Science

from http//www.themodernreligion.com/essays_Gary_Miller.htm The Basis of Muslim Belief By Gary Miller . About Gary Miller, the author Gary Miller (Abdul-Ahad Omar) shows how we can establish true faithby setting standards of truth. He illustrates a simple but effective method of finding out the right direction in our search for truth. G.R.. Miller is a mathematician and a theologian. He was active inChristian missionary work at a particular point of his life but he soonbegan to discover many inconsistencies in the Bible. In 1978, hehappened to read the Qur'an expecting that it, too, would contain amixture of truth and falsehood. He discovered to his amazement that the message of the Qur'an was precisely the same as the essence of truth that he had distilled from the Bible. He became a Muslim and since then has been active in giving public presentations on Islam including radio and television appearances. He is also the author of several articles and publications about Islam. . Dilemma of Applying Reason Almost all of us have been faced with the questioning of a child by repeating one word over and over. He can be very frustrating to us as he asks, "WHY?" If you put a knife beyond his reach, he wants to know "WHY?" When you explain it is sharp, he asks "WHY?" And so you explain, "in order to cut fruit," and he asks, "WHY?" And so it goes. It illustrates the dilemma of applying reason. What we have to do when we apply reason is first set standards of proof. We decide for ourselves, "What will I be satisfied with if I find such and such and so and so that constitutes for me a final proof?" We have to decide on that first. What happens though, is that on the really important issues, the philosophical matters, thinkers set standards of proof and they take a look at their subjects and eventually they may arrive at their standards. They may arrive at the point which say would constitute a proof. But then they ask for a proof of the proof. . Setting Standards The key to avoiding this endless dissatisfaction is to satisfy ourselves about the standards first; to satisfy ourselves that such and such are a list of criteria that constitute proof, satisfying proof, and then we test the subjects that we examine. In particular I will apply this to the Qur'an. Ask a thoughtful Christian why he is a Christian, and he will usually reply, "The miracle of the Resurrection." The basis for his belief being that about two thousand years ago a man died and he was raised from the dead. That is his miracle, his 'touchstone', because all else depends on that. Ask a Muslim, "Well, what is your miracle? Why are you a Muslim? What is your miracle? Why are you a Muslim? Where is your miracle?" and the Muslim can go over and take his miracle off the shelf and hand it to you because his miracle is still with us today. It is the Qur'an; it is his 'touchstone'. . Sign of God While all the Prophets have their signs, Moses had the competition with the magicians and the Pharaoh, Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead and so on, one Sign was given to the last of the prophets. According to the Muslims, this is the Qur'an. And this one Sign is still with us. Does not that after all seem fair, that if prophethood is to end that the last prophet should bring something that stays with us so that, in fact, a Muslim who takes his religion seriously suffers no disadvantage to Muslims who lived fourteen centuries ago? Those people who kept company with the Prophet had access to no more of the necessary information than we have today. They had the Qur'an. That was the sign for them. It is still a sign to us today, the same miracle. Well, let us test the Qur'an. Suppose that if I say to a man, "I know your father." Probably he is going to examine the situation and see if it seems likely that I have met his father. If he is not convinced, he will start asking me questions like "You know my father, you say, is he a tall man? Does he have curly hair? Does he wear glasses?," and so on. If I keep giving him the right answers to all these questions, pretty soon he is going to be convinced. "Well, I guess this man did meet my father like he said." You see the method. . The Big Bang Theory Verses in the Qur'an claim that the author of Qur'an was present when the universe first appeared, when life first began billions of years ago. We have a right to question this claim. We ask the author, "Well tell us something to prove to us that YOU were there when they world began, life began." In reply to our challenge, the Qur'an contains a dumbfounding statement. It reads, "Have not the disbelievers seen that the Heavens and the Earth were one piece and we parted them? And We made every living thing from water. Will they not then believe?" (2130) (in the Qur'an, 'We' is used not to show plurality, that several Gods exist but rather as a sign of respect) There are 3 key points in (2130). First of all, it is the disbelievers who are mentioned as being those who would discover that the heavens and the earth were one piece and then parted and it is the DISBELIEVERS (non-Muslims) who will DISCOVER that all life came to be made from water. Coincidentally, the universally accepted theory of 'the origin of the universe' is now the BIG BANG THEORY. It maintains that at one time ALL OF HEAVENS AND THE EARTH were one piece, the 'monoblock' as it is called. At a particular point in time, this 'monoblock' burst and it continues to expand. This is the origin of the universe we have today. This is a recent confirmation. The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded only a few years ago to those who confirmed the Big Bang Theory origin of the universe. It was only 200 years ago that Leeuwenhoek and others perfected the microscope and discovered for the first time that living cells are composed of 80% water. The above information which was scientifically confirmed only in the last 2 centuries, can be found in the Qur'an which originated 14 centuries ago! Could it then have been written by an ordinary man or can it only be the work of God? The verse above, (2130) states that disbelievers will scientifically prove the Big Bang Theory and that living cells are made of water -- Those Nobel Prize winners and the Dutchman who invented the microscope were not muslims. And yet they confirmed the vital statement that at one time, the universe was one piece, that life was made from water, just as verse says, "Have not the disbelievers seen that the Heavens and the Earth were one piece and we parted them? And We made every living thing from water. Will they not then believe?" (2130) Does this not prove that the author of the Qur'an, has indeed met the challenge, "Was He there when the universe began, when life began." . Taking a Stand Everyone must be committed to something. You have to put your foot down some place. It is impossible to be neutral at all times. There has been a point of reference in the life of any thinking individual. You have to take a stand somewhere. The question, of course, is to put your foot down in the right place. Since there is no such thing as a proof of a proof and so on, in order to find the right place to put one's foot down, to take a stand, we have to search and find that place and it is by a method that I hope to illustrate here. It is a question of finding a point of convergence. You see, we search for truth in many places and we begin to know that we are succeeding in finding the truth if all our different paths start to converge; they start to come together at the same point. If we are examining a book, looking for evidence of divine origin, and we are led to Islam, this is one path. If at the same time, we examining the words of all those who were called prophets and we find ourselves led to Islam, we have a firmly grounded basis for belief. We started looking for truth in two different places and found ourselves going down the path headed for the same destination. No one ever proves all things. We have to stop at some point being satisfied with our standards as I have mentioned earlier. The point is, in order to take a stand and to be sure it is in the right place, we want to examine all the evidence around us and see where does it lead us and anticipate this point of convergence; to say it looks like all things are pointing to this place. We go to that place and then look at the data around us to see if it fits into place. Does it now make sense? Are we standing in the right place? . The Expanding Heavens Let me first show more of our examination of the Qur'an, and then an examination of some words of prophets to find this point of convergence. In Chapter 51, verse 47, it is mentioned that the heavens are expanding. As I mentioned earlier, this is in connection with the 'Big Bang' origin of the universe, as it is usually called, and it was in 1973 that the Nobel prize was awarded to three men who were confirming that, after all, the universe is expanding. The comments of Muslims over the centuries on this verse which speaks of the heavens doing exactly that is very interesting. The wisest among them stated that the words are very clear, that the heavens are expanding, but they could not imagine how that could be so. But they were content to leave the words as they were, to say "Allah knows best." . The City of Iram The Qur'an mentions a city by the name of Iram (897). The city of Iram has been unknown to History, so unknown that even Muslim commentators, out of embarrassment or feeling apologetic for their religion, have commented on this mention of the city in the Qur'an as being perhaps figurative, that Iram was possibly a man and not a city. In 1973, the excavation in Syria at the site of the ancient city of Eblus uncovered the largest collection of cuneiform writings on clay tablets ever assembled. In fact, the library discovered in Eblus contains more clay tablets that are more than four thousand years old than all the other tablets combined from all other sites. Interestingly enough, you will find the details in the National Geographic of 1978 which confirms that in those tablets the city of Iram is mentioned. The people of Eblus used to do business with the people of Iram. So here in 1973, comes confirmation of the fact that, after all, there really was an ancient city by that name, wherever it was. How did it find its way into the Qur'an, we might ask? Those Muslims who may have offered their comments, trying to explain away this reference that they were uncomfortable with, were outsmarted by the author of the Qur'an. They were those who would attempt to outsmart the author of the Qur'an. Primarily, their activity would involve trying to produce the evidence that the author of this book had a primitive understanding of the world around us. . The Smallest Matter For example, there is a word which is translated today usually in Arabic as Zarrah. This is usually translated as 'atom' and it is usually thought of in Arabic as being the smallest item available at one time. Perhaps, the Arabs thought it was an ant or a grain of dust. Today, the word is usually translated as 'atom'. Those who would outsmart the author of the Qur'an have insisted that, well, the atom is not after all the smallest piece of matter because in this century it has been discovered that even the atom is made of still smaller pieces of matter. Is it them possible to outsmart the author who chose to use this word? Well, there is an interesting verse, in chapter 10, verse 61, which speaks of items the size of a zarrah, (atom) or smaller. There is no possibility that on this subject someone is going to say a new discovery has outdated the words of the Qur'an on the issue of the size of matter or the ultimate particles. The verse talks about items the size of a zarrah (atom) or smaller. . Forgiveness Speaking of outsmarting the author of the Qur'an, the Islamic point of view is that when a man embraces Islam, his past is forgiven from the very beginning. This has been the invitation to Islam come to Islam and all is forgiven from the past. But consider this. There is only one enemy of Muhammad, peace be upon him, who is mentioned by name in the Qur'an one Abu Lahab. In a short chapter of this book, he is condemned to punishment for his sins. As it happens, the man himself was alive for many years after this revelation. He could therefore have finished Islam very easily. He needed only to go to the Muslims to announce his conversion. They had in their hands the revelation which said that this man is doomed to punishment. He could have gone to Muslims and say "I accept Islam, am I forgiven or not?" He could have confused them so much as to finish this small movement because he would have been pointing out to them that they were now in confusion. The policy was instant forgiveness of the past, but their own revealed scripture announced that he was not forgiven. As it was, Abu Lahab died without accepting Islam. . Predictions In fact, the Qur'an confidently predicted a number of things only a few years before they came to pass. The fall of the Persian Empire, for example, was predicted in spite of the fact that it had just suffered a serious military reverse. The evidence was all to the contrary. But in the chapter entitled Rom, the fall of the Persian Empire who were recently victors over the Romans was predicted. When all the Muslims in the world could meet in one room, the revelations were already discussing their future successes. In confidence, they were planning for the day when they would be in charge of the city where they were forced at that time to hide for their very lives. . Evidence of Divine Origin Some people may like to find any number of things in the Qur'an. But an honest method in examining this book, looking for evidence of the Divine origin, is to take things at their value, to look for things that are clear and to look in those places where we are invited to look. Remember the passage that I quoted earlier "Have not the disbelievers seen..." This a common phrase of the Qur'an "O Man, Have you not seen." The invitation is to examine the evidence in these places. We are doing the sensible thing if we examine the words used to look for the doubted meaning and to find evidence of the Divine origin. Each one of us is an expert on something. One does not have to have a degree in a particular subject to decide that now, "I can take my expertise to the Qur'an and see what I can find." We all now something for some from our own experience and life. I heard a story, several years ago in Toronto, of man who was given the Qur'an to read. The man was a member of the merchant marines who spent his life on the sea. When he read a verse in the Qur'an describing the wave on the ocean, "waves within waves and the darkness between," he was surprised because the description was just what he knew the situation to be. When he returned the Qur'an to the man who gave it to him to read, he asked him (because he was completely ignorant of the origins of Islam) "This Muhammad, was he a sailor?" Well, of course, he was quite surprised to know that the man spent his life in the desert. So he had to ask himself "From where did he get this knowledge of what looks like on a stormy sea?" We all know something that we can be confident of and if we can turn to the Qur'an to read what it says about that subject, we are asking for confirmation of our belief in the Divine origin of the book. . The Two Phenomena A friend of mine from the University of Toronto, had the experience of dealing with a man who was doing his doctorate in psychology. He chose as his subject 'The Efficiency of Group Discussion'. He suggested a number od criteria as to what constitutes an efficient discussion. He graphed the process; that is, he achieved a measure of efficiency of all groups in their discussions according to an index by his system. On his graph he indicated the progress made by the discussion groups of various sizes. The interesting thing that happened which he did not expect to find when he began his project was that, while there were some differences between the size of any given group and how well they did in discussions, he was surprised to find that groups of two were completely off his scale! In other words, when people sit down to discuss something, they were so much more efficient than any other size of group that it went completely off his scale of measurement. When my friend heard about this, something went on at the back of his mind. My friend, being a Muslim, thought there was something familiar here about this idea. The psychology researcher was not a Muslim. He was debating with himself on changing the topic of his thesis. Should he call it 'The Phenomenon of Two' or 'The Two Phenomena? He was SO surprised at his discovery. Meanwhile, my friend found that there is a verse in the Qur'an, and he found it for himself on the same night, which speaks on discussions and the size of groups and how efficient they are. And maybe we should not be surprised to find that it is the groups that are two in numbers that do the best in achieving results. The main verse in the Qur'an reads, concerning discussion groups, that when discussing the Qur'an one should sit alone and reflect on its meaning or discuss it in groups of two. . Use and Mention of Words For myself, as I said everyone knows something for sure or has an interest and experience in life; my interest is in mathematics and logic. There is a verse in the Qur'an which says "This a scripture whose verses are perfected and then expounded." (111) Which tells me that there are no wasted words in the Qur'an; that each verse is perfected and then it is explained. It could not be in a better form. One could not use fewer words to say the same thing or if one uses more words one would only be adding superfluous information. This directed my attention to a particular mathematical subject, a logical subject, and I examined the Qur'an to see if I could find something of what I knew to be the case. A revolution in logic has occurred in the last one hundred years, primarily over the difference between use and mention of words. A structure of logic seemed to be in danger of collapsing about a hundred years ago because it came to the attention of the people who studied these matters that the structure was not quite sound. The issue involved 'self-reference' and the use and the mention of words which I will explain briefly. Aristotle's law of the 'excluded middle' was the statement that every statement is either true false. About a hundred years ago, somebody pointed out that the law of the excluded middle is a statement and is therefore not a law after all. It could just as well be false as well as true. This was a tangled knot for the logicians to untie until they came to understand the difference between the use and the mention of a word. When we use a word, we consider its meaning. When we mention a word we are discussing the word itself. If I said Toronto is a large city, I mean Toronto, that place, is a large cit. If I say Toronto has seven letters, I am talking about the word 'Toronto'. In the first case I used the word and in the second I mentioned the word. You see distinction. . Jesus and Adam Connecting these ideas and the idea that the Qur'an composed of verses that are perfected and then expounded for us, consider the verse which says "The likeness of Jesus before Allah is as the likeness of Adam." (359) It is very clear that what we have in the statement is an equation. This verse goes on to explain how that is true because they both came under unusual circumstances rather than having a mother and a father in the usual human reproductive way. But more than that, I got to consider the use of the mention of words. The words are used clearly enough. Jesus is like Adam and by Jesus and Adam, we mean those two men. But what about the mention of the words? Was the author aware of the fact that if we were considering the words as words themselves, this sentence also read that 'Jesus' is something like 'Adam'. Well, they are not spelt with the same letters, how can they be alike in this revelation? The only answer came to me fairly quickly and I took a look at the index of the Qur'an. The index of the Qur'an has been made available only since 1945. This book was the result of years of work by a man and his students who assembled a book which lists every word in the Qur'an and where it can be found. So, when we look up the word Isa (Jesus), we find it in the Qur'an twenty-five times. When we look up Adam, we find it in the Qur'an twenty-five times. The point is that they are very much alike in this book. They are equated. So, following up on this idea, I continued to examine the index looking for every case where something was set up as an equation, where the likeness of something was said to be the likeness of some other thing. And in every case, it works. You have to example a verse which reads "The likeness of this who reject our signs is as the likeness of the dog." (7176) Well, the phrase is Arabic for 'the people who reject our signs' could be found in the Qur'an exactly five times. And so is the Arabic word for 'the dog' (al-kalb). And there are several instances of exactly the same occurrence. It was some months after I found this for myself that a friend of mine, who is continuing this investigation with me, made a suggestion that there are also some places in the Qur'an where one thing is said to be not like another thing. As soon as he mentioned this up to me, we both went for the index and had a quick look at several places where on thing is said to be not like another thing and counted their occurrence in the Qur'an. We were surprise and maybe should not have been to find that, after all, they do not match up. But an interesting thing does happen. For example, the Qur'an makes it very clear in the verse that trade is not like interest. The two words will be found six times for on and seven for the other. And so it is in every other case. When one thing is said to be not like another, they over for a difference of one time. It would be five of one and four of the other, or seven of one and eight of another. . Good and Evil There is one interesting verse which, I felt, spoke directly to me from right off the page. It mentions two words in Arabic, al-khabeeth (the evil), and al-taib (the good). The verse reads "Say, the evil and the good are not comparable, even though the abundance of evil will surprise you. So be mindful of your duty to Allah, O Man of understanding, that you may succeed." (5100) When I had a look at those two words in Arabic, the evil and the good, and found it in the Qur'an that they both occur seven times. Yet the verse here is saying that they are not comparable. I should NOT expect to find that they occur the same number of times. BUT what does the rest of this verse say? "The evil and the good are not comparable. The abundance of the evil will surprise you" - and it did for there were too many of them. But it continues... "So be mindful of your duty to Allah, O Man of understanding, that you may succeed." - So press on. Use your understanding and you will succeed. This is what the verse said to me. Well, I found the answer on one verse further on... "Allah separates the evil from the good. The evil He piles one on top of the other, heaping them all together." (837) Here is the solution to the difficulty. While we have seven occurrences of al-khabeeth (the evil) which matches up with the occurrences of al-taib (the good), according to the principle of the verse, evil is separated from good and is piled one on top of the other and heaped altogether as one. Hence, we do not count them as 7 separate instances. . Occurrence of Words A favourite difficulty, or supposed difficulty, which critics like to cite concerning the Qur'an is that - the author of this book was ignorant because he advised Muslims to follow the lunar new year instead of the solar year. The critics say the author was unaware of the differences in the length of years, that if one follows the twelve lunar months, one loses eleven days every year. However, the author was well aware of the distinction between the length of the solar year and lunar year. In Chapter 18, Verse 9 It mentions 300 years and gives their equivalent as 309 years. As it happens, 300 SOLAR years is equal to 309 LUNAR years. The arabic word for 'month', shahar will be found 12 times in the Qur'an. There are 12 months in a year. If we find twelve months, how many days should we expect to find? The word in arabic is yaum, and as it happens you will find that the word occurs 365 in the Qur'an. The original issue which had me interested in looking up the occurrence of months and days was this distinction between solar year and the lunar year. Well, for 25 centuries, it has been known that the relative positions of the sun, moon and earth coincide every 19 years. This was discovered by a Greek by the name of Meton, and it is called the 'Metonic' cycle. Knowing this, I looked again in the index of the word 'year', sanah and found, sure enough, that is occurs in the Qur'an 19 times. . Perfect balance of Words Now, what is the point of this perfect balance of words? For myself, it shows the author was well aware of the distinction between using words and mentioning words, a fine logical point. But more than that, it indicates the preservation of this book. After giving a lecture on the subject of the Qur'an , I touched on some of these subjects and a questionnaire from the audience afterwards said "How do we know we still have the original Qur'an. Maybe pieces of it have been lost or extra parts been added?" I pointed out to him that we had pretty well covered that point because since these items, the perfect balance of words in the Qur'an, have come to light only in this generation, anybody who would have lost the portion of this book, hidden some of it, or added some of their own would have been unaware of this carefully hidden code in the book. They would have destroyed this perfect balance. It is interesting to note too that, well, such a thing might be possible to organize today by the use of a computer to coordinate all words so that whatever thought you might have as to a meaning of a sentence or however you might construe an equation out of a sentence, you could check for yourself and the book will always have the balance of words. If that were possible today, if it were possible fourteen centuries ago, why would it be done and then left hidden and never drawn to the attention of those who first saw this book? Why it would be left with the hope of the author who contrived this, that maybe in many centuries someone will discover it and have a nice surprise? It is a scheme that does not make sense. . Best Explanation We are told in the Qur'an that no questionnaire will come to the Muslims with the question for which a good answer has not been provided, and the best explanation for whatever his question. This verse says "For everything they say we are given something to go back to them and reply." (2533) We looked again to the index of the Qur'an and we found the word, qalu (they say), is found three hundred and thirty-two times. Now, what would be the natural counterpart? The Arabic word, qul, which is the command 'say' and you will find at the index it also occurs three hundred and thirty-two times. . Origin of the Qur'an An interesting feature of the Qur'an is that it replies to critics as to its origin. That is, no one has yet come up with suggestion as to where this book came from which is not commented on within the book itself. In fact, the new Catholic Encyclopedia, under the heading Qur'an, mentions that over the centuries there has been many theories as to where this book came from. There conclusion today, no sensible person believes any of these theories. This leaves the Christians in some difficulty. You see, all the theories suggested so far , according to this encyclopedia, are not really acceptable to anyone sensible today. They are too fantastic. Where did the book come from? Those who have not really examined the Qur'an usually dismissed it as being, they say, a collection of proverbs or aphorisms, saying that one man used to announce from time to time. They imagined that there was a man who, from time to time during the day, will think of some witty little saying and spit it out and those around him will quickly write it down and eventually these were all collected and became the Qur'an. Those who read the Qur'an will find that it is not anything like that at all. The collection of things said by the Prophet is the subject and the content of the Hadith. But the subjects and contents of the Qur'an are all in a form of a composition and explanation. I site as an example the chapter, Yusuf, which is an entire story in great detail about on e particular episode of one portion of the life of one man. It is a composition. It is for this reason that virtually all those who have actually examined the Qur'an usually refer to it as being the product of the authorship as attributed to Muhammad and his 'co-adjudicators'. These were supposed to be people who would sit with him and composed the Qur'an. You see they imagined that the Qur'an was composed by a committee. They acknowledged that there was too much information and it was too well composed for one man to have assembled. So, they imagined that a committee of men used to meet regularly, brought their various sources of information, composed something and then handed to this man and told him, "Go to the people tomorrow, this is your revelation." In other words, it was a fraud concocted by a group of people. But what do we know about fraud? The Qur'an reminds us as it says "Saw, now the truth has come, and falsehood neither invents anything nor restores anything." (3449). It is hard to translate it into English precisely, but what this verse is telling us is that falsehood is not the source of a new thing. A new and truthful thing cannot come from falsehood and falsehood does not restore, to our minds, the facts. Truth is in agreement with facts. Falsehood is something else. So falsehood is empty. If something is born fraud, it will never bring us new information. It will never endure; it will only collapse over a period of time. . Challenge Another interesting verse is a challenge which is addressed to those non-believers. It reads "Have they not considered the Qur'an, if it came, other than Allah, surely they will find in it many inconsistencies." (482) Here is a challenge to the reader. If you think you have an explanation where this book came from, have another look at the book. Surely you will be able to uncover some inconsistencies to support your case. Imagine a student submitting a term paper or a final exam and then writing at the bottom of the page a not to his teacher "You will find no mistakes in this paper. There are no mistakes on this exam." Can you imagine the teacher letting that rest? The teacher would probably not sleep until uncovering some inconsistency after a challenge like that. It is not the way human beings speak. They do not offer challenges like that. But here we have it in the Qur'an, a direct challenge saying "If you have a better idea as to where this book came from, here's all you need to do. Find some inconsistencies." There are critics who make the attempt, critics who try to say the Qur'an contains inconsistencies. A publication that came to my attention recently suggested that the Qur'an was contradictory on the subject of marriage, because in one place, it says "don't marry more than one wife unless you can provide for them all," and in another place it says "Don't marry more than four." They see this as a contradiction. What they have is a counter-distinction. In one case, the qualification for marrying more than one has been given. In the other case a limitation on how many may be married is given. There is no contradiction. Critics are too quick to grab hold of something, give it an interpretation, and then offer it as an excuse to escape the reality of this document. For critics who would attack the Qur'an and insist it contains mistakes, we can use the same method as in our reply to Christians who claim that Jesus is on record as claiming to be equal to God. Remember the three categories of evidence offered. The evidence offered was insufficient, ambiguous or impossible. You see, if someone cites a verse from the Qur'an, trying to show that it is a mistake, we only need to show that the verse cited is insufficient to establish that there is a mistake or we need to show that the verse cited cannot possible have the interpretation which the critic is giving it. It will always fall into one of these three categories. . Attributing it to the Devil I had experience, on one occasion, describing some of the contents in the Qur'an to a man who did not know the book I was talking about. He sat next to me with the cover turned over. I just told him about the book, what it contained and told him it was not the Bible. His conclusion was, the book was miraculous. This man was a minister in a Christian Church. He said, "Yes, that book could not possible have originated with the man and therefore it must come from the devil, because it's not the Bible." The Qur'an comments on this suggestion in chapter twenty-six, verse two-hundred and eleven, as to those who would suggest that the book came from the devil. It points out that it does not quite suit him, does it? Is this how the devil misleads people? He tells them, worship none but God, he insists that they fast, that they practice charity. Is this how the devil misleads people? Compare the attitude of someone like this, to the attitude of the Jews who knew Jesus and opposed him until the very end. There is an episode reported in the Bible where Jesus raised a man from the dead, one Lazarus, who had been dead for four days. When Lazarus came out of the tomb, alive again those Jews who were watching, what did they do? Did they suddenly say that this man is a true prophet and become believers? No, the Bible says they immediately discussed among themselves that "since this man is working on his signs soon everyone will believe in him. We've got to find a way to kill him," and they attributed his miraculous powers to the devil. He raised that man by the power of the devil. Now, the Christians who read that episode will feel very sorry for those Jews who had clear evidence right before their very eyes and attribute the miracles to the devil. Does it not appear that they may be doing the same thing when we illustrate what we have in the Qur'an and their final excuse is only "It originated with the devil." . A Different Story There are those who insist that the Qur'an was copied, that it originated in Christian and Jewish sources. As a matter of fact, a book published in recent years called Worshipping the Wrong God has stated, as though it were a fact, that after the first revelation of the Qur'an came to Muhammad, peace be upon him, that his wife died and so he quickly married a Jew and a Christian, and this is where he drew the rest of his sources for his book. Well, they have the facts partly right. It was ten years after the first revelation of the Qur'an that his wife died, and it was another ten years after that when the Qur'an was virtually completed that he married a Jew and a Christian. Did he copy from Jewish and Christian sources? In the Qur'an, the ruler of Egypt who opposed Moses is known as Fir'aun, not Pharaoh. The Jews and Christians have always said 'Pharaoh'. It is easy for an Arab to say 'Pharaoh'. But in the Qur'an, it is Fir'aun, with an 'n'. Why? Surely the Jews must have teased them about that and said "You've got the word wrong. It's 'Pharaoh' and not Fir'aun." But they insisted on it and it continues that way in the Qur'an, Fir'aun. As it happens, this historical writings of Herodotus, the Greek historian, exist to this day, and Herodotus comments on the ruler of Egypt, being in his day and in the centuries before him, one man who went by the title of Fir'aun. Did the book copy from the Christians sources? The Qur'an insists that Jesus was not crucified, that this was only an illusion, but that the Jews who thought they crucified Jesus were mistaken because it was not really so. Christians would have no part of that. As it happens, the idea that Jesus was not really crucified is really very ancient and can be traced back to the first century. But Christians who believed that were eliminated as heretics within the first two-hundred years after the time of Jesus and they were not teaching this doctrine anywhere around the Arabian Peninsula fourteen centuries ago. Could the author of the Qur'an have been copying from Christian sources when he says that Jesus spoke to man as a babe (346) and in later life? The Arabic word used indicates that he was still speaking to man and teaching to them in the forties. The Christians have always maintained that Jesus was gone by the time he was thirty-three. It indicates that there could have been no copying. In fact, a man would have to be stubborn and insists on the points as explained in the Qur'an in the face of Christian opposition who would have said "No! No! I wasn't like that. We tell the story differently." . House Cleaning Now we go to the words of the prophets themselves, which represent another path that leads to Islam. In the Persian scriptures, which have been around for thousands of years, we read "When the Persians should sink so low in mortality, a man will be born in Arabia whose followers will upset their throne, religion and everything. The mighty stiff-necked ones will be overpowered. The house which was built and in which many idols have been placed will purged of idols and people will say their prayers facing towards it. His followers will capture the towns of the Farsi, Entaus and Balkh, and other big places round about. People will embroil with one another. The wise men of Persia and others will join his followers." (Desature no.14) The Muslims recognize this very quickly because the Ka'bah, the building which all Muslims face in prayers everyday, was at one time filled with idols and it was part of the mission of Muhammad , peace be upon him, to purge the house of idols till today. It was in the next generation, after the time of the Prophet that the wise men of Persia and others did join his followers. . A Prophet Like Moses In the Bible, in Deuteronomy chapter eighteen, we have the words of Moses who reports that God told him that H would raise up a prophet, from among the brothers of the Israelites, like Moses. Christians wish to apply this to Jesus, to say he was the prophet like Moses. It is uncomfortable for them to recognize, however that Jesus was not very much like Moses and Jesus had no father, no wife, no children; he did not die of old age, and he did not lead a nation; all these things Moses had or did. But they say, well, Jesus will return; he will return as a victorious person, and so he will be more like Moses. Do they really expect he will return to also acquire a father and a wife and children and then die of old age? Not usually. Moreover, Jesus was an Israelite. The passage of scripture says that this prophet that was foretold would be raised up among the brothers of the Israelites, not from the Israelites. In the third chapter of Acts, the disciple Peter speaks to a crowd of people and explains that Jesus has been take up and he is in heaven. He will remain in Heaven and he cannot return until all the things that were promised but God come to pass. So what are we still waiting for, does he tell the crowd? He quotes this very saying of Moses saying "For God will raise up a prophet from among the brothers of the Israelites like Moses..." The point is very clear. Christians like to see this prophet as being Jesus. But read carefully Acts chapter three, what it says is that Jesus awaits a return. He cannot return until the fulfillment of this prophecy, that another prophet has to come. Jesus spoke of it himself and the words survived, just barely, but they survived in the bible. Jesus spoke of God sending another 'Paraclete'. . Paraclete There is a lot of argument over the meaning of this word 'Paraclete'. For now we can leave that aside. What is a 'Paraclete'? It does not matter. The first letter of John shows that Jesus was a 'Paraclete'. He is called a 'Paraclete' and we have Jesus promising another 'Paraclete' is going to be sent. We lose a lot by this word 'another' in English because it is ambiguous. If someone's car breaks down, and it is a Toyota, and I say, '" I'll go get you another car," maybe I mean, "I'll go and get you another Toyota because this one you have is broken," or maybe I mean, "Forget Toyota, they're no good; I'll go and get you a Datsun." It is an ambiguous word. But the Greeks had a word for it. When they meant 'another' of the same kind, they said aloes. When they meant another of a different kind, they said heteroes. The important thing there is that when Jesus, who was himself a Paraclete, said "God will send you another Paraclete" he used the word aloes, not heteroes. Christians want to say that this other 'Paraclete' that has been sent was different from Jesus. It was not a man, it was a spirit. What Jesus said was God will send you another one like me, another man." Muslims believe that Muhammad is the fulfillment of this prophecy by Jesus. The Qur'an says that this man is mentioned in the scriptures of the Jews and the Christians (see7157). Christians came to expect that the return of Jesus because of a Jewish misunderstanding. 'Messiah' and 'Son of Man' have been given special significance by the Jews, even though may people were called by this same name as in the Bible. The Jews came to expect a victorious leader. When Jesus did not turn out to be quite what many expected, they hatched the idea that he would return some day and fulfill all these prophecies. . Follower of Jesus Suppose that someone observed Jesus two-thousand years ago, and he left this planet, or he went to sleep for two-thousand years an returned today to look for the followers of Jesus, who would he find? Who would he recognize? Christians? I conclude with just this food for thought the Bible says very clearly that Jesus used to fast. Do Christians fast? Muslims fast; it is obligatory on month every year. The Bible says that Jesus prayed by touching his forehead to the ground. Do Christians pray in this manner? Muslims do. It is characteristic of their prayer and no one on earth is probably ignorant of that fact. According to Jesus, he told his disciples to greet one another with the expression, "Peace be with you." Do the Christians do that? Muslims do, universally, whether they speak Arabic of not. The greeting for one to another is Assalamu' alaikum (peace be with you). The brother of Jesus in the Book of James, stated that no man should suggest what he is about to do of highlight his plans for the next few days in anyway without adding the phrase "if God wills." Do not say "I will go here and there do this and that" without adding the phrase "if God wills." Do Christians do that? Muslims do, whether they speak Arabic or not. If they so much as suggest they are going downtown to pick up some groceries, they will add Insha-Allah, which in Arabic means, "If God wills." These conclude my thoughts on this subject. May Allah guide us always closer to the truth. . NO COPYRIGHT. Any organisation or individual wishing to reprint this booklet may do so freely. An acknowledgment will be appreciated.

Peace All, If anyone has the Science Channel and is interested, the most recent episode of "Science at the Edge" profiled a case where doctors 'rewired' a quadripalegic, allowing him to walk and use his hands. Basically, they put a transmitter in his body that was wired to his spine and allowed electrical impulses to be sent down the spinal cord. It's a small step, albeit, an amazing one. He said just being able to walk with a walker to his car and go food shopping means freedom for him. The episode also touched on stem-cell progress, and nanotechnology. It will be played again today at 200pm and 500pm Eastern time in the USA. Peace, Tay

peace, I have seen and read about the incredible equilibrums within our body, in our surrounding environment and throughout the whole universe but there are flaws in our body as well such as junk DNA and so forth, do these flaws disprove the notion that God created us and that His creation was created perfectly? I'm not exactly sure if there are flaws in the human body but I just read that there were, what are your thoughts peace

Praise be to Allah Lord of the worlds. It's taken almost seven years, but the US/European Cassini probe slipped between the F and G rings of Saturn at a speed of 70,000 kilometers per hour (43,500 miles per hour), fired it's rockets for 96 minutes and became the first spacecraft to orbit around the planet. The Cassini-Huygens mission consists of the Cassini (a NASA built orbiter) that is now in orbit around Saturn, and the Huygens probe (built by the ESA-European Space Agency), which will now try to land on Titan! This has taken twenty years of planning by scientists in the US and 17 nations, and $3.3 billion funded by NASA, the ESA and the Italian Space Agency. Cassini is huge, about the size of a bus. It's the third largest spacecraft ever launched. Because it's so big, it's had to use four gravity-assists to get to Saturn Earth, Venus twice, and then Jupiter. This is why it's taken almost 7 years to get there. edit Saturn is 900 million miles from Earth. These were images captured by Cassini May - June 2004 http//www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2004/jun/phoebe/rings300.jpg http//www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2004/jun/phoebe/ultraviolet300.jpg http//saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/rings/images/PIA06077.jpg http//www.nasa.gov/images/content/61696main_soi7-516.jpg http//www.nasa.gov/images/content/61705main_soi8-516.jpg http//photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpegMod/PIA02275_modest.jpg http//saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/saturn/images/image30.jpg ^This was taken in October of 2002. It's just amazing how the rings, composed of space "debris" orbit the planet so uniformly. Praise be to Allah Lord of the worlds.

God bless, Under a different name. I'm going to add my last comment. A day can equal any period/era/epoch. And that the earth has been created within 7 periods and at the then end God will assume the thrown. His kingdom will come and there will be no dissenters because that is a true kingdom. Godbless, Anwar

When we see scientific discoveries through the prism of the Quran it helps us in understanding the complexity and awe-inspiring nature of creation. Scientific discoveries are evolutionary, at the same time our belief is that God has sent down the Quran for all ages. As we acquire new knowledge our understanding of creation and how we see them in light of the Quran will transform. It is interesting to note the following Quranic verses in light of the following discovery about the cosmos (see below). It is He (God) who created the heavens and the earth in true (proportions) the day He said, "Be," behold! it is. His word is the truth. His will be the dominion the day the trumpet will be blown. He knows the unseen as well as that which is open. For He is the Wise, well acquainted (with all things) Quran 673 The trumpet will (just) be sounded, when all that are in the heavens and on earth will swoon, except such as it will please Allah (to exempt)... Quran 3968 Now they say it is shaped like a trumpet By Charles Arthur / Independent - UK At first they thought it was flat. Then that it was shaped like a football. But now, scientists believe the universe could be shaped like a flat-sided trumpet. That would lead to strange effects in some parts of the universe, where time and light would be so curved that you could see the back of your own head. Also, a long-held theory about the universe - that it looks much the same anywhere - would have to be abandoned. And finally, the universe would be finite, rather than extending in every direction forever. The new shape, predicted by careful mathematical modeling to fit with known astronomical data, would have the universe stretched out into a long funnel, flaring into a bell-like shape at one end. The thin end would be infinitely long - but so narrow that it would have a finite volume. The "bell" of the trumpet would also be peculiar it would flare out, but a spaceship that could somehow navigate towards the open end would eventually find itself flying back along the "outside surface" of the bell. The research by a team of German physicists led by Frank Steiner at the University of Ulm is reported in New Scientist magazine. Their theory uses a complex mathematical model called a "Picard topology", named after a mathematician rather than the Star Trek character. It would mean the universe has a finite volume, although you would not be aware of its "edges"; they would seem to be part of the rest of space. The concept follows a close examination of the dramatic data produced by Nasa, the US space agency, in 1996, which showed that the very faint microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang 13 billion years ago was not evenly spread throughout the cosmos. This lack of evenness - called "anisotropy" - suggested that large-scale models of the shape of the universe, previously thought to be a flat expanse of space-time, were wrong. Ever since then, cosmologists have puzzled over what the data from the Cosmic Background Explorer (Cobe) spacecraft could tell them about the space-time "shape" of the universe. One rival group proposed last year that the universe was shaped instead like a football. But that would have left a particular pattern of background radiation - which has not been found by further experiments. In the "flat" space of conventional cosmology, small "blobs" - hot and cold spots - in background radiation should be round. But observations show that instead they are ellipses. The curve of a horn-shaped universe can explain this, says Professor Steiner. The "space" in any small part of the "horn" is saddle-shaped, like a Pringles potato crisp. Such a "negatively curved" space would act as a warped lens, distorting the image around the blobs so they look elliptical to astronomers. Another property of a "trumpet" universe would be that large blobs more than about 60 degrees across would be absent. So far, scientists have also found this to be the case. But if the team at Ulm is right, scientists will have to abandon one of the fundamental tenets of cosmology - that all parts of the cosmos are about the same. Holger Then, a member of Professor Steiner's team, told New Scientist "If one happens to find oneself a long way up the narrow end of the horn, things indeed look very strange, with two very small dimensions." At an extreme enough point, you would be able to see the back of your own head. Over the next year or so, astronomers will test whether large blobs really are lacking in cosmic microwave background radiation and small ones really are elliptical.

peace, a great scientific documentary by Harun Yahya http//www.harunyahya.com/download/download.php?id=18323 the system of breathing is amazing, an incredible sign of God's creation go here to see all of his documentaries/short movies http//www.harunyahya.com/m_video.php peace

Peace all, 3372.We have offered the trust to the heavens and the earth, and the mountains, but they refused to bear it, and were fearful of it. But the human being accepted it; he was transgressing, ignorant. Inna AAaradna al-amanata AAala alssamawati waal-ardiwaaljibali faabayna an yahmilnahawaashfaqna minha wahamalaha al-insanuinnahu kana thalooman jahoolan Only human is concerned by al-amanata and not animals like birds, monkeys ....etc The human and other creatures on earth didn't make the same choice virsus al-amanata . I have quoted the verse above in connection with the theory of the evolution. The volution of an animal which refused al-amanata towards an animal which accepted it. Is this possible? any comment appreciated ) Salam Marie

go to http//www.harunyahya.com/knowingthetruth01.php http//www.harunyahya.com/matter.php http//www.harunyahya.com/matrix.php http//www.harunyahya.com/eternity01.php http//www.harunyahya.com/timelessness01.php for more on this Day 1 We are so familiar with seeing, that it takes a leap of imagination to realize that there are problems to be solved. But consider it. We are given tiny distorted upside-down images in the eyes, and we see separate solid objects in surrounding space. From the patterns of simulation on the retinas we perceive the world of objects, and this is nothing short of a miracle. R.L. Gregory2 This important conversation begins on a weekend in a summerhouse outside the city. MURAD I really feel I know all of you after reading your letters. It's like we're old friends, meeting after a long absence and just picking up where we left off. You asked just the right questions. In fact, I hope as we talk and share ideas, you'll find the answers are more simple and precise than you can imagine. To explain a few technical matters I brought pictures and diagrams. Now, who's going to ask the first question? IBRAHIM I'd like to start first since I don't know much about the subject. I've read books that say, our lives are only composed of images that have nothing to do with the external world. Is that true? MURAD That's right. IBRAHIM Well I'd like to know what this image is then. MURAD Ibrahim, isn't your specialty biology? IBRAHIM Yes. MURAD To understand this subject, it's necessary to know how our five senses work. We all remember high school biology but since you, Ibrahim, are advanced in that science, starting with the sense of sight, can you tell us how the five senses work? IBRAHIM Technically speaking the sense organs are part of a very intricate system that'll take hours to explain. Each organ has its own complex system. Volumes have been written about the way the ears make hearing possible, alone. But it's possible to at least explain this complex system in a few words. What we call external stimuli, that is, an outside effect stimulating our nerve endings such as light, sound, taste, smell and hardness, reach our sense organs ? the eye, the ear, the tongue, the nose and the skin. Here the first stage begins the nerve endings receive the stimulation and convert it into an electric signal that can be transmitted by the nerves. In the second stage these electric signals are carried to the relevant centers in the brain related to sight, hearing, smell and taste. In the last stage, when the brain perceives these signals, it gives the appropriate response. The stimuli coming from an object or from some food are converted into electric signals and, after passing through a series of processes, reach the brain to be perceived in the 'smell' center. MURAD Ibrahim, you explained it well. Yes, the system works in this way but at the cognitive stage of perception, that is, the stage when we understand what it is we sense, the system becomes much more complex. For example, we're sitting here looking at a pond. The signals of the senses create impressions belonging to the pond and its surroundings... Impressions from the surrounding area such as the smell of flowers, birds singing, the texture of the table and countless elements that form the images come together. The impression is then compared with information stored in our memory and the relevant center of our brain makes sense of our surroundings.Now Ibrahim, would you tell us what operation takes place when we see that tree over there? IBRAHIM It's simple. The information about the tree, that is, its color, distance, and dimensions are carried to my eye by means of light. Inside the eye, this information is converted into an electric signal and fed to the nerves, and then the nerves transport this information to the brain's sight center. These signals reach the sight center and the brain perceives them as a tree. Someone who thinks that he is sitting and conversing with friends in a bright outdoor place is like someone watching a cinema screen. The friends sitting with him and the vastness of the view he sees around him are images formed in the sight center of his brain. He has no relation with anything outside his brain. MURAD Is this tree standing over there now or is it in the brain's sight center? IBRAHIM It's in the brain's sight center, of course. AHMED Just a minute. Okay, the impression of the tree may be in my brain but the tree is standing over there! I can go and pick a fruit from it or lean against it and sit in the shade. MURAD Let's not rush it and look at the subjects in order. Think for a moment about everything that makes a tree a tree ? its colors, branches, leaves ? all are perceived in the sight center of our brain.When we touch a tree or pick a fruit from it we experience an impression of sight, sound, taste, smell and touch, sent to the brain from all our five senses.We never have a connection with anything outside our perceptions. Without the sense of sight we can't see; if we don't have the sense of hearing, we can't hear. In fact, the things we perceive in our brains by means of the senses make up much of our whole life. AHMED Okay I accept that. But look. I'm reaching out and taking a bite of cake and eating it with pleasure. Once I've eaten the cake it gives me energy. Would it be right to say that I have no connection with the reality of this? Can we taste something without having anything to do with its reality? MURAD In fact, earlier in the example of the tree the question was answered. The cake, the tree and the table are in the cognitive center of your brain. But don't worry!We'll find examples later that'll make this clearer! But to sum it up now; everything we know about the world is composed of signals communicated to us by our senses. Apart from the information of those signals carried to the brain, we can never give an answer to questions like, ''What is the reality of these things like?", "Does reality and what we perceive have exactly the same quality?''It's not possible to go beyond our senses and get outside them. For this reason, throughout our whole lives, the world we see in our brain is perceived by the sense organs. Look, what the famous philosopher Bertrand Russell in his book The Problems of Philosophy emphasizes in situations which results from grappling with this problem. Before we go farther it will be well to consider for a moment what it is that we have discovered so far. It has appeared that, if we take any common object of the sort that is supposed to be known by the senses, what the senses immediately tell us is not the truth about the object as it is apart from us, but only the truth about certain sense-data which, so far as we can see, depend upon the relations between us and the object. Thus what we directly see and feel is merely 'appearance', which we believe to be a sign of some 'reality' behind. But if the reality is not what appears, have we any means of knowing whether there is any reality at all? And if so, have we any means of finding out what it is like?3 AISHA I can give an example.I'm studying in the computer department, so this subject is a familiar one and I find the topic interesting. In countries where technology is highly developed, a lot of entertainment and education media have been created. And you know computer programs make up a great part of it. These are able to create a three-dimensional image in the brain. Today the principal aim of these 3-D computer games, so fascinating for children, is to give the illusion of real life in an imaginary setting by stimulating the five senses. Education in some professions from NASA astronauts to architects and engineers is done by the use of three dimensional imaging, called simulation. In simulation flight training, a pilot can't tell the difference between real flight conditions and simulated conditions, created by the computer. The subject of many great science fiction films we see is the idea that human life is constituted of impressions or virtual worlds formed in the brain. IBRAHIM Aisha's right. The world of science is no different. Ten years ago, no one would even dream of this topic. Now, of course, it's a major theme of discussion. There has been so much work in this area that it's getting easier and easier for a computer to form a non-existent world out of electrical signals and to have human beings experience a desired impression by means of these signals.A great deal of physics, atomic and biological research topics are shaped by this technology. MURAD You're so right! Developments in technology produce new examples that help people understand this subject more quickly. But I must make it clear that it's easier to grasp this subject by approaching it with an open mind. Even if we didn't know any of the examples you gave, nothing would change because the situation is extremely clear to me. But it's possible that a person who had never thought about this subject before will at first find it a bit strange. To learn that something we have accepted from birth as true, is, in fact, very different from what we have believed it to be, will cause various reactions in people. But if someone's basic aim is to learn the truth, he must accept the truth without resistance.For this reason, the examples we experience every day will assure that we grasp this reality much better. Besides, it's not enough just to explain the subject technically. We must go beyond this and look at the results. AHMED I've understood what you said up to this point. But I'm curious about where this subject will lead us. It's a little difficult in a moment to get used to a subject that's so unfamiliar. MURAD I think that all of you have understood the situation we find ourselves in.Anyway, it's not so hard to understand since it's a clear truth accepted by science.But since it's necessary for you to come to a definite opinion on this matter, let's look at it again from a different point of view. Now, Aisha, can you tell us about a dream that deeply affected you and that stayed in your conscious memory? AISHA Just last night I had a dream that really struck me. I was being attacked by wild beasts in a forest.I was terrified and running as fast as I could along a rough trail when my foot got caught in some brush and I fell. The animals came closer.I ran into a hut, slammed the door and locked it.Now the beasts were trying to get to me from the windows. I picked up an iron bar, trying desperately to defend myself and to escape. At that point I was awakened by a car horn. When I realized it was only a dream, I took a deep breath and was relieved. MURAD What's the difference between what we experience while awake and our dreams? Maybe you never thought that.Maybe it never entered your mind, but dreams will help a lot to understand this subject. Even if a dream is extremely vivid while it takes place, from the moment we immerse ourselves in daily life, the dream loses its clarity and effect.Someone, who woke up in a sweat from a nightmare a little while ago, soon eats breakfast with none of the disturbing feelings his dream evoked. Or a child who is awakened for school in the midst of a pleasant dream, quickly forgets the delight of the dream by the time he washes his face. The events in a dream are sometimes so vivid that often, when people awaken, they wonder whether or not the dream was real. In fact, technically speaking, there's little difference between the world we experience while awake and the dreams we have while asleep. In the course of a dream, a person can experience anything that happens while awake; he can talk, eat, breathe, run, laugh, cry, feel pain and so on. The dream world is a copy of the every-day world. Therefore, people react to events in dreams as though they were real.Sometimes they wake up screaming from a frightening dream and don't want to wake up at all from a pleasant one. AHMED Last month I had a vivid dream too. In my dream, I was driving along the shore in a motorboat cutting through the water as I went. My friends gathered on the shore, admiring the new boat. I stepped on the gas to impress them. I remember very well the vivid smell of the sea, and the strong wind and cold spray of salty water on my face as the high powered speed boat sped through the water. Occasionally I had to wipe the mist of the seawater spray from my glasses. Suddenly, the boat struck a rock and began to sink.I jumped into the sea and swam to shore with great difficulty. Then I woke up and was sweating profusely. After that dream I wasn't able to get into a motorboat for a while. MURAD The events in your dream were very vivid, weren't they? Now try to remember the details of the dream. For example, Ahmed, can you distinguish the sounds, colors, smells - and the emotions you felt as you drove the boat ? such as fear, hunger and joy from what you experience in a waking state? AHMED Probably not. IBRAHIM I also had a dream the other day I confused with real life. That evening I wanted to go to bed early because the next day we were going to go to the Islands to have a meal with my family. My sister went to sleep in her own room. Since I was tired, I immediately fell asleep. In my dream, I asked my sister to wash and iron my new shirt. I stood there myself and watched her ironing my shirt.When I got up in the morning, Asra had placed the shirt in the place I wanted, and I wasn't quite sure if it was real or I was dreaming.Had my sister really ironed my shirt or was it a dream?I thought for a minute and decided that it was real, then I went to thank my sister. When my sister acted surprised, I realized that all this had happened in my dream. MURAD Yes, sometimes dreams can be so vivid they're confused with real life. Besides, I want to remind you again, there's no difference between what we see while dreaming and what we see while awake. In both states, we have the same reaction to the same stimuli. For example, we sense the full taste while eating, we feel fear and flee from dangerous situations, and feel joy in a happy situation. Although from time to time we experience unusual things, our reactions are the same. AHMED I totally agree. Even that time in the sea when I was swimming and trying to save myself I remember how cold the water felt. MURAD But even more interesting is how it is that we see the things we experience in dreams. Ibrahim, can you tell us where we see our dreams? IBRAHIM Easy. We see dreams in our brain. I mean, just as we experience everything in daily life in our brain's cognition center so do we experience them in a dream. Technically speaking, there's no difference. MURAD To this point you've listened to what's been said. So Ahmed, tell us how is it that, at night, with our eyes closed, such a clear and colorful world is formed in the dark recesses of our brain? How does the sun shine, and how are flowers so colorful and the sea so blue?How can we see these things with our eyes closed? Don't we need our eyes to see? AHMED I don't have a clue though I know the dream I had seems to be proof of that. MURAD Even if we don't receive a stimulus from outside, in other words, even if our sense organs are really unaffected by stimuli we call the world ? elements such as light, color and dimension ? we can still see and feel.In order for a world to be formed by means of the operation of all these perceptions, we have no need of the signals that our sense organs bring from the outside. What sees is not the eye and what hears is not the ear. If all these perceptions were produced artificially and transmitted directly to the relevant center in our brain, we would eat a cake that didn't exist, we would go to a country that didn't exist, we would smell a flower that didn't exist and we wouldn't perceive that all these things were imaginary. AHMED What do you mean? MURAD When we're full, our stomach sends a signal to our brain. If the same signal is sent to the brain without having eaten, we would still feel full. As in the earlier example, imagine that you're looking at a tree. There are signals related to the tree that your eyes send to your brain. If we were to artificially produce the same signals, and transmit them to the relevant nerves, we would see the same tree without eyes. IBRAHIM The earlier examples of a virtual world explains this matter completely. Look, in order to understand this matter better, let me expand the topic with a few more examples.As you know, with the advance of technology, devices called simulators are used in many fields. A life-like but imaginary environment is created and accessed by the use of a helmet, visor and a glove to make the connection. Those hooked up to the connections can experience an environment as if it was real. In a simulator, the fingers of a person wearing the glove are stimulated by a mechanism which sends signals from the finger-tips to the brain and the person thinks, for example, he's petting a cat. There is a similar mechanism in the helmet. In order that the impression appears more realistic, signals go from the helmet to the person's brain, and as a result, the image of a cat is formed in the brain. The person also hears the sound of a cat. In this way, the appearance, the sound and the feel of a cat are perceived completely. Without there being a single cat to be found, the person really feels that he's petting a cat. AHMED Now I understand. AISHA Me, too. Just think. If someone came to me while I was having the dream I had, and said, ''Don't be afraid. It's only a dream and not real. What you see is only in your mind and you're safely in bed."I doubt if I would believe him. Yes, now I understand much better; scientifically and logically there is no difference between what I see in a dream and what I see while awake. It's already common for people to experience computer generated virtual reality. I saw a movie about virtual reality the other day. It was about the same thing we're discussing now. The heroes of the film were hooked up to a computer, found themselves transported to different places. For example, they thought they were in a gym doing Oriental martial arts but in fact never moved from the chair in front of the computer in that small room. One of the characters tried to explain to the person hooked up to the computer that what he was seeing was really just illusions. The film's hero didn't believe it, and he was only convinced when the computer images froze. IBRAHIM I saw that film too, but I didn't think of it from that angle. AHMED Murad, I see the point too, but can you give more examples to help us understand better? MURAD Sure! Let's go back to your dream. When you were swimming did you feel the coldness of the water, the buoyancy, taste the salt?While swimming, did you feel the exertion and then the fatigue? And did you hear the sounds of waves, seagulls, and other details your senses picked up during the dream? AHMED Yes. MURAD Were you convinced that what you were experiencing during the dream was really happening? AHMED Yes. MURAD Our experience of life in the real world, like the images in our dreams, is even more convincing. The impressions we perceive are so many, so clear and detailed that many people lead their whole lives believing they have some connection with the reality of all they see. But the same thing is also true for your dream as in your dream you thought you had some connection with the sea or the chair where you were sitting. If you think carefully for a moment, you'll understand that the things you experience in your dreams and the life you live while awake are composed of the same impressions. AHMED I understand this but when I wake up from a dream, I come back to the real world which is in the same place where it was before I fell asleep. So, it is obvious that there is a world existing apart from our impressions. Right? MURAD What we call the material world is a place we know little about and in fact, we may never understand. Apart from what our senses pick up and our impressions, we can neither see nor feel matter. From the day we open our eyes, we're always affected by impressions. Everything that makes up our daily life ? school, family, toys, food, a bus, friends, a scenic view, home, the workplace ? in other words, everything is composed of a film playing in the brain. Because a person will never be able to get outside of his senses, it's not possible to see what's outside. For this reason, everyone actually lives an entire life relating to impressions of the world that are in his brain. AHMED But people go to the moon and I can get on a plane and go to another city. Doesn't that mean that space exists? MURAD Basically, ideas such as space, depth, size also form a part of an impression. It's possible to understand this with the help of some simple examples. In your dream, did you see the moon and the stars? Or, as in your dream, did you get in a boat and go for a ride? AHMED Yes. MURAD The moon and stars in your dream are in the same space as the stars you see while awake. Is that right? AHMED Yes, but... IBRAHIM Can I answer that? I studied this in an Optics course. What we call space is a kind of three-dimensional seeing. What stimulate the sense of space and depth in an impression are certain factors such as perspective, shadow and movement. MURAD True. The kind of impression called space in the science of Optics is part of a very complex system just as the impression of color is, but to put it simply we can say, basically, that an impression that comes to our eyes has only two dimensions. That is, it has height and width. The fact that the dimensions of an impression meet the eye at an angle and that the two eyes see two different impressions at the same time, causes the sensation of depth and space. Every impression that strikes one eye is different from the impression that strikes our other eye from the point of view of elements such as light and position. When the brain brings these two impressions into one picture, we get the sense of space and depth. Come on, let's try an experiment in order to understand this better. Ibrahim will be the subject. IBRAHIM Okay. MURAD First, stretch your right arm and show us your index finger. Now, focus your eyes on your finger and open and close your right and left eyes one after the other. Because two different impressions strike your two eyes, you will see that your finger changes place or slides slightly. Now, continue to focus your eyes on your right index finger and bring your left index finger as close as possible to your eyes. You will notice that the finger closer to you has formed a double image which proves that an impression of depth different from that of the farther finger is formed in the system of perception. Now, while you are in that position, if you open and close your eyes one after the other, you will see that the closer finger changes place more than that farther finger because the difference between the two impressions striking the eye has been increased. IBRAHIM Yes, you're right. AISHA I did it too. It occurs to me now that the same technique is used in making a three-dimension film. An image shot from two different angles is projected on the same screen. Viewers put on a pair of special color filter or polarized filter glasses. The filters in the glasses receive one of the two images and the brain brings these two together making a three dimensional image. Is that right? MURAD Right! Now, let's try another experiment. Aisha, close one eye and look around you. You continue to have an impression of depth, don't you?How is it that a clear impression like three dimensions can be formed on a single, two-dimensional retina? The answer to this lies in the elements of depth that operate when you look with one eye. The way a sense of depth is formed on a two-dimensional retina is very much like the technique used by an artist trying to get a realistic sense of depth in a two-dimensional picture. A few artists are very successful in achieving this sense of depth. There are a few important methods that go into its formation; these are positioning one object on top of another, the perspective of atmosphere, texture, linear perspective, dimension, height and movement. I brought some pictures to illustrate. MURAD Putting images one on top of the other is an important method of creating the sense of depth. Ahmed, it's your turn for an experiment. Now, take one of these two pens in one hand and one in your other hand. Hold them a little distance from your eyes but don't put them on top of each other.Now, move one pen a little farther away and close one eye. Without looking with both eyes, it's very difficult to know which one is farther away, isn't it? AHMED Yes, you're right. MURAD Now, with one eye closed, bring the two pens close together and place one in front of the other. Now you can measure space and depth much better, can't you? AHMED True. MURAD The famous American psychologist James J. Gibson was one of the first to understand the importance of change of texture in the sensation of depth.The surface we walk on, a road, or a field full of flowers is actually a texture. The textures close to us are more detailed while those more distant appear indistinct. For this reason, it is easier to make a judgment about the distance of an object which is placed on a texture. AISHA As you were speaking a sunflower field I saw yesterday came to my mind. Putting all these things together, I understand much better why the field appeared so vast. MURAD And when the elements of shadow and light are brought into the picture, the three-dimensional image is complete. For example, the reason we admire a painting is because of the sense of reality and depth, and the use of shadow and perspective. Perspective arises from the perception that things in the distance appear to the viewer as smaller in relation to things that are near. For example, when you look at a landscape painting, the trees in the distance appear small and the trees that are close appear big. Or the image of a mountain in the background is drawn smaller than the image of a person standing in the foreground. In linear perspective, an artist uses parallel lines. Train tracks joining on the distant horizon gives the sense of depth and distance. AISHA So it appears that what we call depth and space is an impression formed in our brain. MURAD True. You see, because these elements are applied in art and that details come together, a realistic and convincing world emerges, formed from our impressions. AHMED You mean like the way we used to watch snowy images on black and white television and not get as involved in the action? Now we go to the cinema and, if the film is well made, we get caught up in it and feel as if it's real. The other day I went with my family to a three-dimensional film about dinosaurs. They gave us each a pair of glasses. The dinosaurs looked so real to me that I reflexively reacted when they jumped out at me.And I couldn't persuade the children that they weren't real. MURAD Right Ahmed. The more intricately the details of an impression are woven, such as light, shadow, and dimensions, the more realistic it appears and deceives our senses.And so we react as if three-dimensional space and depth is real. But every impression is formed on a single surface as on a frame of film. The sight center of our brain has an area of one cubic centimeter; that is, as small as a chickpea. All those things we see in the distance such as far-away houses, stars in the sky, the moon, the sun, airplanes and birds in the air, occur in this small area. In other words, there is technically no distance between an airplane which you may say is thousands of kilometers up in the air and a glass you can reach out and take with your hand. It's all on a single surface in the brain's center of perception. AHMED I understand too. There's no longer any doubt that space and depth are particular to the brain just like sight, sound and taste. But what does this change?That is what I can't understand. I mean, what difference does it make if everything is an impression in my brain? MURAD Then answer these questions. With what evidence can we claim that we have a relation to a material world outside our perceptions?Do we have any proof that we're in touch with the reality of things? AHMEDGive me a moment to think about that.If we look at what we've talked about so far, it seems there's no proof. But isn't it true that these images arise from concrete, absolute material objects? MURAD Ahmed, what is it that which you call absolute matter? AHMED It's just anything that has mass and volume; something that I can hold in my hand, see with my eyes; that exists separately and occupies space. MURAD So is that car parked up there a material object? AHMED Yes. MURAD What qualities make that car a material object? AHMED Things like the metal used in its manufacture, the colors and then its size and weight. MURAD In that case, if we go back to what we were talking about earlier, if we take away from the image of the car our perceptions that have given us the feelings associated with that perception, such as color, hardness, depth, what's left?Or, let me put it this way. If we cut or temporarily interrupt the nerves going from our sense organs to our brains, what do we have? AHMED Nothing at all. MURAD Here's a quote from Bertrand Russell that relates to what we've been talking about.He says, "As to the sense of touch when we press the table with our fingers, there is an electric disturbance on the electrons and protons of our fingertips, produced, according to modern physics, by the proximity of the electrons and protons in the table. If the same disturbance in our finger-tips arose in any other way, we should have the sensations, in spite of there being no table."4 That is, when you think you're touching your car, it's an impression that comes from the signals sent to the brain by the protons and electrons in your fingertips. It is possible to explain this subject with dreams. Ahmed, is there any material reality in the impression of a car we see in a dream? If you see your own car in a dream, won't you be able to say the same thing? AHMED I accept what you're saying. From this we understand that the reality of that which we call matter is completely unknown to us. MURAD True Ahmed, no one can know matter. Everything called matter is just an impression to us. Our perceptions send us sensations which form impressions such as color, light, taste, smell but beyond these they don't send us information about what we call matter. For this reason we can never know what the world outside ourselves is really like. And science has reached the same conclusion. Those who claim that everything is composed just of material substance, when it comes to proof, have no answer to give. Because throughout our whole lives we see only mental images and, because our entire world is composed of these images, it's not possible for us to describe or explain anything called matter which exists in a place outside our senses. This would be like a person blind from birth trying to describe color. He's never seen color so he can't describe it. Someone who tries to give a definition of matter is just making suppositions. According to Ibrahim's example, when a person looks at the moon, the telescope or the view in front of him, he is actually looking at images on the same plane. However, these images can lead a person to believe that they are in different spaces. If you looked at such objects disposed in space and scratched your lower eyelid as Ibrahim did, you would see that the objects do not remain fixed but change their location. IBRAHIM Murad, something I experienced the other day comes to my mind. Two friends and I were in front of our summerhouse watching the full moon with a small, fixed telescope. I said to my friend, "The moon is a beautiful sight. It's amazing that it shines so brightly being so far away. You can see even the craters and mountains on it even thousands of kilometers away."While speaking, my lower eyelid began to itch. When I started to rub it, I saw the moon moving in various directions. I moved away from the telescope. With the other eye closed, I continued rubbing my eyelid. The summer houses, my friends, the sea from one end to the other and all the houses in the estate moved in various directions as my eyelid moved. If the moon were really so far away, could it too be moved so much by such a simple action as rubbing an eyelid? My friends, the shore, the houses in the estate and the sea appeared to be at various distances away. But everything as a whole was moving as a result of the simple action of rubbing an eye. Now I understand that I was mistaken when I thought that I was looking at something outside myself and objects I understood to be in the distance. In truth, the moon, other objects and even me are on the same plane. All of these things are only a three-dimensional impression formed in my brain. MURAD Very good! Now, let's repeat once more. A person walking on a street is, in fact, walking on a street in his brain and the cars that pass him are in his brain. If we are walking along an empty street and, as Ibrahim did, gently rub our lower eyelids, we will see this clearly. The street and the trees move in various directions. This is the movement of the impressions in our brains. Just as a picture we are watching on television moves when we try to adjust the antenna, so we have the same kind of effect here. We are like a person in our brain sitting in front of a television whatever image is being shown, that is what we watch. Whatever we do, eat, walk on the street, go to school, meet with friends, our whole life is as if we were watching a video cassette.Images, sounds, smell, taste and touch are all sensed in the brain. In other words, we experience our outside world in our inside world. We spend our whole lives in the little house in our brain and we watch the outside world on the television in there. We experience all these things in a one cubic centimeter cell in our brain. We lead our lives without ever leaving that 'cell'. IBRAHIM For example, the fact that a person who is color-blind sees the world in different colors is proof of this, isn't it? MURAD I think you understand this subject very well. Yes, as you said, because a person watches these images throughout his whole life, he perceives the world according to the perceptions that are given to him. If the sense organs are damaged, a distorted perception occurs; for this reason, a person who is color-blind cannot know real color. People with a seeing disorder sees a blurred world. AHMED I understand. MURAD A person cannot get outside these impressions throughout an entire life.Therefore, to claim that the things we see are the way we see them and to think that we have any connection to their reality is illogical and of no use. IBRAHIM Murad. There's something I want to ask. Are there many people who know about this subject either in the past or in the presence? MURAD There are countless people. Not only in the world of ideas, but people working in scientific fields such as physics, atomic theory and astronomy, and well-known scientists whose names we often hear have understood this subject in one way or another and have come to their own interpretations. Materialist thinkers such as Marx and Lenin also studied this subject in their day and understood that it posed a great threat to their materialist views. For this reason, no matter how well they knew the truth, they tried to take measures to suppress it as they realised that accepting such a view would not be to their own advantage. If you like, I will give you the relevant sources. You do some research and tomorrow we'll talk about what you've learned.

peace, from your views of Quranic verses of the creation of man and animals which one do you yourself conclude that the Quran agrees with a. Creation aka Sudden Creation b. Theistic Evolution aka Gradual Creation c. not sure peace

oops Salaaman Read http//www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=58365 http//www.wndu.com/news/032004/news_24537.php bye Salaamun

peace everyone, How much of these pictures are true and what does they actually show..? Are these really miracle or man made..? check out this link....... http//www.angelfire.com/il2/islamicpage/miraclesofislam Any logical explanation..? peace

According to Mohammad Quran 005.073 YUSUFALI They do blaspheme who say Allah is one of three in a Trinity for there is no god except One Allah. If they desist not from their word (of blasphemy), verily a grievous penalty will befall the blasphemers among them. PICKTHAL They surely disbelieve who say Lo! Allah is the third of three; when there is no Allah save the One Allah. If they desist not from so saying a painful doom will fall on those of them who disbelieve. SHAKIR Certainly they disbelieve who say Surely Allah is the third (person) of the three; and there is no god but the one Allah, and if they desist not from what they say, a painful chastisement shall befall those among them who disbelieve. KHALIFA Pagans indeed are those who say that GOD is a third in a trinity. There is no god except the one god. Unless they refrain from saying this, those who disbelieve among them will incur a painful retribution. So whoever is saying that God is the third OF three? Certainly not the christians... Athanasian Creed "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God." http//www.newadvent.org/cathen/15047a.htm For the Christians there is only one God. The correct thing to say would be "God is one being IN three persons", or simply "one IN three", NOT "one OF three". and certainly NOT "the third of three". That athanasian creed has been in existence hundreds of years before Mohammad was born. If only he made his homework. D So gotcha again, Mohammed. Another proof that the quran is a lie. Muslims, be honest with yourselves and abandon this false religion of Islam.

(an article I read - interesting as the Quran agrees with the Big Bang theory) Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was this guy named Aristotle. Pretty sharp fella; he thought up a lot of good things. But, occasionally he made a mistake. One mistake he made was to toss an orange up in the air and watch it come straight back down to his hand. Aristotle reasoned that if he was moving, the orange would have flown off to one side as soon as it left his hand. Because the orange did not do so, Aristotle concluded he was not moving. On the basis of this one observed fact, and the assumption that there was no other explanation for what he observed, Aristotle concluded that the Earth does not move and that therefore the rest of the universe had to move around it. Aristotle was a very sharp guy, but the fact is that there was another explanation for why the orange fell back into his hand, and it would wait about another 2000 years before another smart man, Sir Isaac Newton, explained just what it was Aristotle had overlooked, set forth in Newton's laws of motion. But for the early church, Aristotle's conclusions fit in rather well with their theology, which had the Earth created as the center of the universe, unmoving, with the rest of the cosmos spinning about it. Of course, there was empirical evidence available to all that cast doubt on the church-approved version of the Cosmos. One could see during eclipses that the Earth was not flat. The curved shape of the Earth's shadow as it crossed the moon was the same no matter place in the sky the eclipse took place. A spherical Earth was the only shape that could produce such a result. Ships sailing over the horizon clearly vanished over a subtle curve ( an observation which eventually inspired Columbus' voyages). Nobody could explain the behavior of a Foucault's Pendulum other than by the Earth spinning beneath it. But by far the most troubling problem for the geocentric (earth centered) universe was the strange behavior of the planets. In an age before TV, or even books, the night sky was something every person was quite familiar with, even those who were not sailors or fortune tellers. Watching the night sky over time, the paths of the planets were easily seen to occasionally pause, move in reverse for a time, then proceed foreword. This behavior was called retrograde motion. Ah, but this was a problem. The church did not have an explanation for this behavior. Indeed in the King James Version of the Bible, the word "planet" appears only once, and the only as an object to be sacrificed to. There is a very simple explanation for retrograde motion. As the Earth, moving in its inner orbit, overtake an outer planet, it will appear to hesitate, reverse its path across the sky, then resume its normal path. But the idea that the Earth moved was contrary to Church Dogma and to Aristotle. What education was tolerated by the church was "encouraged" to find some way to explain retrograde motion in a way that did not conflict with the religious needs for a universe centered on an unmoving Earth. Rather than re-examine Aristotle's basic claim, the learned men of the day grabbed onto a suggestion made by Claudius Ptolemy called "epicycles". This theory explained retrograde motion around a motionless Earth by suggesting that the planets moved in large orbits called deferents, upon which were superimposed smaller orbits called epicycles which produced a "wobble" as seen from Earth. Epicycles was extremely popular with the church, and scholars at universities with religious affiliations were "encouraged" to refine this theory. And it needed refinement, badly, because the epicycle theory did not accurately predict what was being seen in the sky. Generations of effort was expended trying to figure out why the models did not predict the actual motions of the planets. At one point, it was even suggested that the epicycles had epicycles. No matter how many times the observed results did not match the predictions, the approved course of action was to refine the theory, but never to question the basic assumption. Those who dared point to the evidence suggesting that Aristotle (and by extension the church) were in error in postulating a geocentric universe were "discouraged". Galileo was tortured into recanting his conclusions that the Earth moved. Giordano Bruno was burned alive at the stake for suggesting that the sun was really just another star, only close up, and that the other stars had their own planets. In recent times, our expanding technology has confirmed that Galileo and Bruno were right, and Aristotle and the church were flat out wrong. The Earth does move. There are no deferents or epicycles, or even epicycles on the epicycles. he models of the universe which are based on a moving Earth are quite accurate and able to predict the behaviors of the planets as evidence by the fact that we send spacecraft to those planets on a regular basis. The theory of a geocentric universe and the theory of epicycles was not science. It was religious doctrine masked as science. The church has never really dealt with the reality of the universe very well. They only apologized for their treatment of Galileo recently and still refuse to discuss Bruno. and the Bible, presumed to be the perfect word of a perfect God, still teaches that the Earth is flat, rests on pillars (Job 2611), and does not move (Psalms 195-6 931 9610 1045). It seems that some mistakes are destined to be repeated again, despite our technological prowess. In 1929, a Cal-Tech astronomer named Edwin Hubble observed that objects which appeared to be much further away showed a more pronounced shift towards the red end of the spectrum. Scientists building on Hubble's discovery concluded that the farther an object was away from Earth, the faster it was receding, and calculated the relationship between distance and velocity, called the "Hubble Constant" and concluded on the basis of this one observed fact and the assumption that there was no other explanation for that observed fact that the universe was expanding. Religious circles embraced the idea of an expanding universe because for the universe to be expanding, then at some point in the past it had to originate from a single point, called the "Big Bang". The "Big Bang" coincided nicely with religious doctrine and just as had been the case with epicycles (and despite the embarrassment thereof) religions institutions sought to encourage this new model of the universe over all others, including the then prevalent "steady state" theory. Then history repeated itself. Evidence surfaced that the "Big Bang" might not really be a workable theory in the form of General Relativity, and its postulation that super massive objects would have gravity fields so strong that even light could not escape, nor would matter be able to differentiate. Since the entire universe existing in just one spot would be the most super massive object of all, the universe could not be born. Needless to say, this suggestion that the Big Bang could not happen provoked the same exact reaction as the suggestion that the Earth might not be the center of everything. Instead of questioning the basic assumption, great effort was made to find a way to evolve the new data in terms acceptable to the assumption of a universe spawned in a single moment of creation. A complex Cosmology theory sprang up, encouraged by those invested in the "Big Bang" to explain why the basic foundational principles of physics behaved differently in the first few milliseconds of time. The math work is impressive, as impressive as that which supported the theory of the epicycles, but it is really just a polite way of saying "he rules just didn't apply when we need them not to apply". An attempt was made to prove the Big Bang by searching for the "Cosmic Background Radiation", the presumed energy echo from the primordial explosion. and indeed a radio noise signal was picked up. Like Aristotle, and like Hubble, the discoverers of the Cosmic Background Radiation assumed the signal meant what they thought it did and could have no alternative explanation. The discovery of the Cosmic Background Radiation was then heralded as final roof of the Big Bang theory, and those institutions invested in that theory celebrated. But just as the theory of epicycles did not accurately predict the observed motion of the planets, the Big Bang Theory turned out to be less than accurate about the radiation signal detected in space. When the satellite COBE was sent up to analyze the Cosmic Background Radiation, it discovered instead of the smooth featureless glow predicted by the cosmologists a highly complex and detailed structure. Yet again, rather than question the prime assumption that the signal being analyzed was actually from a supposed "Big Bang", research was encouraged to find a way to fit the data into the existing theory, again on the assumption that the signal detected could not be from any other source. And yet, an alternative explanation for the signal was right at hand, indeed literally on all sides. Our Solar System and planets have heavy elements (without which you would not be here) because at some time prior to the creation of our Solar System another star in the immediate vicinity exploded, creating the heavy elements and scattering them into the universe. Every star that explodes creates a planetary nebula, such as the one easily seen with amateur telescopes in the constellation Lyra. A planetary nebula is a bubble of debris in space, and given the presence of heavy elements in our own Solar System, then somewhere out in space there must be the tenuous remains of a billions of years old planetary nebula, the result of the not-so-very-big bang, viewable from our unique point of view near the center. This model of Earth lying at the center of the remains of a supernova predicts exactly the sort of structure that COBE found in the presumed Cosmic Background Radiation. But as was the case with Galileo and Bruno, challengers to the "approved" creation myths ace a tough time, albeit funding cuts have replaced torture and being burned alive at the stake. So pervasive is this bias to see the universe as created in a Biblical-consistent "Big Bang" that when William G Tifft submitted his first article on the quantization of the observed Red Shift to Astrophysical Journal, the Journal published it because they could not find errors in it, yet still felt compelled to editorially distance themselves from the conclusions. The conclusions derived from quantized red shift are devastating to the conventional view of the universe created in a single Big Bang, as devastating as Galileo's first telescope was to the theory that the Earth was the center of the universe. Edwin Hubble (like Aristotle) assumed there was no other explanation for the red shift he observed than the motion of the observed objects relative to Earth. But given the theory that the universe is expanding uniformly, the amount of red shifts would have to be uniformly and randomly distributed. But they aren't. The observed red shifts in the sky are quantized, falling into discreet intervals. This is not explained by the theory that the red shift is produced solely by relative velocity. Some other effect is at work. And that means that the assumption that the universe is expanding based solely on the red shift is invalidated. Some other effect IS at work that explains the observations, quite possibly one that triggers a quantized red shift over vast distances without respect to relative velocity. Which means the universe is not expanding. Which means there was no moment of creation, no "Big Bang" with an epicycle-esque cosmology to explain why the greatest black hole of all didn't behave like a black hole. Which means that the background radiation mapped by COBE which didn't quite fit the Big Bang model is probably the remnant of the stellar explosion that created the heavy elements making up that computer you are reading this on. But the lesson for our time of just how much our society remains dominated by religious superstitions is revealed by the fact that the quantized red-shift is NOT a new discovery. The first article regarding the observed data appeared in 1976, a quarter of a century ago. Since then, scientists as much in the service of superstition as were those scientists who "studied" epicycles have repeatedly tried to disprove the observations of Tifft and Cocke, only to confirm and re-confirm the truth, that there is a quantized red-shift, which casts doubt on the theory of an expanding universe and a "Big bang" creation. Yet even though hard evidence exists to warrant a full re-examination of the basic assumption of the expanding universe, our science classes and TV programs still promote the "Big Bang" view, just as the erroneous theory of Aristotle continued to be promoted even after Galileo proved it wrong, because one theory fits into a theology, and the other does not. Man's progress is not measured by the reaches of his science but by the limits of his superstition. The truth is known. But the truth is unpopular. UPDATE PROOF THE BIG BANG DID NOT HAPPEN Perhaps the biggest contradiction with the Big Bang Theory is the question of the singularity. The "primordial egg" had to be a super-massive black hole. Therefore no amount of "bang", no matter how big, is going to thrust the universe out into, well, the universe. Cosmologists eager to promote the Big Bang Theory have hit upon the "explanation" that the laws of physics, gravity., etc. simply did not apply in those first few moments of the universe. The present Cosmology theory is that the universe enjoyed a period of "rulelessness" of about 3 seconds, after which the elements formed and the fundamental forces of the universe, gravity included, were functioning as we see them today. Ah, but there is a problem. The singularity formed by the primordial egg turns out to be rather large. Estimates of the total mass of the universe vary wildly, given that the ends of the universe have not yet been determined. One estimate is found at http//www.rostra.dk/louis/quant_11.html of 2.6*1060. From the mass, you can calculate the diameter of the event horizon by finding the distance from a point mass that will have an escape velocity of c. Use sqrt(2GM/r) where M is the mass of the hole (the entire universe in this case) and r is the radius (classical), and G is the gravitational constant. Work it backward starting at c and you get c^2=2GM/r. This works out to an event horizon light years across! In short, at the moment in time when the Big Bang theorists claim the universe was functioning as it does today, complete with all fundamental forces, the entirety of the universe' mass was still well within the event horizon of its own gravity well. That the well was not the product of a true singularity is irrelevent, Newton's equation provides an equivilent gravity field for a singularity or a super dense mass in a localized region. Therefore the Big Bang, as currently described, could not have produced the universe as we see it today. At three seconds, the time the theorists claim the universe started operating as we know it, it would have come under the influence of its own gravity and unable to reach an escape velocity exceeding that of light, collapsed back into itself. do the findings of Tifft and Cocke undermine the redshift-distance relationship? The answer might be YES Report on confirmations of the observations. Note the reluctance to follow the data through to a conclusion. "The Big Bang Never Happened" (Book ad at Amazon) "Seeing Red" (Book ad at Amazon)

004.082 YUSUFALI Do they not consider the Qur'an (with care)? Had it been from other Than Allah, they would surely have found therein Much discrepancy. PICKTHAL Will they not then ponder on the Qur'an? If it had been from other than Allah they would have found therein much incongruity. SHAKIR Do they not then meditate on the Quran? And if it were from any other than Allah, they would have found in it many a discrepancy. Even though the qur'an is a bundle of errors and contradictions (as proven here in the science department) you really dont need go further than this very verse to find an error. It assumes that if its not from allah then it is guaranteed to have errors. Funny thing is many of our books today were not from allah and yet are devoid of errors. like the phone book, or the allegedly corrupt Book of Proverbs. The plurality is nonsense. Does the error have to be many in order to disqualify it from being authored by a perfect god?

The Holy Quran states (Yusuf Ali translation) 013.003 And it is He who spread out the earth, and set thereon mountains standing firm 015.019 And the earth We have spread out (like a carpet); set thereon mountains firm and immovable; 016.015 And He has set up on the earth mountains standing firm, lest it should shake with you; 021.031 And We have set on the earth mountains standing firm, lest it should shake with them, 027.061 Or, Who has made the earth firm to live in; made rivers in its midst; set thereon mountains immovable; 031.010 He created the heavens without any pillars that ye can see; He set on the earth mountains standing firm, lest it should shake with you; 041.010 He set on the (earth), mountains standing firm, high above it, 050.007 And the earth- We have spread it out, and set thereon mountains standing firm, 077.027 And made therein mountains standing firm, lofty (in stature); 079.032 And the mountains hath He firmly fixed; 088.019 And at the Mountains, how they are fixed firm? After reading this we can pose some questions arrow Where are the mountainous areas on the earth located? See figure 1. (below) arrow Where are the major seismic/earthquake zones located on the earth? And how often do earthquakes happen? See figure 2. (below) arrow What is the spatial relation between mountainous areas and earthquake zones? Compare fig. 1 with fig. 2 Fig.1 - the earth's (continental) mountainous areas http//members.lycos.nl/whatsthisthen/mountainbelts10k-2--geog-ouc-bc-ca-physgeog-a.gif Fig. 2 - the earth's seismic zones (epicenters of earthquakes in a 35 year period) http//members.lycos.nl/whatsthisthen/earthquake-epicenters-denali-gsfc-nasa-gov-dtam-seismic.gif sources Fig. 1 http//www.geog.ouc.bc.ca/physgeog/contents/10k.html Fig. 2 http//denali.gsfc.nasa.gov/dtam/seismic/ ! Conclusion Earthquakes happen 'all the time' (according to fig. 2 358,214 earthquakes in 35 years = 10,234 each year = 28 each day = 1.16 each hour) and they are concentrated along specific zones, in which mountainous areas are also concentrated. Therefore, claims that mountains are firm and immovable, and that mountains prevent the earth from shaking are in-correct & un-scientific. ... and an extra image that depicts the continents a bit clearer than the second figure above Fig. 3 - the earth's seismic zones (earthquakes in a 5 year period) http//members.lycos.nl/whatsthisthen/quakes-iris-edu-onepagers.gif source http//www.iris.edu/edu/onepagers/Hi-Res/OnePager2.pdf a sidenote As we know from history and seismology, and as we also can see in figures 2 & 3, the mountains in western Arabia ARE relatively stable (heavy earthquakes happen less frequently there).... but the same can not be said of the major mountain ranges of the world.... .... seems like the author of the Quran took the relatively stable mountains of western Arabia as an example for his book, but lacked real-live experience and geological knowledge regarding the shakyness & quakyness of the rest of the world's major mountain ranges... ops ? http//www.faithfreedom.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7226

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE 004.034 YUSUFALI Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband's) absence what Allah would have them guard. As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (Next), refuse to share their beds, (And last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them Means (of annoyance) For Allah is Most High, great (above you all). PICKTHAL Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great. SHAKIR Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great. INHERITANCE INJUSTICES 004.011 YUSUFALI Allah (thus) directs you as regards your Children's (Inheritance) to the male, a portion equal to that of two females if only daughters, two or more, their share is two-thirds of the inheritance; if only one, her share is a half. For parents, a sixth share of the inheritance to each, if the deceased left children; if no children, and the parents are the (only) heirs, the mother has a third; if the deceased Left brothers (or sisters) the mother has a sixth. (The distribution in all cases ('s) after the payment of legacies and debts. Ye know not whether your parents or your children are nearest to you in benefit. These are settled portions ordained by Allah; and Allah is All-knowing, Al-wise. PICKTHAL Allah chargeth you concerning (the provision for) your children to the male the equivalent of the portion of two females, and if there be women more than two, then theirs is two-thirds of the inheritance, and if there be one (only) then the half. And to each of his parents a sixth of the inheritance, if he have a son; and if he have no son and his parents are his heirs, then to his mother appertaineth the third; and if he have brethren, then to his mother appertaineth the sixth, after any legacy he may have bequeathed, or debt (hath been paid). Your parents and your children Ye know not which of them is nearer unto you in usefulness. It is an injunction from Allah. Lo! Allah is Knower, Wise. SHAKIR Allah enjoins you concerning your children The male shall have the equal of the portion of two females; then if they are more than two females, they shall have two-thirds of what the deceased has left, and if there is one, she shall have the half; and as for his parents, each of them shall have the sixth of what he has left if he has a child, but if he has no child and (only) his two parents inherit him, then his mother shall have the third; but if he has brothers, then his mother shall have the sixth after (the payment of) a bequest he may have bequeathed or a debt; your parents and your children, you know not which of them is the nearer to you in usefulness; this is an ordinance from Allah Surely Allah is Knowing, Wise. SEXIST COURT RIGHTS 002.282 YUSUFALI O ye who believe! When ye deal with each other, in transactions involving future obligations in a fixed period of time, reduce them to writing Let a scribe write down faithfully as between the parties let not the scribe refuse to write as Allah Has taught him, so let him write. Let him who incurs the liability dictate, but let him fear His Lord Allah, and not diminish aught of what he owes. If they party liable is mentally deficient, or weak, or unable Himself to dictate, Let his guardian dictate faithfully, and get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her. The witnesses should not refuse when they are called on (For evidence). Disdain not to reduce to writing (your contract) for a future period, whether it be small or big it is juster in the sight of Allah, More suitable as evidence, and more convenient to prevent doubts among yourselves but if it be a transaction which ye carry out on the spot among yourselves, there is no blame on you if ye reduce it not to writing. But take witness whenever ye make a commercial contract; and let neither scribe nor witness suffer harm. If ye do (such harm), it would be wickedness in you. So fear Allah; For it is Good that teaches you. And Allah is well acquainted with all things. If ye are on a journey, and cannot find a scribe, a pledge with possession (may serve the purpose). And if one of you deposits a thing on trust with another, let the trustee (faithfully) discharge his trust, and let him Fear his Lord conceal not evidence; for whoever conceals it, - his heart is tainted with sin. And Allah knoweth all that ye do. PICKTHAL O ye who believe! When ye contract a debt for a fixed term, record it in writing. Let a scribe record it in writing between you in (terms of) equity. No scribe should refuse to write as Allah hath taught him, so let him write, and let him who incurreth the debt dictate, and let him observe his duty to Allah his Lord, and diminish naught thereof. But if he who oweth the debt is of low understanding, or weak, or unable himself to dictate, then let the guardian of his interests dictate in (terms of) equity. And call to witness, from among your men, two witnesses. And if two men be not (at hand) then a man and two women, of such as ye approve as witnesses, so that if the one erreth (through forgetfulness) the other will remember. And the witnesses must not refuse when they are summoned. Be not averse to writing down (the contract) whether it be small or great, with (record of) the term thereof. That is more equitable in the sight of Allah and more sure for testimony, and the best way of avoiding doubt between you; save only in the case when it is actual merchandise which ye transfer among yourselves from hand to hand. In that case it is no sin for you if ye write it not. And have witnesses when ye sell one to another, and let no harm be done to scribe or witness. If ye do (harm to them) lo! it is a sin in you. Observe your duty to Allah. Allah is teaching you. And Allah is knower of all things. SHAKIR O you who believe! when you deal with each other in contracting a debt for a fixed time, then write it down; and let a scribe write it down between you with fairness; and the scribe should not refuse to write as Allah has taught him, so he should write; and let him who owes the debt dictate, and he should be careful of (his duty to) Allah, his Lord, and not diminish anything from it; but if he who owes the debt is unsound in understanding, or weak, or (if) he is not able to dictate himself, let his guardian dictate with fairness; and call in to witness from among your men two witnesses; but if there are not two men, then one man and two women from among those whom you choose to be witnesses, so that if one of the two errs, the second of the two may remind the other; and the witnesses should not refuse when they are summoned; and be not averse to writing it (whether it is) small or large, with the time of its falling due; this is more equitable in the sight of Allah and assures greater accuracy in testimony, and the nearest (way) that you may not entertain doubts (afterwards), except when it is ready merchandise which you give and take among yourselves from hand to hand, then there is no blame on you in not writing it down; and have witnesses when you barter with one another, and let no harm be done to the scribe or to the witness; and if you do (it) then surely it will be a transgression in you, and be careful of (your duty) to Allah, Allah teaches you, and Allah knows all things.

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.