Messages

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General Issues / Questions / Re: EVERY CHRISTIAN SHOULD WAKE UP AFTER THIS VIDEO

« on: May 22, 2013, 03:38:24 AM »

I have heard it said of Islam, over and over again and again, time after time that Islam just "makes sense" and is so clearly logical, etc. etc.

My question to you (all of you) is that if you believe what you just said, and what I have read time and again from other Muslim missionaries, than how do you explain ONE SINGLE Muslim converting to Islam?!

I would hazard that matters of faith are not necessarily at all subject to logic or sense. Belief in something might "feel right" even though it is demonstrably absurd or untrue, and that is enough of an attraction for many, who are additionally often unwilling to critically examine those beliefs for fear of losing their faith, which they value.

Furthermore, it seems that most humans have a hard time believing in something unseen, incomparable and ultimately incomprehensible - people love to give divine attributes to humans, almost-humans or various statues or images of beings to which they can more easily relate.

Lastly, there seems to be a great attraction in the promise of guaranteed salvation through faith alone. Many denominations of christianity promise a "free pass" on judgement day for those who believe that Jesus will save them. Christians fervently cling to this conviction, possibly because it spares them the hard work of taking responsibility for their own actions and establishing an honest relationship with their Creator.

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General Issues / Questions / Re: Breaking an Oath

« on: April 26, 2013, 10:18:36 PM »

There are other verses on the same subject:

61:2-3: O you who believe! why do you say that which you do not do? Most loathsome is it in the sight of God that you say what you do not do!

2:177: True piety does not consist in turning your faces towards the east or the west - but truly pious is he who believes in God, and the Last Day; and the angels, and revelation, and the prophets; and spends his substance - however much he himself may cherish - it - upon his near of kin, and the orphans, and the needy, and the wayfarer, and the beggars, and for the freeing of human beings from bondage; and is constant in prayer, and renders the purifying dues; and they who keep their promises whenever they promise, and are patient in misfortune and hardship and in time of peril: it is they that have proved themselves true, and it is they, they who are conscious of God.

17:34 And do not touch the substance of an orphan, save to improve it, before he comes of age. And be true to every promise - for, verily, you will be called to account for every promise which you have made!

It is my opinion that a person of substance is someone who means what he says. If you don't take your own words seriously, how can anyone else? For me personally, learning to live up to this standard has required me to promise less and do more. I don't see this as a bad development at all.

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General Issues / Questions / Re: Can we eat Gelatin with pork byproducts?

« on: April 23, 2013, 12:23:00 PM »

Peace.

Here's a couple of old threads containing more or less well-reasoned speculative opinions on the subject:

http://free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=9598383.0
http://free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=9604136.0

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General Issues / Questions / Re: Rashad Khalifa

« on: April 22, 2013, 06:12:15 AM »

And how do you know that God has nothing to do with the code? 

I don't pretend to know this for a certainty. However it seemed necessary to make a judgement call, and in order to reach my current position I have mainly relied on my facilities of reason, such as they are. I wrote a few of my arguments against belief in the code on a previous page of this very thread.

Do you pretend to know the 'real God' without "inventing your own version of god"?

Again, not really. My knowledge of God is necessarily limited.
Ultimately we must all rely on His guidance in these matters, but I try to do my part in avoiding falsehood by approaching the subject with as much caution, reason and humility as I can muster. I re-examine my beliefs often, looking for mistakes or unfounded assumptions. I am not afraid to admit past mistakes or present ignorance, since this seems like a better approach than dogmatic stubbornness or unfounded speculation.

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General Issues / Questions / Re: Rashad Khalifa

« on: April 22, 2013, 04:56:19 AM »

How can the code be satanic if it strenghens your Faith in God?

The obvious answer to this question is if the code strengthens your faith in a god that does not exist.
-If there is no code, yet you insist that there is one, you are ascribing things to God that He has nothing to do with. This must necessarily mean that you are inventing your own version of god which differs from the real One. A christian might as well ask "what's wrong with believing that Jesus died for my sins if this increases my faith".
Believing in something no matter how strongly and no matter how tempting the belief may seem doesn't make it true - truth is what it is whether you or I or anyone else are capable of believing in truth alone or whether we chose different belief systems.

39:3 seems somewhat topical:

Is it not to Allah that sincere devotion is due? But those who take for protectors other than Allah (say): "We only serve them in order that they may bring us nearer to Allah." Truly Allah will judge between them in that wherein they differ. But Allah guides not such as are false and ungrateful.

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General Issues / Questions / Re: Rashad Khalifa

« on: April 21, 2013, 10:00:30 PM »

Man of Faith:

Facts are facts. They are relevant to everyone who is honestly seeking truth. By stating that some facts aren't relevant to you, you are in essence stating that truth is not relevant to you. Let me quote a snippet from your very first post in this forum:

By the way, I believe in God's signature being 19. I have many personal experiences strengthening this belief. God can occasionally show Himself discreetly by this number 19. Disbelievers in this "Code 19", as people often call it, have no use of trying to convince me that it is conjecture, I have experienced too strong emotions to ever change my mind. Praise to God!

You make many statements about your emotions and beliefs, taking them all quite seriously and expecting others to do so as well. While I agree that emotions can be a useful tool to "feel" one's way around a subject that is difficult to grasp, I think you are making a huge mistake in valuing emotion over reason. Emotions can be false, just like thoughts can be be false. You often bring up the number one's lips touch in the First chapter of the Quran. I on the other hand see great significance in the words of the last chapter: Remember that we are to seek refuge from the evil of what whispers in the chests of men - obviously this implies that feelings can't always be trusted!

While I agree that some of Noon's posts have an arrogant or at least sarcastic tinge to them, I find them interesting to read since he puts forth actual arguments and facts. Your response reminds me of this emoticon: 
If he is wrong, you ought to be able to point out why and how he is wrong. If you can't, you owe it to yourself to examine if it is possible that you are the one who is wrong. If you were sincere in the part you wrote that I quoted, you are the one who is truly arrogant - are you so sure that you have already found absolute truth that you are unwilling to re-examine your previous assumptions, because it is impossible that you have made a mistake?

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General Issues / Questions / Re: Rashad Khalifa

« on: April 19, 2013, 12:38:12 PM »

1:I have learned that I must guard myself from speculation. I dare not allow myself to at all disregard what I believe to be the words of God in order to substitute or even complement them with a belief system that must necessarily be a product of my own speculation.
I do not trust my own ability to accurately determine what various counts are to be considered part of any "miracle" and which ones are to be disregarded as "irrelevant", and I am somewhat perplexed by those who claim to be able to do this - how can they trust themselves to know the difference?
Nor can I allow myself to believe that the number 19 is especially prevalent in the structure of the Quran without a properly conducted statistical analysis showing this is true, nor believe that any particular number has significance beyond what the words of the Quran says it has. I am most reluctant to seek allegories wherever a more literal understanding is at all plausible.

2: Code 19 as it has been presented to me does seem at all similar to the ways in which the Creator has structured this universe, which as far as I understand it is based on rules and relationships that are consistent, elegant and self-explanatory to the point where they can be understood and described as universally applicable equations and constant ratios, which in turn can be used to make accurate predictions about the behavior of creation. Code 19 appears to me like an instructive display of human blind faith and selection bias much more than as a signature worthy of the One who designed the celestial bodies with their orbital mechanics, the building blocks of energy/matter itself and everything in between so flawlessly.

3: It is my personal experience that those who profess faith in code 19 (myself included when that was the case, looking at my former more confused self with the sharpness hindsight sometimes brings) are hindered in their spiritual growth and appear relatively lacking of the clarity and guidance I have come to associate with submissive monotheism. They are often if not always incapable of honest self-reflection or deep reasoning and tend to unquestioningly believe various strange ideas without good cause, often against overwhelming evidence that these ideas are false. (I am merely making the observation, I can not say whether these perceived inabilities to self-reflect or reason are the result of faith in 19 or is rather its cause, if they indeed exist at all.)

Since I can see no reason to take RK's claim to being a messenger seriously without believing in the "code", I'm answering the survey with "no".

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Discuss Latest News/Events / Re: HELP: youssef4342 is missing!!!

« on: April 03, 2013, 10:41:58 PM »

I'm hoping this turns out alright. God sometimes tests those who wish to serve Him. Some of us need relatively severe trials because we are slow and stubborn learners. We should all take comfort in the fact that God surely knows exactly what He is doing, even if youssef4342 doesn't.

What's scary is that he predicted his own death would be in 2013-2014 in a post of his I read. May Allah protect him!

He also claimed to be a messenger sent to preach monotheism and code 19, and predicted that he would go to Egypt and witness a great commotion before he died.

how can he go outside without shoes?

One cautious step at a time and with some pain involved, I assume.

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Submitters / Code 19 / Re: Why Remove 9:127&129?

« on: April 03, 2013, 02:01:07 AM »

Your partial message was to tell people not to be be arrogant yes?

No, not really, although arrogance is certainly incompatible with the honest search for truth.
I am simply trying to help frame this discussion in a productive manner - everyone taking part in it should ideally be in agreement about what is being discussed, why the discussion matters, good ways to go about it, and why we must not be in such a haste to reach a particular conclusion as to leave crucial presuppositions unexamined or considered as self-evident when they are not.

Peace.

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Submitters / Code 19 / Re: Why Remove 9:127&129?

« on: April 03, 2013, 12:42:11 AM »

Read the information objectively, and then come and complain. It appears as though you initially approached the info with a made-up mindset that cannot be altered.

Peace.

You do well in questioning the objectivity of others. You would also do well to question your own objectivity. In an attempt to nudge this thread towards an objective inquiry into this subject, I would like to postulate a few things:

1: We ought to be searching for truth, for the sake of truth itself. This means that we cannot allow ourselves to favor an outcome for other reasons than it being evidently true. For example, a unifying doctrine for believers to adhere to is not a good argument for it being true. It may be comfortable adhering to such a doctrine, sure, but there are countless religious sects who's adherents unite around some doctrine or other; presupposing a single objective reality, all but one of these doctrines must necessarily be at least partly false, and it is possible that every last one of them is false.

2: Faith is not necessarily a good thing. We are all believers in one way or another, sure, but that doesn't make faith inherently valuable. It is good to belive in things that are true, even if there is no empirical evidence for this belief. It is bad to believe in things that are untrue, since this belief must necessarily increase one's confusion about the nature of reality.

3: Those who claim a positive must make their case, or confine themselves to statements of belief. Saying "I believe this to be true" is fine, we are all (according to my belief) responsible before the Creator for our minds and hearts. Saying "this is proven to be true" means you have a duty to back up those claims. Your evidence must stand all honest scrutiny.

4: Presuppositions matter, whether these are explicit or implicit. Unless all the presuppositions upon which a claim is based can withstand honest scrutiny the claim does not hold - except as an article of faith, possibly against evidence to the contrary.

5: Words have meanings. Words like "statistical" or "mathematical" refer to fields of knowledge, which in turn are built upon rules that must be followed in order to get valid results, that in turn can be argued as evidence for a claim of truth. Those who disregard statistical and mathematical rules in any particular numerical inquiry can not claim to have produced evidence based upon math or statistics.

If you disagree with any of these points, please feel free to express why.