You answered a yes/no question by posing a different yes/no question and then answering that surrogate question instead. Anyway, the answer to your question is no. The process through which I was created is not my creator and thus my parents do not own me.
I thought the simple analogy would be obvious to you without any further explanation.
Fair enough. My answer is:
No. I will not concede that your god created us, for a start. You still have all the work to do to convince me that is the case, if you want to try and convince me. This line of reasoning will go nowhere if you do not, however. Do we just part ways here?
That being said, a creator does not automatically own their creation, if the creation is an entity in its own right. If there is a case to be made that the entity has rights. If the entity has standards of its own. Your parents took it upon themselves to create you. Their actions brought about your existence. They gave you life. You are blood of their blood, flesh of their flesh. Without their actions, you wouldn’t exist. They raised you, as a significant part of the community of humanity that raised you. Your interactions with this community has made you the man you are. Is this correct? Do your parents own you, as an adult man?
I wont address all of the rest of your post. It’s just the same argument repeated with different framing.
This is what it boils down to: You cannot just define something into existence. You are assuming the very thing you are trying to prove. You are trying to smuggle in a level of ontological commitment to your claim in your definitions, a level of commitment I’m not even willing to make for arguments sake, because that is
the very essence of the argument anyway. It is the essential dispute at the heart of it. Just because you can conceive of something and have it all nicely defined, does not bring it into existence. That is a leap of faith you make of your own accord. I can’t stop you living in this fantasy, but you cannot drag me into it with you.
There are many things I’d
like to exist, but it doesn’t make them so. I cannot define myself as wealthy and suddenly it is so. You cannot define 'God' as my creator and suddenly it is so. Whether I owe this god anything is neither here nor there until I am committed to your idea in the first place. To that I am certainly not. It’s a fine methodology if the only person you’re trying to convince is yourself. If that’s the case, have fun with it. Good luck with it.
Of course not. None other than Him is the source of all existence, and thus thinking that I should emulate Him would only make me a monster.
But this ‘Him’ has a name. It is Allah, a very particular entity we all know at least something about. An entity with personality traits we can relate to. Traits we can agree with or condemn. If the particular mythology it inspired is true, it has committed atrocities in this universe. It has left its mark, something to judge. Unless you’re speaking of a different god. This Allah is apparently a entity of infinite love. Shouldn’t we see infinite love from it? I don’t mean a super-special definition of love that only applies to Allah, I mean the standard definition of infinite and standard definition of love - the definitions we are working with.
Are you saying that you DO accept the notion that the infinite God should indeed care less if He sent all of His creation to an eternal inferno, yet there is a contradiction in Him being (seemingly) concerned with the minutest details of the lives of His creation?
No, I’m saying that this particular god
does, apparently, send his ‘creations’ to an eternal inferno. It apparently
does care enough about our toilet habits and dress sense to tell us exactly what it thinks they should be, and
will punish us according to a specific points system. It makes a special effort to tell us what we ought to do, and in doing so, seems less impressive, less like a god, and more like a dark age human, more petty, more obsessive, less indifferent, less awesome, less respectable. Let's never lose focus on which particular god we are talking about. There are many different gods, many different conceptualisations of god, and it's easy to get sidetracked by defining it. Let's just be clear which god we are talking about.
Now, I’m really curious: What makes you think it’s holding me back? I believe God exists, I maintain the 5 pillars and avoid the 9 greatest sins. That’s it.. that’s all.
Your spiritual journey is restricted by the ruleset of Islam, is what I meant. It is not only restricted, but
ruthlessly policed by an all seeing eye. There is the overbearing knowledge that you will be judged according to a specific and set standard. You are held back. How can it be any other way? If there are definite rules, and you claim to be following them, you are restricted. Isn’t it so?
Topic: Hi from on the fence muslim