9 1 1

[Tracy Woo]

ok, so? How does that relate to Coran or any holy book?

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by <eleison>:
[i]
Your idea is flawed. "True == True," is correct because of definition. It proves nothing. It's like saying "5==5"; it's a given. However, things that are expressed in the Koran are not given. The basic one of which is "God == Allah" - this cannot be proven. Also, until something is proven to be fact, i.e., "True == True", there will always be room for error; hence, updates. Concepts have always gone through revision until it is _FACT_.

If you have been following this thread thoroughly and my argument with Tracy u would have realized what I'm trying to prove. I am trying to prove: "You cannot make a judgement if a concept(s) can hold true for all time or not, without knowing what the concept(s) is. Tracy was trying to say that is doesn't matter what the concept is, the mere fact that it being a concept gives it inherent qualities of being outdated over time. So I presented the concept true = true as a totaulogy..one that holds true forever, and challenged her how she figured out
that concepts in the Quran are not of the same nature WITHOUT reading it. So yes I do prove or am trying to prove something: some concepts do not have the inherent quality of being outdated

[Michael Ernest]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
As to the concept of "true==true"... a book that had only concepts such as this wouldn't be worth reading. Religions such as Islam and Christianity are based on the assumption that there are absolutes and that these absolutes are spelled out in a book. However, no matter how absolute a truth may be it still needs to be interpreted. Why do we have so many sects of Islam and Christianity which don't believe the exact same things? Because they interpret what the books say differently.

I agree, although I'd state it differently:
What amounts to moral absolutes, at least in my understanding of Catholicism, is God's Truth, an essence, thing, or conceptual omnibus beyond human understanding.
The believer holds God's Truth as self-evident, even though the believer cannot fully say what it is. The believer, at best, can provide examples through practice. Different practices are not a result of differences in God's word, I would argue, but a result of the attributes that make up a community's identity expressed as religious custom: good works, devotion to prayer, a codified diet, observance of the sacraments, etc.
But Truth itself remains unprovable; the nature of an absolute law cannot be understood by an imperfect vessel, and all that kind of jazz. So we handle the cracks between Truth and what is tangible or observable by asserting an unshakeable belief in things we "know" are true, even if we can't show them to others. That's faith.
To add a difference: I believe the flaws in our understanding start with the books themselves, which we nonethless regard as God's Word. Interpretation is inescapably misinterpretation as a result, which is not to say there's the possibility of another outcome.

[Michael Ernest]

Originally posted by <eleison>:

Your idea is flawed. "True == True," is correct because of definition. It proves nothing. It's like saying "5==5"; it's a given.
-Eleison

And not a terribly useful one, as any high school physics teacher would be glad to tell you.
"5 == 5" is only true within specific contexts, like a computer program that only expresses equality of representation. That is, "our first exrepssion of five will always equal any other expression of five. We deem literal values to be self-identifying, so we assert that any value is equal to itself."
These notions of reflexivity and associativity go down in flames when we start assigning any further information to the statement. We can't say that "five grapes are equal to five grapes" in any other manner other than their count, for example. Five Thompson's Seedless grapes are not equal to five Sauvignon grapes. In fact, five Sauvignon grapes probably aren't equal to any five other Sauvignon grapes, if any aspect other than count (like weight, color, shape, sugar content) has meaning in the statement. If you bring absolutely every aspect of one thing into an equality statement, then probably nothing is equal to anything else.
I propose the only thing we can do to relieve this world where no two things find comparison is to strip away all the details that mitigate the assertion of equality and ignore them, or accept approximations as near-equalities. That's the world we live in; presumably an abstract God does not, or does not have to. For religions in which God is a physical, active being, it's another matter.
Mathematics is one thing that maintains an apparent bridge between absolutes and the real world for us. Through it we can comfort ourselves in the idea that we have a hold on absolutes in our world. Any deconstruction theorist of course has a good time with that one, as do most academic critics interested in "relative" issues like gender politics.
Math gives us the illusion that we can divorce ourselves from imperfect meanings in the real world. By no means is mathematics useless, but I would contend that even among its practitioners it is widely misunderstood. Then again, what makes mathematics so fascinating is that the concepts within it find so many expressions in real world patterns.
[ September 24, 2002: Message edited by: Michael Ernest ]

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by Tracy Woo:
ok, so? How does that relate to Coran or any holy book?

Did I say that it does relate to Holy books?
I was replying to Michael's comment about absulute and non absulute truths adn tried to show that it does not make sence to assert there is no truth for all.
What that absolute truth is, is not for me to tell you because it is not the topic of our argument.

[Mapraputa Is]

What that absolute truth is, is not for me to tell you because it is not the topic of our argument.
Interesting. This thread started from Shura's request for evidences of OBL guilt, then it advanced to the discussion of what constitutes a higher-order insult, then to whether and how religion is different from science, then assorted religions came under examination, the question about polygamy disparities in Islam was of particular interest, in passing presence of sense of humor in Thomas Paul was detected, and finally we migrated to investigation of tautologies properties and whether there is such thing as an absolute truth... Pretty impressive...
There is a form of poetry, I do not know English term, in Russian it is "garland of connets", where each next part (sonnet) starts by repeating the end of the previous one. There are 14 of them, and then 15-th is formed by taking the first line from each sonnet. We should try to post like that sometimes
[ September 24, 2002: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]

[Mapraputa Is]

These notions of reflexivity and associativity go down in flames when we start assigning any further information to the statement.
But why would we do that? To start, we defined our number of 5 as an entity whose value *is* its identity, and who doesn't have any other properties, so why would we now start "assigning any further information to the statement"?
Math gives us the illusion that we can divorce ourselves from imperfect meanings in the real world.
Does the real world have any meaning? You seem to suggest that it does, yet imperfect one, as opposed to "perfect" meaning we construct in our heads? Or does your sentence mean that while our grasp of meaning is imperfect, math gives us the illusion it *is* perfect if we apply math in the real world?
By no means is mathematics useless, but I would contend that even among its practitioners it is widely misunderstood.
Interesting observation. What do you mean?
Then again, what makes mathematics so fascinating is that the concepts within it find so many expressions in real world patterns.
You seem to support POV that mathematics is invented rather than discovered.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by Tracy Woo:

All I am saying is religion is not God's work and should change according to time. Please tell me, is this statment so wrong???

The following article is one of many occasions
were the Quran has foretold scientific truths before man had the means to discover them. It (amongst many others) not only supports that Quran is God's word, but also that concepts in it could hold for 1400 years after its revelation...It's a bit long, read it if you're interested:
------------------
Professor Alfred Kroner, who is one of the world�s most famous geologists. He is a Professor of Geology and the Chairman of the Department of Geology at the Institute of Geosciences, Johannes Gutenburg University, Mainz, Germany studied and commented on several Qur'aanic verses and Ahadeeth of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him.
Professor Kroner said: "Thinking about many of these questions and thinking where Muhammad came from, he was after all a bedouin. I think it is almost impossible that he could have known about things like the common origin of the universe, because scientists have only found out within the last few years with very complicated and advanced technological methods that this is the case."
Professor Kroner chose an example from the Qur'aan which proved to him why the Qur'aan could not have come from Muhammad (sallallahu �alaihi wa sallam) himself. The example which Professor Kroner chose is a description in the Qur'aan of the fact that this universe had its beginnings in one single entity. Allah, may He be Exalted and Glorified said: {Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together [ratqan], before we clove them asunder? We made from water every living thing� } [Qur'aan 21:30]
The meaning of [ratqan] in this verse, is that the heavens and the earth were stuck together or blended together, and that they were later separated from each other. Professor Kroner used this as an example to prove that no human being during the time of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), could have known this.

Professor Kroner: "Somebody who did not know something about nuclear physics 1400 years ago could not, I think, be in a position to find out from his own mind for instance that the earth and the heavens had the same origin, or many others of the questions that we have discussed here."

Professor Kroner, so it seemed to us, has a special talent of being evasive. For example, we asked him to describe the geological conditions of Arabia. �Was Arabia full of orchards and rivers?� He said: "During the Snow Age." And it is further known that the North Polar icebergs are slowly moving southwards. When those polar icebergs become relatively close to the Arabian Peninsula, the weather will change and Arabia will become one of the greenest and wettest parts of the world. We asked him: �Will Arabia become the land of orchards and rivers?� He said: "Yes, it is a scientific fact."

This astonished us, and we wondered how he could state this as a scientific fact while it was related to the future and we asked: �Why?� He said: "Because the new Snow Age has actually started. And we can see the snow crawling once again from the North Pole southwards. In fact, the polar snow is now on the way to get closer to the Arabian Peninsula. We can see the signs of this in the snow blizzards striking the northern parts of Europe and America every winter. Scientists have other signs and information proving the actual beginning of another Snow Age. It is a scientific fact."

So we said to him: �What you have just mentioned has only been known to scientists after a long series of discoveries and with the help of specialized instruments. But we have already found this mentioned by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) 1400 years ago. He said in a hadith transmitted in Saheeh Muslim: "The Last Hour will not come upon us until the lands of the Arabs are once again pasture lands and filled with rivers."

At this point we asked Professor Kroner: �Who told the Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu �alaihi wa sallam), that the lands of the Arabs were once filled with orchards and rivers?� He immediately replied: "The Romans." This reminded me of Professor Kroner�s evasive ability. We asked him another question, we said to him: �But who informed the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon hi), that the lands of the Arabs would once again become pasturelands and be filled with rivers?�. Professor Kroner becomes evasive if embarrassed. But whenever he was faced with the truth, he is courageous enough to state his opinion frankly and thus he replied: "This could have been known to him only through revelation from above."

Finally, after our discussions with him, he made the following comments: "If you combine all these and you combine all those statements that are being made in the Quran in terms that relate to the earth and the formation of the earth and science in general, you can basically say that statements made there in many ways are true. They can now be confirmed by scientific methods, and in a way you can say that the Quran is a simple science text book for the simple man, and that many of the statements made in there at that time could not be proven but that modern scientific methods are now in a position to prove what Muhammad said 1400 years ago."

Allah confirms in His Book that:
{This is no less than reminder to (all), the worlds. And you shall certainly know the truth of it all after a while} (Qur'aan 38:87-88)
-------------------------------------

[Anonymous]

Check out the following picture for another scientific miracle in the Quran revealed 1400 years ago before we had telescopes:

http://www.bensys.mcmail.com/red_rose_nepular.htm

[Anonymous]

hmmmm very interesting.The photograph of the exploding Nebula raises a distinct possibility that the explosion at some very early stage of the big bang might have looked like the photograph of the Nebula. In that case the Qur'anic verse in Sura Ar-Rahman is yet another reference to the big bang. Notice that the verse in Sura Ar-Rahman says that "when the sky is clove apart ..." and not when "a star is torn apart ..". The reference to sky rather than a star suggests an explosion involving the whole universe as in the big bang.

[Anonymous]

Also this may be of interest since we are arguing whether religion is God's work or not.The following site has a overview of
the list of scientific miracles found in the Quran which was revealed 1400 years ago:
http://www.islam-guide.com/

Among them are:
Embryotic development
The Quran on Mountains
The Quran on the Origin of the Universe
Human Cerebrum
Seas and rivers
Deep Seas and internal waves
Clouds

[Jason Menard]

Wouldn't the fact that polytheism predates monotheism be enough to indicate that the concept of religion is man-made? Religion is just that, a concept. Religion != God and similarly God != religion. Both exist independant of the other.
It is through religion that man expresses his relationship with the deity of his choice. Religion also serves to codify a general belief structure which man uses to guide moral and spiritual matters. These are needs that predate man's recognition that "God is the father" or "there is only one God and Allah is His name".
Therefore it is clear that religion is a man-made concept. To believe otherwise would probably be to accept that man does not have free will.

[Thomas Paul]

<anonymous>, if you start building your religious beliefs on scientific truths or untruths found in the Koran then you are making a travesty of religion. A highly enhanced and false color picture of a nebula is not proof of some obscure quote in the Koran.
Tracy, yes I do believe that there are moral absolutes that are true for all time. Thomas Jefferson and I are together on that one.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Jason Menard:
Wouldn't the fact that polytheism predates monotheism be enough to indicate that the concept of religion is man-made?

Two points... How do you know that polytheism predates monotheism? How do you know that polytheism was nothing more than early man's misunderstanding of a greater truth?

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Jason Menard:
Therefore it is clear that religion is a man-made concept. To believe otherwise would probably be to accept that man does not have free will.

That I don't get at all. You'll have to explain that in a little more detail.

[Mapraputa Is]

Regarding revelations that science discovered centuries later, I thought Nostradamus beat all the religions, no? Isn't it simply a matter of how vague a writer express his revelations and how much a reader is eager to read from them?

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
Regarding revelations that science discovered centuries later, I thought Nostradamus beat all the religions, no? Isn't it simply a matter of how vague a writer express his revelations and how much a reader is eager to read from them?

Well I guess there is only one way to find out.
Give me specific examples of how vague writing in religion has been used to insinuate foretelling of future events that science will come to prove. I have provided a Link for such miracles in the Quran:
http://www.islam-guide.com/
Please do tell which ones do prove your point?

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
A highly enhanced and false color picture of a nebula is not proof of some obscure quote in the Koran.

Just what makes you beleive it is a false color picture?? Have you checked the picture on Nasa's website:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap991031.html
Does it not show the same colors? And also what makes you think the quote from the Quran is obscure? It clearly states how the sky is like a red rose.

[Mapraputa Is]

Give me specific examples of how vague writing in religion has been used to insinuate foretelling of future events that science will come to prove.
Well, Ok, let's pick the very first one.
Chapter 1. Some Evidence for the Truth of Islam
(1) The Scientific Miracles in the Holy Quran
A) The Quran on Human Embryonic Development
"We created man from an extract of clay. Then We made him as a drop in a place of settlement, firmly fixed. Then We made the drop into an alaqah (leech, suspended thing, and blood clot), then We made the alaqah into a mudghah (chewed substance)... "
- are you serious?

[Mapraputa Is]

"true = true" or Zero = Zero and not their representations on paper and how they could resemble a smily! Since we're talking about concepts !!! There are concepts that are ALWAYS true Tracy you cannot deny that! Like the concept of: true is true.
There are concepts that are "always" true because we defined them so, not because they relate somehow to the Absolute Truth. In logic, we start with variables that can hold two values, "false" and "true", we introduce logical connectives: NOT and AND with properties, again, defined by us and so on. Then we can infer something from this formal system by rules of inference.
There can be alternative systems, which define their building blocks differently, for example probabilistic logic assigns probabilities to its propositions...

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by <Anonymous>:
Just what makes you beleive it is a false color picture?? Have you checked the picture on Nasa's website:

The picture is color enhanced. That is not the way the nebula appears. It has been color enhanced in order to bring out the detail. The quote from the Koran does not say that a nebula exists in the sky which is shaped like a rose. In order for you to believe that that quote refers to that nebula you have to have a pretty vivid imagination. I'll bet that prior to the discovery of that picture that people had a different interpretation of that verse. And I'll also bet that that interpretation is not universally held by all believers in Islam. In other words, you are letting your imagination and desires to cloud your vision.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by <Anonymous>:
http://www.islam-guide.com/

That, by the way, is one of the funniest web sites I have ever read. The Onion could not have done a better job of mocking religion. The thought that anyone could read that and take it even the least bit serious is just too funny.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
"We created man from an extract of clay. Then We made him as a drop in a place of settlement, firmly fixed. Then We made the drop into an alaqah (leech, suspended thing, and blood clot), then We made the alaqah into a mudghah (chewed substance)... "
- are you serious?

Am I serious? Is this a trick question? Have you looked at the photos taken by modern devices showing each stage in the development of the embryo ? Do u deem the words used in the Quran to describe each step in those photos to be vague? They seem quite descriptive of the photos to me...the Leech..the suspended thing etc..

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by <Anonymous>:

Am I serious? Is this a trick question? Have you looked at the photos taken by modern devices showing each stage in the development of the embryo ? Do u deem the words used in the Quran to describe each step in those photos to be vague? They seem quite descriptive of the photos to me...the Leech..the suspended thing etc..

Exactly... to you! Not to anyone who isn't drunk on their beliefs. A leech! Your penis looks more like a leech than a fetus so maybe the Koran was talking about that. People who try to use religious books as scientific textbooks are just nuts. Whether its creationists in Kansas or Moslems and their leeches, it's all just silliness.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
That, by the way, is one of the funniest web sites I have ever read. The Onion could not have done a better job of mocking religion. The thought that anyone could read that and take it even the least bit serious is just too funny.

I will take that to be a subjective comment, which you're entitled to of course...however it does not serve our argument...it does not add anything, refute anything or make any objective point...

[Mapraputa Is]

Equality like any concept has attributes which may vary according to context. Whether equality is reflexive, symmetric, commutative or associative, for example, depends on the system
This seems more a problem of terminology than anything else. If to see "equality" from mathematical POV, than "commutative" being applied to equality probably means the same as "symmetric" and I am not sure what you mean by "associative", because formally equality doesn't possess such a property.
Now the problem with "according to context" is that equality seems to be *defined* as a reflexive, symmetric and transitive relation.
if "equality" doesn't possess them in some context, then it's probably better not to call this relation "equality" to prevent confusion. If I am mistaken, somebody will correct me.
We can loosely use equality in sentences like "men and women are equal" and spend rest of our time arguing what the heck this mean and whether they are biologically equal or what, because when our terms are ill-defined, then our discussion is what it is - meaningless drivel
To argue that "true = true" is to presume a world composed of, or least accessible through, some absolute perspective. Mathematics does not offer absolutes, nor does logic: both begin with a set of laws that are held to be true unless they can be proven otherwise.
I would say it starts with a set of definitions and axioms that can be accepted as "true" or not. If one chooses another set of definitions and axioms to build his theories on, it doesn't "disprove" the previous ones. Similarly, religions can start from different sets of postulates and then converge, diverge, go in parallels or in circles...

[Mapraputa Is]

"We created man from an extract of clay. Then We made him as a drop in a place of settlement, firmly fixed.
By the way, what proves that this is the description of human embryonic development? "We created" to me suggest that this is how first man was "created". If this *is* the description of human embryonic development, then what "an extract of clay" refers to? "Clay" has too many meanings in English, and if I am not mistaken, translations of the Quran aren't particularly welcome in Islam. "A place of settlement, firmly fixed" - what is this?

[Mapraputa Is]

Have you looked at the photos taken by modern devices showing each stage in the development of the embryo?
Well, I studied biology in school. This was called "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" and is by no means a distinctive feature of a man, humans share this path with other vertebrates.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
Well, I studied biology in school.
This was called "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" and is by no means a distinctive feature of a man, humans share this path with other vertebrates.

Then I'm sure you know that the realization that the embryo develops in stages in the uterus was not proposed until the 1940�s?! Yet the description of development in the form of stages was in The Quran 1400 years ago..
The Quran 23: 12-16 indicates that there is a lag or a gap between two of the early stages of growth. How does that compare with modern scientific knowledge? Remarkably! It is well established that there is a lag or a delay in the development of the embryo during the implantation� The agreement between the lag or gap in development mentioned in the Quran and the slow rate of change occurring during the second or third weeks is amazing. These details of human development were not described until about 40 years ago.

[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by <Anonymous>:
Then I'm sure you know that the realization that the embryo develops in stages in the uterus was not proposed until the 1940’s?! Yet the description of development in the form of stages was in The Quran 1400 years ago..

I am still not convinced that human embryonic development is being described, but let's assume it is. Then why it took so long for mankind to "rediscover" what was said in such plan and unequivocal terms as "a drop in a place of settlement", "suspended thing" and "chewed substance"?

[Mapraputa Is]

"Democritus (Abdera, Thrace, 470-380 B.C.). Greek philosopher. Expanded the concept of atoms that was introduced by his teacher Leucippus and showed that atoms are the basis of all form of matter. He recognizes that the Milky Way consists of a number of stars and that the moon is similar to Earth."
http://www.ics.forth.gr/~vsiris/ancient_greeks/presocratics.html
- amazing, do not you think? So what it proves?

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:

Then why it took so long for mankind to "rediscover" what was said in such plan and unequivocal terms as "a drop in a place of settlement", "suspended thing" and "chewed substance"?

Note that the microscpe was invented in the 17th Century and were not used in this field of study until the 18th century.. 1000 years after the description appeared. Anatomy doctors will tell you that it's not possible to study embryo development without the microscope. And if you mean why science is slow in general in comming up with a scintific proof to something that clear..well simply because scientific knowledge for it to be considered scientific it must be "testible"..and for us to build the means to do so will take time...you do the math

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
[QB- amazing, do not you think? So what it proves?[/QB]

You tell me, what does it prove?

[Mapraputa Is]

You tell me, what does it prove?
It is clear to me that these statements must have come to Muhamma... pardon, Democritus, from God, because almost all of this knowledge was not discovered until many centuries later. This proves to me that Muham... I mean Democritus must have been a messenger of God.
Sorry, I did copy&paste a quote from Professor Moore...
Alternatively, it can prove that this kind of "revelations" is available for simple mortals, there is no need for "divine" dictation.

[R K Singh]

Originally posted by <Anonymous>:
Check out the following picture for another scientific miracle in the Quran revealed 1400 years ago before we had telescopes:
http://www.bensys.mcmail.com/red_rose_nepular.htm

First thing, Big bang is only theory & can be proved wrong anytime.
And second what God was doing before 1400 years ;-)
I am infidel (Kafir). I will go to hell, but if I convert to Islam then my all past sins will be washed.
So I will convert in to Islam at the age of 89, when I wont be able to do anything and by converting I will wash my all sins also
till then I can enjoy my freedom and my sins

[R K Singh]

Originally posted by <Anonymous>:
[b]
Among them are:
Embryotic development
The Quran on Mountains
The Quran on the Origin of the Universe
Human Cerebrum
Seas and rivers
Deep Seas and internal waves
Clouds

Hindu's dont have any thing like conversion else I would have advised you to convert in to Hindu.
There are people who have proved that Testtube baby has been done in Hindu long back, nuclear bomb is not a new thing, in Mahabhrat(an epic) has mention of it.
But alas... Why do we come to know abt all these things when sciencs says so.
Its like relating your dream with reality. In dream I was falling from appartment thats why I had loss in bussiness.

[Mapraputa Is]

Regarding "Origin of the Universe", I remember Madam Blavatsky was quoted as a big authority

[Mapraputa Is]

Intersting that Holy Books share one very important feature with Communistic Holy Books (Lenin's fine writings in particular): they are self-contradictory. It is always possible to prove *anything* by finding a proper quote in Bible, and it was always possible to prove *anything* within the communistic doctrine because you can be sure Lenin ingeniously wrote something in support of your POV in 1919 or maybe earlier.

[R K Singh]

Originally posted by <Anonymous>:
http://www.islam-guide.com/

So all who born before Islam will go to hell

[omar khan]

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
Intersting that Holy Books share one very important feature with Communistic Holy Books.

Yes. As a matter of fact Russian Communism was regarded by someone as a quasi-religious movement where the concept of Heaven was susbstituted by the Proletariat Dictatorship, and so on.
There was even a church with the clerics
FYI: If I am not wrong (Anonymous plz. contribute), one of the "challenges" posed by the Quran to non-believers is to write a single line "similar" to the verses contained in the Quran.
Similar means so beautiful, so poetic, so modern, so universal, so enlighting ...
Until now nobody was able to.
And for believers it is a proof of the fact that the Quran is the word of God.