Quran as the word of God.

af_thefragile · 11-09-2010 1:39am #1

A discussion on the divinity and theology of the text and religious belief opposed to modern scientific reasoning.

I have very limited knowledge of Islam and its teachings so please don't consider my words to be the absolute teachings of Islam. A lot of what I'm saying is my personal interpretation of things while a lot is what I have herd and learnt from reputable scholars of Islam. But this is not what all muslims believe in. Like in most religious theology there are many different opinions on certain subjects among different group of muslims so this is just how I see things.
(Also a reason why I don't go too deep into many of the topics I touch on as there are many able scholars who have explained these concepts/thoughts a lot better than I could ever attempt).

The Quran is a book considered by muslims to be the word of God. It was written by God who then commanded the Angel Gabriel to teach it to the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) so that he can spread the message of God.

Its an islamic belief that although revelation from God had been constantly sent down onto the people throughout history, most of this revelation got corrupted over time and therefore its original innate message got lost within the pages of time. To prevent this happening to the last and complete message of God (which was sent down as the Quran to the final messenger Muhammad), God himself vowed to take the responsibility of protecting the final revelation from any sort of corruption and modification. Hence the Quran today is still preserved in the very same language and text as what it was sent down as 1400 years ago.

A question among atheists and non-believers in Islam is that how can we consider what the Quran says as to be true as there isn't any compelling evidence for neither God nor the divinity of the text and hence Islam must fall flat on its face when attacked by scientific reasoning.

Well there is a really good reason most of the around 1billion muslims in the world believe so deeply in the book and consider it absolutely infallible. Firstly Islam begins with a belief in God. If you don't believe in God, you can't be a muslim. Then there are many other articles of faith one must believe in to be a muslim. Among these are the divine books, the messengers, the unseen realm (angels, demons etc.), predestiny, mercy and wrath of God, resurrection and judgement. Only after one believes in all of these can one be a Muslim.

So Islam begins with a belief. Not a proof or a scientific principle but a belief. In fact the Quran begins by saying "This is a book in which is guidance without doubt for the believers". Three claims are made here. Firstly the Quran is a book of guidance, a book that teaches people how to live according to the rules and laws of God. Secondly it is a book that has no doubt in it, in its message. It is the truth from God and there are no doubts regarding what it says (God himself vows to this being the truth). Thirdly it is a book for those who believe in God. Hence if you approach it with a very skeptical, close minded point of view, you will not be able to penetrate into its message. That's a lot of claims made in the very first line of the book and this is what sets up the tone for rest of the things to come in the book.

The reason I'm going through all of this is to first get you familiarised with the value the Quran holds among muslims which can help explain to you why most muslims never really got affected by a scientific "enlightenment" period and why spirituality always prevailed over reason throughout the Islamic world.

So coming back to the problem of there being no hard compelling proof of the existence of God and the divinity of the book. There are still many pieces of evidence that hint towards the divine nature of the text. The proof of the Quran is meant to be within the text itself. All these little 'pieces' when collectively taken together make a very strong argument that the Quran must be divine.

Now I can not go through all of these individual 'pieces' explaining them one by one as there are a lot of them for time and patience to permit going through over here. But I will touch on some of the big and most compelling pieces.

Firstly taking the setting in which the Quran was revealed. The prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was an illiterate man who had very little knowledge of the outside world. It is highly unlikely a person with his amount of knowledge could come up with such a complex and extensive text as the Quran.

Now let me split this into the categories of form and content.

First just looking at form is the language of the Quran which is in the most authentic and complete form of Arabic. Again highly impossible for a man of Muhammad's level of knowledge to come up with. In one place the Quran argues for the skeptics to come up with even one phrase of similar magnitude and caliber of the Quran and then exclaims no one can come up with such a text but God.

Then there is the structure of the Quran which is again deeply complex and extensive that at first it baffles the reader but once you take the time to settle in and start to work out the patterns, you'll start to notice its brilliant form which is extremely impossible to be the work of a man.

Now one must note that the 'form' of the Quran can only be studied/observed in its original Arabic form. When the Quran is translated to English, it loses it form and thus you're only left with a sort of summary of what the Quran says.

Now moving onto content, there is great amounts of content in the Quran which has scientifically been proven to be true only in the recent few centuries and could not have been come up with a person who lacks the modern knowledge and equipment to study/observe this phenomenon.

The most elaborate and compelling of these is the description of the formation of the embryo in the Quran. I'm not going to go into that as that is a whole lecture on its own but you could look it up if you're interested in finding out what it says.

Now there is a lot of text in the Quran which deals which phenomenon not many people understand and some of it is completely unexplained. This is where you start to get into Islamic metaphysics and the works of many Persian, Arab and Andalusian philosophers. Philosopers and theologians such as Al-Ghazali, Ibn Sina, Imam Junaid, Ibn Taymiyya and many more have written a lot of fascinating, encompassing and truly enchanting documents about the Islamic belief system. This is where the Islamic belief is truly established.

The atheist vs believer, God vs. natural universe, Reason vs. Spirituality debate has been discussed thoroughly and answered in Islam a long time ago. Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) were greatly influenced by Platonic philosophy and did a lot of work on reason and its nature and how it could and could not be compatible with religion. This was around the time great scientific progress was taking place within the Islamic world.
Then Al-Ghazali came with a completely spiritual debate in a way going back to the traditional roots of the faith. His spiritual philosophy refuted the Platonic reasoning of his contemporaries and in a way put an end to these debates in Islam. One result of this was that muslims went back to the traditional spiritual values of Islam and the scientific progress (which was already suffering due to the Mongol invasion and instability in Al-Andalus) pretty much ended and it has stayed that way ever since.

And this is why it is difficult if not impossible to repudiate the existance of God in Islam and the divinity of the Quran along with its belief system among muslims. The modern scientific argument for the universe being an uncompounded singular entity working on the principles of physics without the inherent need of a higher power can't really stand against the amount of work done by the Islamic philosophers and theologians on these discussions.

This is why Islam's "age of enlightenment" ended with the refutation of scientific reason for spiritual learning while the opposite happened in the Christian world.

If you have doubts and objections of what I said, feel free to go ahead and post them. I'm sure you have many!!

Thanks.

Mark Hamill · 11-09-2010 3:41pm

Thank you for your informative post

af_thefragile wrote: »

A question among atheists and non-believers in Islam is that how can we consider what the Quran says as to be true as there isn't any compelling evidence for neither God nor the divinity of the text and hence Islam must fall flat on its face when attacked by scientific reasoning.

This is not scientific reasoning per say, its just general skepticism.

af_thefragile wrote: »

Firstly Islam begins with a belief in God. If you don't believe in God, you can't be a muslim. Then there are many other articles of faith one must believe in to be a muslim. Among these are the divine books, the messengers, the unseen realm (angels, demons etc.), predestiny, mercy and wrath of God, resurrection and judgement. Only after one believes in all of these can one be a Muslim.

But all of these are described in the Quran though, correct? What I mean is all these specific details about islam come purely from the Quran.

af_thefragile wrote: »

So Islam begins with a belief. Not a proof or a scientific principle but a belief.

These are not distinct princibles. Scientific principles are beliefs the difference is how scientific beliefs are arived at (through empiricle measurement and experimentation).

af_thefragile wrote: »

In fact the Quran begins by saying "This is a book in which is guidance without doubt for the believers". Three claims are made here. Firstly the Quran is a book of guidance, a book that teaches people how to live according to the rules and laws of God. Secondly it is a book that has no doubt in it, in its message. It is the truth from God and there are no doubts regarding what it says (God himself vows to this being the truth). Thirdly it is a book for those who believe in God. Hence if you approach it with a very skeptical, close minded point of view, you will not be able to penetrate into its message. That's a lot of claims made in the very first line of the book and this is what sets up the tone for rest of the things to come in the book.

And the question becomes why believe those claims in the first place?

af_thefragile wrote: »

So coming back to the problem of there being no hard compelling proof of the existence of God and the divinity of the book. There are still many pieces of evidence that hint towards the divine nature of the text. The proof of the Quran is meant to be within the text itself. All these little 'pieces' when collectively taken together make a very strong argument that the Quran must be divine.

Which just amounts to circular logic: the quran is divine because it says it is divine.

af_thefragile wrote: »

Firstly taking the setting in which the Quran was revealed. The prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was an illiterate man who had very little knowledge of the outside world. It is highly unlikely a person with his amount of knowledge could come up with such a complex and extensive text as the Quran.

I thought he was a merchant, involved in trade between the indian ocean and mediterranean sea? Could this not have given him plenty of information about the world.

af_thefragile wrote: »

First just looking at form is the language of the Quran which is in the most authentic and complete form of Arabic. Again highly impossible for a man of Muhammad's level of knowledge to come up with. In one place the Quran argues for the skeptics to come up with even one phrase of similar magnitude and caliber of the Quran and then exclaims no one can come up with such a text but God.

I'm not quite sure what you are saying here? What do you mean by "most authentic and complete form of Arabic"? How do measure the magnitude and caliber of a phrase objectively?

af_thefragile wrote: »

Then there is the structure of the Quran which is again deeply complex and extensive that at first it baffles the reader but once you take the time to settle in and start to work out the patterns, you'll start to notice its brilliant form which is extremely impossible to be the work of a man.

Read "The House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski and get back to me about deep complexity and extensiveness.

af_thefragile wrote: »

Now one must note that the 'form' of the Quran can only be studied/observed in its original Arabic form. When the Quran is translated to English, it loses it form and thus you're only left with a sort of summary of what the Quran says.

Many works loose their orignal meaning when translated into other languages.

af_thefragile wrote: »

Now moving onto content, there is great amounts of content in the Quran which has scientifically been proven to be true only in the recent few centuries and could not have been come up with a person who lacks the modern knowledge and equipment to study/observe this phenomenon.

The most elaborate and compelling of these is the description of the formation of the embryo in the Quran. I'm not going to go into that as that is a whole lecture on its own but you could look it up if you're interested in finding out what it says.

Its very easy to look back on fairly unspecific poetic language and attribute to it an understanding that may not have been there in the first place. The best example of this is Nostradamus' predictions, which get re-evaluated every few years to mean different events.

af_thefragile wrote: »

And this is why it is difficult if not impossible to repudiate the existance of God in Islam and the divinity of the Quran along with its belief system among muslims. The modern scientific argument for the universe being an uncompounded singular entity working on the principles of physics without the inherent need of a higher power can't really stand against the amount of work done by the Islamic philosophers and theologians on these discussions.

Wait, what? Where did this come from? Why cant it stand up? Because some philosophers said so? Can you explain his reasoning for why this reasoning (its not scientific, its just common sense skepticism) cant be applied to Islam?

af_thefragile · 12-09-2010 2:57am

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Thank you for your informative post

This is not scientific reasoning per say, its just general skepticism.

You are entitled to your skepticism. Islam regards questioning very highly. Only through questioning things can one gain knowledge.

But all of these are described in the Quran though, correct? What I mean is all these specific details about islam come purely from the Quran.

That is actually a sort of a translation of a verse from the Quran, the belief in all of these things. Its a core value of Islam. And the supernatural/unseen elements and entities are mentioned several time in the Quran, there's no doubt in Islam on their existence. Its not an interpretation or anything as such. All of this is very clearly mentioned.

These are not distinct princibles. Scientific principles are beliefs the difference is how scientific beliefs are arived at (through empiricle measurement and experimentation).

Like I was explaining to you before, things happen different in religion. You first need to believe and then rather than confirming it after you find the proof, in religion you need to consider it confirmed and figure out how it might be measured/arrived at. And if you can't figure out how, you accept that your measurement is flawed/incompetent and you just leave it saying God knows how this works best.

It is very contradictory to rational thinking but religion is not always rational. Though it is assumed that if you really were committed to it, one could (with God's help) find a rational explanation for a religious phenomenon which does not refute the presence of God. In Islam nothing can happen without the will of God!

And the question becomes why believe those claims in the first place?

Because you either chose to believe or you don't. The Quran requires you to approach it with a open mind and heart. If you approach it with an agenda as to find flaws in it or find arguments that correspond to your agenda, then you won't get anything from it and you'll only get misguided by it.

Which just amounts to circular logic: the quran is divine because it says it is divine.

It is not circular logic. The proof of the Quran is inherent in its words and teachings. Yes the Quran says it is divine but it also gives the reader many reason as to why it is divine. A few of which I stated in my earlier post.

I thought he was a merchant, involved in trade between the indian ocean and mediterranean sea? Could this not have given him plenty of information about the world.

Yes he was a merchant and yes there are books which say he had met many Christian and Judaic scholars gaining his knowledge from them. But this isn't true. He didn't have any contact with any scholars to be able to detail the events mentioned in the Quran in such detail.

I mentioned this video in the other thread about the revelation, compilation and authenticity of the Quran, I'll post it here as well if you can find the time to watch it. Its given by one of the most highly reputable scholar in the western world atleast and should clear many doubts. I really couldn't explain this better than he can in this video.
Here is the link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2963640488220666019#

I'm not quite sure what you are saying here? What do you mean by "most authentic and complete form of Arabic"? How do measure the magnitude and caliber of a phrase objectively?

Read "The House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski and get back to me about deep complexity and extensiveness.

It is impossible for someone who is doesn't know Arabic to recognise and understand this.

I have read "The House of Leaves". Interesting book though at times I felt the author was trying a little too hard. But you really can't compare that to the Quran. Its totally different.

For now you will just have to take my word on the complexity, beauty and depth in the language of the Quran. If I find any good video by a reputed scholar on this topic, I'll post it here.

Many works loose their orignal meaning when translated into other languages.

And this is a very big problem with the Quran. Which is only made worse by the fact there are no english words for many of the core concepts mentioned in the Quran. For example Nafs is very central concept in Islamic theology and especially spirituality. Is is a property of a person's soul which deals with his desires. It can be poorly translated as the self or the ego but none of these words do any justice. I will not go into explaining the concept of Nafs here as its a very extensive and deep topic and is secondary to the topic of this thread.

Also many Arabic words come from a different understanding than their equivalent words in English. Some words in Arabic have a very spiritual meaning while their corresponding word in English has a very worldly meaning. This creates a difference in understanding of the Quran. I can't think of any good examples right now. When I find one, I'll post it here.

Its very easy to look back on fairly unspecific poetic language and attribute to it an understanding that may not have been there in the first place. The best example of this is Nostradamus' predictions, which get re-evaluated every few years to mean different events.

Though many of the interpretations of the Quran has remained unchanged for centuries. Infact the interpretations of the earliest scholars of the Quran are consider more authoritative than the more modern interpretations as the earlier scholars had a better and more deeper understanding of Quran.
There is a concept that the essence of religion gets watered down with every generation.

And concerning what Quran says about the development of the embryo, it is clear as day to be interpreted any other way. This information could not have been found out without the help of powerful microscopes yet its mentioned in a book very accurately that was written 1400 years ago.

Wait, what? Where did this come from? Why cant it stand up? Because some philosophers said so? Can you explain his reasoning for why this reasoning (its not scientific, its just common sense skepticism) cant be applied to Islam?

Well, I've mentioned before how the Quran is considered divine and hence infallible. When you believe in the Quran, you have to believe in everything it says. Which means you can not believe there isn't any God.

Al-Ghazali wrote his discussion for the refutation of Platonic reason and rational thinking in his book "The incoherence of the Philosophers".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_the_Philosophers
(acutally funny how the info on that wiki page changes everytime I visit it, I should find a better source for you).
He argued on the nature of facts and scientific phenomenology. Sorta in a very primary school excerpt he argues everything is the way because God meant it to be that way. Note, its a very very very basic summary of his philosophy. He is considered probably the greatest philosopher in Islamic history and hence his argument is very strong. That book had perhaps the greatest imapact in the Islamic world after its "Age of Enlightenment".

The repercussions of this philosophy are not very good for scientific progress in the rational experimental way. Its not to be said this philosophy destroyed the scientific knowledge in Islam because science flourished in Islam once and a lot of it was a direct result of the Islamic teachings in the Quran. What is did was destroy the skepticism that was slowly creeping in withing the Islamic philosophers on the question of God and religion (very similar to what happened during the Christian Enlightenment period). This philosophy rather opened up a new window into the world of spiritual knowledge. The focus shifted from scientific knowledge and discovery to the development of spiritual sciences. The understanding of concepts such as of life, death, of love, devotion and the nature of God. You'll find Islam has a very rich spiritual understanding and philosophy.

When you've seen the amount of spiritual knowledge there is present in Islam thanks to the many great scholars, philosophers and theologians, it becomes very hard for one to repudiate all of that knowledge and believe "what we see is what there is", the material universe is all that exists. This is why most muslims hold fast to their believes. Its because spirituality runs very deep in Islam and it can't be removed neither can it be refuted.

Mark Hamill · 12-09-2010 1:57pm

af_thefragile wrote: »

Like I was explaining to you before, things happen different in religion. You first need to believe and then rather than confirming it after you find the proof, in religion you need to consider it confirmed and figure out how it might be measured/arrived at. And if you can't figure out how, you accept that your measurement is flawed/incompetent and you just leave it saying God knows how this works best.

You do realise that the difference between science and religion that you have described, is that science takes a conclusion and tests it, open minded to it being wrong, while religion takes a conclusion and closes its mind to it being wrong? That science is open minded and religion is close minded?

af_thefragile wrote: »

Because you either chose to believe or you don't.

You cant choose to believe something, you are either convinced or you aren't. Something must be presented to convince you, you cant get convinced of something in a vacuum.

af_thefragile wrote: »

The Quran requires you to approach it with a open mind and heart. If you approach it with an agenda as to find flaws in it or find arguments that correspond to your agenda, then you won't get anything from it and you'll only get misguided by it.

Now you have majorly contradicted yourself. First, earlier, you said religion requires you to start with your conclusion, and then find arguments for it, but now you say that you have to start with an open mind, you cant start with a conclusion (an agenda). Which is it?

af_thefragile wrote: »

Here is the link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2963640488220666019#

The video is quite long (~70 mins), can you roughly point to where he proves that Mohammad never met anyone from the outside world?

af_thefragile wrote: »

It is impossible for someone who is doesn't know Arabic to recognise and understand this.

Why doesn't that count against it? If god did inspire it and made sure that it didn't loose any meaning throughout the years (ie prevented it from being corrupted by fallible humans) then why did he do it in such a way that by simply translating the book, you could loose important meaning?

af_thefragile wrote: »

I have read "The House of Leaves". Interesting book though at times I felt the author was trying a little too hard. But you really can't compare that to the Quran. Its totally different.

For now you will just have to take my word on the complexity, beauty and depth in the language of the Quran.

The problem here, as exemplified by "The House of Leaves", is the subjectivity of concepts like complexity, beauty and depth.

af_thefragile wrote: »

And this is a very big problem with the Quran. Which is only made worse by the fact there are no english words for many of the core concepts mentioned in the Quran. For example Nafs is very central concept in Islamic theology and especially spirituality. Is is a property of a person's soul which deals with his desires. It can be poorly translated as the self or the ego but none of these words do any justice. I will not go into explaining the concept of Nafs here as its a very extensive and deep topic and is secondary to the topic of this thread.

Also many Arabic words come from a different understanding than their equivalent words in English. Some words in Arabic have a very spiritual meaning while their corresponding word in English has a very worldly meaning. This creates a difference in understanding of the Quran. I can't think of any good examples right now. When I find one, I'll post it here.

As I said above, why isn't this seen as a bad thing? Why wouldn't god choose a language or terms that translates better?

af_thefragile wrote: »

Though many of the interpretations of the Quran has remained unchanged for centuries. Infact the interpretations of the earliest scholars of the Quran are consider more authoritative than the more modern interpretations as the earlier scholars had a better and more deeper understanding of Quran.
There is a concept that the essence of religion gets watered down with every generation.

And concerning what Quran says about the development of the embryo, it is clear as day to be interpreted any other way. This information could not have been found out without the help of powerful microscopes yet its mentioned in a book very accurately that was written 1400 years ago.

You can quote the specific parts you think detail embryology if you like, but its been debunked before (google it, The extent to which embryology is described isn't great, its not particularly accurate and its predated by the greeks and romans).

af_thefragile wrote: »

Al-Ghazali wrote his discussion for the refutation of Platonic reason and rational thinking in his book "The incoherence of the Philosophers".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_the_Philosophers
(acutally funny how the info on that wiki page changes everytime I visit it, I should find a better source for you).

I found this link which describes his arguments based on setting fire to cotton, so I can talk on that until you find something else more to your liking.
There are a few flaws in this argument (maybe he covers them elsewhere in the book though). Firstly while making the claim that fire doesn't burn cotton, that its gods will (and so forth for any causal effect), he doesn't demonstate how he comes to this conclusion, i.e. he doesn't show how he can tell the difference between a universe where everything is causal due to gods will, or causal due to their inherent properties, as he says the outcome is the same anyway.
The second flaw is that his argument is essential unfalsifiable. Not only can he not tell what kind of universe he is in, but no-one else really can either. (This, by the way, is why I have repeatedlly said that I'm not coming from this from a scientific point of view, science doesn't deal with unfalsifiable hypotheticals). The problem with this is that any number of other unfalsifiable positions simultaneuous exist (why is it his god, Allah, that must be the god to be doing this? why not any other god - Jehovah, Yahweh, Brahma, or even one humanity is unaware of? Even if you accept the starting position, how can you tell which god is involved? Why does it need to be a god, as we undestand gods?).
Simple skepticism shows the gaps in the starting assumptions, and the gaps between the starting assumptions and the conclusions.

af_thefragile wrote: »

When you've seen the amount of spiritual knowledge there is present in Islam thanks to the many great scholars, philosophers and theologians, it becomes very hard for one to repudiate all of that knowledge and believe "what we see is what there is", the material universe is all that exists. This is why most muslims hold fast to their believes. Its because spirituality runs very deep in Islam and it can't be removed neither can it be refuted.

Spirituality runs very deep in many cultures, and simply by virtue of not being of those cultures, you deny them. I have yet to see an argument that isn't straightforwardly refuted with simple logic and skepticism.

af_thefragile · 14-09-2010 1:54am

I knew a starting a thread of this nature was going to push me beyond my capabilities of knowledge and understanding. But well, sometimes you need a push to move ahead.

I'm not a scholar which is why I'm not going to be quoting verses from the Quran or any other books because firstly I honestly don't know where the right quotes lie and then even if I do know, I wouldn't attempt at trying to explain them with my little knowledge.

Anyway, here we go.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

You do realise that the difference between science and religion that you have described, is that science takes a conclusion and tests it, open minded to it being wrong, while religion takes a conclusion and closes its mind to it being wrong? That science is open minded and religion is close minded?

There is a very key fundamental difference between scientific and religious knowledge which makes the whole process of establishing proofs very different between the two studies.

Science is the knowledge of the material. Of energy and matter. Of what Islam refers to as the 'zahir' (sp?) or the 'outward'. It is the part of the universe we can see and/or feel and/or measure. You can measure matter and energy using scientific instruments and hence you can study them using these instruments and observe how they interact. This is very easy as it requires only visual and intellectual perception of these material phenomenon to measure them and understand them.

Religion/theology/spirituality on the other hand is the knowledge of the unknown/the hidden. Its the knowledge of what is 'veiled' from us. It is what Islam refers to as the 'batil' or the 'inward'. Sometimes also referred to as the true nature of things. You can not measure this with any 'material' instruments as these are separate from the material world. The only way of measuring them is through the 'inward' instruments or senses we humans have been given. This is our 'Qalb', our 'Core' of our Heart (its the inner, hidden dimension of our material heart). Our heart is the instrument we need to measure/observe these hidden phenomenon. If the instrument isn't working properly or is damaged, it is not going to record or observe properly either. Hence once a sound heart can perceive this 'inner'/'hidden' dimension and what goes on there. This is where you get all your 'spiritual knowledge' and 'spiritual enlightenment' from.

And this is not some LSD induced talk. It is what the various religious books in Islam say and the work many great Islamic scholars have done over the centuries on this subject.

Al-Ghazali said the 'outward' and the 'inward' are not two contradicting states but instead they're complementing states. Like two sides of a coin. Only when a person recognises both these states oh himself and maintains them in balance can he live a healthy life.

You cant choose to believe something, you are either convinced or you aren't. Something must be presented to convince you, you cant get convinced of something in a vacuum.

Yes but you can either chose to approach with a open mind and heart to try to learn something and see if you can bring yourself to believe in it.
Or you can grab onto your preconceptions and approach with an agenda trying to discover fallacies or worse not bother trying to discover anything in the first place.

Now you have majorly contradicted yourself. First, earlier, you said religion requires you to start with your conclusion, and then find arguments for it, but now you say that you have to start with an open mind, you cant start with a conclusion (an agenda). Which is it?

Well, religion requires you to acknowledge the certain phenomenon and not refute it if you don't find any evidence/proof in it because as I explained above due to the nature of what you're trying to measure in religion, it is very difficult to approach on any solid universal evidence in religion. Everything is very subjective as religious evidence usually comes from spiritual experiences.

About the Quran, like I stated above. If you approach it with a closed mind and an agenda, you'll get very little out of it. You need to approach it with an open mind thinking "this is a book considered by 1/5th of the world's population to be the word of God, there has to be something in it to convince so many people that this is the absolute law".

A verse in the Quran says (in a very loose translation) "this is the book by which God guides many and he misguides many". The Quran is called the "furqan" meaning "the differentiator". The Quran differentiates between people with sound hearts and people who don't have sound hearts/with corrupted hearts. It differentiates between people who are accepting to receiving guidance and people who are closed to ponder upon what is stated in the book.

When I said you have to approach the Quran with an open mind, I meant yes, you need to be accepting to learn something from it.
When I said you can't approach it with an agenda, I meant you can't refute the book without even pondering over what it says. You can't approach it to find faults in it or to derive a certain meaning out of its verses because if you try to do that, sure you might be able to achieve what you came for (when God says "he misguides many by it") but you've not benefited from the book and then eventually God won't let you away with it... I won't go any further on this unless you wish me to go into the nature of the disbelievers and how God says he deals with them.

The video is quite long (~70 mins), can you roughly point to where he proves that Mohammad never met anyone from the outside world?

Mohammad did have contact with the outside world but he didn't know much about other religions. That lecture doesn't say that. Though it does shed's light on his nature and his level of knowledge before the Quran came to him. The first 20mins of the lecture pretty much deal with that.
The next 10-20mins deal with how the Quran was revealed to him.
The next 20 deal with how the Quran was compiled after his death. The last 10 or so mins are questions and the last Question deals with a topic you touched on.

Why doesn't that count against it? If god did inspire it and made sure that it didn't loose any meaning throughout the years (ie prevented it from being corrupted by fallible humans) then why did he do it in such a way that by simply translating the book, you could loose important meaning?

And this is kind of what the Question deals with. The book is in the language of the people it was sent to so that they may understand it and comprehend it easily. The book work's wonders in arabic and different dialects of Arabic. The meanings of the words do change when read in the different arabic dialects but the core essence/teachings of the verses remain the same. But unfortunately over centuries languages get watered down and corrupted and hence as the knowledge of the Quran lies, in the knowledge of Arabic, as the knowledge of Arabic decreses among the people, the knowledge of the Quran decreases as well. Though Arabic is one of the few languages that is still preserved in its knowledge in the very same form it was during the period of the Prophet. This is only possible because the Quran has been preserved in the very same shape and form as it was when it first came.

The problem is not with the book but its with English. Firstly english is a very modern language, it has roots from many different languages. Then the background english comes from (which is mostly Latin roots) is very different to what Arabic comes from. And also when the Quran came, it pretty much came with its own language (not a contradiction to what I said earlier about it coming in the language of the people, bear with me to explain this). The Quran was in the language of the people as in it used the same words and phrases and rhetoric as the literary arabic of that time. But the Quran was a radical shift of views and ideology for the 7th century Arabs. With the coming of the Quran, suddenly words and concepts which were associated with good things in the mind of the people became bad and concepts which were bad became virtuous. Such as gluttony, extravagance, exuberance etc were considered good traits among the Arabs and was looked upto in people. With the Quran these suddenly became negative traits and were replaced by modesty, piety, humility as virtuous traits.

It took a while for the Arabs who became muslims to adjust to this paradigm shift. About 10 years to be more precise.

Now unless such a paradigm shift takes places in the Latin derived languages, you will not be able to understand the Quran without reading through the several pages of commentary which goes with every verse of the book.

Although you can not understand the Quran even in Arabic properly without guidance from a teacher either because it is very easy to get misguided by it unless you read the Quran the way the 7th Century Arabs (the first muslims) read it. Meanings and concepts change over the years in language and they get diluted as time passes by and people's perspectives and social thinking changes. This is nothing to do with religion but with how society changes over time.

The problem here, as exemplified by "The House of Leaves", is the subjectivity of concepts like complexity, beauty and depth.

You can not compare "The House of Leaves" with the Quran. Really. They're on different levels. Its like comparing Winnie the Pooh to Hamlet.

Sure complexity, beauty and depth are subjective but unless you have studied the book, you cannot judge it.

As I said above, why isn't this seen as a bad thing? Why wouldn't god choose a language or terms that translates better?

Its because God didn't chose Quran to be in English or Latin. In fact the Quran is considered to be "God's uncreated speak". The real meaning of this no one can fully explain. But it sort of means the Quran was present before creation itself. In a way somehow God knew how the world was going to change and what events would be taking place and how the people would be speaking the certain language at that time. Again, this can't be explained. But there are many things in Quran that can't be explained.

The Quran begins with three Arabic letters whom no one know the exact meanings of. The letters with their equivalent in English being "A", "L" and "M". The way the Quran starts by these strange apparently random letters is telling you that there are things in this book and the universe that you don't have knowledge of. You need to accept this fact that there are things you don't know before you can begin with the Quran. Going back to what I said earlier about approaching it with an open mind and heart. If you think you know everything, then here are there letters for you whose meaning no one can comprehend (but God). So you need to accept it that you don't know everything before you can begin with this book.

You can quote the specific parts you think detail embryology if you like, but its been debunked before (google it, The extent to which embryology is described isn't great, its not particularly accurate and its predated by the greeks and romans).

Well, you can chose to believe what those internet "islam debunking" websites say or you can chose to believe what the Islamic websites say.
Here's a good website to have a look at in your spare time:
www.miraclesofthequran.com

You can either believe an illiterate person in the middle of the desert could come up with a book that says all those things.
Or you could believe Muhammad was a very intelligent person who traveled around the world and gained knowledge from the Christians, Jews, Greeks, Hindus etc. and came up with a book that has stuff from all of these teachings along with some new ones. For which you should give him some credit for coming up with such a thing.

I found this link which describes his arguments based on setting fire to cotton, so I can talk on that until you find something else more to your liking.
There are a few flaws in this argument (maybe he covers them elsewhere in the book though). Firstly while making the claim that fire doesn't burn cotton, that its gods will (and so forth for any causal effect), he doesn't demonstate how he comes to this conclusion, i.e. he doesn't show how he can tell the difference between a universe where everything is causal due to gods will, or causal due to their inherent properties, as he says the outcome is the same anyway.
The second flaw is that his argument is essential unfalsifiable. Not only can he not tell what kind of universe he is in, but no-one else really can either. (This, by the way, is why I have repeatedlly said that I'm not coming from this from a scientific point of view, science doesn't deal with unfalsifiable hypotheticals). The problem with this is that any number of other unfalsifiable positions simultaneuous exist (why is it his god, Allah, that must be the god to be doing this? why not any other god - Jehovah, Yahweh, Brahma, or even one humanity is unaware of? Even if you accept the starting position, how can you tell which god is involved? Why does it need to be a god, as we undestand gods?).
Simple skepticism shows the gaps in the starting assumptions, and the gaps between the starting assumptions and the conclusions.

I'm sure he dealt with these "flaws" elsewhere in his book or else he wouldn't be considered the greatest philosopher in Islam and his book have influence worldwide across the Islamic and Christian world. Thomas Aquinus was greatly influenced by Al-Ghazali.

I will not argue on the points you bought up because to be honest, I don't have the knowledge to. I haven't read that book so I'm not familiar with the complete discourse of Al-Ghazali's argument.

Although if I attempt to, I'll say Ghazali in that book question the very nature of scientific facts and knowledge and the inherit flaw in scientific measurement as it only deals with the 'material' aspect of the universe. Its like Plato's Allegory of the Cave. We don't actually know the true nature of things. We see shadows on the blank wall and ascribe form and meaning to them while the real reason of all of this happening is hidden from us (behind our backs).

So once again, you cannot use scientific reasoning to try to falsify this. He comes to this conclusion through understanding the spiritual, hidden nature of the universe. You'll have to read the book to understand this and unfortunately I can't explain you this. Not until i've read the book myself atleast.

Then to your question of "Why Allah". Its because of the nature of Allah. It fits in better than other other concept of God. If you want me to describe that I'll do that but not now because I've already been typing this post for more than an hour and I'm a bit tired at this point... I'll expand on it in my next post if you wish me to.

Spirituality runs very deep in many cultures, and simply by virtue of not being of those cultures, you deny them. I have yet to see an argument that isn't straightforwardly refuted with simple logic and skepticism.

It depends on what logic you use. It is very easy to be a skeptic. Questioning things is the easy part. Trying to find explanations for them is the difficult bit. Which is probably why it has taken me close to 2hrs to type this whole thing.

We see things through different perspectives which is why sometimes things I feel are straight forward, you end up picking out flaws in them and things that are much complex, you don't see them as complex and deep as I do.

Scientific study is easy to prove and disprove. You've just got to make measurements and see if you can recreate the experiment with the same results while letting computers do all the hard calculations for you.

With spirituality, you've first got to fix your instrument of measurement (your heart) to make sure its working properly. Then you've got to open yourself to the possibilities of receiving light from the unknown/hidden and be able to interpret it.

Just like there are very few scientists who have the complex measuring instruments and the ability to interpret the results and solve complex physical and mathematical formulas and equations to attain a conclusion and hence a result. There are very few people (spiritual scientists) who have the instruments and the ability to interpret the spiritual data and convert it into knowledge for us to make use of. The rest of us just have to take their word for it.

Peace.

Mark Hamill · 14-09-2010 9:48pm

af_thefragile wrote: »

There is a very key fundamental difference between scientific and religious knowledge which makes the whole process of establishing proofs very different between the two studies.

[SNIP]

This is where you get all your 'spiritual knowledge' and 'spiritual enlightenment' from.

The problem here is how you can call the religious stuff "knowledge". You cant objectively measure it, or objectively define it, there is nothing you can do with your "heart" that can I get the same results when trying to experince what you experience. All you are left with is personal belief, and personal belief is not nearly the same thing as knowledge.

af_thefragile wrote: »

Yes but you can either chose to approach with a open mind and heart to try to learn something and see if you can bring yourself to believe in it.

Or you can grab onto your preconceptions and approach with an agenda trying to discover fallacies or worse not bother trying to discover anything in the first place.

There is nothing open minded about approaching an idea trying to believe in it. Being open minded means approaching an idea and just running with its hypotheses and seeing if they are right or wrong. If you start with an idea and run with it from the point of view that you want to believe it, your biases will blind you to any problems the idea has, you will enevitably be close-minded.

af_thefragile wrote: »

Well, religion requires you to acknowledge the certain phenomenon and not refute it if you don't find any evidence/proof in it because as I explained above due to the nature of what you're trying to measure in religion, it is very difficult to approach on any solid universal evidence in religion. Everything is very subjective as religious evidence usually comes from spiritual experiences.

So you do have to approach religion with an agenda? You have to start already believing in it (to justify not trying to refute anything) in order to believe it? The problem with religion being very subjective is how do you convince others that what they have subjectively experienced is the same as what you have? Not to mention the flawed nature of subjective experiences.

af_thefragile wrote: »

About the Quran, like I stated above. If you approach it with a closed mind and an agenda, you'll get very little out of it. You need to approach it with an open mind thinking "this is a book considered by 1/5th of the world's population to be the word of God, there has to be something in it to convince so many people that this is the absolute law".

Approaching it like that is approaching it with an agenda, its just an agenda that is more likely going to result in you believing. You cant have it both ways. Not to mention the flaws in the argumentum ad populum (least of which is that if 1/5th of the population may hold to the quran, that means that 4/5ths dont, does that mean there has to be something which convinces them it isn't the absolute law)

af_thefragile wrote: »

When I said you have to approach the Quran with an open mind, I meant yes, you need to be accepting to learn something from it.
When I said you can't approach it with an agenda, I meant you can't refute the book without even pondering over what it says. You can't approach it to find faults in it or to derive a certain meaning out of its verses because if you try to do that, sure you might be able to achieve what you came for (when God says "he misguides many by it") but you've not benefited from the book and then eventually God won't let you away with it... I won't go any further on this unless you wish me to go into the nature of the disbelievers and how God says he deals with them.

Look to your left. Look to your right. Just look all around. Everything you see is possible because ideas looking to find problems in them. When we develop computers, building techniques, agriculture, just any piece of technology we have and use is there because we test ideas for flaws and correct them whe we find them. When something comes along, tells you not to look for flaws and justifies any possible ones with claims that they are there to fool you, it holds no real weight. How do you tell the difference between a book that is flawed and is just trying to cover itself, and one that truely isn't flawed just our understanding of it is? If it truely isn't flawed, then examining what we think are flaws will only improve our understanding and our though processes.

af_thefragile wrote: »

Mohammad did have contact with the outside world but he didn't know much about other religions. That lecture doesn't say that. Though it does shed's light on his nature and his level of knowledge before the Quran came to him. The first 20mins of the lecture pretty much deal with that.
The next 10-20mins deal with how the Quran was revealed to him.
The next 20 deal with how the Quran was compiled after his death. The last 10 or so mins are questions and the last Question deals with a topic you touched on.

So first Mohammad didn't know anything at all about the outside world, now he just doesn't know much about other religions?

af_thefragile wrote: »

And this is kind of what the Question deals with.

[SNIP]

The Quran was in the language of the people as in it used the same words and phrases and rhetoric as the literary arabic of that time.

That doesn't answer what I said, it just repeats that the quran as it is today is better in arabic than english. You are forgetting that this is a book whose form and meaning was decided by god. Sure it may be at the time of writing it, arabic was the most common language (i dont know if that was the case though), but there is no reason that it couldn't have been written in such a way that translation didn't effect the meaning.

af_thefragile wrote: »

But the Quran was a radical shift of views and ideology for the 7th century Arabs. With the coming of the Quran, suddenly words and concepts which were associated with good things in the mind of the people became bad and concepts which were bad became virtuous. Such as gluttony, extravagance, exuberance etc were considered good traits among the Arabs and was looked upto in people. With the Quran these suddenly became negative traits and were replaced by modesty, piety, humility as virtuous traits.

It took a while for the Arabs who became muslims to adjust to this paradigm shift. About 10 years to be more precise.

Now unless such a paradigm shift takes places in the Latin derived languages, you will not be able to understand the Quran without reading through the several pages of commentary which goes with every verse of the book.

Such a paradigm shift would not be restricted to the language used. What I mean is, you dont need to restrict yourself to one language, and one form/dialect of a language to get an idea across. A concept being considered good or bad defines the language used to describe it, not vice versa. People describe something as being good or bad because they believe it to be good or bad , not because they are unable to consider it otherwise without inventing new terms for it.

af_thefragile wrote: »

Although you can not understand the Quran even in Arabic properly without guidance from a teacher either because it is very easy to get misguided by it unless you read the Quran the way the 7th Century Arabs (the first muslims) read it.

Thats the problem I have been describing. You are assuming a whole lot of people all through the years have not inserted their own subjective meaning or even emphasis on the verses, all because the book is restricted to a limited timeline and culture in how it was written.

af_thefragile wrote: »

Its because God didn't chose Quran to be in English or Latin. In fact the Quran is considered to be "God's uncreated speak". The real meaning of this no one can fully explain. But it sort of means the Quran was present before creation itself. In a way somehow God knew how the world was going to change and what events would be taking place and how the people would be speaking the certain language at that time. Again, this can't be explained. But there are many things in Quran that can't be explained.

If god knew how the world was going to be (massively variable, like it is) then why not have it in such a way that its langauge gets across to anyone, at any time. This is god we are talking about, the fact that the world is varied, and the manner in which it is varied is entirely his choice, why would he set it up in such a way that his message is limited in its reach?

af_thefragile wrote: »

The Quran begins with three Arabic letters whom no one know the exact meanings of. The letters with their equivalent in English being "A", "L" and "M". The way the Quran starts by these strange apparently random letters is telling you that there are things in this book and the universe that you don't have knowledge of. You need to accept this fact that there are things you don't know before you can begin with the Quran. Going back to what I said earlier about approaching it with an open mind and heart. If you think you know everything, then here are there letters for you whose meaning no one can comprehend (but God). So you need to accept it that you don't know everything before you can begin with this book.

Being open minded is not just how you ask questions, its how you deal with answers. Approaching the first three letters and assuming there is a meaning is not being open minded, as you are not able to consider all possible implications because of your starting bias.
How do you tell the difference between three meaningful letters that we will never know the meaning of, and three letters that simply have no meaning?

af_thefragile wrote: »

Well, you can chose to believe what those internet "islam debunking" websites say or you can chose to believe what the Islamic websites say.
Here's a good website to have a look at in your spare time:
www.miraclesofthequran.com

Agian, there is no choice, its all a matter of being convinced. And I am convinced by those answers which are logical and consistent and are accompanied by onjective evidence.

af_thefragile wrote: »

You can either believe an illiterate person in the middle of the desert could come up with a book that says all those things.

This is one point I have seen multiple times from different people that I think is just poorly worded. If Mohammad did write the quran, then he could not be illiterate, as illiterate people, by definition, cant write books. The miracle you proclaim is that his literal abilities came entirely from god. Its a bit semantic, yes, but the difference is there.

af_thefragile wrote: »

Or you could believe Muhammad was a very intelligent person who traveled around the world and gained knowledge from the Christians, Jews, Greeks, Hindus etc. and came up with a book that has stuff from all of these teachings along with some new ones. For which you should give him some credit for coming up with such a thing.

If this where true, that the quran was an amalgamation of other religious ideas coupled with a few of Mohammads own, then it implies that the quran contains lies (it can hardly be considered directly divinely inspired if Mohammad was inspired by other religions).

af_thefragile wrote: »

I'm sure he dealt with these "flaws" elsewhere in his book or else he wouldn't be considered the greatest philosopher in Islam and his book have influence worldwide across the Islamic and Christian world. Thomas Aquinus was greatly influenced by Al-Ghazali.

Thomas Aquinus is far from a great philosopher.

af_thefragile wrote: »

I will not argue on the points you bought up because to be honest, I don't have the knowledge to. I haven't read that book so I'm not familiar with the complete discourse of Al-Ghazali's argument.

Fair enough.

af_thefragile wrote: »

Although if I attempt to, I'll say Ghazali in that book question the very nature of scientific facts and knowledge and the inherit flaw in scientific measurement as it only deals with the 'material' aspect of the universe. Its like Plato's Allegory of the Cave. We don't actually know the true nature of things. We see shadows on the blank wall and ascribe form and meaning to them while the real reason of all of this happening is hidden from us (behind our backs).

Its not a flaw to recognise its own limitations though. Science knows it can only describe materialistic events, as these are the only events that can objectively be described and examined. The flaw, is in those who think they can say, with any degree of certainty, what does happen outside of materialistic reality. Theists have no more idea whats going outside Platos cave than anyone else.

af_thefragile wrote: »

So once again, you cannot use scientific reasoning to try to falsify this.

And thats why I dont. I never said I was, I have repeatedly told you not to think of this about science vs religion, just skepticism vs religion. I dont expect proofs or materialistic evidence, just logical, consistent reasoning.

af_thefragile wrote: »

He comes to this conclusion through understanding the spiritual, hidden nature of the universe. You'll have to read the book to understand this and unfortunately I can't explain you this. Not until i've read the book myself atleast.

I wonder how he can be so sure of his understanding of something, that by his own definition is unseen and unknown.

af_thefragile wrote: »

Then to your question of "Why Allah". Its because of the nature of Allah. It fits in better than other other concept of God. If you want me to describe that I'll do that but not now because I've already been typing this post for more than an hour and I'm a bit tired at this point... I'll expand on it in my next post if you wish me to.

Whenever you are ready.

af_thefragile wrote: »

It depends on what logic you use.

The only logic I'm working off is that if a god exists, it should be logically consisitent. IF a god is not logically consistent, then its not logically consistent to believe in it. Sure its possible that its simply me understanding that is logically inconsistent, but thats why I keep asking the "how do you tell the difference ..." questions, as they will help me make sure I'm looking at things fully aware of everything involved.

af_thefragile wrote: »

Scientific study is easy to prove and disprove. You've just got to make measurements and see if you can recreate the experiment with the same results while letting computers do all the hard calculations for you.

With spirituality, you've first got to fix your instrument of measurement (your heart) to make sure its working properly. Then you've got to open yourself to the possibilities of receiving light from the unknown/hidden and be able to interpret it.

In science you also have to set up instruments and make sure they are accurate and then be aware of experimental errors and natural interference, so your explanations here aren't very different.

af_thefragile wrote: »

Just like there are very few scientists who have the complex measuring instruments and the ability to interpret the results and solve complex physical and mathematical formulas and equations to attain a conclusion and hence a result. There are very few people (spiritual scientists) who have the instruments and the ability to interpret the spiritual data and convert it into knowledge for us to make use of. The rest of us just have to take their word for it.

Peace.

But we dont. There may only be few scientists who have the instruments, but their results and methods are made public. I dont have to have a particular instrument to be able to tell, after reading a scientific paper, that it was used wrong. This is a fundamental aspect of science, its why it works: you dont have to take someones word for it when they claim things, claims are subject to peer review (other scientists in the same field make sure the experiments aren't dodgy) and even after that, any one else can get a published paper and check it themsleves (if they cant get the instruments to repeat it, they can still see if its internally consistent).

Quran as the word of God.

Comments