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Why should we limit our choices to only 3? Why not the Multiverse or Ultimate Ensemble? Besides, we have no way of analyzing whether something can come from nothing because we have never observed "nothing". Regardless, inserting a non-physical being simply from ignorance is not logical.
Limited to 3 simply because I had not contemplated any others. You have just opened other areas for me to explore.
Islam demands we question all things and to believe what we our self have verified. Now I have other possibilities to look at.
What led me to Islam was one event what keeps me Muslim is the constant questioning and seeking answers.
Location: In a little house on the prairie - literally
10,202 posts, read 7,933,385 times
Reputation: 4561
Quote:
Originally Posted by Woodrow LI
Limited to 3 simply because I had not contemplated any others. You have just opened other areas for me to explore.
Islam demands we question all things and to believe what we our self have verified. Now I have other possibilities to look at.
What led me to Islam was one event what keeps me Muslim is the constant questioning and seeking answers.
Although there were notable muslim, particularly from the middle east, scientists in the past, that has all disappeared.
Why is it that great scientific discoveries are made in Europe, East Asia, North America, some in South Africa, but I can not recall a substantial recent scientific discovery that has come from a muslim.
Why?
My theory is that Islam is not only a religion, but a social order, and the repressions that the religion demands permeate over to the social.
You say there is constant questioning and seeking answers, but on the other hand, you have also said the Koran is perfect and not only never has been altered, it should not be altered. That is not very questioning and searching for answers, is it?
Even the rich Arab countries are not known for their scientific endeavors or rigors. The closes they come is having good doctors, who are primarily trained in the west. I can't even think of a university outside the University of Tehran in the muslim world that has any stature at all.
Obviously something is not working in that regard.
Although there were notable muslim, particularly from the middle east, scientists in the past, that has all disappeared.
Why is it that great scientific discoveries are made in Europe, East Asia, North America, some in South Africa, but I can not recall a substantial recent scientific discovery that has come from a muslim.
Why?
My theory is that Islam is not only a religion, but a social order, and the repressions that the religion demands permeate over to the social.
You say there is constant questioning and seeking answers, but on the other hand, you have also said the Koran is perfect and not only never has been altered, it should not be altered. That is not very questioning and searching for answers, is it?
Even the rich Arab countries are not known for their scientific endeavors or rigors. The closes they come is having good doctors, who are primarily trained in the west. I can't even think of a university outside the University of Tehran in the muslim world that has any stature at all.
Obviously something is not working in that regard.
Even perfection needs to be questioned in regards to how we Humans interpret it.
What do you consider the Muslim world? While there are 49 predominately Muslim Nations. Roughly 2/3 of the world's Muslims live in 5 Nations. Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and China. The over whelming Majority of Muslims are Asiatic.
Mideastern Muslims are now a very small minority. Muslims in India and China are a Minority but have a larger Muslim population than all the Arab Nations combined.
Indonesia and Malaysia seem to have some quality schools. Have you looked at any of them?
You must have me confused with another poster in re copy and pasting chopped off and butchered stuff. If I gave you something from another website I'd quote it, so you could research it yourself.
You're at the water. Your entire book is suspect, but you don't want to see it. Whether you have too much invested in the religion and can't back out now or someone convinced you that it is the 'real deal' simply because it has cool sentence structure, now all that is left for you is to examine your source material with skepticism. Jump on in. It won't hurt and you might even wake up in the process.
Exactly!
Please study the book in its entirety, understand the message and then please point out to the suspected stuff. I hope you wont go out and google stuff reply back if you REALLY wanna have a scholarly and constructive dialog.
The reason I am asking you to study the book and understand the message is because I have done it, and you should do it too so that we are one same page.
But instead, what you are doing is writing stuff based on your impulses that have been triggered by watching perhaps too much of a media portrayed Islamic silhouette WITHOUT actually going out and reading the book to understand its message. Don't put THAT much of a trust in today's media. Trust me, there is all sorts of cropped, skewed and twisted reporting.
It doesn't work that way, you will need to do your own investigation and form your own opinion to be confident enough to support your stance.
Have you read the Quran in its entirety, and have you understood its message BY YOURSELF? A simple Yes or No answer should give you a fair idea about your position on the subject at hands.
Location: In a little house on the prairie - literally
10,202 posts, read 7,933,385 times
Reputation: 4561
Quote:
Originally Posted by Woodrow LI
Even perfection needs to be questioned in regards to how we Humans interpret it.
What do you consider the Muslim world? While there are 49 predominately Muslim Nations. Roughly 2/3 of the world's Muslims live in 5 Nations. Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and China. The over whelming Majority of Muslims are Asiatic.
Mideastern Muslims are now a very small minority. Muslims in India and China are a Minority but have a larger Muslim population than all the Arab Nations combined.
Indonesia and Malaysia seem to have some quality schools. Have you looked at any of them?
Yes, you are correct. I was well aware that Indonesia was the largest muslim country, however, outside of Aceh province, it is relatively open to religious freedoms. India certainly is, China getting there (sort of) but one can't claim that most of the Arabic or Iran (Persian), nor Pakistan have anything resembling religious freedom. I pity the few Zoroastrians left in Iran, especially since they are the precursors to the Abrahamic religions and the viewpoint of monotheism.
Korea, Japan and India each have one in the top 100 universities in the world, and the highest rank is Korea at 93.
In the top 200, Saudi Arabia has one at 192 and Indonesia at 194.
Again, I am not aware of substantial scientific advances made by muslim scientists. If we look at the Nobel prize for science we get only two muslims, one who effectively was declared by Pakistan as being "excommunicated" afterwards.
BTW, christian scientists also make a substantial list (although declining) as to jewish ones.
I make these points as you say the one thing that drew you to Islam was that there always was questioning. Seeing that one is not allowed, as a muslim, to question the veracity of the Koran, and there certainly appears to be little evidence that Islam is a gateway to scientific discovery, what questioning are you referring too?
Yes, you are correct. I was well aware that Indonesia was the largest muslim country, however, outside of Aceh province, it is relatively open to religious freedoms. India certainly is, China getting there (sort of) but one can't claim that most of the Arabic or Iran (Persian), nor Pakistan have anything resembling religious freedom. I pity the few Zoroastrians left in Iran, especially since they are the precursors to the Abrahamic religions and the viewpoint of monotheism.
Korea, Japan and India each have one in the top 100 universities in the world, and the highest rank is Korea at 93.
In the top 200, Saudi Arabia has one at 192 and Indonesia at 194.
Again, I am not aware of substantial scientific advances made by muslim scientists. If we look at the Nobel prize for science we get only two muslims, one who effectively was declared by Pakistan as being "excommunicated" afterwards.
BTW, christian scientists also make a substantial list (although declining) as to jewish ones.
I make these points as you say the one thing that drew you to Islam was that there always was questioning. Seeing that one is not allowed, as a muslim, to question the veracity of the Koran, and there certainly appears to be little evidence that Islam is a gateway to scientific discovery, what questioning are you referring too?
So, when you analyze the statistics of "Muslim world", what world are you comparing this against? Are you saying Scientific and academic milestones of
1. "Muslim world" versus "Rest of the world"?
2. "Muslim world" versus "Non-Muslim world"?
3. Or do you have "Muslim world" versus a specific block of "Countries" or specific geographical regions pertaining to some particular faiths?
For example
"Muslim world" versus "United States"?
"Muslim world" versus Europe?,
"Muslim world" versus "The first world"?
"Muslim world" versus "Nuclear armed countries"?
"Muslim world" versus "The Vatican"?
"Muslim world" versus "The Christian world"?
"Muslim world" versus "The Jewish world?
And correct me if I am wrong, we are comparing statistics in a certain time frame where we don't wanna go back to a time when Muslim scientists were laying the foundation stones of modern day science. Do we wanna stick to about 200 years of history from today?
Location: In a little house on the prairie - literally
10,202 posts, read 7,933,385 times
Reputation: 4561
Quote:
Originally Posted by ll0OoO0ll
So, when you analyze the statistics of "Muslim world", what world are you comparing this against? Are you saying Scientific and academic milestones of
1. "Muslim world" versus "Rest of the world"?
2. "Muslim world" versus "Non-Muslim world"?
3. Or do you have "Muslim world" versus a specific block of "Countries" or specific geographical regions pertaining to some particular faiths?
For example
"Muslim world" versus "United States"?
"Muslim world" versus Europe?,
"Muslim world" versus "The first world"?
"Muslim world" versus "Nuclear armed countries"?
"Muslim world" versus "The Vatican"?
"Muslim world" versus "The Christian world"?
"Muslim world" versus "The Jewish world?
And correct me if I am wrong, we are comparing statistics in a certain time frame where we don't wanna go back to a time when Muslim scientists were laying the foundation stones of modern day science. Do we wanna stick to about 200 years of history from today?
When I first posted on muslim and science, I lamented that advances particularly the Arab world was known for has fallen by the way side.
The greatest growth in science has been in the last 150 years... you know that, right?
Where is the large body of contribution from the muslim world?
There is little, and certainly not a large body of knowledge. That is a fact.
So now, why is that? What happened where the Arab, and at that time, muslim, world was eons ahead of its European counterparts, to today and the past 150 years or so where it is infinitesimal.
I can only conclude that the focus on religion and the suppression of free though is a large contributor. What a waste of human capabilities!
Yes, you are correct. I was well aware that Indonesia was the largest muslim country, however, outside of Aceh province, it is relatively open to religious freedoms. India certainly is, China getting there (sort of) but one can't claim that most of the Arabic or Iran (Persian), nor Pakistan have anything resembling religious freedom. I pity the few Zoroastrians left in Iran, especially since they are the precursors to the Abrahamic religions and the viewpoint of monotheism.
Korea, Japan and India each have one in the top 100 universities in the world, and the highest rank is Korea at 93.
In the top 200, Saudi Arabia has one at 192 and Indonesia at 194.
Again, I am not aware of substantial scientific advances made by muslim scientists. If we look at the Nobel prize for science we get only two muslims, one who effectively was declared by Pakistan as being "excommunicated" afterwards.
BTW, christian scientists also make a substantial list (although declining) as to jewish ones.
I make these points as you say the one thing that drew you to Islam was that there always was questioning. Seeing that one is not allowed, as a muslim, to question the veracity of the Koran, and there certainly appears to be little evidence that Islam is a gateway to scientific discovery, what questioning are you referring too?
What is not open for question about the Qur'an is what the exact words in the Qur'an are. We are very much at liberty to question the interpretations and commentaries by any and all scholars. We can not spread our own interpretations as Qur'anic fact. We can state our opinions and interpretations, but we are to state they are our own words and give the reasons why we come to our conclusion.
Exactly!
Please study the book in its entirety, understand the message and then please point out to the suspected stuff. I hope you wont go out and google stuff reply back if you REALLY wanna have a scholarly and constructive dialog.
The reason I am asking you to study the book and understand the message is because I have done it, and you should do it too so that we are one same page.
But instead, what you are doing is writing stuff based on your impulses that have been triggered by watching perhaps too much of a media portrayed Islamic silhouette WITHOUT actually going out and reading the book to understand its message. Don't put THAT much of a trust in today's media. Trust me, there is all sorts of cropped, skewed and twisted reporting.
It doesn't work that way, you will need to do your own investigation and form your own opinion to be confident enough to support your stance.
Have you read the Quran in its entirety, and have you understood its message BY YOURSELF? A simple Yes or No answer should give you a fair idea about your position on the subject at hands.
I have read portions of it, in English. I'm not going to learn Arabic just to read a book that I don't believe and isn't sacred to me. The portions that I did read struck me as having been authored or inspired by a bratty 9 year old boy who has frequent temper tantrums and breaks his toy soldiers when they don't do exactly what he demands of them. The Sura on 'religious freedom' if you will is a perfect example of this whiny, jealous style of writing. It is quite interesting to note that the God described in both the Bible and the Koran seem to possess some of the worst of human traits, such as anger, envy, and vengeance. One would assume that a deity would be above these emotions. When we examine the period of time in which these books were written, however, it is clear that this is what people understood and this was the language needed to inspire the kind of social control the authors of the Bible and Koran wished to instill in the populations. Woodrow already broke down the entirety of the Koran for us: "I am God, hear me roar!"
I've got quite a bit of experience in Muslim countries to gather my own conclusions from, but I'll use two contrasting ones as examples. Turkey, where Muslims can pretty much live and practice Islam as they see fit, is a nice (not perfect, but fairly good) example of how people can both live their faith and be successful. Women can wear headscarves, or not if they choose not to. Nobody berates them for their choices. If you want to buy and drink a beer, that is your business, so long as you don't bother anyone else. The calls to prayer are either hauntingly beautiful (usually when they are farther away) or screeching, annoying noise. Afghanistan, on the other hand, is a perfect example of what happens with too much Islam on the brain. The Taliban, first welcomed by the Afghani people until they showed their true colors, managed to keep that country is a state of perpetual poverty. There was no effort to build infrastructure or sanitation or education, just a severe implementation of an inflexible belief system, with people were left to fend for themselves. The Taliban took what they wanted from the people and since they had more guns, that was all there was too it. Boko Haram and Isis are following the exact same path.
I look at religion the same way I look at childhood: You've got a wonderful security blanket that feels nice and snuggly, but eventually you have to grow up and face the real world. When you do grow up and realize that there isn't any boogieman, you can start towards your own spiritual development.
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