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 Topic: Textual tonality of Quran and Allah

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  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #30 - November 15, 2014, 02:14 AM
    Honestly, if it is just the shorthand for some subconscious feeling that you personally have when you hear the word "God," I don't see this as being any different than, say, beauty. Everyone's going to have their own ideas, everything's going to speak to people differently.

    So why it can be subjective and undefined in your case, but can be measured and deemed incompatible outside of yourself is just escaping me a bit, and sounds a lot like arguments over anything being objectively beautiful or appealing.

    Remember that Allah and all other gods were products of human imagination and tradition, anyway. A far more relevant question would be one considering the external influences shaping what makes a god character appealing to humans during different times. If your entire question was whether or not Allah was compatible with a caring, loving, benevolent God like many people now believe in, then I'm with you. No, that doesn't sound so compatible to me if we're going by the Quran. Is it compatible as an idea of God? Clearly, right?
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #31 - November 15, 2014, 02:22 AM
    " So why it can be subjective and undefined in your case, but can be measured and deemed incompatible outside of yourself is just escaping me a bit, and sounds a lot like arguments over anything being objectively beautiful or appealing. "

    You make completely sense to me. Maybe I was trying to put the argument "this can't be from God" on a  rational basis, which seems to fail here.
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #32 - November 15, 2014, 02:29 AM
    Quote from: abbuke on November 15, 2014, 02:12 AM
    I continue thinking about it, I'm sure I can find out, if I put enough energy.



     Never mind.
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #33 - November 15, 2014, 02:31 AM
    Quote from: abbuke on November 15, 2014, 02:22 AM
    Maybe I was trying to put the argument "this can't be from God" on a  rational basis, which seems to fail here.


    "This can't be from God" will never work as well as "This can't be from a loving God," unfortunately, and even every scientific advance in the world wouldn't be able to knock the possibility that there's a god behind the scenes out of the picture.

    That's interestingly the only way I could accept that the Allah character is real. Is if he's just a real jerk. Grin I can say pretty rationally that there's no way he's a merciful God like he claims to be. I guess by some weird chance he could be real and just be totally evil, and I can't exactly prove that that couldn't be the case, although I doubt it to the point where I'm pretty comfortable staking my eternal torture on it.
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #34 - November 15, 2014, 02:39 AM
    Quote from: INcePtion on November 15, 2014, 02:29 AM
    Never mind.


    That will not happen unless it is me who ask those questions, to myself.
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #35 - November 15, 2014, 02:41 AM
    Quote from: lua on November 15, 2014, 02:31 AM
    "This can't be from God" will never work as well as "This can't be from a loving God," unfortunately, and even every scientific advance in the world wouldn't be able to knock the possibility that there's a god behind the scenes out of the picture.

    That's interestingly the only way I could accept that the Allah character is real. Is if he's just a real jerk. Grin I can say pretty rationally that there's no way he's a merciful God like he claims to be. I guess by some weird chance he could be real and just be totally evil, and I can't exactly prove that that couldn't be the case, although I doubt it to the point where I'm pretty comfortable staking my eternal torture on it.


    Then how do you justify the passage from "there are some weird chances" to "I'm pretty comfortable staking my eternal torture on it".  That is an emotional leap, isn't it?
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #36 - November 15, 2014, 02:42 AM
    -
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #37 - November 15, 2014, 02:45 AM
    You are not able to see your contradictions through my questions. Your argument is not rational. Not even for a bit.

    Therefore "never mind".
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #38 - November 15, 2014, 02:49 AM
    Quote from: abbuke on November 15, 2014, 02:41 AM
    Then how do you justify the passage from "there are some weird chances" to "I'm pretty comfortable staking my eternal torture on it".  That is an emotional leap, isn't it?


    Easily. I guess we can divide it into two major parts.

    Part one would be that I could say this about anything. Christianity, Buddhism, Rastafari, Pastafari, turtles all the way down, that we're in the matrix, that we're all characters in an advanced The Sims game. And yeah, sure, Islam has some pretty gruesome punishments if you don't win this lottery, but so does Christianity and a bunch of others.

    In fact, I could tell you right now about my new religion that requires you to clap your hands at the stroke of midnight every day for the rest of your life, and failure to conform to this religion will ensure you a seat in a hell so truly terrible that you'd want to go to Islamic hell for vacation. And you can't prove that that's not true, but you can feel pretty certain that it's bullshit.

    Which leads us to part two: for a lot of reasons, it sounds like bullshit. And I can personally conceive of many better models, and many more likely scenarios to explain our existence and how we came to be. Islam looks, sounds and smells to me like something that came out of the mind of a man a thousand some odd years ago who knew little about the natural world. Islam is so far towards the bottom of the list of models that sound convincing for this world that even all of its threats fail to send so much as a shiver down my spine.
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #39 - November 15, 2014, 02:52 AM
    Quote
    In fact, I could tell you right now about my new religion that requires you to clap your hands at the stroke of midnight every day for the rest of your life, and failure to conform to this religion will ensure you a seat in a hell so truly terrible that you'd want to go to Islamic hell for vacation. And you can't prove that that's not true, but you can feel pretty certain that it's bullshit.


    Well  pretty much , that's what religion is
    a child's play  Tongue
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #40 - November 15, 2014, 02:53 AM
    Quote from: INcePtion on November 15, 2014, 02:45 AM
    You are not able to see your contradictions through my questions. Your argument is not rational. Not even for a bit.

    Therefore "never mind".


    You seem not to grasp the possibility that my argument maybe wasn't based on reason, maybe there was no argument before trying aggressively to debunk me.
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #41 - November 15, 2014, 02:58 AM
    Asking questions does not mean being aggressive.
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #42 - November 15, 2014, 02:59 AM
    Quote from: INcePtion on November 15, 2014, 02:52 AM
    Well  pretty much , that's what religion is
    a child's play  Tongue


    Well now you've just earned a "surat al inception" when I get around to writing my religion's book.   finmad
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #43 - November 15, 2014, 03:00 AM
    Quote from: lua on November 15, 2014, 02:49 AM
    Easily. I guess we can divide it into two major parts.

    Part one would be that I could say this about anything. Christianity, Buddhism, Rastafari, Pastafari, turtles all the way down, that we're in the matrix, that we're all characters in an advanced The Sims game. And yeah, sure, Islam has some pretty gruesome punishments if you don't win this lottery, but so does Christianity and a bunch of others.

    In fact, I could tell you right now about my new religion that requires you to clap your hands at the stroke of midnight every day for the rest of your life, and failure to conform to this religion will ensure you a seat in a hell so truly terrible that you'd want to go to Islamic hell for vacation. And you can't prove that that's not true, but you can feel pretty certain that it's bullshit.

    Which leads us to part two: for a lot of reasons, it sounds like bullshit. And I can personally conceive of many better models, and many more likely scenarios to explain our existence and how we came to be. Islam looks, sounds and smells to me like something that came out of the mind of a man a thousand some odd years ago who knew little about the natural world. Islam is so far towards the bottom of the list of models that sound convincing for this world that even all of its threats fail to send so much as a shiver down my spine.


    Ok, so you don't believe because you can put it in natural context. You don't say that it can't be from God but only that there is another explanation.  
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #44 - November 15, 2014, 03:01 AM
    Quote from: INcePtion on November 15, 2014, 02:58 AM
    Asking questions does not mean being aggressive.


    Let me be silly, "i didn't say asking questions means being aggressive" Smiley
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #45 - November 15, 2014, 03:04 AM
    Quote from: lua on November 15, 2014, 02:59 AM
    Well now you've just earned a "surat al inception" when I get around to writing my religion's book.   finmad

     Cheesy that is just a surah within a surah, innit?



  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #46 - November 15, 2014, 03:07 AM
    Quote from: abbuke on November 15, 2014, 03:01 AM
    Let me be silly, "i didn't say asking questions means being aggressive" Smiley

    I didnt say you said, but you MEANT.
    You equated my asking questions to
    "Aggressively debunking your argument"

  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #47 - November 15, 2014, 03:10 AM
    Quote from: abbuke on November 15, 2014, 03:00 AM
    Ok, so you don't believe because you can put it in natural context. You don't say that it can't be from God but only that there is another explanation.  


    Not only that, but that there are many other explanations. Countless others, with less baggage and fewer inaccuracies associated with it.

    I think if you're being really honest, there's few things in life that you can be completely 100% sure isn't true. There's a lot of limitations to being human, isn't there? If our whole universe really is just like the fevered dreams of some madman in some other realm, you and I would have no idea, right? It's just really not worth the time to worry about all the "what-ifs" about our existence. There are infinite explanations, and no good reason to believe any of them except for what we can piece together with evidence and experimentation.

    No religion on earth is able to do this, and therefore no religion emerges as more worthy of your serious consideration than the other. To pick Islam out of fear of Hell might just land you in the Christian Hell, or the hell of some other religion that hasn't even been revealed yet. It's just truly not worth anyone's time until an actual reason to believe it comes along. And Islam has none. But it does have many reasons to doubt it.

    So no, I won't tell you that there's no possible way. But as someone who sulks all day long when I burn myself prying toast out of a toaster, I am not at all worried about Islamic Hell. That should say a lot. I am convinced that it is bullshit beyond a reasonable doubt.
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #48 - November 15, 2014, 03:11 AM
    Quote from: INcePtion on November 15, 2014, 03:04 AM
    Cheesy that is just a surah within a surah, innit?


    Cheesy At this rate, it's just going to be a lot of sad emoticons.
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #49 - November 15, 2014, 03:25 AM
    I suppose when I was growing up I had a conception of God that was just super loving and would always accept you for who you are and never let you down. I had never taken a serious look at the Bible, but when I did I realized that the God of the Bible was nothing like the God I had conceived of. I feel like I am someone who does not have a particular spiritual or religious predisposition, so even though I am not sure I ever believed that "my God" existed, I still conceived of it according to my own ideals which were a heck of a lot different from the Biblical god. For those of us who grew up attending church (or mosque), we get the idea that this god fella must be a really nice guy if all these loving people we know around us are good buddies with him. But if you take the time to read the scriptures, you realize that God is merely the projection of Bronze Age ideals and has nothing to do with what a 21st century individual would consider the embodiment of moral perfection.

    Everybody makes God in their own image. In a way, God is simply a concept that people throw their ideals or unfulfilled hopes and desires upon. As Marx said "Religion is the sigh of the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions." If you've lost a loved one, don't worry, God will reunite you again in the afterlife. For every short coming and disappointment in this life, to the believer, God is the remedy. I , too, can conceive of a God too that can take away all my pain and struggle. The difference between me and the believer is I recognize that that concept, no matter how powerful it is, does not exist.
    "I moreover believe that any religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."
    -Thomas Paine
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #50 - November 15, 2014, 03:27 AM
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jknynk5vny8

    I think John Lennon put it well
    "I moreover believe that any religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."
    -Thomas Paine
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #51 - November 15, 2014, 03:42 AM
    Sorry, abbuke. You're kind of new so I didn't really remember you, and had to glance at your posts to realize that you're the one who is dealing with intense anxiety over Hell and was asking about that Quranic verse. So now that I realize who I'm speaking to, let me add:

    You're never, ever, ever going to be satisfied or convinced if you keep doing this to yourself. You need to realize that religion is really no different than anything else in your life. Can you imagine how maddening it would be if you needed to be convinced of everything with undeniable proof? If I told you your mother wasn't your mother, you might want to check out the birth certificate--but what if it's forged? Then you might want to look at pictures of her holding you on the day you were born, but what if that's some other kid and they just switched you? So you might get a DNA test, but then what if that test was a false positive? And then what if DNA tests are really just a big conspiracy by those "scientists" and all they're doing is lying to you and taking your money? So who the fuck knows who that lady is who is calling you her son? Not you, if you're only willing to accept proof that cannot be even hypothetically argued with. She's probably just some lady.

    I mean, there's always going to be room for doubt for anything. If you need to keep checking back with Islam to see if anyone's made an argument that doesn't have irrefutable proof that it's false, you're never going to be happy. You're either going to have to stay in the religion to feel safe, or you're going to have to realize that sometimes in life there's no irrefutable proofs. There's just evidence. And we go with the evidence, and it works pretty damn well. Everything else leads to failure except this. You will go right out your mind trying to make a religion the exception.

    All the evidence is stacked against Islam. Truth doesn't often have to work so hard as apologists do to be apparent.
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #52 - November 15, 2014, 03:53 AM
    Lua speaks the truth. Anxiety has the tendency to try and switch the burden of proof on you. You need to just take a step back and realize in the lack of better evidence, Islam is just another religion and no more likely to be true than the others. Stop giving your anxiety power over you by not demanding from Islam what you would demand from any other religion claiming to be truth.
    "I moreover believe that any religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."
    -Thomas Paine
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #53 - November 15, 2014, 08:57 AM
    Quote from: justperusing on November 14, 2014, 11:29 PM
    Convenient how it spends most of its time claiming how things are gonna be in the world after death which none of us have access to and tries to not promise too much for the world that we can observe, experience, and test now. I think it is the red flag of a charlatan to only give you information that once you can verify it, you can't get mad or get back at the person who gave you false information.


    Yes, and this is one of the points the book "My Ordeal..." highlights!!
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #54 - November 15, 2014, 09:02 AM
    Quote from: abbuke on November 15, 2014, 01:12 AM
    I think a difficult part in leaving islam, is that muslims equate Allah to God. And there is a difference.


    As far as I see Allah is little different from the OT God Yaweh.
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #55 - November 15, 2014, 04:08 PM
    Over the centuries, the Library of Alexandria specialised in rewriting Homer for succeeding generations.

    So is Orwell's 1984 a rewrite of the koran?
    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #56 - November 15, 2014, 04:38 PM
    Quote from: justperusing on November 15, 2014, 03:27 AM
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jknynk5vny8

    I think John Lennon put it well


    btw I LOVE that song  Afro
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #57 - November 15, 2014, 11:26 PM
    This is a difficult thread for me to get my head round. Maybe I'm being a little slow, but the first half of the thread completely went over my head. But I was relieved to see that some of our best brains grappled and wrestled and ran with it, until it actually became an enthralling read. Well done all, and I hope that some of your questions were answered abbuke.
    Hi
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #58 - November 16, 2014, 12:12 AM
    Quote from: Abu Ali on November 15, 2014, 09:02 AM
    As far as I see Allah is little different from the OT God Yaweh.



    I would disagree here. Yahweh in the Torah and the books of Joshua and Judges (and you're probably not thinking of the Yahweh of the latter prophets who condemned Israel for failing to take care of the poor, orphans, widows, and oppressed) was a tribal god who loved his people, Israel, and no one else; yet a jealous one which hated other gods, and that was what made him different from the like of Ba'al. But he was NOT a universal god who wanted all people to worship him; he was Israel's and Israel was his. Allah in the Quran is the Late Antique Christian god, he is the god  of all peoples in all place and he does not want anyone to worship any god but him, no matter where they are. He is not only jealous of his people, the believers (mu2min is user more than muslim in the Quran itself, and there's good reason to believe that the early proto-Muslims called themselves mu2min and muhaajir not muslim), but he is also intolerant of any god being worshipped anywhere in any way but that proscribed in the Quran and by the prophets. This idea can be found later in the Tanakh, mainly in Isaiah, but even there god does not want to convert the unbelievers, he just wants Israel to triumph over them through the coming of the Messiah. The vindictive Yahweh that ordered the Israelites to slay the Amalikites to the last man, woman, and child can be seen in the "sword" verse etc., but his aim is quite different. In the Torah, Joshua and Judges Yahweh wants to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its people to make way for the Chosen People, in the Quran Allah wants to terrorize the unbelievers into accepting the rule of the believers and eventually accepting their religion. It's a crucial development IMO.
    إطلب العلم ولو في الصين

    Es sitzt keine Krone so fest und so hoch,
    Der mutige Springer erreicht sie doch.

    I don't give a fuck about your war, or your President.
  • Textual tonality of Quran and Allah
     Reply #59 - November 16, 2014, 12:19 AM
    Quote from: musivore on November 15, 2014, 11:26 PM
    This is a difficult thread for me to get my head round. Maybe I'm being a little slow, but the first half of the thread completely went over my head.


    You're way too modest. Abbuke, don't listen to him, he's always self-deprecating and way smarter than he lets on.  Grin
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