Geshtinnanna

You are an idiot and I refuse to talk read your posts. Good day

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Vinterland

The Koran mentions nothing of martyrdom in exchange for virgins. This was spoken by the Muslim prophet(I dare not utter his name . I don't claim to know much at all about the Muslim faith, but the Koran does appear to be inconsistent in that of how to reach immortality. One verse states suicide is forbidden while others say martyrdom is fine. Since martyrdom is suicide, this appears to be an obvious contradiction.

Mezzen:
The general rule is that a non-fundamentalist Muslim doesn't take the Koran any mor eliterally than a non-fundamentalist Christian reads the Bible literally. You're assuming that all Muslims believe in literal creationism.

This is also true for the Judeo-Christian god. Believe it or not, the Christian god somehow deludes his believers in heaven so that even if their mother, father, or brother went to "hell" for being atheists, they are still "there" in heaven. Yep, the whole point of heaven is being with god. He doesn't give two shits about anyone who doesn't accept him.

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And on we walked. Suddenly we heard a voice crying, "This is the sea. This is the deep sea. This is the vast and mighty sea." And when we reached the voice it was a man whose back was turned to the sea, and at his ear he held a shell, listening to its murmur.
And my soul said, "Let us pass on. He is the realist, who turns his back on the whole he cannot grasp, and busies himself with a fragment."
—Gibran Khalil Gibran, “The Greater Sea.”

Faith

Tell that to Jesus.

He cares, which has been shown so many times. Me being here for example trying to teach you people is proof of his love. I am not saying that I am special, but it is obvious he wants you to be saved. People look past that and complain that they may be punished just because they haven't accepted God, not realising they have the choice to, they don't so you are responisble for the choice to not accept God.

The An-Jel

Yeah if you can believe Jesus. They like the Prophet Mohammed better. I don't damn anybody unless they shove it down my throat.

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"And let there be Light!" said the Blind man.

Life is simple, people make it complicated - Basilisk

Nulli Expugnabilis Hosti - Royal Gibraltar Regiment

mezzen

To be clear, I should have said Islam, not Muslims. Furthermore I mean majority scholarly opinion of Islam, there is no good in learning about Islam from a Muslim who does not read about his own religion. Nevertheless, overwhelming evidence in scripture (Biblical too) would suggest Allah created Adam "from dust" and furthermore he was created in Paradise. Even if you took that as a metaphor, in my view it doesn't fit well with human evolution.

In Islam, martyrdom is not necessarily suicide. For example, it is true that in some cases of suicide bombing, scholars do consider it to be martyrdom, but generally martyrdom is non-suicide deaths. A woman dying while giving birth is considered a Muslim martyr, or a Muslim unwillingly dying in war (in defence of the Islamic state) and many other situations. The Qur'an does say that it is martyrdom to die in war, but as far as I am aware it does not specify suicidal tactics. Such tactics are acts of desperation and are done by any overwhelmed side in a war.

Now to explain my understanding of the thinking behind why scholars don't regard 'suicide bombing' as plain suicide. When the Qur'an talks about suicide it means taking your own life because you are depressed, or in pain, or any reason in order to avoid some hardship, this is made more clear in hadith. However if you commit suicide for the benefit of Islamic nation (sake of Allah) then it becomes a form of martyrdom, so the intent of the suicide is the key. There is a 'selfish' suicide, which is sin, and then there is martyrdom.

For example, if you witness some armed terrorists planting a nuclear weapon in a city and rather than running away to save yourself, you run up to the group to smash the control panel just before they manage to arm it. They kill you but cannot arm the bomb now. One could call that suicide, but martyrdom would be more appropriate because you died for your country. When it is said to die for the sake of Allah or Islam, remember the context is that Muslims are living as one nation of Muslims, thus dying for your country is dying for your religion.

Number 6

Wrong. even if god designed us himself, then he would need to put those desires. there are people who can't feel pain, and this is a serious life-threatening conditions. so even if evolution didn't come up with pain, any intelligent designer would. if you felt no hunger, you might forget to eat and die and god doesn't want that. he also would want for good, nourishing, high caloric food to taste better. and that goes for sex.
and since there are a lot of restrictions considering sex (like gay sex and masturbation, cheating and so on) why would god design those in us? you might say 'freewill' - fine, but freewill is needed to TEST us on earth, after you are in paradise, why test us?

oh, and if Islam doesn't believe in evolution, then Islam is wrong.

Exactly this is MEN-MADE paradise, this is how horny, hungry, thirsty people who are engrossed in earthly desires would want to spend eternity. do not impose those primitive and atavistic desires on a supernatural deity.

Is god physical? saying he is, is blasphemy as far as I know. so why won't he make us more like him?
do you claim that god doesn't feel pleasure? because I think he is quite content. will we have more pleasure than god? are sex and food the acme of all pleasures? if so maybe god also indulges in sex? does he pretend to be a rockstar and F@#$ the bejesus out of some groupies every now and then?
does he fly planes? does he enjoy a good meal? clearly no. and I suspect he does feel content. I want to be more like him. clearly you guys want to be more like the animals (funny, considering you deny evolution...).

your idea of paradise is becoming a Greek god, a god that has sex and drinks ambrosia and rapes women and toys for all eternity.
Funny, considering you think of Greek mythology as idolatry.

In a human mind there are the animalistic side and the transcended side, (the side that can look from above on itself). that is the divine in us (if the divine exists), I see no reason why the animalistic side will continue to exist in a supernatural realm.
The animalistic side is a necessity for our survival on earth (whether by evolution or design) or necessary for free will. those things will not be required in paradise.

your beliefs are also fantasy; and talk about arrogance, it's you guys who talk about what god wants and what the afterlife will be like.

At least my fantasy is more respectful to god, since it doesn't assume he's a panderer or a manager in six flags, and that he will let us be more like him and less like APES.

mezzen

In order for us to understand each other properly, I will explain how I see your argument. You speculate that pain and certain pleasures are designed into humans purely as 'tools' for the purpose of survival on Earth. You claim that these tools will not be needed in Paradise, thus removed, leaving only a special kind of pleasure; a minor note is that you did not explain why something has to have a need in order to exist. Anyway, you did not make it very clear to me what that special pleasure is, or whether we can feel it in this life, but that it is some kind of 'divine pleasure'. To find out what you meant by this special pleasure, I inquired about what you think of the pleasure some people feel by knowing of the misfortune of others, something that is not described as a carnal pleasure. Anyway you completely ignored that point given in the third paragraph of my other post choosing, instead, to pick on minor issues. So the first point is about your speculation of the purpose of pain and carnal pleasure and the second point is the issue of whether there are higher pleasures that are worthy of Paradise.

To answer the first point, it maybe that God gave us pain and certain pleasures to help us survive, or it maybe that there are several reasons; I don't claim to know but you blankly decided that was the full picture. All a Muslim knows from experience and scripture is that humans feel something labeled as pain and pleasure, and that they are just a small taste of what is to come. The point being, if we did not have pain and pleasure on Earth, then there would be no fear of Hellfire or desire for Paradise. Picture an existence devoid of pain and pleasure; then imagine Muhammad trying to explain the concepts Paradise and Hellfire. It would be very hard, if not impossible, for him to do that therefore nobody would have reason to follow him and nobody would care about their fate. So in a twisted way a Muslim could agree with you by saying that they are survival tools, but in the sense of getting into Hell or Paradise, not merely survival on Earth as you believe them to be. I'm sure you agree that God would not lie to man by first saying that pain and 'carnal' pleasure are tastes of Hell and Paradise, and then when you get there they are missing and you are left with something different. So there is a lot of reason for a Muslim to believe in the pleasures of drinking, eating and sex in the afterlife. It might be that Muhammad used metaphors in a few descriptions, so that the nomads would be able to grasp the concept. However, scholars generally agree that both Hell and Paradise are created, tactile and physical existences with pain and pleasure as we know them.

In answering the second point, I hope to show that your speculation is not worth anything. In your original post you suggested that this 'divine' pleasure might be akin to that gained from the satisfaction of knowing everything. You see knowledge as pleasure because of an Earthly experience where you feel you know something, or made some discovery, and found you got pleasure from it. You labeled this is a pure form of pleasure. Now someone else could speculate about the inner workings of the human mind/soul as follows. The pleasure you get from gaining knowledge is really from the arrogance of knowing more than others, and you cannot prove otherwise since no-one actually understands the functioning of the mind/soul. Thus what you label as pure, through your own speculation, is labeled as impure through another man's speculation. Just as those who take pleasure in other people's misfortune, people can take pleasure in feeling they know things that others do not know, neither seem fit for Paradise because they stem from arrogance. This should show that speculation is pointless and arrogant. Sticking to logic and evidence, be it scientific or religious, is the only reasonable and humble way.

This is why I asked you whether you could explain exactly how the soul/mind functions. You responded with a flurry of seemingly unrelated questions, and were even bold enough to answer a few on my behalf. Answers which I will attribute to you, not me. I say that your questions seemed unrelated because I didn't see the link between my mentioning the soul and your asking whether I think 'God is physical'. In Islam the soul is created by Allah, not a part of Allah. You continue this in remarkable manner by stating how humans have 'animalistic' and transcended sides, where the 'animalistic' side will cease to exist. Amazing, you made that up all by yourself!

Following up with some of the other issues. Apparently you feel Islam is wrong if it does not accept evolution, ironically you are also adamant that humans are quite apart from animals. I actually said 'human evolution' not simply 'evolution', maybe animals did evolve; I don't know. Secondly the evolution of man is completely unproven scientifically, yet you fall into the trap of accepting it as fact. I remember hoaxes like Nebraska Man and Piltdown Man, made by certain scientists desperate to prove the evolution of man, and now we have scientists and certain religious groups coming up with a compromise called Intelligent Design. Says a lot about their faith, following a completely made up philosophy, having neither scientific nor scriptural evidence.

You said, "Do not impose those primitive and atavistic desires on a supernatural deity." Nowhere have I imposed anything on God. I've clearly said that humans will be humans, not God or part of God, in Paradise. Remember you are the one hoping to be more than a human in Paradise.

mezzen

I want to add something regarding a key issue. I quote you, "Your beliefs are also fantasy; and talk about arrogance, it's you guys who talk about what god wants and what the afterlife will be like." I don't know who you mean by 'you guys,' but I assume you mean Muslims. The fantasy I meant is the creating of ideas about God's nature entirely based on your own imagination. This is what you are doing. Divine prophets received their ideas through Revelation, and people believed them because they often had miracles or were prophesied by earlier prophets. This is an entirely different process, it is witnessing real evidence of something that can only be attributed to God and then drawing conclusions from it whereas you are simply making ideas up.

All religious people, and here I include those atheists who will only accept fully established facts, just follow the teachings of others. Surely this is a position of humbleness. If scientists tell you the Moon is made from rock because astronauts went there and brought some back, but you preach that it is made from cheese because you concluded it from your own imagination, it is pretty obvious who is the arrogant one. Likewise if you make up ideas about God when prophets are telling you different, the same applies. You might ask why a person should believe a prophet. Well if a man managed to part the Red Sea by tapping his stick on it and claims that this power comes from God, then people tend to believe it. Obviously in times when there are no prophets the evidence is the records of those events and your choice is to believe in that evidence or not. Instead, you are following your own ego by philosophizing and speculating. In thinking you can figure out, not just creation, but God Himself and without any evidence, I cannot imagine a position of greater arrogance.

Number 6

I really don't wish to continue discussing fantastic scenarios of the afterlife any further.

The most reasonable possibility is that death is like the state you were in before you were born. you just get annihilated.

I see no reason to go further and defend any god - he's a big boy so he can defend himself.

If I am right, then we just die and no further discussion
if you are right and paradise is like you think it is - enjoy it.
if your vision is wrong, then you will have to have this argument with him.

Either way, I so no point in further argument.