get our heads around that one. So we have many religions and squabble about what is the truth like little children fighting over toys.

Brother karl i enjoy reading ur inputs

Modern science has disproved materialism. The Big Bang proves God's existance because everything was created out of nothing. Something can not come out of nothing.

Thats one of many power of allah azzawajal to create something out of nothing, i guess its understood when he wants to create something he says be and it becomes

Most people tend to blindly believe scientists only because they are able to utter some unpronounceable words.

lol, yeah may be and we shoudnt trust science completely as it take a complete U turn sometimes

you I guess believe blindly all things Muslim?

No we dont and when a person worship allah azzawajal can never be blind

 

[OurIslamic]

I ordinarily don’t do this. Through gradual tapering I’ve more or less stopped responding to atheists altogether, at least in forums or other places where there’s an immediate and direct back-and-forth. (This is why I may well never write another “Atheistic Chestnuts Refuted” article, for instance.) There are two reasons. First, because most of the atheists you’ll talk to respond to your arguments with nothing more than talk that is little different from the insults of an elementary schooler, and their behavior otherwise is no less immature or appalling. They even use directly childish idioms and reference points, each more puerile and needlessly obnoxious than the last. (For instance, take their cliché analogies to God: Santa Claus, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, invisible pink unicorns...stop and think for a minute how odd it is to hear this coming from the mouths of grown-ups.) Some of them try to rationalize away their constantly insulting way of speaking by saying that humor helps to open the mind or that anyone who believes the “silly” things we do deserves to be mocked ruthlessly (apparently their sense of justice is no more advanced beyond the fifth grade than their sense of humor); others make no apologies but still get just as defensive anyway when you label their horrible behavior for what it is. I’m not saying that there aren’t civil atheists out there: probably there’s a lot of them, and years ago I was close friends with one. But the more vocal ones almost always seem to be the ones who mock and deride instead of reason: this trait reaches far beyond the ubiquitous forum trolls who exist among people of every stripe and goes all the way into many if not most of their most esteemed, “professional” scholars.

The second reason is that you can’t win with these sorts anyway since they’re constantly shifting their ground or fortifying themselves with catch-22’s. The modern atheistic intellectual zeitgeist is little more than a mass of self-contradictory double standards which leave no conceivable means for even a theoretical possibility to slip in from any quarter of anything making the holders of these standards change their minds. If one or two extraordinary events happen then the skeptics say that of course that doesn’t indicate anything because it’s obviously a fluke instead of a sign or divine intervention because after all, it’s not like such unlikely things happen all the time; if they do end up happening all the time then these people say that of course it doesn’t mean anything because it’s obviously just the statistical effect called clustering: an epidemic of extraordinary things has to happen to someone eventually. A lot of these skeptics walk around saying, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” yet if they do see something themselves they pass it off as a hallucination or some other sort of phantasm or illusion. They complain (rightly, perhaps) of atheists always being depicted, in fiction and even in real life, as being merely prejudiced by some emotional or psychological impetus like a personal trauma or something, but at the same time they go around talking about religious faith like it is automatically and inherently a purely emotional or psychological phenomenon, or even a mental illness. Some of these atheists (many of them the same people who on other occasions demand miracles as proof) claim that if something were to break the laws of physics then that would just necessitate a redefinition of those laws—again, leaving no room for any persuasion that there was divine intervention. Something in reality that doesn’t fit your worldview? Just patch it up by redefining a word.

Most egregiously of all, they criticize creationist “science” (again, rightly) of bringing the subject of the supernatural into science when by definition science is the study of the natural world only and therefore it’s like mixing oil and water, but then many of these same people also say that they disbelieve in God because there is no scientific evidence for Him. It’s no use pointing out to them that if scientific proof of the supernatural is impossible then so is scientific disproof of the supernatural, or that it is unreasonable and irrational in the first place to say that you disbelieve in God, a supernatural Being and therefore something that wouldn’t and couldn’t yield scientific evidence of His existence even if He did exist, because there is no scientific evidence for His existence. Oh, they’ll get the self-refuting and mind-closing discrepancy involved but somehow they still won’t get what’s wrong with holding to it. Do you see my predicament now? How are you to argue with a man who insists that something can’t be in the next room behind a locked door because his methods of studying this room have disclosed no reason to think that the object is here in it, even though he very well knows this is not where the object could possibly be if it exists, and he doesn’t care (or even takes pride) in how beside the point his reasoning is? And that’s not even close to the worst thing you have to deal with when trying to reason with these folks. It’s difficult and seemingly pointless to go on—in person, at any rate.

Every now and then, though, I come across a piece of anti-theism propaganda that is so very asinine, unoriginal, and nigh unreadable behind the words FALLACY being written all over it a thousand times in giant bold letters—and yet so likely to be talked about endlessly--that I know a refutation seems necessary and even with my ordinary distaste for such things I can hardly resist anyway. Such a piece is Stephen Hawking’s recent cant about God having no role in the universe. This is one of those articles that is so drenched in illogic that it seems necessary to go through it bit by bit:



I refer you to what I said above. Science, the study of nature, could no more prove anything about supernature one way or the other than linguistics could prove a mathematical formula. I suppose the idea is that nauseatingly old “God of the Gaps” nonsense, which posits that the real purpose of theism is to explain things that science has not “yet” explained. I’ve always had two serious problems with this theory. First, there’s the absurd literalism and historical snobbery involved with the implications and typical explanations or supports of the idea. Second, science has, in the end, not explained diddly squat as a replacement for how nature works as opposed to divine agencies or whatever. All science has done is put the words "the forces of nature" in as a placeholder and pretend that it already is what it is a placeholder for, and for that matter that these words even have a definition in the first place—or at least one that’s specific, coherent, articulate, and meaningful enough to have any practical value whatsoever so that it really makes any difference whether the definition is there or not. The concept of “the forces of nature” is a non-explanation—indeed, it’s really a non-concept. Descriptions are not the same thing as explanations. Saying the word “force” does not supply any new information. It doesn’t even communicate anything. Science can describe, to some degree, what gravity or electromagnetism does, but not what it is, or what causes it. The laws of the universe are just patterns of consistent behavior for which science has no actual explanation whatsoever, just semantics masquerading as explanations. These people notice a common type of occurrence, affix a label to it, and then say, “There, now the occurrence is explained.” Well, maybe they don’t go so far as to put it directly into words like that: one wouldn’t want to openly reveal the malarkey for what it is and force oneself to face the reality of one’s ignorance and, worse, one’s denial.

Not to mention that even if a fact does render something redundant, that is not the same as rendering it untrue. Or that these “forces of nature” themselves form an arabesque of pattern and organization to begin with which in every other instance is an evident mark of design. We are a colony of microscopic creatures living in one isolated corner of a vast Persian rug, and once we’ve seen enough of our corner to notice some patterns in the rug which form the basis and structure that our little “world” stands on, a few of us come up with names for these patterns, pretend the names are themselves existential and causal accounts, and then, most puzzlingly of all, use these names as evidence that we must not be on a woven thing of any sort. Because consistency is a sign of lack of design, apparently. At least when you give it a name which allows people to forget that you’re not talking about anything in the first place more specific and explanatory than things behaving consistently in certain ways. Such is “the forces of nature”.

But wait, if we read on then we see that Mr. Hawking isn’t saying that: no, it’s worse. He’s saying that not only was there no weaver, the rug wove itself:



Except that there must have been something to light the paper with, and something to have ignited it and set it to the paper. It seems ridiculous that I should actually have to explain that and why things can’t create themselves, let alone out of nothing, but all right. For one thing, something has to exist before it can perform any action or function such as creation. And if it already exists to begin with, that means it’s already been created, and furthermore...oh, enough of this. Like I said, it shouldn’t bear explaining. (Additionally, even if it were not necessary to invoke God, that would not mean that He’s not there. “Necessary” and “real” are two very different concepts, and thus to say that an absence of necessity indicates an absence of reality is to speak in non-sequiturs.)



The “mind of God” statement is open to various possible interpretations. Indeed, many people have suspected Hawking of being a flat-out atheist all along, who didn’t want to admit to it because it would mean a drop in book sales or reputation. He has been maybe a little vague and evasive on the subject, and I do seem to remember reading at infidels.org or somewhere a few years back, in some article about how more atheistic celebrities should proudly proclaim their atheism rather than keep it a secret, that...I can’t remember the author’s name for the life of me, but whoever it was put months of “tremendous pressure” (i.e. obnoxious poking, prying and pestering instead of letting the poor man have his right to privacy) on Hawking until finally his secretary said, “When Mr. Hawking says ‘God’ he is referring to the forces of nature.” I don’t know if that’s true or not—it was only secondhand information from a secretary who may have just been trying to shut that badgering fellow up—but in any case, whatever Hawking believed Bates should not just declare a flip-flop in Hawking’s position on theism when his previous position was not at all clear and he himself has not said anything about changing his mind.



“Just to please us”?! I’ll be generous and assume that was a silly little careless poor choice of words. As for the rest, it’s all that same endlessly repeated line about how modern knowledge of science somehow means less evidence of teleology because the individual (and usually, mostly abandoned per se) straw man argument is treated or implied as standing for all teleological thought. Usually this is done by saying that the theory of evolution itself has disproven the teleological position; now Hawking is speaking as though the likelihood of life on other planets has, and in mere reference to the ancient words of Isaac Newton. This makes Hawking no better than the creationists who attack selected, oversimplified statements written by Darwin himself as if that could refute the entire theory of evolution. I have already discussed above why the “forces of nature” are more likely to be signs of design than of undesign, and I have discussed it further, with refutations of the inevitable counter-arguments, in the other thread where I gave the excerpt from my own book in progress. If—pardon me, when—I must explain it all over again, it should be in another thread still, because to go into it here would be prolix and slightly off topic.



If that doesn’t make you wonder why even the most intelligent nontheists in the world cannot formulate intelligent arguments, I don’t know what will. Apparently Hawking is one of those nontheists who automatically equate belief in God with belief that God made the world only to make humans, or mainly to make humans. Another straw man, though not at all of an uncommon stripe: nontheistic literature is replete with attacks on theism itself by way of attacking individual, select beliefs of certain groups of theists. Lots of theists do not believe that God made the world just to make mankind: indeed, the notion is explicitly denied in the Koran, which was written in the Dark Ages: “The creation of the heavens and the earth is certainly greater than the creation of humans, though most humans don’t know it.” (Surah 40, verse 57) This is one of the dangers of ignorance and stereotype: they strike even the smartest people, making them think such manifest malarkey as that “X existing in the first place=X having certain motives” is a necessary truth that is so obvious as not even to be considered. Heck, God’s role as creator and designer doesn’t even indicate that any viewpoint about His motives at all, religious or unorthodox, is necessarily correct.

Second of all, what makes other worlds redundant? The Koran, again, stated that there are many earths (surah 65, verse 12). Even if we are alone out there, the vast size of the universe beyond us—which we know we can only barely begin to detect, the detectable parts alone being unimaginably cyclopean—is anything but redundant: it just goes to show how us how great and inconceivable its Creator would be. There is nothing redundant about a master who needs nothing yet who still creates people out of the kindness of His heart coming up with a few more servants: if anything, it stands to reason. And what the heck could the worlds being out of reach of each other (if they even are, for a more technologically advanced and long-lived species than our own) have to do with it?? There may be another colony of microscopic organisms living farther away from us here on this great Persian rug than we can ever hope to reach, but that doesn’t change the fact of the arabesque in the rug itself. And besides, it’s not like the existence of intelligent life on other planets is even proven in the least yet, though Hawking seems to be taking the matter purely for granted.



Okay, stop right there. Dawkins may be high-profile in the literal sense of being famous, but only in that sense. The implication here seems to be that he is a respected member of the intellectual community and yet I don’t even know of very many atheists who take him seriously. I think very little of him myself.



I spoke too soon. It looks like they did go ahead and tow the “evolution automatically refutes a teleological view of the universe” line after all in addition to the rest. I really should have seen this coming.



He was doing so well until that final sentence. But because he messed up there and said that “faith” line, he has allowed the psyches of thousands of atheists reading his words to focus on that one thing and overlook the common sense of the rest. A week after reading the quote, it will be the only thing they remember him saying.

Stephen Hawking has given many signs lately that in the best case scenario what brilliance he may have once genuinely had is slipping, and in the worst case scenario he is losing his capacity for original and rational thought, or isn’t bothering to use said capacity. One of his other most recent articles is just one long cliché about how aliens probably exist and will probably be hostile toward us and must be of vastly superior intelligence and so on. Barring all the other errors involved, you’d at least think that he of all people would understand that the only thing necessary for a race to develop interstellar travel is not superhuman intelligence but only intelligence that’s at minimum approximately human, given that the human brain has not grown definitely and noticeably more intelligent in the few thousand years we’ve been really developing our technology, and obviously still will not have if in a few more thousand years we’ve taken it to new levels like interstellar travel ourselves. It just takes a mind like our own and a lot of dedicated time and practice, not an inherently greater intellect. Perhaps it is dedicated time and practice that Mr. Hawking has fallen out of, because for the reasons I have given (and I’m really only scratching the surface) he hasn’t given any more sign of applying mental effort to the subject of theism either. As Stephen King wrote in On Writing, no one can be as intellectually lazy as a really smart person. Nevertheless, Hawking’s words are good for one thing: they go to show that even the most intelligent nontheists in the world can’t come up with any argumentation that’s even remotely new, logical, or even interesting.

I like you.

By the way, I'm pretty sure this is just a ploy to sell more books.

 

[Argamemnon]

Why single out scientist here, we are all influenced by personal views and ideologies and Muslims or anyone else is not exempt

Nobody was singling out scientists. The problem is that most people seem to think that scientists are always right (and righteous), which can't be further from the truth.

 

[Argamemnon]

And because they're trained professionals and therefore anyone who disputes ANYTHING they say is therefore either an ignoramus or a know-it-all. You see this in all walks of life, including if not especially in Islam, wherein anyone who questions a scholar is treated like they're at least as much a heretic as if they had questioned one of the prophets of Allah. Apparently anyone who has degree in something (or the equivalent) is an infallible deity among men. Whereas in reality every branch of academia is taught on the (frequently false or fallacious) premises of particular biases common to the profession and therefore treated as a natural part of it. Think about it: how often have you ever seen a textbook in your life that wasn't biased or slanting about something? Or an intellectual profession where the general philosophy behind it all in the modern zeitgeist is not taught as being beyond reproach? So it is with scientists. They are taught what is perfectly reasonable yet what also must not be mistaken for an automatic way of reaching truth, that they must be secular in their work. And therefore it proves nothing that something starting with secular premises comes to a secular conclusion. Indeed, it is inevitable.

Other people, among the nontheistic and the nonreligious, automatically believe scientists because they don't think and therefore automatically presume science to be the natural, default, automatic, unavoidable replacement of religion. Just because everyone else of the sort they see does and, once again not thinking, they presume that it's therefore a package deal. I even saw someone or other (another guy at infidels.org whose name I don't remember through the mists of time--I'm sure you could do a search there if you had to) say that he would define atheism not as the disbelief in God but as the belief in science as the final word.

Well said brother, I agree.

 

[Hugo]

And because they're trained professionals and therefore anyone who disputes ANYTHING they say is therefore either an ignoramus or a know-it-all. You see this in all walks of life, including if not especially in Islam, wherein anyone who questions a scholar is treated like they're at least as much a heretic as if they had questioned one of the prophets of Allah. Apparently anyone who has degree in something (or the equivalent) is an infallible deity among men. Whereas in reality every branch of academia is taught on the (frequently false or fallacious) premises of particular biases common to the profession and therefore treated as a natural part of it. Think about it: how often have you ever seen a textbook in your life that wasn't biased or slanting about something? Or an intellectual profession where the general philosophy behind it all in the modern zeitgeist is not taught as being beyond reproach? So it is with scientists. They are taught what is perfectly reasonable yet what also must not be mistaken for an automatic way of reaching truth, that they must be secular in their work. And therefore it proves nothing that something starting with secular premises comes to a secular conclusion. Indeed, it is inevitable.

Other people, among the nontheistic and the nonreligious, automatically believe scientists because they don't think and therefore automatically presume science to be the natural, default, automatic, unavoidable replacement of religion. Just because everyone else of the sort they see does and, once again not thinking, they presume that it's therefore a package deal. I even saw someone or other (another guy at infidels.org whose name I don't remember through the mists of time--I'm sure you could do a search there if you had to) say that he would define atheism not as the disbelief in God but as the belief in science as the final word.

Do you have any biases?

 

[IAmZamzam]

Do you have any biases?

Everyone has biases, for better or worse. Mine, at least, are (so far as I know) never the result of mindlessly adhering to a general atmosphere of thought or unquestioningly accepted general philosophies around something. And if it ever is, I hope myself or someone else can spot it so that I can thoroughly re-examine the bias.

 

[FS123]

Hugo you are a Christian? You sound like agnostic or atheist.

 

[IAmZamzam]

Hugo you are a Christian? You sound like agnostic or atheist.

As I said above. I suppose I believe him if he says he’s a Christian (he doesn’t seem the sort who would hide his nontheism if he had any in the first place), but I’m willing to bet that he, like many theists who talk like nontheists and even seem to take their side, is one of those “no contest” theists, as I call them. People who do not deny that human knowledge and reason is against theism yet still believe in it all the same because they buy into the ignorant stereotype that faith is some sort of undefinable, nebulous, emotional/intuitive thing and must be kept separate from reason and academia at all times and in all capacity.

 

[Hugo]

Hugo you are a Christian? You sound like agnostic or atheist.

Christian, but if one is going to discuss faith one has to see the other persons position or argument - you cannot just assume or worse know that you are right can you?

 

[جوري]

ugh.. wasn't this guy banned?
this forum is much too lenient- if he comes back then surely Islamirama and mad-scientist should be allowed to come back as well.

Whatever the case I suggest members not reply but report him at the first sign of venom, which should be rather soon as I know he can't help himself!

 

[Hugo]

ugh.. wasn't this guy banned? this forum is much too lenient- if he comes back then surely Islamirama and mad-scientist should be allowed to come back as well. Whatever the case I suggest members not reply but report him at the first sign of venom, which should be rather soon as I know he can't help himself!

I wonder if you have ever read these words by John Bury in his book "A history of the freedom of thought" (easy to get as a free ebook) or if Islam totally disavows them ?

There is a peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the worse for being common.

There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation.

The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it: for, being cognizant of all that can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his position against all gainsayers knowing that he has sought for objections and difficulties instead of avoiding them, and has shut out no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter—he has a right to think his judgement better than that of any person, or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar process. To think that some particular principle or doctrine should be forbidden to be questioned because it is so certain, that is, because they are certain that it is certain.

It is the undertaking to decide that question for others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on the contrary side. In so doing, he prevents the opinion from being heard in its defence, he assumes infallibility. No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.

Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think. There have been, and may again be, great individual thinkers, in a general atmosphere of mental slavery. But there never has been, nor ever will be, in that atmosphere, an intellectually active people.

Where there is a tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed; where the discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy humanity is considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high scale of mental activity which has made some periods of history so remarkable. However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.

There is a class of persons (happily not quite so numerous as formerly) who think it enough if a person assents undoubtingly to what they think true, though he has no knowledge whatever of the grounds of the opinion, and could not make a tenable defence of it against the most superficial objections. Such persons, if they can once get their creed taught from authority, naturally think that no good, and some harm, comes of its being allowed to be questioned.

 

[جوري]

I wonder if you have ever read these words by John Bury in his book "A history of the freedom of thought" (easy to get as a free ebook) or if Islam totally disavows them ?

I do wonder if you read any book yourself past the title and the parts of interest!

There is a peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

I don't think any members here aside from your ilk find anything enlightening or of substance in what you spew, further compounded by your total lack of interest to the writing of anyone aside from your own person. Your opinion is seldom right, and when corrected, you are apt at either deflecting the topic, so that folks wouldn't be on to the ignorance covered by bombast. But for the most part you have no interest in being of correct opinion all together, as you often recoup by re-presenting points that have already been addressed. You stifle others, you tire them and then bore them with irrelevant tirade!


Do us all a favor and enroll yourself in some institution where needless incoherent logorrhea is better appreciated by individuals who seem to collectively talk at the same time with no interest in exchange with others. Not only will you feel king for your stay but you might also purge your soul from all that declamatory talk that seems to have you almost burst at the seams if not let out..

Thank you for giving us yet another reason to report you..

try to enjoy your brief stay with us without getting so painfully crazed ..

all the best

 

[IAmZamzam]

vale's lily: take a chill pill.

Hugo: All that sounds nice and fancy, but what it really amounts to is a euphemistic admission of deliberately wasting our time by playing devil's advocate. If you're so concerned for our open-mindedness then by all means "enlighten" us sincerely from your own true viewpoint. It's not like we had any shortage of dissenting parties in this thread already. We didn't need a poseur dissenter.