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Wuthering Heights - Kate Bush
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW3gKKiTvjs

Lovely song based on the book Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

4:78-79 Wherever you may be, death will find you, even if you are in fortified towers. If any good befalls them, they say: ?This is from God,? and if any evil befalls them, they say: ?This is from you!? Say: ?All is from God;? what is wrong with these people, they barely understand any narrative! Any good that befalls you is from God, and any evil that befalls you is from yourself. We have sent you as a messenger to the people and God is enough as a witness.

Why does the god first tell us that It is responsible for both good and bad things and then go on to say that we're responsible for bad things while It is responsible for good things? That seems like a contradiction to me. Why do we just thank the god for the good things that happen to us, but not blame It for the bad things that happen to us if the god is indeed the one who does everything?

seattletruth,

I agree with you. I think Rashad Khalifa's religion was merely a major stepping stone in our lives. I think the Rashad Khalifa periods in our lives should teach us to be cool about having doubts. I'd much rather have doubts about the existence of the god or even become an atheist than force myself to believe something. Rejecting Code 19 was such a relief. It was such a weight off my chest not to force myself to see a miracle in something that is just so braindead.

God, I feel so stupid for having believed in Khalifa's mumbo jumbo once. I try to justify my past belief in Khalifa and his Code 19 religion by reminding myself that I was desperate not to be a Shia, but being a 19er is scarcely better than being a Shia.

I'm posting this on my facebook wall

Read what I posted a bit more carefully.

Do you really think everyone who's had their balls cut of wants to be told their not a man anymore? I don't see how that helps in the fight against the taliban.

I didn't say that. Don't put words in my mouth.

Anyway, eunuchs aren't really men. They're males, but they're not men. I think there's a difference between sex and gender although the terms are used interchangeably.

Good move It's about time eunuchs were finally recognized as human beings. Forget whether or not  this creates "confusion about biology". Pakistan's confused about far more fundamental things, like whether the Taliban are good or bad. Many Pakistanis still think they're swell.

I think my understanding of 5:32 answers Abdun Nur's question. The quran tells us that Cain willfully killed Abel. It does not say Cain let Abel die, which I think is very important because it informs us of the inviolability of the right not to be killed. It doesn't tell us that we have the right to live because we don't really have the right to live. The right to live would mean that we have the right to do whatever we want to ensure we live, like getting people in power to tax the rich for our benefit in case we're poor. The right not to be killed simply means that we have the right not to have others actively put an end to our life. It means that we can't be justified in stopping others from letting us die. So human life is valuable, but not so valuable that other rights can be violated to protect it.

It could be that 5:32 is misunderstood. I used to think that 5:32 tells us that killing one person is as sinful as killing every person on Earth, but there's a problem with that understanding of 5:32. According to such an understanding of 5:32, the value of human life depends on the number of people on Earth so if you killed a person a thousand years ago, it wouldn't have been as bad as killing a person today because there are many more people now. This understanding of 5:32 contradicts verses of the quran in which the god tells us that there can be no change in the god's system. I think what 5:32 is really telling us that the rights of one person are equal to the rights of every other person; that the rights of a majority don't trump the rights of a minority. 5:32 makes it perfectly clear that the quran's moral philosophy is a completely individualistic one since it emphasizes the inviolability of the rights of an individual using the example of the most foundational individual right: the right not to be killed.