Kaz jaan, in two successive paragraphs you are more or less in contradiction. In the first you are suggesting that it is not of supreme importance that another person that you happen to respect his opinions in certain matter happens to believe in something, and that you must have your own reasons. And you are absolutely correct. In your second paragraph you are saying that you do not believe something because people who have believed in it have done harm. Instead you should have your own reasons. In one case you are stating that it is not right to pass judgment on the truth of something primarily based on the opinion and behavior of another human being, in another you are saying your reason you do not believe something is the behavior of other humans. Using humans in this way as a judgment of truth is an absolutely wrong choice. It can instead only be a prompt, at best, a cause for a pause; that is all.
Lastly, almost all people do have brains and capacity to reason but all humans, including you and me have a far, far greater capacity to lie to their own selves by covering the truth from their own immediate awareness. It is much easier to see this in others, and you have spotted it, but don't think even for a minute that you do not do this with your self, and often. The hope is that you do it less often and continue to improve. This by the way is the accurate meaning of kofr what is translated as disbelief, an inaccurate translation because there is no equivalent word for it in English or Persian. It means knowing deep, deep down about a truth of a matter but covering it from one's own immediate awareness. Isn't that the dominant mode on this board for example?
No, I think you've misunderstood what I've said mate.
It does matter to me what the people I respect think, that's not really brought up in my reply at all. My point is if both you and I believe something, that is fine. But if we get to the same point in different ways then I will treat our journey differently. A scientist may make a prediction in the weather and some other person may make the same correct prediction through some sort of witch-craft. The fact that they achieved the correct result is important only insofar that the procedure to getting that result is an intelligible one.
My second paragraph is not talking about why I don't believe in it. My point is a retort to those saying that religion is not harmful, even if it cannot prove what it preaches. To which I explained that the mere deviations in interpretation can cause travesties and these happen frequently; and in many cases you can't say that the people who interpreted religious texts in another way did it wrongly for the source of the information (i.e. god) is silent and unreachable for clarification.
For your last point; well I did say all people kid themselves
. But, the assumption that people "deep down" know things to be right or wrong or truthful or false is a dangerous one. That's why I move towards science which does not care about what we believe, but rather what we can prove. And the model is stringent enough, also science has evolved enough, to keep people from abusing it in such elementary ways as they do in religion.
Yes, for the most part people hold political dogmas, you are right. And science in popular culture is essentially a marketing tool. If you want your dogma to sound good you call it scientific or science. Things like social sciences are not sciences, maybe a few small pieces here and there. And much of physical science is also dogma, including the majority of published work. Still this is not what I meant. What I meant was much simpler than that. Your 6 day argument in this very thread is a dogma and it is very similar to the dogmas that religious people hold. You are doing much the same as the fault you find with religion and religious people.
For example, you started by saying that days referred to in the Quran must mean earthly days. When you were at length refuted, your argument was that it does not matter any way because, it must be a copy of earlier religious text that do in fact seem to straightforwardly mean earthly days. Not so. It matters a lot. It means that part of the hypothesis you put forth was refuted and thus your hypothesis is weakened. You were not aware that not just in Arabic the word straight forwardly means period or eons in addition to days, but that in fact in the text itself term is used to refer to varying periods of time. You have to now come up with a new argument that you did not initially present to stick with the same hypothesis. This immediately weakens your hypothesis and you should have acknowledged and revised the strength of your hypothesis, scientifically speaking.
But you are incorrect. I knew very well that the muslims argue that ayyam means long periods of time. I even said so before Thinkpad - who brought it up - replied.
The reality is, if we look objectively, when we define a word or a word within a context, we look at it's use in similar context. For example, in law, when courts wish to determine the precise or accurate meaning or intended use of a word, they look at it's trade usage as well as how it may be defined in dictionaries or wherever else it was defined.
We know ayyam has several meanings: days, long periods of time, or eon. Each one of these is a wholly different period in length. So let's look at the context; the creation of the world. It is a story that was borrowed from the other abrahamic texts. In those texts, they used the meaning of ayyam in terms of days. So on what evidence should we take it that ayyam is meant to mean eons or an uncertain amount of time? AFAIK there is none and no one here has named any. Before science's discovery of how old the earth is and how long it took to form; there would have been no need for such revisionism. So now people are believing that it means eons; as that's the only way the story could still be relevant.
So, objectively, looking at the story and how it was told and the same usage of "days" across the board, I am not going to buy that it means eons to placate muslims.
Furthermore, that new argument is weak and fails to consider other possibilities. On top of that, there is already existing evidence that hugely weakens your hypothesis but you have chosen to ignore it. That is, if in fact the Quran is a copy of the earlier text, and if in fact it meant day as in earthly days as your hypothesis goes, then it should be expected that the same mistakes from the Bible that seems to identify days as earthly days would carry through. It doesn't. And it is not just that, you continue to argue that James Usher concluded that the world is 4,000 years. You fail to know how and if you did it would weaken your hypothesis even further. The way Usher did it, the same as the way Isaac Newton did it, is that he primarily used the two accounts in the Bible of the lineage and age of Jewish prophets all the way to Adam that is then linked to the beginning of the Universe. There is no such account in the Quran. Furthermore, the opposite is stated in the Quran. That the world had existed for ages and ages before man appeared. Here is the verse:
I don't understand your argment here. "then it should be expected that the same mistakes from the Bible that seems to identify days as earthly days would carry through." what does that mean? Carry through with what?
I know the Quran is not in exact agreement with the Bible; there are differences. That's not my point. My point is, if we are arguing that the Bible meant days, where the Quran means eons, where is that explanation given as to why they changed it and why it is different in that part?
What Ussher did was create a chronology based on the life times of all descendants of man - to which the Quran AFAIK doesn't disagree with (the same ancestors seem to be named. Based on those lifetimes, he came with the year 4004BC.
76:1 Is it not a fact that there was ages when man was nothing to even be mentioned.
Elsewhere, translated as: Qur'an 76:1 "There came over man a period of time when he was a thing not worth mentioning."
What does that mean and how does it back your assertion?
In the Bible there existed such a period too. Man was created on the 6th day.
Scientifically you can at best state, why are 6 eons specified and is it or is it not in agreement with existing observation.
There is some evidence. First, the verses straightforwardly indicate that our universe had a beginning. This is only recently in agreement with scientific observation. Prior to George Lemaitre based on Einstein's the common theory was that the Universe had always existed. In fact Lemaitre and later Einstein only made a hypothesis that there was a bing bang. Observations to confirm only came much later. Further, it was fiercely opposed to in particular by atheist scientist, not by accident. It is thus in fact in agreement with observation. Second in the Quran while it specifies that the Universe was created in 6 eons it specifies that the earth was created in 2 eons. Here is the verse:
41:9 Say, "You disbelieve in the One who created the earth in two days, and you set up idols to rank with Him, though He is Lord of the universe."
Is this in agreement or disagreement with observations to date? It is in excellent agreement. Best evidence to date points to the age of the earth to be 4.54 billion years plus or minus 1%. 4.54*6/2=13.62. Best evidence to date puts the age of the Universe between 13.5 to 14.0. Then straightforwardly from the verses of the Quran it should be expected that the age of the Universe.
Have you seen the movie 23 with Jim Carrey? You should, it deals with trying to find patterns in numbers...that don't actually prove anything.
Science can ask even more than merely why are there 6 eons. Another important question would be: how long is each eon? You are assuming they are all the same length - is there reason for such an assumption? An eon is not a defined amount of time which makes your formula flawed from the get-go.
We have more than 6 planets in our solar system alone. If it took god to 2 days to create Earth, how long did it take for him to create the others...not to mention that we inhabit hardly the biggest one. IIRC, the big bang theory assumes the whole universe was created at once.
In fact, the very
surah you cite mentions that the earth is created in 8 days. I found this interesting retort Googling:
http://www.answering-islam.org/Responses/Shabir-Ally/questions.htm.
It is the One god. There is all the difference in the world. If you cannot figure this one out, then I am absolutely certain that you you are beyond lost.
No, there is no difference. The Phoenix is not a god by the way. But even if it were, even if there were many...the same point holds. You cannot prove their existence either way.
Therefore you cannot begin to equate gravity and it's verifiable existence with that of deities.
It has zero difference to me. It most certainly has a large difference to most, in particular in the west "intellectuals" or religious, little difference between the two, of the west. As shown above for example. You must make a hypothesis, then draw consequences from it, then put it to the test. And there is much, much more. The simplest fact is that if the Quran or any other book is from God, then the laws of reality dictate that it must declare about itself to be from God and infallible. It does. And immediately at the beginning. And no other book that I know of does this. This fact alone is signicant but of course insufficient support for it to be from God. The reason it is significant support is that, to this day, even the absolute majority of scientist do not understand the significance of making tests after the hypothesis is put forward and confuse observations leading to the hypothesis with the tests made after it has been put forth.
So, essentially, the fact that both science and the quran both make a claim in the beginning makes them have zero difference? I do not follow the rationality in even making that parallel. It's not even a very big coincidence, nor should it matter. In science, it does matter and there is a reason why hypothesis are made. Why so for the Quran? Even if it were to be mentioned at the end, the same occurs: it makes claims it does not prove. Thanks for your explanation, now I can disagree with you knowing there isn't something I am missing here.
