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Theme Changer

 Topic: Hey Folks

 (Read 6408 times)
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  • Hey Folks
     OP - August 03, 2013, 09:23 PM

    Hi guys, I'm new here. Male, 20, Born into Islam of Syrian descent and living in England. I can't say I was very religious but I kept to the 5 pillars of Islam, but then things started to change, faith started to disappear, stopped reciting the Quran, Stopped praying, even started to break fasts.

    Started really questioning Islam past few days during Ramadan, I kind of don't know what to think anymore. I keep getting this churning feeling in my stomach like I'm going to be sick. I wanted to approach an imam/ knowledgeable person in Islam but I know what they will say.

    What kind of a God is Allah, doesn't seem to be the fellow I would want to associate myself with. But then what if he exists and I'm making a mistake    Cry Huh?
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #1 - August 03, 2013, 09:57 PM

    First of all welcome. Always good to see another Brit  Smiley

    Everyone here to one level or another knows what you're going through. Personally if there is a god, I can't see how it would be Allah, there are just to many holes. This forum wasn't set up to bash islam or muslims, just to be a safe place to let things out, ask questions and come to your own conclusions.

    Would you like to tell us what exactly caused you to have doubts, or ask why many of us here don't believe? Though fair warning not a lot of holding back when it comes to that  Wink

    Think of CEMB as a sanctuary. You'll find no judgement for honesty, just honesty in return.

    `But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
     `Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad.  You're mad.'
     `How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
     `You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #2 - August 03, 2013, 10:32 PM

    Hi Revengeance

    Welcome to the forum - have a parrot before Berbs spanks us for forgetting it! parrot

    Hello from the opposite of the North Sea (and then some) - I'm in Denmark piggy grin12

    I think it would be a good idea for you to look at the other introductions and the answers there - I can imagine quite a few you should be able to relate to Smiley You are definitely not alone in your endeavour!

    Best regards and welcome again,
    Nikolaj

    Danish Never-Moose adopted by the kind people on the CEMB-forum
    Ex-Muslim chat (Unaffliated with CEMB). Safari users: Use "#ex-muslims" as the channel name. CEMB chat thread.
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #3 - August 04, 2013, 11:56 AM

    Well I keep hearing the phrase Islam is the religion of peace constantly in media, friends etc.. but how is this the case when I see it first hand (especially in Birmingham), fights between muslims (mainly south asian) and non muslims, cursing other religious preachers in the street etc.. and then you have the terrorist Jihad plots. I see muslims trying to convert other people in the street in less than 5 mins, how can you just make someone convert using a few sentences without telling them the majority of rules in islam not giving them any guidence, they tell them to say the shahadah.
     ok it is all up to you now comrade ma'asalameh.

    The fighting between muslims, hate between muslims, look now at Syria it is literally being raped and not one other country is helping, rape of women, selling off of women as wives for 4 weeks to rich saudi middle aged men for $3000, stealing of oil drilling equipment. When it comes down to it everyone is following their own interests. The sheikhs that steal from the mosque charity, driving a mercedes and owning a mansion. Countries using billions to invest and build buildings to gain more money for themselves not giving a damn for poverty stricken islamic countries.

    Lets not forget the stories of the 'prophet' the violence the blood shed, I think it was an elaborate plan just to take control and build an empire, he was a smart very smart man i'll give him that, and who wouldn't want total world domination, I would try if the opportunity came  whistling2 .

    the Idea of Islam is to build a Utopia with a certain few in control, literally puts the prophet on the same level as Hitler, Killing of other religions, slavery of those who were different, starting wars.

    Anyone read Naruto (bear with me), you heard of Tsuki no Me Keikaku; to manipulate every living creature, ceasing all conflict by purging free will itself from the world #Islam

    Where is the free will that they preach if I'm told to follow all these rules, it's like you can have any colour car you want....... as long as it's black.

    The only thing that I used to like of Islam is the morality, sure it might be a little extreme, but divorce rates are pretty low, no drunks on the streets little teenage pregnancies out of wedlock, one partner (usually), but looking at it now isn't that what the other religions ask of as well?

    However what still worries me is the day of judgement, because some of the signs are popping up, tall buildings, anarchy, earthquakes.

    When I ask other muslims of this they come up with arguments I really won't be able to win because they are not interested, I guess they have invested to much time in Islam to jump the ship. I'm glad i'm starting to question it all now.

    so yeah what made you guy leave  Smiley
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #4 - August 04, 2013, 12:08 PM

    Hello Revengeance, welcome aboard. Smiley
    Here, have a parrot and bunny  parrot bunny.

    "So what do we do?", "You know what we do."
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #5 - August 04, 2013, 04:59 PM

    My reason for not believing in a theistic god is quite simply that there is nothing to make me believe in it. The holy books are filled with so many errors, and as well as the quran I also include the bible, the torah, the eddas, the upanishads, the vedas, etc. They all claim to be true. They all fail to live up to this claim,

    It's also apparent in these books that the god of choice is always taking an interest in the world. Miracles and divine intervention are common place. If that happened today atheism would not exist because proof of the divine would be a regular occurrence. I see no proof. None. All I have are the stories in an ancient text that once upon a time this and that happened.

    Next you have to wonder about the teachings of the religion. Since you're from an islamic family I'll stick to that religion.

    The quran, like all the other holy texts, claims to be the word of god. The way to verify this is testing it, see if it stacks up. Quite frankly it doesn't.

    Islam teaches that humans were created from clay. I may be thinking of another religion but I'm fairly certain it's the quran that teaches Adam was 90 feet tall. We know the first human was not a 90 foot tall clay giant. It also doesn't account for evolution, the proof of which is overwhelming. Nor does it account for the number of people today who have Neanderthal DNA in them from before the Neanderthals went extinct. Everything I know to be proven fact contradicts the claims of the quran. The only logical conclusion I can come to is that it was a story told by ancient societies because they didn't have any answers. Adam never existed. It's not real.

    The story of the arc and the great flood. This would have happened around 4000 years ago. It's quite simply impossible for the number of races, ethnicities and the huge amount of genetic traits to come from one incestuous family in just 4000 years. It cannot happen. Something else that puts a hole in the story is the amount of people who were thriving at this point. God flooded the entire world. Except for the Chinese who were developing at an incredible rate and remained unaffected from a global flood that wiped out every human on the planet. The Japanese were also unaffected. And the Africans. And the Europeans. And the Native Americans. And the Aztecs. And the South Americans. And most of the middle east.  The flood never happened. It's not real.

    Mohammad splitting the moon. Now this I can't prove to be false,  but I can weight it against other things. People throughout the world at this point gazed at the stars. The Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, they all had wonderful astronomers who mapped out the night sky. Certain claims by one society are matched by claims in another. Ancient Greeks for example would leave records of things they observed, shooting stars, eclipses, things that would last seconds or minutes, the same claims found with other peoples they had no contact with. Both recorded things matched by the other. So it's reasonable to assume that if Mohammad split the moon and then joined it together again, someone somewhere would have also noticed apart from a few Arabs in the desert. Maybe the rest of the world was on holiday, but I doubt it. I have to say this isn't true.

    The sun orbits the Earth...yeah, we've known that's bullshit for a few centuries now.

    It says in the quran that in the embryo/foetus the bones are the first thing to form. "So we made the clot a morsel, so we made the morsel bones, so we clothed the bones (with) meat". This is wrong. The skeleton is actually among the last to be formed. You'd think the all knowing creator of everything would realise this. It's wrong.

    The stars are missiles to be hurled at jinns. Or they hunt demons. I haven't read the quran in a while so I can't remember the exact quote, but you can look it up to see exactly what it says. This is also wrong. The stars are just stars, they do the exact same thing as the star we orbit, the sun.

    Women are defective in intelligence. Coming from a culture where gender mixing is the norm and close relationships aren't looked down upon, I can tell you this isn't true from my own experience. And then there's current trends in school grades, sciences, IQ and employment performance, the fact there are women in MENSA (if you don't know MENSA is like a super genius club, only 2% of the human population globally have a high enough IQ to qualify for membership). Now we live in an age men and women have equal rights, women are on the same level and even starting to out preform men. So I'm going to say this is wrong.

    You touched on something about islam being a religion of peace. This isn't the case. That's not to say it's a religion of violence, but that it's both. You can find justifications in the quran for living a life of peace and for living a life of violence because it isn't wholly one or the other. Your Hitler analogy was interesting. Throughout the quran there's talk about the believers, and the kaffir. It's important to note the quran makes a huge distinction. Those who aren't muslims are inferior. The quran compares non muslims as beasts of burden, on the same level as animals, and according to some preachers worse than animals. Islam must be spread by the sword, peace through slaughter and conquest.

    But then by that same token, god made us different tribes so we might know each other. So you can cherry pick. But the quran is supposed to be taken in it's entirety as the ultimate true word of god. If you don't believe this part here, why should you believe this other part over here?

    This and many more examples are why I'm not a muslim. or a follower of any other religion, all making the same claims, all claiming to be true, to be the word of whatever god they describe. But if something is supposed to be the wisdom of an all powerful all knowing deity who created everything, why is there so many errors? Why are they filled with what seems to be the best knowledge of the time they were written? The only conclusion I can come to is that they were not written by the god described in these holy books but by people.

    `But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
     `Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad.  You're mad.'
     `How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
     `You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #6 - August 04, 2013, 09:30 PM

    ^
    @ Q; Poster of the month anyone?
    Re; Revengance, couldn't agree more with the points you made criticising this so called perfect faith (oh wait the faith is perfect it's just the flowers aren't,  yada yada) but have no fear of the apocalypse, it's just better media coverage, is all.
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #7 - August 05, 2013, 03:39 AM

    Welcome among us Revengeance ! Here's a parrot  parrot considering it's the tradition here.  Smiley
    And to answer your question to what if God exists,I don't think he would give a damn about us really,if you take in consideration all the galaxies,stars,planets...Earth is a little dot,and I don't think a God,like described in Islam,would be so materialistic and would want us to say a shahada,pray 5 times,give money to the poor,fast a whole month and go to hajj just for the sake of going to heaven and having servants and house made of gold.Those look more like what a human would want rather than what the creator would give.And even if there's a God,the way I see it,is that he obviously has a really low self-esteem for creating us only for the purpose of praising him day and night.
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #8 - August 05, 2013, 03:00 PM

    Ok first off welcome. parrot parrot
    Address a few of your points

    1. YES Islam has some good morals and such but seriously you can find the exact same things in other beliefs. I don't think it's a good reason to be attached to it. I personally like morality in Eastern  religions (Buddhism) because instead of having set concrete rules, they believe some rules and laws should based on cause and effect. If a rule/law does harm to someone else, then you should not do it.

    2. Rape rates are under-reported in Islam everywhere. In the West if a woman is raped we encourage her to report it immediately, what happens when a Muslim woman gets raped out of marriage? What does Islam say if a women is raped? Is she encourages to seek help? Also in the West rape is any kind of non-consensual forceful sex (no EXCEPTIONS), in Islam this rule is exempt if the woman is married to her rapist (before or after the rape). Just like apostates of Islam, rapes are a hidden thing that Muslims try to pretend doesn't exist and try very very hard to quiet it, in it's perfect world.

    3. I actually do like the no alcohol thing in Islam, but that's just replaced with drugs, *cough* Afghanistan which is rampant with children and families addicted to drugs. So you can't cherry-pick one poison Islam discourages, and ignore other things it does nothing about. Also alcohol has been a staple and enjoyed in every other culture in the world and the entire world isn't in mass chaos.

    4. Also judgement day is a bunch of bogus, every religion has been predicting the end of the world every year for thousands of years, and ain't nothing happened yet. There was a hadith I think, where Muhammad was terrified of a solar eclipse and thought it was the end of the world (If someone can cite that for me).Which just proves, he really was a man of his time.

    - Earthquakes have been happening since the beginning of Earth's creation, not even because it's dying, but because the tectonic plates in the earth's crust and moving (Allah, the all-knowing, suspiciously never explained this to Muhammad or in any of his Holy books).

    -Buildings have also been getting taller throughout history, because of rising populations in cities. And there have been very tall buildings and structures in history since the 1800s in Europe. HECK even the pyramids in Eygpt, and the Aztec pyramids in South America are tall ass buildings and how long ago was that built!? and the world hasn't ended yet? Again illogical 'signs' that make no sense when you think about them and created to fit in really any time period.

    5. Ah yes Anarchy, How come it's only happening in 'certain regions' and not in most non-Muslim countries? Like you've pointed out, in most Muslim countries the conflict is internal, so it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that has nothing to do with the 65% of the non-Muslims world that has figured out how to 'somewhat' run a stable country. Heck Sweden has the largest atheist population and they are the ones taking care of the Muslim refugees coming in for their war-town countries. What happened to the perfect utopia that can only be created under an Islamic state?

    There is no religion or region of peace, there are always going to be sickos in any and all creeds. Islam ignores this and gives anyone who is labelled 'Muslim' a free pass to get away with cruel things. As long as you're a 'good' Muslim you can beat and kill whoever isn't.




    ***~Church is where bad people go to hide~***
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #9 - August 05, 2013, 04:01 PM

    There was a hadith I think, where Muhammad was terrified of a solar eclipse and thought it was the end of the world (If someone can cite that for me).Which just proves, he really was a man of his time.


    Sahih Bukhari volume 2, book 18, hadith 167 ?

    Quote
    Narrated Abu Musa:

    The sun eclipsed and the Prophet got up, being afraid that it might be the Hour (i.e. Day of Judgment). He went to the Mosque and offered the prayer with the longest Qiyam, bowing and prostration that I had ever seen him doing. Then he said, "These signs which Allah sends do not occur because of the life or death of somebody, but Allah makes His worshipers afraid by them. So when you see anything thereof, proceed to remember Allah, invoke Him and ask for His forgiveness."


    Regarding anarchy, Crunchy Cds is right about a country like Sweden. Four more of the most atheist countries in the world are the additional Nordic countries of Denmark (where I live), Norway, Finland and Estonia. Of course every country and society has its issues, but definitely not anything near "anarchy" here. All aforementioned countries are very safe and people have a high degree of trust (no experience with Estonia in this regard, though) to fellow citizens compared to other countries.

    However, albeit I hate to say this, immigrants from Muslim majority countries have an over-reprensentation in our courts and correctional systems (together with citizens from some of the East European countries) and some seem to be radicalised when in prison. Luckily for at least Denmark many immigrants are also very happy for having ended up or being born here because of the educational and health services and the personal freedom and our social security system - albeit the last one being eroded by blind liberalist agendas both right and "left".

    Of course if you look at your ancestral Syria I understand why you see anarchy and signs of the end of the world Cry

    Danish Never-Moose adopted by the kind people on the CEMB-forum
    Ex-Muslim chat (Unaffliated with CEMB). Safari users: Use "#ex-muslims" as the channel name. CEMB chat thread.
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #10 - August 05, 2013, 06:20 PM

    Thanks guys, I guess when you use logic most of these things can be explained but god damn it ( Cheesy ) In the car today  my mother wouldn't stop talking about how this life is nothing, you won't be taking wealth with you to the grave, memorize surat al mulk, and that scientist are only just discovering what the quran has mentioned and the scientists are converting to Islam, this is our religion, etc.. even after what I know I still feel uneasy. I still believe in a supernatural and some sort of afterlife whether reincarnation or judgement but I don't know what it is yet.


    Could I also ask, In terms of the Hadiths,

    There some Hadiths people quote i.e.

    Muslim-3753: ''We were with the Prophet of Allah, and He was thirsty, and a man said: O prophet of Allah, Do you want to drink wine? Prophet of Allah said: Yes.The Man went to get the wine. The Prophet of Allah said: Make it Intoxicated. And He (Muhamad) Drank"

    Muslim-3721 ''The Prophet of Allah used to pour alcoholic drinks in a Bowel of Stone''

    However I can't find such Hadiths on islamic sites when I search online?

    Are these just made up from Anti-Islamic sites?

    Because I'm pretty sure there was a show discussing the first hadith above saying it was a powerful and authentic Hadith
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #11 - August 06, 2013, 05:31 AM

    I can't remember the blog, it was by a woman who used to be a muslim. She had a picture and a link to an official Islamic site in Saudi that showed proof Mohammad drank wine but it was in Arabic, and as I can't speak read or write Arabic I had no way of verifying it. Just tried looking for it, so far nada. Sorry, it was years ago.

    Pretty much every culture on Earth has alcohol so it wouldn't surprise me at all.

    `But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
     `Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad.  You're mad.'
     `How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
     `You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #12 - August 07, 2013, 11:35 AM

    welcome Revengeance  parrot
    don't worry i read Naruto too and i'm 26  cool2
    you want ask some questions to other muslims? ask them about slavery in Islam
    how can Allah the most merciful, most kind, most wise forbids adultery, fornication, alcohol, gambling, etc (even music, for god's sake, wait  Huh?)
    but he won't abolish slavery? ask them how Islam allows muslim to have sex (actually rape) slaves and war captives

    and damn Quod Sum Eris, for a non Muslim you know too much about Islam. which is good by the way  Wink
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #13 - August 08, 2013, 12:45 AM

    Oh and the scientists are discovering the quran is correct and converting to islam. Not true.

    `But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
     `Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad.  You're mad.'
     `How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
     `You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #14 - August 08, 2013, 08:19 PM

    Hi welcome Im another newbie here too have another parrot parrot  dance I started questioning it all to a few days ago too, dont stop now!!!! x
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #15 - August 12, 2013, 08:41 AM

    Thanks guys, it's just really tough as I'm with the family this summer, and I love them all but the constant reminder (nagging) of Islam and being more religious is really annoying, and when I see my mother devoting so much time to praying reciting quran and duaa's, I feel pretty sad at how brainwashed she is, and teaching it to my younger sisters. However is it wrong for me to say I would prefer my sisters to be religious and marry a religious guy? maybe I'm just being over protective. I see many guys saying they don't care what their sisters get up to. I can't have that.

     
    Oh and the scientists are discovering the quran is correct and converting to islam. Not true.


    tell that to the party of relatives and friends we have come over, they are so easily bought into it, and when they forward videos of things with Allah's name on it (miracle of allah) oh lawdy  Cheesy   and the street da3was
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #16 - August 12, 2013, 12:21 PM

    My reason for not believing in a theistic god is quite simply that there is nothing to make me believe in it. The holy books are filled with so many errors, and as well as the quran I also include the bible, the torah, the eddas, the upanishads, the vedas, etc. They all claim to be true. They all fail to live up to this claim,

    It's also apparent in these books that the god of choice is always taking an interest in the world. Miracles and divine intervention are common place. If that happened today atheism would not exist because proof of the divine would be a regular occurrence. I see no proof. None. All I have are the stories in an ancient text that once upon a time this and that happened.

    Next you have to wonder about the teachings of the religion. Since you're from an islamic family I'll stick to that religion.

    The quran, like all the other holy texts, claims to be the word of god. The way to verify this is testing it, see if it stacks up. Quite frankly it doesn't.

    Islam teaches that humans were created from clay. I may be thinking of another religion but I'm fairly certain it's the quran that teaches Adam was 90 feet tall. We know the first human was not a 90 foot tall clay giant. It also doesn't account for evolution, the proof of which is overwhelming. Nor does it account for the number of people today who have Neanderthal DNA in them from before the Neanderthals went extinct. Everything I know to be proven fact contradicts the claims of the quran. The only logical conclusion I can come to is that it was a story told by ancient societies because they didn't have any answers. Adam never existed. It's not real.

    The story of the arc and the great flood. This would have happened around 4000 years ago. It's quite simply impossible for the number of races, ethnicities and the huge amount of genetic traits to come from one incestuous family in just 4000 years. It cannot happen. Something else that puts a hole in the story is the amount of people who were thriving at this point. God flooded the entire world. Except for the Chinese who were developing at an incredible rate and remained unaffected from a global flood that wiped out every human on the planet. The Japanese were also unaffected. And the Africans. And the Europeans. And the Native Americans. And the Aztecs. And the South Americans. And most of the middle east.  The flood never happened. It's not real.

    Mohammad splitting the moon. Now this I can't prove to be false,  but I can weight it against other things. People throughout the world at this point gazed at the stars. The Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, they all had wonderful astronomers who mapped out the night sky. Certain claims by one society are matched by claims in another. Ancient Greeks for example would leave records of things they observed, shooting stars, eclipses, things that would last seconds or minutes, the same claims found with other peoples they had no contact with. Both recorded things matched by the other. So it's reasonable to assume that if Mohammad split the moon and then joined it together again, someone somewhere would have also noticed apart from a few Arabs in the desert. Maybe the rest of the world was on holiday, but I doubt it. I have to say this isn't true.

    The sun orbits the Earth...yeah, we've known that's bullshit for a few centuries now.

    It says in the quran that in the embryo/foetus the bones are the first thing to form. "So we made the clot a morsel, so we made the morsel bones, so we clothed the bones (with) meat". This is wrong. The skeleton is actually among the last to be formed. You'd think the all knowing creator of everything would realise this. It's wrong.

    The stars are missiles to be hurled at jinns. Or they hunt demons. I haven't read the quran in a while so I can't remember the exact quote, but you can look it up to see exactly what it says. This is also wrong. The stars are just stars, they do the exact same thing as the star we orbit, the sun.

    Women are defective in intelligence. Coming from a culture where gender mixing is the norm and close relationships aren't looked down upon, I can tell you this isn't true from my own experience. And then there's current trends in school grades, sciences, IQ and employment performance, the fact there are women in MENSA (if you don't know MENSA is like a super genius club, only 2% of the human population globally have a high enough IQ to qualify for membership). Now we live in an age men and women have equal rights, women are on the same level and even starting to out preform men. So I'm going to say this is wrong.

    You touched on something about islam being a religion of peace. This isn't the case. That's not to say it's a religion of violence, but that it's both. You can find justifications in the quran for living a life of peace and for living a life of violence because it isn't wholly one or the other. Your Hitler analogy was interesting. Throughout the quran there's talk about the believers, and the kaffir. It's important to note the quran makes a huge distinction. Those who aren't muslims are inferior. The quran compares non muslims as beasts of burden, on the same level as animals, and according to some preachers worse than animals. Islam must be spread by the sword, peace through slaughter and conquest.

    But then by that same token, god made us different tribes so we might know each other. So you can cherry pick. But the quran is supposed to be taken in it's entirety as the ultimate true word of god. If you don't believe this part here, why should you believe this other part over here?

    This and many more examples are why I'm not a muslim. or a follower of any other religion, all making the same claims, all claiming to be true, to be the word of whatever god they describe. But if something is supposed to be the wisdom of an all powerful all knowing deity who created everything, why is there so many errors? Why are they filled with what seems to be the best knowledge of the time they were written? The only conclusion I can come to is that they were not written by the god described in these holy books but by people.


    First of all, thank you. I've been waiting for a major post that summarizes the flaws in Islam atleast to a reasonable extent. This is the first one I have seen. Now, you have got to be kidding me if you think anarchy, earthquakes and tall buildings are signs.
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #17 - August 12, 2013, 12:40 PM

    Just for future reference though Quod, you should perhaps edit your post. Islam doesn't claim that the flood was global, nor does the Qur'aan claim that Adam was a 90 foot giant. The authentic hadiths do though (Y)

    This is the problem with scriptural arguments though. Interpretation is almost entirely subjective, especially with the verses in the Qur'aan.
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #18 - August 12, 2013, 08:05 PM

    Apologies about the mix up with quran and hadith, though I have to disagree with the flood thing. Reasons:

    "Build the Ship under Our supervision and as We reveal. When Our command comes and water bubbles up from the earth, load into it a pair of every species, and your family-except for those among them against whom the word has already gone ahead. And do not address Me concerning those who do wrong. They shall be drowned." (Qur'an, 23:27)

    "Earth, swallow up your water!" and, "Heaven, hold back your rain!" And the water subsided and the affair was concluded and the Ark came to land on al-Judi. And it was said, "Away with the people of the wrongdoers!" (Qur'an, 11:44)

    "The Ark came to land on al-Judi". This is a mountain as tall as 5 world trade centres stacked one atop the other. Also, two of every species?

    We sent Nuh to his people: "I am a clear warner to you. Worship none but Allah. I fear for you the punishment of a painful day." (Qur'an, 11:25-26)

    But they denied him so We rescued him and those with him in the Ark. And We drowned the people who denied Our Signs. They were a blind people. (Qur'an, 7:64)

    So We rescued him and those with him by mercy from Us, and We cut off the last remnant of those who denied Our Signs and were not believers. (Qur'an, 7:72)

    Okay, now this could be purely down to interpretation, but when I read this, to me it says global. I'd be interested to know why some may disagree?

    Just to point out, when we say we don't care what our sisters do it doesn't mean what it sounds like. I don't care what my sister does in the sense she's entitled to live her life without constraint, which I would guess it what others mean. I would never say I wouldn't care if she came to harm or got hooked on heroin or something. But yeah, it's her life and if she's an adult she can follow whatever dreams she wishes.

    `But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
     `Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad.  You're mad.'
     `How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
     `You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #19 - August 12, 2013, 08:30 PM

    Well I keep hearing the phrase Islam is the religion of peace constantly in media, friends etc..


    Welcome Revengeance. 

    Just highlighted that sentence. 'Religion of Peace' does this qualify as a meme? Imo it was coined, or more correctly made popular after 9/11. Perhaps with moderate muslims being on the back foot in the face of American rage.

    I am my own worst enemy and best friend, itsa bit of a squeeze in a three-quarter bed, tho. Unhinged!? If I was a dog I would be having kittens, that is unhinged. Footloose n fancy free, forced to fit, fated to fly. One or 2 words, 3 and 3/thirds, looking comely but lonely, till I made them homely.D
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #20 - August 12, 2013, 10:17 PM

    What kind of a God is Allah, doesn't seem to be the fellow I would want to associate myself with. But then what if he exists and I'm making a mistake    Cry Huh?


    You just need to ask yourself one question:

    'Is there sufficient evidence for the claim that Allah exists?'


    Judging by your above statement you have already come to your conclusions. If you wish to leave the fold of Islam than the next question you will have to ask yourself is this:

    'Am I able to instill value and meaning in my life from a secular perspective?'

    If you find that a difficult question to answer, then ask the following courtesy of Albert Camus:

    'Do I or do I not wish to commit suicide?'


    If you do wish to commit suicide then all other questions become irrelevant. If you don't then obviously there is at least one thing that you consider worth living for. By linking this with other things you will find meaning and value in your life.
     
    Living without Allah is difficult because it means you have to do the hard work yourself. You are accountable to yourself and you have to navigate the ethical path yourself. But don't worry we are all here to help each other out.

    You have asked 'what if he exists and I'm making a mistake?' You can live in your world of 'ifs' but I'm the kind of guy to say if at the end of the day Allah did exist and he demanded a reason of me as to why I did not believe in him I would reply: 'Because you didn't do a good enough job in convincing me.'

    May The Force Be With You

    No free mixing of the sexes is permitted on these forums or via PM or the various chat groups that are operating.

    Women must write modestly and all men must lower their case.

    http://www.ummah.com/forum/showthread.php?425649-Have-some-Hayaa-%28modesty-shame%29-people!
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #21 - August 12, 2013, 11:18 PM

    Just to add to what Jedi said about the value of a life without god, I wrote something in response to a poster named Seeker who had similar questions. I was exhausted when I wrote it but I think I got the point across. It may prove helpful to you.

    http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=24235.msg697248#msg697248

    `But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
     `Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad.  You're mad.'
     `How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
     `You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #22 - August 13, 2013, 09:32 AM

    That's a good post Quod....once people see that they can live without religion then they will leave it in droves.

    No free mixing of the sexes is permitted on these forums or via PM or the various chat groups that are operating.

    Women must write modestly and all men must lower their case.

    http://www.ummah.com/forum/showthread.php?425649-Have-some-Hayaa-%28modesty-shame%29-people!
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #23 - August 13, 2013, 09:36 AM

    Glad you liked it  Smiley

    `But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
     `Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad.  You're mad.'
     `How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
     `You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #24 - November 09, 2013, 04:03 PM

    My reason for not believing in a theistic god is quite simply that there is nothing to make me believe in it.


    You're not interested in an eternity of paradise?  I genuinely find that odd and can't relate.

    The holy books are filled with so many errors, and as well as the quran...


    Examples, please.

    It's also apparent in these books that the god of choice is always taking an interest in the world. Miracles and divine intervention are common place. If that happened today atheism would not exist because proof of the divine would be a regular occurrence.


    Atheism has always existed.  The performing of miracles never changed that.  The children of Israel had so many prophets because they were quick to fall into disbelief despite all the miracles Moses was allowed to regularly perform.  In the Qur'an God told Muhammad He wasn't jumping through hoops as a condition for people to belief anymore, people disbelievers throughout history would just find a way to justify why it wasn't really a miracle, etc.  So your claim is a gross untruth in light of human nature having not changed a bit for aeons.

    The quran, like all the other holy texts, claims to be the word of god. The way to verify this is testing it, see if it stacks up. Quite frankly it doesn't.


    What are you using as the criterion of measurement?

    Islam teaches that humans were created from clay.


    We are CLEARLY made from clay; everything within the earth... all the minerals, vitamins and substances that make up the land and seas around us... are what we are composed of.  Grab a food product at random and read the Nutrition Facts list of what we routinely put within our bodies, and then read the list of the minerals found in a gob of black, sticky clay scooped up from the ground.

    I may be thinking of another religion but I'm fairly certain it's the quran that teaches Adam was 90 feet tall.


    There is nothing like that in the Qur'an.  It does mention an extinct tribe of people who God said were tall, meaning presumably taller than the average Arab. 

    It also doesn't account for evolution, the proof of which is overwhelming.


    1. Why doesn't the fossil record show the in between stages of the super slow transformation of one species into another?
    2. What possible reason would such information be in the Qur'an?

    Nor does it account for the number of people today who have Neanderthal DNA in them from before the Neanderthals went extinct. Everything I know to be proven fact contradicts the claims of the quran.


    1.  What are the claims of the Qur'an that anything about Neanderthals would be an instant debunking of the Book?  lol
    2.  Wouldn't the mystery of who were the people that Cain, son of Adam encountered after his banishment be explained by this Neanderthalic complaint?

    The only logical conclusion I can come to is that it was a story told by ancient societies because they didn't have any answers. Adam never existed. It's not real.


    From a purely scientific mindset, why wouldn't Adam be real?  As you go back through history, doesn't the human population get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller?   What does that imply?

    The story of the arc and the great flood. This would have happened around 4000 years ago.


    Where did you pull that number from?

    It's quite simply impossible for the number of races, ethnicities and the huge amount of genetic traits to come from one incestuous family in just 4000 years. It cannot happen. Something else that puts a hole in the story is the amount of people who were thriving at this point. God flooded the entire world. Except for the Chinese who were developing at an incredible rate and remained unaffected from a global flood that wiped out every human on the planet. The Japanese were also unaffected. And the Africans. And the Europeans. And the Native Americans. And the Aztecs. And the South Americans. And most of the middle east.  The flood never happened. It's not real.


    Your argument about the Deluge is unreasonable and devoid of facts.  The truth of the matter is that every people in the world have the Flood in their history of "myths" tat correspond to the exact same time period of around 10,000-12,000 years ago.  A time period in which there was enough regular rainfall to erode the Great Sphinx, and in which the last of the Ice Age glaciers were still melting in century long intervals. 

    Mohammad splitting the moon. Now this I can't prove to be false,  but I can weight it against other things. People throughout the world at this point gazed at the stars. The Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, they all had wonderful astronomers who mapped out the night sky. Certain claims by one society are matched by claims in another. Ancient Greeks for example would leave records of things they observed, shooting stars, eclipses, things that would last seconds or minutes, the same claims found with other peoples they had no contact with. Both recorded things matched by the other. So it's reasonable to assume that if Mohammad split the moon and then joined it together again, someone somewhere would have also noticed apart from a few Arabs in the desert. Maybe the rest of the world was on holiday, but I doubt it. I have to say this isn't true.


    Throughout the Qur'an Allah frequently told the prophet that He was not allowing His servant to perform miracles as signs for the disbelievers, and when they asked for them, he was instructed to point to the Qur'an itself as the great miracle.  The "splitting the moon" story is not worthy of serious discussion.  I don't believe in it any more than you. 

    The sun orbits the Earth...yeah, we've known that's bullshit for a few centuries now.


    What is this?

    It says in the quran that in the embryo/foetus the bones are the first thing to form. "So we made the clot a morsel, so we made the morsel bones, so we clothed the bones (with) meat". This is wrong. The skeleton is actually among the last to be formed. You'd think the all knowing creator of everything would realise this. It's wrong.


    The "morsel" is a clump of meat.  In food terminology, reference to a "morsel" means a clump of meat.  So this particular translator seems to be using 'meat' when he meant 'skin.'  What's the Qur'anic address for this verse?

    The stars are missiles to be hurled at jinns. Or they hunt demons. I haven't read the quran in a while so I can't remember the exact quote, but you can look it up to see exactly what it says. This is also wrong. The stars are just stars, they do the exact same thing as the star we orbit, the sun.


    This is a reference to the 'shooting stars' phenomena that look like moving stars from an earthbound point of view.

    Women are defective in intelligence. Coming from a culture where gender mixing is the norm and close relationships aren't looked down upon, I can tell you this isn't true from my own experience. And then there's current trends in school grades, sciences, IQ and employment performance, the fact there are women in MENSA (if you don't know MENSA is like a super genius club, only 2% of the human population globally have a high enough IQ to qualify for membership). Now we live in an age men and women have equal rights, women are on the same level and even starting to out preform men. So I'm going to say this is wrong.


    "Defective in intelligence" is one way of interpreting that, I guess.  I prefer to recognize that it doesn't say she is 'defective' but different in how she thinks... men and women being two different genders in the species.   There's going to be situations in which she is better equipped for and vice versa. 

    You touched on something about islam being a religion of peace. This isn't the case. That's not to say it's a religion of violence, but that it's both. You can find justifications in the quran for living a life of peace and for living a life of violence because it isn't wholly one or the other. Your Hitler analogy was interesting. Throughout the quran there's talk about the believers, and the kaffir. It's important to note the quran makes a huge distinction. Those who aren't muslims are inferior. The quran compares non muslims as beasts of burden, on the same level as animals, and according to some preachers worse than animals. Islam must be spread by the sword, peace through slaughter and conquest.


    I'm sorry, but this is always foolishness.   Islam is not spread by the sword/slaughter/conquest.  Arab nations/empires were spread by conquest, but religion can't be.  There is no compulsion in religion.

    But then by that same token, god made us different tribes so we might know each other. So you can cherry pick. But the quran is supposed to be taken in it's entirety as the ultimate true word of god. If you don't believe this part here, why should you believe this other part over here?


    Because of misunderstandings and confusion.

    This and many more examples are why I'm not a muslim. or a follower of any other religion, all making the same claims, all claiming to be true, to be the word of whatever god they describe. But if something is supposed to be the wisdom of an all powerful all knowing deity who created everything, why is there so many errors? Why are they filled with what seems to be the best knowledge of the time they were written? The only conclusion I can come to is that they were not written by the god described in these holy books but by people.


    The fundamental problem is that the body of sacred scripture have a very specific purpose for being on earth, none of it being a history book, or a detailed catalog of scientific inquiry.   Sacred scripture's sole purpose is to instruct the believer on how to profit from the existence of the afterlife, and to warn the disbeliever of the folly of his ways.  Attempting to shoehorn the Book into categories it was never meant to fit is the only real error involved within these discussions.

  • Hey Folks
     Reply #25 - November 09, 2013, 04:35 PM

    If anyone is interested, I'll be replying to MRasheed's comments here:

    http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=25251.msg717445#msg717445

    `But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
     `Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad.  You're mad.'
     `How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
     `You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #26 - November 14, 2013, 03:06 PM

    congrats on seeing throught the bullshit
  • Hey Folks
     Reply #27 - November 14, 2013, 03:11 PM

    Very apparent he was just making it up as he went along.

    `But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
     `Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad.  You're mad.'
     `How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
     `You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
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