If there is no God

I suppose this the point for me in this thread. If, what Mohammad has to say was worth listening to, then he wouldn't have had to make up a story about an angel or a God to give his statements credibility. It also makes the ideas therein unchallengeable. The first part is the logical fallacy Appeal to Authority and the second part is a classical example of a Cult of Personality.

Anyway, I'm not sure if you are able to think about this question but: IF there is no GOD, THEN what does this say about Mohammad's claim to have heard an Angel?

M

PS: IMO these two aspects of Islam really place it in the trash bin of ideology. I also think this is the reason why Islamic nations have produced so little given the extremely long time they have been in a postilion do so. Islam reminds me of the Communist Manifesto and Communism. Sure, they put a person into space, but, relatively speaking - a complete failure of an ideology.
 
scifes said:
that is one of the reasons i love god the most..you see..if god wanted to make life harder on us..he could've made us choose from the two(i.e evil gods)..then life would've been reaaaally a challenge..you either do what is right and risk going to hell(not so good survival wise)..or do what's bad and go to heavan(not good at all ethics wise)..
i always wondered if life was like that..what would i've chosen??
i don't reach an answer..and so i thank god for making us live practicing what's right and gaining good things.....now THAT'S a life to live..

from my understanding of atheism is that it utterly fails survival wise..and when that fails..the individual doesn't have much reason to follow ethics any more...lool, it's like oli's (why bother?)..lool..(although i'm sure oli's a great man..he wouldn't do anything stupid..though he just acts so to annoy me..)
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-=-

The road to heaven is paved with bad intentions.
 
wise acre said:
Really? You think opening is logical....
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I already broke the structure down for you. Yes he has structured it as a logical argument. Get over it already.

Does that mean it is necessarily either sound or true? Of course not.

Are you convinced?
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That is not what you asked.

Personally I don't see that he has sufficient supporting material for his conclusions and his premises are not acceptable as given. Does that prevent it from being logical? Of course not. You can say all manner of nonsense logically. Go read Alice in Wonderland some time.

I suspect what you meant to ask was "Is the OP reasonable?" No, but no less than any religious claim.
 
swarm said:
I already broke the structure down for you. Yes he has structured it as a logical argument. Get over it already.

Does that mean it is necessarily either sound or true? Of course not.
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OK. Me, I wouldn't use 'logical' as an adjective for something that is invalid, unless the context somehow indicated that was what the person wanted to know. But now I see how you took the question.

Get over it already.
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Thank you for the spiritual advice, but I haven't as far as I know asked for it. You could show me that you have gotten over it by not responding.

That is not what you asked.
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Well, actually I did. I was using the more colloquial sense of logical, but now I understand how you took it.

Personally I don't see that he has sufficient supporting material for his conclusions and his premises are not acceptable as given. Does that prevent it from being logical? Of course not. You can say all manner of nonsense logically. Go read Alice in Wonderland some time.
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Oddly enough without your advice I have read that and its partner work.

I suspect what you meant to ask was "Is the OP reasonable?" No, but no less than any religious claim.
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yes, I understand. When I asked you if the OP was logical, you took this to mean 'Can it be translated into logical form?' and not whether it was sound or valid, as the context would likely indicate.

I didn't realize how technically my use of this word would be taken. My bad, as they say. I will try to fit in better with the strict use of philosophical terms here.

I do hope you can get over this sloppiness on my part. Just to reassure you, I am now over it. Thank you for your efforts and for acknowleding the OP is a mess, a mess not mitigated by the problems of other arguments, as we both know.
 
SAM said:
Most importantly, we can be reasonably sure that the Qur'an is a collection of utterances that he made in the belief that they had been revealed to him by God. The book may not preserve all the messages he claimed to have received, and he is not responsible for the arrangement in which we have them. They were collected after his death – how long after is controversial. But that he uttered all or most of them is difficult to doubt
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It's not that difficult to doubt, and many people do.

The odd thing is that so far scholarship has been very limited in the field - those engaged in actually researching the major circumstances, etc, (which is to say, those prepared to deny them) work in a fairly tense and uncooperative environment, often maintaining anonymity and lacking the standard advantages of collegiality and mutual aid.

We are not reasonably sure of much of anything about the Quran's origins. There seems to have been more than one language involved, for one thing.

And we have plenty of examples of the origins of a religion being very hard to trace even in the immediate generation after its founding. Religions invent their histories, and revise accordingly.
 
iceaura said:
We are not reasonably sure of much of anything about the Quran's origins. There seems to have been more than one language involved, for one thing.
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Exactly. It's a collection of stories from various Jeudo-Xian peoples in and about the area. Everyday tidbits surface with proto-Qur'an like sayings.

we can be reasonably sure that parts of the Qur'an are collections of utterances made by various people at various times in various languages.

Which is why no one knows the date it was made into a book. Nor who wrote which parts of it. Even if people sung it for 1 million year without ever ever making a mistake, as some of the really brainwashed like to think, it'd still have been made into a book - and no one knows who, how or when.
 
Michael said:
If there is no God ...

Buddha was still a philosopher.

But, Mohammad was then a liar.

And Paul was a liar (or more likely pure nuts) too.

Joseph Smith Jr. was also liar.

Ron Hubbard still might not be a liar (I mean Xenu is an Alien not one of the Gods)



Seems to be that there are no Gods.

I fail to see what's so hard about connecting the dots?
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If "ifs" and "buts" were candies and nuts, the world would be a better place.
 
takandjive said:
If "ifs" and "buts" were candies and nuts, the world would be a better place.
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hahaha... I like it :)

In a classic example of Appealing to Authority: Mohammad invented a God to give his words credibility as what he had to say lacked credibility of its own.

In a classic example of Philosophy: Buddha said what he had been thinking about and let the people listening decide whether his work were worth listening to or not.
 
Michael said:
hahaha... I like it :)

In a classic example of Appealing to Authority: Mohammad invented a God to give his words credibility as what he had to say lacked credibility of its own.

In a classic example of Philosophy: Buddha said what he had been thinking about and let the people listening decide whether his work were worth listening to or not.
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Its not clear what Mohammad was doing to prevent people "letting people listen and decide"
 
Think of it like this.

"People I need 10% of your money"

*no one pony's up*

"People Xenu will screw up your theta levels and you will feel sadness for this life on into eternity unless you give me 10% of you money"

*money starts flowing*
 
Michael said:
Think of it like this.

"People I need 10% of your money"

*no one pony's up*

"People Xenu will screw up your theta levels and you will feel sadness for this life on into eternity unless you give me 10% of you money"

*money starts flowing*
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People don't take threats seriously just like that.

There must be some good reason for people to take a threat seriously, or they are prone to superstition, or both.
 
Signal said:
People don't take threats seriously just like that.

There must be some good reason for people to take a threat seriously, or they are prone to superstition, or both.
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I'd say they are prone to superstition.

I mean, people truly worry about Xenu the Intergalactic Alien Overlord. They truly worry about their eternal Thetian. They pay BIG money and spend a lot of time trying to alleviate those fears. Fears of death really. Just as do Xians and Muslims.

If I raised you to think in English, you WILL think in English.

Try this. I will write a word in blue below. You try NOT to recognize it's meaning.



computer


It's impossible for you not to. You have been taught to think in English. Much in the same manner, some people have been taught to worry about Gods. They are "prone" to do so just as you were prone to know the meaning of computer. There is almost nothing you can do to NOT know the meaning of computer and they can not know how to not believe in Gods and worry about them.
 
Michael said:
I'd say they are prone to superstition.

I mean, people truly worry about Xenu the Intergalactic Alien Overlord. They truly worry about their eternal Thetian. They pay BIG money and spend a lot of time trying to alleviate those fears. Fears of death really. Just as do Xians and Muslims.

If I raised you to think in English, you WILL think in English.

Try this. I will write a word in blue below. You try NOT to recognize it's meaning.



computer


It's impossible for you not to. You have been taught to think in English. Much in the same manner, some people have been taught to worry about Gods. They are "prone" to do so just as you were prone to know the meaning of computer. There is almost nothing you can do to NOT know the meaning of computer and they can not know how to not believe in Gods and worry about them.
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So you are saying that "worrying about God" is a matter of social conditioning, and that without that conditioning, people would not "worry about God"?

This still doesn't explain how it all began. To use your example of Mohammad - by whom was he taught to "worry about God"?

Or are you saying that religious people are simply victims of a few deranged individuals?
 
Signal said:
So you are saying that "worrying about God" is a matter of social conditioning, and that without that conditioning, people would not "worry about God"?

This still doesn't explain how it all began. To use your example of Mohammad - by whom was he taught to "worry about God"?

Or are you saying that religious people are simply victims of a few deranged individuals?
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How did it begin? Good question.

It's hard to imagine what humanoid proto-Apes were thinking about as they evolved into us. But, we know they were social. When we look at the social contract Apes have with the alpha male in their group and compare this to the social contract people have with Kings, Pharaohs, Prophets, Emperors and Shoguns ... there's a distinct similarity.

Why do people believe in Gods and Goddesses - probably because they have this cause-and-effect evolved brain that demands it get an explanation. To do this it produces feelings of stress that will only be alleviated AFTER it gets an explanation. What's easier than "The Gods did it". By saying the Gods did such and such, early humans were able to continue doing what needed to be done and not waste unessessary time trying to figure out WHY a rock fell on Wilma. Now we're stuck with it.

I wonder, why do you suppose people believe in Xenu the Intergalactic Warlord? Do you think people's propensity to join such religions says that Xenu is real or says something more about human psychological needs?
 
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