Random ramblings of an agnostic

good_logic

Peace StopS.

How are you?

Welcome brother( With open arms)!

It is nice to hear from you.

GOD bless you.
Peace.

JavaLatte

Better say; we do not know the reason for the singularity to have created all this within its own boundaries.

Yes,

if we still don't know, it's better to have neutral position first, rather than thinking negative about God or even position ourselves as God's opponents, because opposing God is very risky and careless.

Why many people seem so quick to make negative judgments towards God (the Creator)?

I see "open bad speech against the Creator" as something insolent, ungrateful, the arrogance in high level.

If a person have more and more bad accusations to God, then perhaps he/she will have more and more incapability to recognize God.

Salm.

JavaLatte

Do you have a better alternate explanation to the purpose of creation?

Honest answer I still don't know exactly about the purpose of creation.

But, should I accuse or insult Allah because my lack of knowledge? NO.

Quran clearly says its option 3.

You are who made option 3 (based on "sounds like&quot.

5156 And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me.

Sounds like ego

See, that's you.

4116 Allah forgiveth not (The sin of) joining other gods with Him; but He forgiveth whom He pleaseth other sins than this one who joins other gods with Allah, Hath strayed far, far away (from the right)

Sounds like an awful lot of jealousy

I suppose that if you want to know about Allah, you need to humble yourself before Him.

If you think that to humble yourself before Allah is not necessary, then... you should know that actually you are not the owner of yourself, not even one cell, not even one atom.

Man_of_Faith

Peace JavaLatte,

The issue for him is that he feels that God has ego by citing that phrase. What you say will not make him feel less that way.

But the way I interpret that passage it does not reveal any ego of the singularity, but it all depends on what you take it that it wants in the passage. Worship it or serve it or... be on its side as someone who belongs to it. The third is my understanding. The opposite is to serve evil and that is the intention by God in the passage and unfortunately taken by insulted people to give God an ego.

If you serve evil then you become an anomaly for God, the singularity everything is contained within, a sort of virus or polluted being and if you are an entity just made within that singularity, its platform, then of course it can also have some standards when it deflates into One and all is returned to it.

And if you call the preference for ego because it wished good and not evil then it is your choice. I call it being wise and having sound judgment and personally glad to be in its service. It is not exactly that God can practice injustice or anything along those lines either because it does not have an ego. All it wishes is that you serve good and not evil, and it wants synchronized beings, synced with it.

And God is everything and at the same time conpletely independent.

And it appears most of the "worship" is to realize your origin and become one with it. Nothing weird, no strange rituals of anything. Just plain appreciation. God seems to dislike Pagan rituals.

And your Master hears you any time you open your mouth and it reads your mind in real-time together with billions of other people. It is not hard for it because it is not limited like beings that you can comprehend and are not contained within the singularity that is God. No limitations of mass. To try to explain the mechanics would be futile.

Have faith

runninglikezebras

First of all my apologies for the late reply. My response in-line

I think it would be a good idea to move this discussion towards divinity of the Quran. Arguments over existence of God has been going on unresolved for centuries and I doubt if our discussion over it is going to lead us anywhere.

My position is that I can concede that although it looks unlikely to me, there is logical and scientific possibility that an an all powerful entity exists.

I will assume that an afterlife for our consciousness also exists and we are one of the if not the sole purpose of the creation of this universe.

That leads us to ask is the Qur'an or any other religion divine in a sense that it was sent down by God or perhaps programmed into our genes for us to be lead to that conclusion.

We should first ask about the nature of such a creator and the purpose of our creation. We can say that we were created either

Just for fun
As a research experiment
To satisfy God's ego and for him to show off to the Malaika or to something else that he had himself created

Can anyone think of a fourth option? The Abrahamic religions tells us in a refined way that it was option 3.

I think all 3 options are invalid. The only reason this world was created was to create a framework that guarantees free will and indvidiuality. It relates to what I explained earlier about free will. You speak about afterlife but you might as well consider the idea of pre-life. Quran tells us this is not the real world. That this is only temporary, with the goal to test us. Our loyalty is being tested. The reason why our loyalty is tested because from the perspective of an all knowing being such as God, some of us have already betrayed him. Betrayed their creator and set up partners beside God. This reality only materializes our choice and records it.

I am ready to do that but if you pick any religion the only thing you will find is the same grumpy old man throwing down lightning bolts from the sky.
Although he acknowledges the Human intellect, nowhere in any scripture does he provide any information or reasoning that a person cant arrive at without scripture.

First of all I dont know why you associate grumpiness with God, you could rather say the opposite. Most merciful, you are giving an endless amount of new chances. Second, God acknowledges human intellect but also many times in Quran underligns the limits of human reasoning. You should read the many verses in Quran about how mankind is unaware of how helpless they are. Especially without God. In this world you can get away with thinking all achievements in this world are proof of your own/or mankinds divinity but how will that prove to work for you in the afterlife?

So essentially a scripture is only confirming what is the most pleasing argument to a human (afterlife, heaven etc) and the proof it provides is by telling you that since you already arrived at this conclusion this must be the truth. Classic catch22.

I disagree with that statement. If you read Quran eg, most people these days will not find it a pleasant argument. Few of us live up to the standards required to be pleased about the message. With a greedy, materialistic lifestyle - as is more and more accepted these days - the future scripture offers you is quite horrible in fact.

I have my own idea about how religion must have started

Man starts contemplating the concepts of birth and death.
He begins to understand the concept of past present and future.
Man starts thinking what happened in the distant past, what will happen in the distant future and what will happen if he keeps going up in the sky. Will it ever end?
Man suddenly realizes that he can only comprehend finite. He starts to go mad over these ideas. He wants to find out how the first man was created.
Another more clever man comes to him claiming to have received a message from a powerful king in the sky who claims to be able to answer all questions. This is how their discussion goes
Q Creation
A Easy! the powerful king put the first man on earth

Q After Death
A The same king will take you to a beautiful place if you are good and you fight in his name, if not he will punish you for all eternity

Q So what about the king himself
A It is not you place to ask these questions. You will not be able to comprehend. Next question!

Q How do I know you are not lying
A Me? Lying? Take a look around you. Look at that tree. Can you make something like it. Look at this small ant. Can you ever make something as fine as this. Look at the lamps in the sky. Can you hang anything in the sky. Who do you think did all this stuff? The King did it.

Q Can you ask him how he did it
A Its easy. He did in Six days and didnt even get tired.

Q Wow! that must be a powerful king. What does he want me to do?
A He wants you to remember him all the time and not to think that there may be another king as well, because that is just ridiculous. He also doesnt want you to worship the king that the guys on the other side of the river acknowledge. That king is a false king.

Q Can you elaborate more
A Here take this book. It has everything you need.

This is basically the same argument Steiner made. There is a degree of truth in the chronology of mysticism -> religion -> philosophy -> science. In a sense all these domains can be related back to mysticism. Science does not have all answers, neither does philosophy or religion. The question primitive humans asked about the reason of the sun setting is still valid and unanswered. We have only answered it in different domains with different language. At the same time we are still guessing. I accept you dont want to make that leap of faith. To me taking that leap of faith is exactly what the test in life is about.

JavaLatte

I think all 3 options are invalid. The only reason this world was created was to create a framework that guarantees free will and indvidiuality.

Good perception.

You speak about afterlife but you might as well consider the idea of pre-life.

What do you mean by pre-life?

Whether you refer to this world as pre-life?

Or perhaps the life before we're born on this earth?

Quran tells us this is not the real world. That this is only temporary, with the goal to test us. Our loyalty is being tested.

Bold True.

The reason why our loyalty is tested because from the perspective of an all knowing being such as God, some of us have already betrayed him. Betrayed their creator and set up partners beside God. This reality only materializes our choice and records it.

I suppose many of us already betrayed the Creator.

Thank you brother for sharing your insight. I think I can learn something from it. Praise be to God.

Salm.

runninglikezebras

What do you mean by pre-life?

Whether you refer to this world as pre-life?

Or perhaps the life before we're born on this earth?

I was referring to your identity before birth. We often talk about afterlife, just as if the sequence starts with being born in this reality and continued in the afterlife. In my opinion our bodies are vehicles for our souls, implying we existed before we were born in this world and will return after death.

There was a time when man was non-existent and he was not even mentioned (Al-Insan 761)

O mankind! Be careful of your duty to your Lord Who created you from a single soul and from it created its mate and from them twain hath spread abroad a multitude of men and women. Be careful of your duty toward Allah in Whom ye claim (your rights) of one another, and toward the wombs (that bare you). Lo! Allah hath been a watcher over you. (An-Nisaa' 41)

There are a few other Quranic references from which you can deduce this and it fits remarkably with the hermetic philosophy about life and death.

JavaLatte

I was referring to your identity before birth. We often talk about afterlife, just as if the sequence starts with being born in this reality and continued in the afterlife. In my opinion our bodies are vehicles for our souls, implying we existed before we were born in this world and will return after death.

I do think that there is possibility that our souls have pre-life, but previously I didn't really give too much attention on this subject.

It is nice to know that not only me who has a thought about this. I think you have more faith than me regarding pre-life.

And thank you for reminding me those verses.

Salm.

runninglikezebras

I may have expressed myself badly, but I was not mentioning life before the soul. Life is defined by death. If a soul is eternal it implies it does not die. Therefor it continues to exist in the afterlife and existed before we were born, what I referred to with pre-life. I've never given much thought on how souls are created either. I think the answer to that question can be found in answering wether our souls are a creation of God or rather a part of God. I guess this is going a bit off-topic. So I'll refrain from continuing that debate here.

JavaLatte

I may have expressed myself badly,

No, perhaps it's me, sorry.

but I was not mentioning life before the soul.

Yes, I understand, and I wasn't either.

What I think is that before I was born, my soul may already exist (already made).

Considering that Allah is All-Just, I have thought that before I was born, maybe I've been given the choice whether I'm willing to undergo the worldly life or not. I also have thought that my soul may have agreed to make a strong agreement (contract) with my Creator which include the rule that I should be loyal (faithful) to Him during my live in this world, something like that I suppose.

I think that I should be loyal to my Lord, no matter where I live.

Salm.