An example of where Quranic Science might get you ?

OK, maybe its a bit uncalled for there, but the fact that he found a podium to honestly discuss things is what makes me more sure that not all voices/ideas should be entertained equally.
It's making me grind my teeth that am linking to a memri video, one of the most ultra zionistic unprofessional organizations that translate selectively for the only purpose of shedding light on Arabic ignorance and twisting things in Israeli favors but this video was just too much of a WTF moment to let it go unposted
I bet Galileo is turning like a maniac in his grave at the thought of people in the 21st century still arguing for the earth is flat idea. although I kind like having earth on a big giant turtle, it's cute eh ?



Just to be fair... he's not the only one to be arguing for such a hellish idea



ENJOY !

Hey muslims are Making headlines ...... AGAIN !!!

So Muslims are in the headlines of the Herald Tribune (shame seems we are moving down the scale now in media haute couture) . This time it is to remove a depiction of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) ... either go to Wiki or here (Close your eyes now I wouldn't want you to be "offended")

Can somebody please explain this to me ? we never went around banning and petitioning Britannica as far as I remember. Look if you ever want to be genuinely accepted in better light stop being so antagonistic about every single little thing. You want to recreate your image then recognize that you have to play according to the rules, it's like the 12th player on a football field cursing his mates for not passing the ball sheesh.

If there is anyone offended by seeing a picture that was drawn in the 13th century please tell me how you are offended by it. Now I draw, and I have always drawn characters and people thats what I enjoy drawing. So I remember the issue being brought up to me back when I was in school early on. For one, even as a child I thought it was absurd and irrelevant to our day and age. I am not gonna end up idolizing my drawings and praying to them ...

So here are the hadiths and the futwa on depictions , since Quran doesn't mention the issue;

الرسم له معنيان :
أحدهما رسم الصور ذوات الأرواح ، وهذا جاءت السنة بتحريمه ، فلا يجوز الرسم الذي هو رسم ذوات الأرواح ، لقول النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم في الحديث الصحيح : " كل مصوّر في النار " وقوله صلى الله عليه وسلم : " أشد الناس عذاباً يوم القيامة المصورون ، الذين يضاهئون بخلق الله " ، ولقوله صلى الله عليه وسلم : " إن أصحاب هذه الصور يعذبون يوم القيامة ويقال لهم : أحيوا ما خلقتم "

ولأنه صلى الله عليه وسلم لعن آكل الربا وموكله ، ولعن المصور ، فدل ذلك على تحريم التصوير ، وفسر العلماء ذلك بأنه تصوير ذوات الأرواح من الدواب والإنسان والطيور .

أما رسم ما لا روح فيه ـ وهو المعنى الثاني ـ فهذا لا حرج فيه كرسم الجبل والشجر والطائرة والسيارة وأشباه ذلك ، لا حرج فيه عند أهل العلم .

ويستثني من الرسم المحرم ما تدعو الضرورة إليه ، كرسم صور المجرمين حتى يعرفوا وحتى يمسكوا ، أو الصورة في حفيظة النفوس التي لا بد منها ولا يستطيع الحصول عليها إلا بذلك ، وهكذا ما تدعو الضرورة من سوى ذلك ، فإذا رأى ولي الأمر أن هذا الشيء مما تدعو الضرورة إلى تصويره ، لخطورته ، ولقصد سلامة المسلمين من شره حتى يعرف ، أو لأسباب أخرى فلا باس ، قال الله عز وجل : ( وَقَدْ فَصَّلَ لَكُمْ مَا حَرَّمَ عَلَيْكُمْ إِلَّا مَا اضْطُرِرْتُمْ إِلَيْهِ ) الأنعام 19/ 1

Translation:

visual depictions refers to two types:
The first type is referring to depictions of creatures with souls(all living creatures except for trees) and that is forbidden because of the prophet's(PBUH) saying "every depicter is in hell" , also quoted saying "[one of] the people most severely punished on judgment day are depicters, those who compete with god's creation". finally adding "the authors of those depictions are tortured on judgment day and are told: give life to your creations"

And because the prophet (PBUH) cursed the usury, her agents, and depicters. that points out that it is haram (forbidden). The people of knowledge explained that this prohibition applies to depictions of anything with a soul.

Depictions of the soulless is the second, that includes trees, mountains and other inanimate objects. There are no issues in this regard and it is permissible.

The exception to the depiction of creatures with souls is in cases where it is deemed necessary and helps in protecting the muslims from harm.

Reading the above, it is not particularly depictions of the prophet per se, although those are deemed extremely offensive. It is anything and everything that has a soul. (I wonder do viruses and bacteria have one ? and poor trees are singled out ... dammit, sunflowers look happy in the sun to me, they even lean forward to greet it )

So there you go, for anyone that ever took a photograph of his friends, drew a cartoon character or did anything that is loosely related to illustrating anything that would have a soul. I'll see you in hell for the remix !

ps. i picked depiction so it will include sculptures, drawings and photographs. even though its not a proper noun, so if anyone has a better word for it am welcoming suggestions. plus the translation is my own so if there are any mistakes please do point them out(I omitted some because i got bored).


ENJOY!

Another more artistic taste on the Creationism vs. evolution debate

Since his majestic tentacleness has been busy at work in yet another school debate for the infusion of meta physics into the educational system this is one brilliant video that should not be missed
Watch duality (just watch the duality one with the two versions playing side by side, if that isn't divine I don't know what is)



ENJOY!
ps. i recommend watching it on the website linked above much better there.

Disturbia p.I

eh ... as usual I like to disturb my self from my comfort zone on weekly bases, so thats the summary of the things that disturbed me during this week...




Mr.Benedict XVI encyclical where he discussed atheism and equates it to hopelessness and stalinism, not only have you proven time and time again that you are a bigot and have no semblance of credibility of the comparative religion degree that you hold. I would have atleast thought you(and the whole catholic church under your hands for that matter) can come up with a better argument than a 13 year old catholic boy surfing the internet and set out an example of tolerance and love to all(rather than the conditional one you set) ... so much for spreading the message of Jesus. and whats that about forbidding the thought of "images" of god (Ex 20:4) while your churches are littered with portraits of him . I guess you're just horny :P


seriously ? a bear called mohammed ? REALLY NOW, is that uproar called for ... yeah, true islam is real peaceful, i just wish someone would tell me whats true these days


if this was satire it would have made me reluctantly put up a smile, sadly it was meant literally. It definitely brings back memories of religion classes in school when were told that sickness on earth will deduct from our bill that we will have to foot in hell, how nice eh ? no wonder I preferred biology class when it gave a reason and said it just happens.







Why ? ! seriously it isn't even aesthetically pleasing which is the whole point of it, na ? well I guess I like that I still have decrees curbing me from getting one even though I like em.


Really who the hell in their right mind would buy this stuff ! I guess only the ones that want their children to be "from the womb to the war". Never mind placing it on their Christmas tree, and beside the point that a fetus embracing a machine gun is an image that disturbing doesn't even begin to describe.

Grrr... ENJOY!
h/t:stumble(zuza fun blog), daily irrelevant and Greta's blog

I hope they speak Norwegian in Hell !

One of the most recurring arguments against people who distance themselves from religion is that religion is the guiding post for living a peaceful and righteous life. A light house of morality.


Without the moral compass of religion, society will fall into chaos and immorality. Also that it will give a proper fostering ground for totalitarian regimes that will abuse the people and will enact genocide on the population, and more often than not the examples sited to back that argument is that of Stalin's USSR, Mao's china, and to a lesser extent Hitler's Germany (not that the country was anything but religious, although his personal religious belief do draw some question marks)

Now that is all fine and dandy, and ignoring the separation between a dogma and state systems since they view them as one and the same from a religious point of view. The biggest elephant they overlook is that atheism unlike religions for instance has no set and predefined dogmatic rules its essentially the lack of those that makes it what it is so you can't draw a 1-1 relationship based on that label to throw a blanket statement to encompass all what is atheistic.

so the argument is Mao, Stalin, & Hitler were evil and atheists so atheism is evil


Lets look at a country of heathens and disbelievers who boast a population of about 26% to 71% of atheists depending on your definition of the word. Where regular church service's attendance is about 10%. this is a place where the church has been reduced to a place were you hold some cycle of life(read birth, death, & marriage) events and has little to no relevance in the day to day life of people in the classical sense.

According to that argument you would expect such a country to have a rampant crime rate, since if there is no divine punishment there is no inhibitor for people's evil deeds. essentially we would expect it to be what we call a hell on earth *wink* *wink*

So what do we have here then, Norway (in case you missed what we have been talking about) is
The most peaceful nation on earth(the economist global peace index) ! with the top honors in a quality of life that is environmentally friendly and one of the best places to raise a family in terms of quality of living for women and children. It's also a given that they have exceptional press freedoms and rights movements. Also it just happens that due to this environment they have the second highest GDP per capita in the world. So at this point someone might jump and mention that Norway is an evangelical lutheran country with 83% of the population affiliated to the church of Norway but the reason behind that is simple. registration to the church is done at birth so the statistics are not representational of personal belief.


In no case is that an anomaly, there is a high correlation between how secular a country is to how high it ranks on these indexes that measure the quality of living. You notice that the more a country tries to adopt a religious inline political & economic legislations the further it drops in that scale (take the United states in the past 6 years and compare its rankings) . Nordic countries, Canada, New Zealand, Slovenia and other similar countries always rank consistently high on those indexes.

That just goes on to prove that slogans like "fill in the blank religion is the solution" or "without religion you can't have a moral and prosperous society" are bunked.
Or the alternative you can hope that Norwegian will be the official language of hell, and the prince of darkness is brushing up on his Norwegian.

ENJOY!

The one and only truth

Well in light of reading about Mother Theresa being a total hypocrite (now before you start flaming me, I am just quoting her own words)
So since every religion is the one and only truth, and they all seem to be geographically centralized am going to play on an idea that was just ricocheting in my head for a while.

So lets see since they are all "the one and only truth", I am going to try to separate them using other metrics.

For the sure the one with the biggest number of followers stands the highest chance of being right ?

That should be fairly easy then I would be a Christian (2.1 billion), a roman catholic(1.05billion) in specific though being a Sunni Muslim(940 million) comes at a very close second. So the one with the largest number should do it, but how did it get to be so that they have the largest number of followers since it is really intriguing that it seemed like the missed a spot on the world map.
So it seems the major catalyst to the spread can be traced to the roman empire and Constantine's conversion, and having similarities to already established and popular religions (Mithraism, The cult of Dionysus to name a few) to help in the slow spread of the religion among the populace. During the persecution of the Christians they had to blend in and adopt a lot of the pagan holidays as their own in order to celebrate their religion unnoticed (Christmas and Easter to name a few). then came the establishment of the catholicism which centralized the governance and aided in the spread of the religion utilizing missionaries (with some not so "godly" practices).

So it seems that it took alot based on what is established in older religions, so ....

The oldest religion that is still recognizably followed today must be the truth, since it withstood the test of time.
Hmm so that would be Hinduism (1500 BC or 2500BC according to references compared to 1300BC for Judaism) , with 900 million that is certainly respectable. A long and established list of dualism of the matter and self, about a dozen deities and the longest running mythology of superheroes in pre-existing literature.
All that is dandy except for from previous interactions with Hindus they seem to be pretty private and unwelcoming about letting anyone into their sects , so I guess they are not that welcoming of newcomers. this evident that although it is one of the oldest religions it has remained well anchored around its birth place and not expanded beyond its local population.

Maybe the youngest religion will be more welcoming lets give that a shot. I'll make sure to thank them for exporting yoga along the way.

So the youngest most recognizable religion that would be ...
Baha'i faith (19th centurty), nope. Cai Dao (1926) don't know what that is but it doesn't qualify.
There we go Scientology (1952) , now lets see what it is about.... OK seems interesting, positive and negative energy, they are always on the look out for new members, hmmm i have to pay to move along their levels, thats fine sounds like donations to me. So far so goo..... wait xenu ? intergalactic confederacy, body thetans, am orginally the tortured spirit of an alien prisoner.
Aight i'll pass, but seriously even for a religion that is bloody weird.

So too many ppl didn't work, oldest didn't work youngest is just loony, what is left ... I could go by what is the fastest growing one but these seem to be either pure propoganda (Falun Gong), birth rates (Islam), or just because it became more socially acceptable (non-religious) . could go for the most complicated(Etruscan religion) but whats the point they are all dead and archaic.

Honestly coming back to reality it seems there is really little choice, as a matter of fact rarely it is when you ask an adherent to any religion do you get an answer that they choose it. the majority revert to what they are familiar with originally or some denomination to it. this is never truer than it is in Islam, the idea is that everyone is born "Muslim" so they are not converting but reverting. So since there is little choice and we frown about discrimination regarding things we have little choice about ( skin color, language, sexual orientation ... etc) why do we still consider religion out of that context and we vehemently despise others in opposing faction ?

In the end it is a solitary journey, so journey on ...

ENJOY
perhaps

Creationism Vs. Evolution ... Follow-up

Well I was just tempted to do this bit. Now the basis of this argument is :

Are we supposed to include dogmatic knowledge when teaching a scientific class since some of the theories undermine some of what is mentioned in religion

Now this has been a heated debate recently in the states, in actuality in this region of the world its not even a debate. not because we are enlightened or any of that, but because we pass over the evolution part of science with the comment of its BS. We move on without even thinking of it, and after that you hear all the pseudo proofs of why that is the case "human DNA has the same components as soil", "the scientific wonder of the Bible/Quran/Torah".
So am going to try to the best of my abilities to lay down the arguments and counter arguments for each one, if i missed any please advise.

Definition(premises):

The Case for Creationism:
(this will mainly on the Christian side which is identical to the Islamic side since this argument was dead in Muslim science since the 14th century and most of the arguments are based on those of the Christian creationists. besides that the accounts for the creation are the same on either side of things, albeit the Christian account is more literal while the Muslim account is slightly more vague)

Essentially its whats in the book of Genesis, especially the first 7 chapters. Essentially the point of creationism (intelligent design or what ever other name it might be given) is to utilize science to prove scientifically what is mentioned there.

1. Earth is approximately 6000 years old (that is based on the calculation of ages of the prophet and since the lineage can be traced down to Jesus Christ (3issa 3aleih 2il salam)
2. The creation of earth, and all of its inhabitants(including humans) came to be at around the same point, on the sixth day (now earth was created in 7 days if you would like to calculate the time of god's days(Muslim point) in thousands of years please do so)
3. Humans are descendant of Adam and Eve, and the "Flood" has reduced the population of the earth and constricted the gene pool (or diversified it not sure since its the first reference to races).
4. People in the past lived longer(biblical & Quranic references) and their point of origin was from what is anthropologically called the agricultural age.
5. Faith; since the evidence is of a religious nature it is eminent that faith will be a strong force even if its being pushed as "scientific" evidence.
   

So those 5 points form the starting point, and the whole "scientific" method of creationist is to counter all scientific evidence that contradict this, and overburden theories with answers that are not know yet.

The Case for Evolution:
(This is based on what I know and could find references to)

The general theory of evolution is commonly meant to mean the biological evolution which was incepted by Charles Darwin. It does stretch to the origins of life since it's "a necessary precursor for biological evolution, but understanding that evolution has occurred and investigating how this happens does not depend on understanding exactly how life began"
The main points of Biological evolution: (reference:theses of darwinism)

1. Transmutationism - that species change form to become other species
2. Common descent - that similar species have common ancestors
3. Struggle for existence - that more are born than can survive
4. Natural selection - that the relatively better adapted have more offspring, sometimes called Malthusianism
5. Sexual selection - that the more "attractive" organisms of sexual species mate more (and have more offspring), causing unfit traits to spread; again there is no alternate, just a denial that it happens
6. Biogeographic distribution - that species occur close by related species, explaining the distributions of various genera
7. Heredity - the more modern view that genes don't record information about the life of organisms.
8. Random mutation - the notion that changes in genes aren't directed towards "better" alternatives; in other words, that mutations are blind to the needs imposed by the ecology in which organisms find themselves
9. Genetic drift/neutralism - the view that some changes in genes are due to chance or the so-called "sampling error" of small populations of organisms. Molecular neutralism is the view that the very structure of genes changes in purely random ways.
10. Functionalism - the view that features of organisms are neither due to or are constrained by the shapes (morphology) of their lineage, but are due to their functional, or adaptive, benefits.

Discussion:
(evolution points are in blue while creationist points are in black)

So in order for creationist to prove their premises they need to disqualify a huge chunk of science for the past couple of centuries. spanning biology, astronomy, geology, physics, and others.

Some points they need to prove:

• The Dating methods Used are inaccurate there are cases were isotropic and other dating methods have been proofed wrong (in essence that Geochronology is a hoax):
• Dendrochronology; tree-ring dating
• isotropic dating(C-14 dating); depending on the half-life of the carbon-14 we can accurately measure dates up to 50,000 without scaling

• This might be bias(from my end not the scientific end), but trees have been dated to more than 10,000 years ago (with living ones aged over 4,000 years which conflicts with the flood accounts) with no refutal point other than it is going to be refuted in the future which is sufficient enough to cancel the debate regarding the age of living things being limited to 6,000 years. I am a bit rusty on my chemistry and physics but C-14/C-12 ratio dependence and contamination arguments are not convincing

• The variation of organisms on the planet need to fit into the arc(inferred from the flood and passages of elimination of all other beings), and dinosaurs need to have coexisted with humans with no relative time space between them.

• Couldn't find much material regarding this, one point was that evolution in small amounts accounts for the species seen today (microevolution), the other is that the flood was limited to human populated areas and not the entire globe. As for the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs its attributed to scientific dishonesty and dating inaccuracy, some even draw evidence from Job 40 that biblically it is documented that dinosaurs coexisted(mentioned as leviathans, behemoths, and dragons since the word didn't exist till the 19th century or so)
  

Major Argument tools:

• Irreducible Complexity: The idea that biological systems couldn't have arisen from less complete predecessors and that They are too complex to have risen through mutation,e.g:
• Blood clotting in humans
  
• Dolphins have an "incomplete" form of the system and it still functions
  
• Flagella bacteria
• Along the same lines as the previous part, different proteins in the flagella serve similar or different function is other organisms so they don't prove the point
  
• Eye is to complex to form by chance
  
• Not having the knowledge of how something came to be doesn't prove the fallacy of what was know, and there are some suggestions as to how it came to be. Evolution does not mean that things pop out of nowhere due to chance !
  
• The idea as a whole is non sequitur since the presence of IC does not falsify evolution or prove creation.
• There are no transitional fossils(the birth of a new species from an older one through a transitional species) , and fossils don't take millions of years to form
• The dating methods used to estimate the millions or hundred thousands of years are discussed above, as for the transitional fossil the expectancy of true chimeras of the creatures around today is what they want to see which makes them ignore other transitional fossils found
  

There are many other points that are made but in my opinion these are usually the biggest and "strongest" ones that could be made. Personally I don't mind either theory to be held by anyone. For the longest time I have been trying to correlate and find a common ground between the two, but the more I learned about both the more I leaned toward evolution since it plainly made sense to what I had been taught in my scientific education.

The argument point is that "what I had been taught in my scientific education" that is the main beef of creationist, is that teaching science in that sense tends to undermine what is being taught in religion.

Hence the idea to teach both sides, or to ignore the evolution part of science which as seen plainly touches on the majority of what we call science nowadays based on Biblical and religious texts mainly . That will bring us back to the earth is flat and it revolves around the sun since thats what is mentioned in the bible.

In my opinion religious text didn't set out to be of a scientific nature they were meant to be understood for people who didn't hold much regard or knowledge to science as we see it today. So that is the first case, that teaching creationism in a science class is akin to teaching alchemy is chemistry and astrology in astronomy. It is a pseudo science.

On the other hand believing in evolution and the general theory doesn't undermine the belief in god or religion (ok maybe not in the general sense or a personal god ), believing in evolution is not equivalent to being atheistic or agnostic since you will still have the faith to believe.

As for Intelligent design I didn't touch much upon it since the idea that god set the systems of nature to test the faith of the people sounds like we are being deceived and its something I don't really like to get too much into it since it will be more philosophical than scientific. Also the arguments of the watch maker and firing squad analogy(Weak Anthropic Principle) fall in that category too.

Sources and reference/ extra material:
creationist arguments
evolution refutals
creationism refutals
creationism vs. evolution entry in wiki
Video of a presentation by Ken miller (catholic biology professor) arguing against ID

So whats the next iteration of creationism

Creationism Vs. Evolution

Recently I read about the views on Turkish people regarding this matter, and that the majority of them believe in creationism. There is even a "scientific" institute to dis-prove the theory of evolution. In the report that they released earlier in the year they claimed alot of "interesting things".

So I wonder what do you think ? what are you views about this ?

I remember back when we were "taught" that in school the mention of it was like "god created us .... blah blah blah, but some silly people think that our grandparents are monkeys and what silly idea that is" a very unbiased way of teaching it relatively. Well atleast they mentioned it :D

On a different note my first post on arab expats which was my first attempt at satire proves that i suck at it but it was fun, it also proves that some people don't even properly read what i write and others are even annoyed by my mentione that they leave such helpful comments as ":S" which was a WTF moment "why bother really ? "
Anyways thank 7aki, who-sane for having me over there .

Dogmatic Amalgam of Thoughts (part III)

Our life boils down to questions and answers in my humble opinion. In our inquisitive journey we find some, we stumble on some, and other are left hanging. Religions offer us such answers, a master plan for life, one to lead in order to obtain salvation.
There are always questions running through my head regarding religion, most of the time I can't find any answer. Or it might be that I don't wanna recognize an answer in fear of losing a part of me.

I see people getting sucked into it, its their method of escape from reality. Why do you belittle your current life so much that you shell your self up and wait for the end by diligently following the code without much thinking.
Is it really honest when your rituals and prayers devolve into a duty without an ounce of spirituality. A drone in a game set out to get points that end up earning him the end game price.

Why do we still parade our figure heads ? in the past there was a maldistribution of knowledge and tools among the people, that is hardly true nowadays. So why are the figure heads still the pivotal point of religion, is it our fear of comprehend religion as our own ? Why do we still get fooled by the claims that we are not qualified to interpret religious text, and abide by our moral understanding. Why are fatwa's still binding, and why is it sacrilegious to revise them?
Why are the relics of religious thought of the middle ages still prying their claws to this day and age ?

How come everyone believes they have the Ultimate truth and all the rest are condemned to hell unless they convert ? one of the harshest memories I have as a kid at school was when I asked the religion teacher in a discussion of judgment, "so what happens to my friends of other religions?".
That reason by itself gives birth to countless annoying missionaries of all sorts and colors that are fighting to salvage your soul, their view of the world composes of the "US vs Them". they never stop to question whether you want to be salvaged by them to start with.

Why do all Abrahamic religions treat that human as an innately corrupt being that can only be salvaged by religion. Are we really corrupt with out religion ? Sweden seems to be doing fine without one....

Isn't it easy for blaming whatever good that a religious faces in life is "the hand of god" while any missteps and mishaps are "the work of the devil". It must be really sweet to take that burden of the shoulder of the person and place the major part on an invisible force. Why don't these people take credit for their own choices !
People pray all the time, how many prayers are really answered ? how many of these would have happened without praying ? So "why" is the answer. The other day I heard someone tell another to do a certain prayer in Islam that is done in order to choose between things, now either way it goes he is making the choice. no matter how it turns out its a closed loop so why do it for the sake of doing it.

They always say god judges people but on this earth people are doing all the judging. It gives them a sense of superiority to condemn the rest of humanity to an eternity in hell without even losing a nights sleep. Then they come back and say god is merciful, Is it really that simplistic of an equation ? doesn't those two statements confound logic ?

The whole religious system that we have in place when the world is getting smaller and smaller is not viable ! those bubbles are crowding the globe and causing chaos.

As for religion it self, it is really weird how people are programmed to disregard certain aspects of religion that they are not comfortable with....
they are oblivious to the consequences of their choice to do that, if you are claiming its the truth then you have to take it all or not, nit picking decrees is not a choice in this case !
Why does a merciful god allow certain humans to be abdicated and abused by the rest of humanity for centuries and centuries because of their skin color, and finally when they obtain some sense of freedom they end up ripping each other apart ?
Why favour some sect of people and ascribe them as "special" then revoke that right ? why do it in the first place if it is going to plague humanity till our time ?
how can people justify that biblically and religiously the earth is only 6,000 years old while abundant proof is that its not ? why do giants and people living for hundreds upon hundreds of years seem logical ? how can a religion propagate the idea of empowering women, while on the other hand allowing the acquisition of sex slaves ?
There are so many contradictions in religion that its just faith and faith alone that can keep it together ! Faith is a personal connection between god and a human so why does it have to be a public thing, why don't we keep religion to our self. Why can't we accept that religious entropy has been reached and be content that there are others that have a different view.

Why is the thought of living life by one's own moral code so apprehensive to people ? what is so bad about following your heart ? why belittle god and think that he takes offense to what "some of his servants" are doing ? Isn't it kinda silly most of the time that religious people tend to make their points by creating tension to be visible nowadays ? simply "Ethical people will do what is right, no matter what they are told. Religious people will do what they are told, no matter what is right."

I am not posing any of this to challenge people's thoughts and make them think. More so it is to allow me to be at peace with my environment and to find a balance.

The parody in all of this is that you can't have a proper argument with a religious person regarding this, it always devolves to shouting. I would like one to base their argument on logic rather than faith.....
Anyone up for trying ?

some quotes on the matter;

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. -- Steven Weinberg

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing, all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." -- Gene Roddenberry --Robert A. Heinlein

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." -- Seneca the Younger

Dogmatic Amalgam of Thoughts (part I)
Dogmatic Amalgam of Thoughts (part II)

Dogmatic Amalgam of Thoughts (part II)

Back to this series, what i was trying to do is to boil down all my thoughts regarding religion into age groups, the first one dealt with children in religion. The focus was on some extreme examples. Even though in the average sense it leaves a lasting impression on a person.

As soon as a person starts hitting adult hood those Do's and Don't start hassling him more and more. Also his eyes open up on the world, while he was younger he was always seeing the world through the family filter. Everything in his perception has been shaped based on the opinion of his family. At this stage he starts reviewing and rebelling over everything trying to find his own place in the world and find an opinion that he can claim is his. Try to answer any of the why questions that he hopefully learned to not ask by now and you will be stumped.

Usually one of the first things that he tackles is his religious commitment, depending on his upbringing as a child it sets the limit of how far he can go with it. As a Muslim kid you might have conflicting emotions about simple things such as drawing, why can't I draw ? am not gonna kneel down to my drawing ? so whats the reason i can't draw humans ? If you are Jewish it might be why can't I have some cheeseburgers ? or if your Christian, So..... whats the connection between Santa and JC again ?

So that stage carries on in silence, a few small shifts from the point of origin, and no big steps are taken. Then begins the influence of the outside world taking over and the majority develop a duel standard when dealing with the world. one is the mask they show to their families and one that they show to their friends and society and his individuality gets strained between the two.

So as soon as the attachment from the family starts to weaken and more independence is established (usually around the college age) an introspective scrutiny to their experiences thus far takes place and sets the tone for how he is going to carry himself from then on.

At this point it some get floored by the realities of life and religion offers a secure and happy place for them. It helps them from facing reality and developing on their own, instead they prefer the child's mentality of being told what to do, and how to do it. Religion offers a parent's hand of sorts.

In it is comforting to find other people like you, who are facing similar difficulties in comprehending the world. It offers solidarity, but it takes the "awe" out of experiencing life. Some find the experience it self "awe" inspiring to be absolutely fair.
The danger in that view of the world is that its too simplistic, the world is not a black and white.
So trying to fit everything into those boxes eliminates logic process, you rely less and less on your experiences and more and more on your reference. The more loyal you are to your references the easier it is to accept extreme ideas without questioning.

Every coin has a good and a bad side, to shun one and parade the other just because it lessens the burden of holding to your belief is being biased.
If left unchecked it opens the door to abuse of the masses and cult behavior. It also closes the door on progress since you have a long tally of people who lived in different circumstances that you aspire to be like.

What baffles people the most is they are not able to talk rationally about the subject, the only way they are able to argue the subject at this point is through emotions. In the end they still claim to be more rational and level headed ! That form of escapism is fragile and self destructive in nurturing way, it allows your mentality to be assimilated in the crowd which for a person who finds facing reality to be draining is comforting setting. This is what nurtures the disconnect and creates a xenophobic society, and in turns protects the institutions.

These people are usually the most visible section of the religious community and they are the core propagator of the religious thought in society, and that applies anywhere anytime.
They are also the most zealous in criminalizing and announcing heresy that they are swift tongue in their usage of those terms. The reason for that is that they believe their sacrifices in this life time entails them to acquire a superiority status to the corrupt common that they live among.

Then we have the fence sitters, the religious middle. They are prefer to be conforming to their society. They are practicing or believing religiously, always trying to be politically correct. They candidly have admiration to the previous group since they feel that they are extraordinary in their ability to make the sacrifices that they were not willing to do to their religion.
They really feel that they are the please all crowd, but usually their complacency is what allows extremism to breed amok.
Their journey is much simpler and they find security in their origins. They hold tight to their teaching, but not too tight as to cripple their life style. They are the ones that think praying once a week is not too bad its better than nothing. They are prisoners of their environment, "I go to church because my wife thinks it will instill morals in the kids" kinda people.
In the end they hold on that double faced attitude since they hit puberty, and they never develop beyond that.

These wannabe crowd pleaser are actually loathed by both extremes for being what they are Hypocrites.

Then we have the hedonistic crowd, the fashionably religious crowd. who to them religion is a satisfaction of a hip image they aspire to maintain. They can gown any view depending on the time and place. These are usually brushed of from these arguments since they at least recognize that their ideas are not a central point to their lives more of a complimentary aid in living, and rightfully they don't involve themselves in the tussle. which doesn't make them hypocrites atleast to themselves.

Some unshackle themselves from all the views and look for something more they are usually the free thinkers. Some prefer to describe them as Lucifer's agents, they are the greatest threat to
a religious organization since they actually use logic and reasoning. If they are not convincing they will atleast prompt you to do your own research. They are the ones who really want to be left alone, they are the ones shunned by religion for who they are, they are the ones that tried to find logic in religion but their experience and knowledge came in the way.

and that is where my train wreck of thoughts just stalled. I had a strong Urge to keep this part rotting in the draft bin since i find it pointless and doesn't add anything but i thought its worth adding just for the comics

Since am still at that introspective stage i can't really talk about any experiences beyond that, all I can do is observe, and from what I observed in older people is that they treat religion as a tally book (maybe due to fearing the inevitable more than the youngsters) . They try to collect points like kids collecting trading cards, and it is funny how some conversations devolve to how many "points" such and such can get you ! Also the religious middle tend to move closer to the right as their life goes on.

In the end which ever path is treaded is a personal choice, religion is a choice. No one should be persecuted for the choices they make, they are responsible for those choices. When these choices extend to effect a whole community is when silence is no longer an option and that choice extends beyond the personal realm.

"Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to investigate."
-- F. M. Knowles

cartoons from H.E.R.B

Best of the farewell Falwell cartoons ;)

I know some of us might not be too familiar with this guy, but its divine comedy at its best ! I for one will miss you and I hope your soul will rest in "peace".

I'll leave you with the top 10 of his (Grr..) gems:

On Christianity:

"Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions."

"If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being."

"I had a student ask me, "Could the savior you believe in save Osama bin Laden?" Of course, we know the blood of Jesus Christ can save him, and then he must be executed."

On politics :

"The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country."

" God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve."

"The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen."

"If I were president of the United States, I would include Muslims in my presidency."

On global warming:

"I believe that global warming is a myth. And so, therefore, I have no conscience problems at all and I'm going to buy a Suburban next time."

On Women & Minorities:

"Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them."

"I do not believe the homosexual community deserves minority status. One's misbehavior does not qualify him or her for minority status. Blacks, Hispanics, women, etc., are God-ordained minorities who do indeed deserve minority status."

finally on the Teletubbies (hell even those !) :"As a Christian I feel that role modelling the gay lifestyle is damaging to the moral lives of children."

ENJOY!

Edit: for anyone (more like one !) that might find this offensive i apologize i tried to keep my words limited and let the man speak for himself

Bridging the Gap between Science and Faith (implied) - Dr. Naggar

relatively lately I started hearing people talking about a certain scholar in Islam who was trying to present the scientific miracles found in the passages of the Quran, my father, my sister, and a group of other people held a great admiration for this person. His name was zaghloul naggar.

Now I was intrigued since in my mind I couldn't really bridge two fundamental things; the scientific method, and faith. When Qwaider mentioned this issue Here I remembered to finish up this article


By definition the scientific method is suggesting a hypothesis on a natural phenomena, devising an experiment that proves the predicted results, and to be able to replicate these result with higher degree of accuracy. One of the main things is that those methods and result must be objective and be able to withstand careful scrutiny. This makes science an evolutionary idea, and never set in stone.

To contrast that we have "faith", a belief without reason. It is always set in stone ...

According to our dear Dr. they meet ever eloquently! now from the premise of this idea it didn't appeal to me at all, after all science and especially astrology is very volatile !

So am skeptic by nature but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, so I tried to listen to him occasionally usually didn't last long at all.
So i had to get my hands on some of his books so I would get to read them, and although I discussed much of the content with people before I didn't want to post this unless i finish the first part of the book. (the book was presented by Ahmad Faraj and as i understood its an adaption from some interviews)

So far after finishing the first part the most I learned is his reasoning of why when a theory that was used to explain the Quran is falsified it doesn't effect the integrity of the Quran. The reasoning is kind of a convoluted one, since he considers the Quran as the truth it doesn't affect it and its attributed to human error. essentially its not a big deal is what he is trying to say.

For me its that religion is based on faith, their are alot of articles of faith that contradict science.
If you are going to introduce scientific thought into religion the least you can do is justify those articles with a reasoning that is not based on faith.
that is the least you can do if you are allowed to use the scientific method, you can't be selective. you have be consistent and not side step things according to your whims.

Now am not gonna go into details but generally I found him selective in his references, when ever he sites something its so obscured that there is no way to trace it (e.g. I have a recording of the an astronaut that says ... ") . The other is the reinterpretation of science in a convenient ways(eg. there are two types of light, but science doesn't distinguish between them yet, but the Quran does .... there is Do2 and there noor, one is off the source the other is a reflection and they are different in a scientific sense, or so he infers) .

What was more drastic is his loose usage of arabic language and reading. Now I don't have a Phd and am sure as hell Arabic language skills are at most sub-par, but there is no way am going to read موسعون (mousi3oon as in knowledgeable, able ) as (muwasi3oon, expanding) . plus some other shrewd speech patterns that make you feel like you missed something (he refers to some people like he already mentioned them, but he never did).

Most common of all, is that he usually ignores the knowledge of people in that area. albeit it was not scientific but it was still pretty accurate. So when you tell a pearl diver that it gets darker the deeper you go down, he will most likely reply with "yes, i know". no surprise there, so why over simplify their experience and over complicate the meaning ...

so all in all. He might have a good intent in what he is doing, and he might think its for the greater good that he is discovering those "great" things. In the end its as amazing as numerology nothing more nothing less, and that is as pseudo scientific as astrology. Hid endeavors are mostly insulting and only the faithful will ignore the discrepancies in his selective pinching of evidence.

The wealth of Islam is in its spirituality and belief, and faith is the corner stone of religion. please keep it intact. If you think you will convert people based on your scientific evidence and not the spirituality of Islam, you won't able to withstand the scrutiny of an averagely educated skeptic.
If that is the reason then Stop, and if the reason is to give more pride in their holy book, they don't need it. We are already proud of the Quran regardless ! don't insult our faith.

One last note, people in the Arab word are complacent to the extent that any one who is shown on television and especially if they seem quite poised and well spoken. He earns their trust trust blindly, and they would not even question his statements. they are taken as fact rather than taking the burden of researching what they are being stuffed with. Its dangerous on a different level when those are scientific "facts" that are mangled and twisted... and when its mingled with religion their brains are programmed to shut down any logic circuits so its so hard for them to be faced with the reality that alot of what is being said is not what it seems .


ENJOY!

Dogmatic Amalgam of Thoughts (part I)

After a recession of religious zealous during the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century, after the fall of the last Islamic empire, the entrenchment of the United States status as World super power, and the birth of the state of Israel. The religious mentality was reborn again.
At this point of time religious polarization of the globe has reached the point that we have presidents declaring a new age of the crusades, children being absorbed by martyrdom ideology and blunt usage of the rules of the gentiles.

The world seems to be psychotic !

Although religious population as a whole is declining, that gave rise to a backlash of fundamentalists extremism in the world's four major religions (since I don't have much knowledge about Hinduism, but given what I know about India, and it being one of the most religious countries in the world it might pertain to it as well).

Now regarding what I'll write about in this post, I have no status to speak from, I have no authority what so ever to be didactic. I am just a person with what he considers as 8 years of experience in life, and am just trying to share what goes through my head about this specific issue, since it personally affects me every day. So if you are offended by my piece of mind, please try to talk to me about it with out being too abusive (do i sound too scared .... am just trying to be gentle thats all and asking the same in return :D )




The overwhelming majority of us were born into a faith, based on that it shapes our outlook to life. It was always interesting how much of that shapes who we are in the world. We don't have a real choice when it comes to religion.

When a baby is born into this world it has no perception of religion, but as soon as you hear his first cry he starts feeling the full effect of religion in his daily life.

If he is born to Jewish, or Muslim parents then you are guaranteed that he is going to be circumcised (am not saying this is a bad thing or a good thing). Their name that they are going to carry for the rest of their life will reflect their religion in one way or another. Even their social status in some religions. plus the untold baggage of history that he will learn to carry on his back no matter where he is going to end up in his life.

Well in case you are wondering what Christian children have to go through then it is baptism, and until recently roman catholic children who died before they were baptized were going to reside in "limbo", so the pope naturally sent "them" to heaven .... it only took 8 centuries to come to that realization !

Now little children are like sponges they take in whatever information they find available to them, so evidently the most ripe age to in doctrine children in articles of faith is at a young age
for example

"43% of evangelical Christian become "born-again" before the age of 13"

Now evangelical Christians, Wahhabi (Salafi) Muslims, and Haredi Jews (funny thing the Firefox spell checker doesn't seem to recognize any word related to Judaism) got more in common than they think.

The main theme is to isolate the community in order to protect it from the outside world,
they discourage their followers from interacting with the outside world unless for necessity.
So children being brought up in such an environment (or for that matter these extreme examples could be expanded to other "moderate" sects) can really be moved in either way, since their critical thinking has been stripped out of them, and enforced with promises of eternal damnation instead.

Now one documentary that brought this to light was "Jesus Camp" (if your interested in seeing it u can download it at the bottom but you need bittorrent to do so). It just follows 3 evangelical children aged 9, 12, and 10 years old. What was shocking to me is not that they were inducing mass hysteria into the kids and getting them to speak, not that they were getting them to protest abortion, not that they were telling them that the earth is 6000 years old, and not even that they were praying and blessing George W. Bush !


It was how similar things were to how things are going on here (as in the Arab world), they even were looking up to the methods and commitment Palestinian children. the way the children work hard to garner the admiration and approval of their parents really drove their psyche to the edge.

Here is what one of the children's minister's and what she thinks about what children should do;

"I want to see people committed to the cause of JC as they are to the cause of Islam radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are... because "excuse me" we have the "TRUTH" " - Becky Fischer, a children minister

now that is a dangerous thought to pass on to the children, and that mentality of confrontation rather than understand is so entrenched that its hard to purge it when they are all grown up.

Ideas like global warming is not a real problem, just keep on guzzling fuel like we did. After all the world is ending anyways!

That "science doesn't proof anything" and that the age of the earth and humanity is approximately 6000 years.

These are really very dangerous thoughts. If you believe those without a shred of doubt then your critical thinking abilities have been shredded to nihilism.

Now the double whammy is that most of the evangelical children are home schooled, i.e. they are not scrutinized to peer critique.
So the end product; you get children saying things like:

"when I dance I really have to make sure that its for God, cause people will notice when you are dancing for the flesh" - Tory, 10 years old

"sometimes I don't even believe in what the bible says that makes me a faker. that makes me feel guilty and bad cause god always talked to me about that and I kept rejecting him" - a young boy at the camp after having a break-down

"I was saved when I was five years old" - Levi, 12 years old

"this world all it feeds you is trash" - Levi, 12 years old

"thats what alot of people in this world are! they are sick, they are looking for something. " - Levi, 12 years old

when I heard those lines, they just seemed so familiar.
So essentially we end up with a closed minded generation of kids, who are willing to suspend all logic for the sake of their faith. who started their political activism from the youngest age, and blindly adhere to a single party of thought. This makes them very susceptible to manipulation by a figure head. They have no ability to understand other school of thoughts and blatantly fight them and ridicule them.

Now think about this scenario but look at it happening in all three major religions, who all believe they are getting ready for the confrontation of Armageddon.

Thats the nature of the world that I was born into, how lucky am I.

I can't really think what could be done to change the route these people are taking, the only way I can think of ,but will never be implemented in the age that it really matters, is to teach comparative religions that way the thoughts and ideas will not be foreign. Ridicule will be minimized since it'll be done in a safe environment that diffuses it, and people will learn to be tolerant and more understand, even the moderate and less religious people need that !
They should be the ones pushing for it, but alas our pride will stop us from understanding since ridiculing others is the easiest and safest way...

As i promised here is a link to "Jesus Camp" on the web, and if you would like to watch it here is a bittorent download .

Just for irony's sake the camp was called "kids on fire", held in Devil's lake, North Dakota.

I leave you with those two quotes:
"we are engaged today in what they call a culture war... we want to reclaim America for Christ"
"Devil we know what you like to do ..."

ps. although this was originally not meant to talk about "Jesus camp" as much as it ended up doing, but it felt very applicable since its one of the few sources in my memory of religious extremism in children.
ps. i wanted to confine this part to topics pertaining to the children .
ps. this article was a tough writting i just hope i did my thoughts justice with my words (i don't know how to carry this conversation on with out getting people to pull me one way or another....... GRRRR )