what makes you so sure that "your" religion is right?

[Eeman]

although i was born a muslim, religion was never a part of my life, we were not sent to sunday school to learn the Qur'an or any of the privilges that MashaAllah young muslim kids have nowadays.
so growing up was really hard for me i was a confused kid about life why we are here and whats our purpose, we were taught that there was one God and that was Allah swt, we were taught to fear Him and yet love Him and to do bad to no one and be a good person.
when i was a kid atthe age of 10 i would say i went out swimming to the swimming pool, coming out of the swimming pool i noticed that there was a new islamic shop opened right across the road, i've always loved books and reading so naturally i walked to the shop and entered. the shop was empty and there was a young african man sitting at the end where the till was, as he saw me he asked if i needed help, feeling shy and embarrassed knowing that i had no money to buy any books since i had spent all my pocket money on food i sad "ummm i'm just looking around" he asked me if i was looking for anything in specific, and feeling myself going red in the cheeks out of embarrassment that i didnt even know what kind of a book i would find here since its an islamic bookshop i automatically remembered the qur'an, so i said im looking for a qur'an.

He gestured for me to come nearer to him and picked up a book from a shelf behind him,
he said take this home, and showed me how you read from right to left and write his number and name on the front page. Feeling even more embarrassed now i asked him how much is it, and he said my child it's a gift fom Allah swt, if u need any help please call me.
i took the book and feeling confused said thank you and walked out, thinking how can someone just give you a book away like that???

his name was brother umar, I pray that Allah swt bestows Jannah upon him as his eternal abode InshaAllah.

i got home and showed the qur'an to my mum, she said that i was not paak (clean) to hold it or read it so gave me a bath.

i went into my room and sat down opened it and started to read, all i felt was the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, shivers down my spine and i started to burst out crying.

after then it freaked me out so much that i never turned to it again.

so i carried on with life and wronged myself many times over and over and over again, i was more lost and more confused, i never understood why everything happened to me, i started to believe that i was cursed and just a bad omen.

wen i thought life could possibly not get any worse then it would do just that get worse than it was. i was always waiting to hit rock bottom to spring up again but that bottom kept getting deeper and deeper, it came to a point where i lost motivation to live or to even breath, the only way out and exit to me was ways f ending the suffering and taking the exit card out of this world but there was always this one thing just this one thing that wouldnt allow me to do that.

then many years ago i got myself into a situation where i thought i was gonna mentally lose all sense i was in bed crying so much that it phsyically hurt, i sat up in bed and looked at my shelf and i saw the book that had been sitting there for many years untouched, and i remembered God.

i got up did my ablution and got on the prayer mat not knowing how many rakahs you pray orin what order you do it just knew that you praise Him and talk to Him and i'll tell you one thing to this day i have never have prayed like that it was so powerful and so gripping i cannot describe in words. And here I am today SubhanAllah in more peace than i have ever been. Alhumdulillahi rabbil Alamin!

so what makes me sure that my religion is right?
Cos if it was not for the mercy of Allah swt I would not be alive today.

 

[glo]

so what makes me sure that my religion is right?
Cos if it was not for the mercy of Allah swt I would not be alive today.

Amen to that, sister

But isn't that a statement people from other religions would make too (although they may replace the name of Allah with a different title)?

Personally, I am very clear in my beliefs that without God I

1. wouldn't exist in the first place, and
2. wouldn't have been guided on the path of Christianity

It makes me feel joyful, truly blessed and very humbled.

But with reagrds to this thread, it seems that the same thing which makes you convinced that your religions is right, makes me convinced that mine is ...

 

[Eeman]

Amen to that, sister

But isn't that a statement people from other religions would make too (although they may replace the name of Allah with a different title)?

Personally, I am very clear in my beliefs that without God I

1. wouldn't exist in the first place, and
2. wouldn't have been guided on the path of Christianity

It makes me feel joyful, truly blessed and very humbled.

But with reagrds to this thread, it seems that the same thing which makes you convinced that your religions is right, makes me convinced that mine is ...

salam

Dear sister of course they would,
and it is their religion and their belief.
that was why i know in my heart my religion is the right religion but i was not arguing anything about other religions being wrong.
without God no one would be in existance...
and i didnt mean it that way as in i would have never come into this world...
i was more as to refering to the fact that if it was not for Allah swt's mercy i woud have lost the battle with life and taken an exit card. i think you may have misunderstood me there.

 

[Eeman]

sister glo is that qoute about "to you your religion to me mine"from the bible?

 

[glo]

i was more as to refering to the fact that if it was not for Allah swt's mercy i woud have lost the battle with life and taken an exit card. i think you may have misunderstood me there.

I am glad that God's protective hand was on your life, sister. I trust and pray that he has great things planned for you.

sister glo is that qoute about "to you your religion to me mine"from the bible?

No, It's from the Qu'ran.

 

[Eeman]

I am glad that God's protective hand was on your life, sister. I trust and pray that he has great things planned for you.


No, It's from the Qu'ran.

Thank you sister and i pray that InshaAllah Allah swt bestows all the joys and happiness upon you in this world and in the hereafter.

regarding the qoute i thought so,
its surah al kafiroon.

lakum deenikum waliya deen.
to you be your religion and to me mine.

 

[glo]

Do you like my new signature, Eeman?

Is it right like that??

 

[Eeman]

Do you like my new signature, Eeman?

Is it right like that??

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!!!
:thumbs_up

 

[Eeman]

yes but the deen is pronounced as deen the "i" is silent and it means religion.

 

[------]

^^ Why should u get a reward for being a cruel person all your life. Do you want someone who hurt u or the people u care for, around u? Especially if they never regret it? Good grief, makes me wonder...

:salamext:

Ind33d!!!

 

[Abdul Fattah]

Hi tornado

Belief by definition is something you accept as true without proof. Yes the claims might be huge, I agree, but so are the consequences as well as the risk! Now don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind of person that would argue that pascal's wager is sufficient ground to start to believe. However pascals wager, if nothing else, should at least show you the flaw in this "I'll only believe what is proven" attitude, does it not?

You know pascal's wager if flawed. But it's claim with zero evidence.

Pascal's wager isn't flawed by itself, however it's often used in flawed circumstances.

A life that should be lived that's based on that zero evidence. If not lived, eternal punishment.

Yes, indeed. So your point being?

How come? I didn't realize paranoid behavior was limited to certain aspects of life? As far as I know it can affect decisions and viewpoints on every level. Care to clarify?

I meant that I am not paranoid about religion, just the truth.

So you're paranoid about everything then?

A lot of things are simply beyond the scope of provable, but that doesn't mean they are untrue.

Nor does it make it true.

I don't see the purpose of giving me that reply. I never claimed that everything which cannot be proven is true. So why did you point it out? I'm simply showing that your being narrow-minded when you're not willing to accept anything that cannot be proven. That doesn't mean you have to accept everything that cannot be proven. Just the things that make sense is sufficient.

It is flawed because it relies on the presumption that you are not free to believe what you want. Islam holds that you are free afterall to choose. So if Islam turns out right, your defense is will be based on false assumptions.

I am free to believe what I want but what can I do if I am truly unable to without any evidence.

Well you say that you are truly unable to believe, but I disagree. I say that you are very well able, but instead not willing! So it's not a questions of one's ability, but rather a question of one's preference! So if it turns out you will be judged; in that case I will have been right, and the reply you'll most likely get is that you have deluded yourself into thinking you were incapable while you were in fact very capable but simply not willing. (see further for the jigsaw example)

Well isn't it completely logical? Lets consider a comparison ...

Although that seems o.k. in classrooms, we are talking about infinite pleasure vs infinite pain as the result.

How so, why is it that in a different situation what is otherwise considered as "fair" suddenly becomes "unfair"? You'll have to motivate your arguments a bit more rather then just stating your opinions. How does a higher stake influence whether or not a treatment is fair? Treatments should be judged by their own merits, not by what's at stake. By your logic I could argue that when the stakes are small and insignificant enough, it's perfectly just to be unjust. That's of course ridiculous, injustice is always injustice regardless of how important or insignificant the stakes are, and justs is always just regardless the stakes. Perhaps you don't like things the way religion presents them; but personal preference has nothing to do with just! Even if you don't like it, that doesn't make it ok for you to call it unjust, when it's obviously just.

I don't agree with eternal torture. What Hitler did was absolutely evil and beyond disturbing. However, not even he deserves eternal hellfire.

Again, you're allowing your personal preference get the better of you. We are unable to judge other people. Take our example of Hitler for example. Most people would agree that many of his actions and decisions were bad. Thats' not what we disagree on. However most people would disagree, just how bad-good Hitler actually was. Take the nature-vs. nurture debate in psychology for example. Proponents of nurture-theory would say that his "evilness" is relative, and that his actions are more a consequence of his environment and the interbellum atmosphere, whereas proponents of nature-theory would tend towards the opinion that he was evil to the core, and that unlike many other evil people, he simply had the ability to indulge his evilness more than others due to the circumstances. All of these things obviously matter. It should be evident that neither of us is truly capable of understanding the gradation of evilness of other people. So how are we able to judge then whether or not eternity is an appropriate punishment? No I think that such a judgment of your part, is biased by your disbelief in the first place. For example, if you don't believe in free will, you will tend towards "nurture-school" instead of "nature-school" in psychology. Now again, the point I'm trying to make is not that you are necessarily wrong, everyone has his/her own paradigm, and it's impossible to weigh of one world-view against the other. What I am trying to say, is that you're being blind to just how influential your paradigm actually is in your judgment. You take a single concept of the religious paradigm, and try to fit it into your atheistic paradigm, only to conclude it's false. I would compare that to take one piece of a jigsaw puzzle, and trying to make it fit somewhere in another jigsaw puzzle. When you fail you say this is obviously not a piece of a puzzle, as it doesn't fit anywhere. Well, you're wrong. It's not a piece of your puzzle, but it's still a piece of "a" puzzle. The image on your puzzle (as well as mine or anyone else's for that matter) is biased! So by what authority is your view of the world better then your neighbor's? Because that's what it all boils down to.

But, I'm straying from the topic.
Think about how long eternity is. 100 years of pain causing is only 0.000000000000000000000(infinite 0's here) of the punishment you get to receive in hell

Your estimation of 0.0000... is not true. Infinity is not a number. Infinity is not a quantity. You can't divide or fraction it. So you cannot compare it with a finite quantity (like a 100 years) either. Infinity is a concept. You're mixing up concepts with quantities, that's like comparing apples with oranges. Any results you bring forth from such a comparison are nonsense.

dividing by infinity

 

[Nσσя'υℓ Jαииαн]

although i was born a muslim, religion was never a part of my life, we were not sent to sunday school to learn the Qur'an or any of the privilges that MashaAllah young muslim kids have nowadays.
so growing up was really hard for me i was a confused kid about life why we are here and whats our purpose, we were taught that there was one God and that was Allah swt, we were taught to fear Him and yet love Him and to do bad to no one and be a good person.
when i was a kid atthe age of 10 i would say i went out swimming to the swimming pool, coming out of the swimming pool i noticed that there was a new islamic shop opened right across the road, i've always loved books and reading so naturally i walked to the shop and entered. the shop was empty and there was a young african man sitting at the end where the till was, as he saw me he asked if i needed help, feeling shy and embarrassed knowing that i had no money to buy any books since i had spent all my pocket money on food i sad "ummm i'm just looking around" he asked me if i was looking for anything in specific, and feeling myself going red in the cheeks out of embarrassment that i didnt even know what kind of a book i would find here since its an islamic bookshop i automatically remembered the qur'an, so i said im looking for a qur'an.

He gestured for me to come nearer to him and picked up a book from a shelf behind him,
he said take this home, and showed me how you read from right to left and write his number and name on the front page. Feeling even more embarrassed now i asked him how much is it, and he said my child it's a gift fom Allah swt, if u need any help please call me.
i took the book and feeling confused said thank you and walked out, thinking how can someone just give you a book away like that???

his name was brother umar, I pray that Allah swt bestows Jannah upon him as his eternal abode InshaAllah.

i got home and showed the qur'an to my mum, she said that i was not paak (clean) to hold it or read it so gave me a bath.

i went into my room and sat down opened it and started to read, all i felt was the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, shivers down my spine and i started to burst out crying.

after then it freaked me out so much that i never turned to it again.

so i carried on with life and wronged myself many times over and over and over again, i was more lost and more confused, i never understood why everything happened to me, i started to believe that i was cursed and just a bad omen.

wen i thought life could possibly not get any worse then it would do just that get worse than it was. i was always waiting to hit rock bottom to spring up again but that bottom kept getting deeper and deeper, it came to a point where i lost motivation to live or to even breath, the only way out and exit to me was ways f ending the suffering and taking the exit card out of this world but there was always this one thing just this one thing that wouldnt allow me to do that.

then many years ago i got myself into a situation where i thought i was gonna mentally lose all sense i was in bed crying so much that it phsyically hurt, i sat up in bed and looked at my shelf and i saw the book that had been sitting there for many years untouched, and i remembered God.

i got up did my ablution and got on the prayer mat not knowing how many rakahs you pray orin what order you do it just knew that you praise Him and talk to Him and i'll tell you one thing to this day i have never have prayed like that it was so powerful and so gripping i cannot describe in words. And here I am today SubhanAllah in more peace than i have ever been. Alhumdulillahi rabbil Alamin!

so what makes me sure that my religion is right?
Cos if it was not for the mercy of Allah swt I would not be alive today.

SubhanAllah sis, that was very touching...:statisfie

Ameen to your du'a. May Allah Ta'ala bless the brother immensely and may Allah continue to shower you with his guidance InshaAllah, Ameen

 

[Eeman]

SubhanAllah sis, that was very touching...:statisfie

Ameen to your du'a. May Allah Ta'ala bless the brother immensely and may Allah continue to shower you with his guidance InshaAllah, Ameen

Thank you sister Light of Heaven, whenever I make dua i always include all my fellow brothers and sisters, I pray that Insha'Allah Allah swt bestows Jannah upon us as the final destination.

 

[Nσσя'υℓ Jαииαн]

^^InshaAllah, Ameen!

 

[Souljette]

Ameen to the dua

 

[SixTen]

Your estimation of 0.0000... is not true. Infinity is not a number. Infinity is not a quantity. You can't divide or fraction it. So you cannot compare it with a finite quantity (like a 100 years) either. Infinity is a concept. You're mixing up concepts with quantities, that's like comparing apples with oranges. Any results you bring forth from such a comparison are nonsense.

dividing by infinity

I think he was just trying to say, 100 years of punishment is so much, now just imagine that forever, in that, 100 years in comparison to eternal is nothing, yet 100 years is so much pain.

 

[Abdul Fattah]

I think he was just trying to say, 100 years of punishment is so much, now just imagine that forever, in that, 100 years in comparison to eternal is nothing, yet 100 years is so much pain.

I know exactly what he was trying to say. What I was trying to say though is that our concept of infinity is biased. And thus such arguments are flawed. For all we know "infinite time" means absence of progression truogh time rather then spread out over an infinite time. Ever thought of that? ^_^

 

[SixTen]

I know exactly what he was trying to say. What I was trying to say though is that our concept of infinity is biased. And thus such arguments are flawed. For all we know "infinite time" means absence of progression truogh time rather then spread out over an infinite time. Ever thought of that? ^_^

Actually, a better point would be that, (recall it from some awlaki lectures), hell is not infinite. It is stated as eternal (as it is a very very long time) but not infinite.

 

[Gator]

I never claimed that everything which cannot be proven is true. So why did you point it out? I'm simply showing that your being narrow-minded when you're not willing to accept anything that cannot be proven. That doesn't mean you have to accept everything that cannot be proven. Just the things that make sense is sufficient.

I think you answered your own question. He appears to be willing to accept things that appear reasonable to him, even with slightly dodgy evidence.

From reading Tornado's answers, he does not need proof, he's just looking reasonable evidence or basis of your explanation of how things work. Apparently your conception of a god is currently not sufficient.

For me, if you were to put forward a description of god that fit my perception of the world more reasonably than his atheism, I'd consider it more. Again, we're not talking proof, we're talking evidence and experience of the world on which to form a reasonable basis.

Hi tornado

Sorry about jumping in here and Tornado please correct me if I'm wrong on any point.

Thanks.

 

[Abdul Fattah]

Hi gator,
Intelligent comment. Remind me of this Jesuit priest I once saw an interview of, who said:
I've found in most of my atheistic colleagues (he was an astronomer) that they "don't believe" in a very specif god, a god that I myself don't believe in.