If the purpose of life is to worship God, I would rather have not been born. (science, spirit)

[TKramar]

I work better at night. There are people who prefer it, actually. Their rhythms find it much more acceptable than working during the day.

[LongIslandEddie]

TKramar-

If a horse is lame, they generally shoot him.
I see no reason not to apply the same to a human.
We're just another animal.

The foolish logic that you are trying to apply, doesn't fly with me, and I strongly suggest that there will be others who join with me, in saying so.
If you have never come to understand the difference between man and beast, there really is no point in trying to reason with you. I'm gathering
a sense that you are being cutesy here, looking only to increase your ever-growing post count. I see that in this respect, you've forsaken quality
and gone for quantity of issuance. I mean, how do you qualify "lame", could you explain lameness by degree, telling me, at what point does a human
reach uselessness? And, as far as a horse versus a human, although we both have the gift of sense, could a horse even send a text message?
Talk about lame...

If the afterlife is much better, why would we want to continue this existence?
This existence is about being productive, particularly for your own benefit.
But this existence isn't particularly important either.

This existence is ALL that we've got! It seems as though you need to come to a better outlook on life, the gift from "above". Trust me, the afterlife
will come for each of us and in the realm or stream of time, we are here for but a moment but our instinct for survival will always restrain us from
"canceling our contract" with life. It's the old "bird in the hand" analogy, you know that you are alive and the hereafter is only what you believe it to be.
To say that "this existence isn't particularly important", is to have missed out on the whole point of life, also, it negates your observation about us being
productive in life, productivity is an essential ingredient of life, producing children and memories, sowing seed and reaping harvest. In line with the original
theme of this thread, we were never born to slave for God, we were gifted with a few things that would guide us through the relatively few years that we
had to "endure" life here on this planet. Give thanks for the gifts of conscience, reason, intelligence and emotion, those blessings from the cosmos, which
clearly define our place, in the order of life.

[ans57]

Conscience = spirit is how man differs from instinctive intellect of beasts. Without it man then would be lower than beasts...simply because, very seldom (if ever) do they kill or destroy without "reason."

Serial killers are a good example of man without a conscience...

For the believers...man and beast were created out of identical make-up which is ground/dust, whereas woman was perfected from the "living/breathing prototype..."

Peace to all men (love) from a consummate feminist...

[TKramar]

Man has serial killers...and you think it puts us HIGHER than animals?

[ans57]

Originally Posted by TKramar

Man has serial killers...and you think it puts us HIGHER than animals?

Please...reread my post with some thoughts and maybe (just maybe) you'll see the gist...?

[rifleman]

Originally Posted by Truth light

His [the Muslims'] life here on earth although short, is full of purpose and is totally meaningful within the complete framework of total submission [Islam].

rifleman: [Meaning: purposefully choosing to avoid reasoning outside of the unified response of the bowing and scrapping masses, or of exploring anything by stepping outside the self-imposed boundaries of that tome. Also meaning entirely limited to the context and directives in that poorly written and ambiguous book, which was written by an illiterate who did not understand 1/10th of one percent of what we now know as to how this world functions. He simply realized the time and place was right to subjugate masses of illiterate people. Seems to be working for him even now!]

The Permanent or Afterlife will either be spend in luxurious splendor or miserable punishment .

Ah yes: "luxurious splendor. That old tease, huh? Depends on what each individual considers luxurious doesn't it? Gold? Useless in heaven. Wine? What, you enjoy being intoxicated all the time? And, most interestingly in your Chauvinistic brutal culture, it's considered "luxurious" to have your way with 72 virgins.

Ever made love to a virgin, Truth Light? It's generally not that much fun for the virgin, nor even for the "taker", since it's usually accompanied by physical pain and psychological uncertainty for her and for him is hardly the same as making love to an experienced woman who has, well, learned the ropes, as it were. It's only a thug-head who would place the "taking" of 72 virgins as any sort of accomplishment or desirable outcome. Why not offer up the gift of a loving, respectful but individual and single woman, capable of contributing to the relationship?

I can only conclude that a shallow, physically dominating multi-woman relationship based on submission and thuggery is the secret desire of every male Muslim "man" (and I'll use that term loosely...]

I fear, however, I'm wasting my time here. The masses are assembling again to bow and scrap, and to dream of screaming virgins.....

This life is very meaningful and purposeful to the Believing Muslim, as he realizes that it will determine is outcome and permanent position in the Next Life.

[Yep! We've discussed those goals and how shallow they are...]

The Muslim's permanent purpose is to Surrender, Submit, Obey, in Purity and Peace to Allah the Almighty, carrying out His Orders and staying in some form of worship to Him as much as possible everyday.

[And then go home and beat someone up and dream of dominating an entire flock of submissive virginal women? How pleasant for them....]

Sorry, but this belief system and it's fabrications completely fails on all counts of civility, intelligence, understanding and openness to learning. As our world culture grows, this will, of course, come to a hard point and will unfortunately be dealt with in a painful way; many people will die and suffer, but in the end, mass unthinking droning and droll chanting will not win out over independent thought and literacy.

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

In this single statement you reveal the fundamental flaw in religious thinking and Buddhist etc. Oneness thinking. Contrary to such ideas . . . the Oneness is a multitude (a host) with individuality within the Oneness that is based on agape love . . . the essence. About this I am absolutely certain . . . but despite my best efforts I cannot produce objective (scientific) validation. You need to experience it for yourselves. An eternity of sameness or so-called worship is an absurd concept. An infinity of individual experiences with an essential compatibility and oneness of Spirit is inevitable . . . especially when we accept the inevitable realization that we are not likely to be the only conscious species in this vast reality.

Interesting. However, is it possible that others have experienced the same level of experience that convincingly points in entirely some other direction, Mystic? And what of the essential shift in paradigms that has accompanied modern scientific rigor? Where past beliefs (even just 50 or 75 years ago! Re-watch Inherit The Wind.) about how it was all accomplished by smoke and mirrors and the man behind the curtain, have and are, being relentlessly replaced with simple, logical answers? With many MANY more in the pipeline, so to speak?

As in: The creation of reproducing, evolving life from simple base chemicals; the finding of non-DNA or Earth-type biochemical life on other planets? Intelligent life on other galaxies that potentially do not attribute hteir existence to a divine entity? or worse for us, inform us that our Creator is perhaps them, and we're simply some advanced, Greater Universal PhD student's experiment gone entirely wrong? And it's now time to autoclave it/us?

Perhaps that omnipotent grad student can instill experiences into our memories, and He's done that to, say, 33% of his subjects through convincing experiences with "A Christian God", while 33% get nothing but an investigative mindset (like me, for instance), while the remainder get the Muslim silliness, just as a bizarre control group?

This all has the potential to leave only the synthetic skeleton of the man, as it were. Like one of those plastic skeletons we see hanging in the classroom, devoid of the necessary parts that make it whole. But even those plastic joints and tie-wraps that hold the office skeleton together will eventually rot and fail.. Tinkle, clatter, collapse.

Originally Posted by ans57

Isn't semantics a trill...? A good course for a never-ending study...--

!

I love it! He does it again. Trilling heroines, perhaps? "Lah-dee-dah-dee-dumm-dee-doo!" Please... Do keep it up! We need the laughs! Really! God would be pleased!

[MysticPhD]

Originally Posted by rifleman

Sorry, but this belief system and it's fabrications completely fails on all counts of civility, intelligence, understanding and openness to learning. As our world culture grows, this will, of course, come to a hard point and will unfortunately be dealt with in a painful way; many people will die and suffer, but in the end, mass unthinking droning and droll chanting will not win out over independent thought and literacy.

I fear you are correct, rifleman . . . a sad (and a potentially global) disastrous reality of unthinking, ill-educated ignorant submission to primitive and barbarous belief systems.

Interesting. However, is it possible that others have experienced the same level of convincing experience that convincingly points in entirely some other direction, Mystic?

A virtual certainty for such an individualistic species and its subjectivity, Rifle. Then the truly interesting question becomes . . . is there an objective reality against which they can be validated or rejected . . . or does the subjective certainty determine the reality for each of us?

And what of the essential shift in paradigms that has accompanied modern scientific rigor? Where past beliefs about how it was all accomplished by smoke and mirrors and the man behind the curtain, have and are, being replaced with simple, logical answers? with many more in the pipeline, so to speak?

This has been almost uniformly positive (you can guess why I said almost) . . . despite the deceptive use of euphemisms AS IF they are explanations for the hard problems.

[ans57]

Originally Posted by rifleman

!

I love it! He does it again. Trilling heroines, perhaps? "Lah-dee-dah-dee-dumm-dee-doo!" Please... Do keep it up! We need the laughs! Really! God would be pleased!

This heroine will gladly oblige...provided, you posses the "organ of Corti" needed to detect the subtly altered musical tones a scale degree apart...in short, the knack for tangential metaphors..."Lah-dee-dum-dum!" Now...where were we...oh yeah..."semantics..."

Peace!

[JerZ]

Originally Posted by TKramar

Man has serial killers...and you think it puts us HIGHER than animals?

Total myth. Man is NOT the only serial-killing, or "for no apparent reason" killing, creature on the earth. Check out Jane Goodall's observations of a female chimp named Passion, who, along with her daughter (I believe...IIRC), repeatedly stole the infants of other chimp mothers, murdered and ate them; something NOT very chimp-like at all and, in fact, sociopathic as regards chimp society (if not every society).

Also check out NatGeo's "The Dark Side of Chimps," which outlines a male chimp serial killer nicknamed "Saddam," and evidence of another one as well (don't know if that one has been found, caught, etc.). "Saddam" wasn't reacting to abuse, encroachment on his territory, fear for his young, etc. He brought himself WAY out from his group's original area (inside the woods) to deliberately hunt humans, and in fact, usually very young humans. He took the time to wait for a woman to be alone with her child or for a group of adults to be some feet/yards away from a child before rushing out and attacking and killing the child. It was a VERY thought-out, planned thing each time (as far as forensics can tell) and he went WAY out of his own are to find people to kill. Sounds a whole hell of a lot like attempted genocide to me.

Also note the relish with which cats play with their meals before finally putting them out of their misery by killing them. No, man is NOT the only animal that "kills for pleasure," "serial kills" or, in fact, has a crazy population. Many animals other than man have been found to have bullies, members of the group who kill for "pleasure" or for some completely inscrutable reason, abuse their young although they themselves have not been abused, are "antisocial" and simply can not follow the rules of the group, etc. etc.

For the record, I don't think man is "better than" other animals. However, I don't think he's necessarily any worse, either, on his gut/instinctive level. I do think he has greater resources at his disposal to, say, mass murder (a la Hitler). But that doesn't mean humans are capable of worse impulses; he's just more technologically capable, period. There are insane, murderous, antisocial animals of all kinds on this earth. Insanity is not just a human thing.

[Trimac20]

If you don't know the real God then I can understand how someone might feel that way.