First, I am a guy. Don't misconstrue proper grammar and sentence structure with femininity.

You don't have shapely curves? A pity. Your new gender is noted.

As for your statement, I am taking it that it is a matter of pain then that is the issue? If the creature doesn't feel pain then it's okay to slay it? Am I understanding you correctly?

The objection is twofold. The infliction of unnecessary suffering on sentient creatures is an abomination primarily. And secondarily animals are not commodities. They have a claim to moral consideration that respects their active desire to live out their full lives. It is no more ethical to truncate their life however painlessly than it is to deprive you of your life under anesthesia just because it is pain free.

b]Root apices as plant command centres the unique?brain-like? status of the root apex transition zone
http//ds9.botanik.uni-bonn.de/zellbio/AG-Baluska-Volkmann/plantneuro/pdf/NeuroPlantTZ-Biologia.pdf

"Although plants are generally immobile and lack the most obvious brain activities of animals and humans, they are not only able to show all the attributes of intelligent behaviour but they are also equipped with neuronal molecules, especially synaptotagmins and glutamate/glycine-gated glutamate receptors.
Recent advances in plant cell biology allowed identification of plant synapses transporting the plant-specific neurotransmitter-like molecule, auxin. This suggests that synaptic communication is not limited to animals and humans but seems to be widespread throughout plant tissues. Root apices seated at the anterior pole of the plant body show many features which allow us to propose that they, especially their transition zones, act in some way as brainlike command centres. The opposite posterior pole harbours sexual organs
and is specialized for plant reproduction. Last but not least, we propose that vascular tissues represent highways for plant nervous activity allowing rapid exchange of information between the growing points of above-ground organs and the brain-like zones in the root apices."

So, where is your proof they do not feel pain?

While plants can communicate through chemical signals, and certainly have complex responses to stimuli, the belief that they possess advanced affective or cognitive abilities is not supported by scientific research.

http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_%28paranormal%29

Plants are intelligent in the same way that bacteria is intelligent. They feed, they reproduce and they evolve defence mechanisms to ward off predators all of which can be done by the the lowliest amoeba or jellyfish or sponge. This is not consciousness. This is the product of chemical signals. Plants have no central nervous system, no pain receptors. To say that plants have a brain is to say that bacteria have brains

There is no empirical evidence of plants experiencing a sensation even remotely close to what we call pain. Pain has a very specific definition that is often lost in the colloquial use of the word. Simply put, pain is a negative sensation that occurs when an organism has suffered some sort of physical injury. Pain signals travel from specialized sensors cells in the body, called nociceptors, through the sensory peripheral nervous system and to the brain. Depending on the nature of the pain the response could be either unconscious, as when you pull your hand off a hot plate without thinking about it, or conscious, as when you stick your hand under freezing ice water for as long as you can on a dare (I know I?m not the only one to do this.)

http//metabiological.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/do-plants-feel-pain/

Do you not know that in moments of adrenal hyperactivity - Fight or Flight - the sense of pain is dulled if not removed altogether? Researchers say a stress hormone, noradrenaline, also known as norepinephrine, which floods the bloodstream during stressful events, numbs the brain's pain-processing pathway.

This is akin to saying that soldiers don't suffer when struck by a missle because their adrenaline glands are pumping.

You are overlaying your ideas onto mine. You missed where I spoke of extinction events, which occurred in pre-human times. Take the focus off the ladies and pay attention. Iblis is controlling your frontal lobe and leading you to the Fire.

You espoused an anthropomorphic outlook that places the trousered ape at the center of the moral if not quite the physical universe. If so, then God botched his creation by populating the vast bulk of the earth's history with only non-human creatures who lived and suffered and perished with nary a thought for their welfare.

So you will take your hand off the stove.

I'm surprised you actually asked this question, as I thought you were learned in the 'why-for' of the nervous system.
But He did give us pain receptors, so we would know when something we do is harming us. There are diseases that inhibit sense of pain, and they are disastrous to the person as they don't have the autonomic response to move/flinch/pull back when they are injuring themselves.

You should have gone with your gut instinct. The context makes it transparent that I was referring to pain receptors in animals. Twice I've made plain my question has no bearing on human suffering because mainstream Islamic theology deems it as a test of faith. Comically, your answer here guillotines your plants-feel-pain psuedoscience. Pain is a selectively adaptive trait designed to escape perilous conditions. It makes no evolutionary sense for an immobile organism like plants to evolve pain receptors because they cannot flee.

Since you do not believe in Allah and do not submit to Him, if you continue the path you are on until your appointed term, you will have plenty of time to ponder on the 'why-for' of the nervous system in the Fire.

Amusing. To be lectured on post-mortem retribution by a man who belongs to a universally reviled fringe sect whose entire constituency might comfortably fit into a phone booth, who denies the Hadith, who rejects the existence of a personal Devil, who mocks the miracle stories of the Quran, who asserts that man is just an ape, for such a person to threaten others with eternal damnation drive hilarity to escape velocity.

Brother, drop the fire and brimstone posture. You will breakdance in hell with me come the sound of the Trumpet. Inshallah.

Let me start answering with the basic rule of engagement..
My dear friend I'm not trying to 'convert' you... please please please put the sectarian conception of 'convertion' far away from your (already) exploded head..

islam is not a sect or religion
islam (without the capital i) is an A-ttitude. (pronounce this as the NY black rapper said it in their coolest manner.. it's an A-ttitude bro!)
islam is an arabic word for 'submission' / 'acceptance' / 'peacefully accept', in hebrew it's 'taslam'...
when you peacefully accept any of God's will, then life will be happier and easier for you..
The only A-ttitude acceptable to God is to peacefully submit to His will... as saith in the Quran..

A long haired jewish dude allegedly saith this during one of his time of anguish and despair.
"Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me but not as what I will, but as what thou wilt."

That's why in the Quran, the before mentioned long haired jewish dude are being called as a 'moslem' (those who had an islam A-ttitude) and furthermore he's being mentioned as an 'example to human kind'.

Did the long haired Jewish dude ever read the Quran? did he proclaim the sunni style of shahada? did he ever do a 7 times roundabout jogging around a black cube? did he ever received an Eucharist from an authoritative priest? Nope...

This knocked me flat on my bottom. Steady, I?m just an old man whose joints are colonised by arthritis. I will report you for cyber assault. Your credo is uber sophisticated and thoughtful, but how theologically sound is it my little rabbit?

If you are convinced that my convictions will bear me aloft on the wings of the angel of death to sweat a little in the cosmic oven of Jahannam, don't you have some moral duty to set me straight on my follies?

And from a sheer survival vantage, the murderous impatience of Allah?s hang for heresy being what it is, boosting the numerical strength of your school of thought is a matter of self-preservation. Such tribal crudities might not appeal to your urbane mind; you might talk it down as the fossilised remains of the Old Time Religion better consigned to neglected obscurity, but when you live in a rough part of town it?s unwise to venture out without a stab proof vest. True or false?

Till then, I've gotta file a police report for assault.

By the rashness with which you threw yourself into a diverting conversation I expected more from your invective than the enthusiasm of a prostitute on her seventh client of the night. A pity.

I enjoyed dismembering and eating your imbecility for lunch. And with that I draw a line under this disciplinarian excercise and press on to theology. As much I would like to schoolmaster you in the elements of style and wit, I have not come here for that.

When you've nursed your wounds feel quite free to contribute meaningfully to the discussion. I belong to a generation which holds no grudges.

^ By which Salafi were you forcibly raped as a child? Poor widdle thing.

Look, I'm sorry for the damage done to your gaping ass hole, but it's nothing to do with this old man. I'm just here to learn about your theology brother. I wish you a speedy recovery. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to be molested!

Too bad modern law restricts us so. Apparently there is something very wrong with this mans head, and it should be amputated.

Why should biology get in the way of the love that dare not speak its name? If you let me squeeze you like a bunny, if I can mount you like a bison, I promise you'll walk funny in the morning beaming a radiant smile.

Not a chance, Sir. Once a man is unfaithful to a woman, then he will not stay faithful to anyone. Besides, when men are as abundant as the stars, why shall I settle for the likes of you?

You misunderstand. I don't propose that you settle down with me. As you've hinted man is a creature so constructed that when the red mist of lust descends, off he goes running after the nearest skirt. You are an accomplished psychologist. I will give you that. What I propose is more sensible and practical and Islamic. Let me warehouse you in my damp basement down which my wife never goes so we might carry on a passionate amorous entanglement to shake Allah's throne.

If you behave and not make too much noise I will let you out to bathe once a month, feed you goat milk and cheese and belt you no more than twice a day according to the stipulations of the Shariah.

You must not decline this once in a lifetime offer sister.

Galloping on to more engaging themes, I'm more than happy to outfit my tiny brain with the relevant threads about the Quranist take on Creation and science. Link?

Jafar,

I was teasing about the marital problems. My wife is a delicate flower and I am a big softie who could not wrestle a school girl to the ground.

It is true that my better half and I diverge on first and last things. After many years of training her artillery fire on the heavens she made her peace with God in recent years and now is something vageuly religious. Not in the orthodox sense of belonging to a formal creed ; she and I are agreed upon our anti-clericalism; but she lights her candle at the altar of a personal God. If that deity sounds rather much like the Deist version of a cosmic engineer who after kickstarting the universe repaired to a dignified retirement home and snoozed for the end of time you might just be right.

I bear no grudge against deism and watch the spectacle with quiet amusement.

Your theology seems like a work in progress. I would have thought you might have so fundamental a thing as the creation story smoothed out by now, but maybe that's my dogmatic Salafi alter ego talking.

Pressing question If the Eden story is just an allegory and man is a trousered ape, at what point in our slow climb out of the primordial seas did God breathe an imperishable soul into homo sapiens?

Paradox Uncreated

A thousand apologies. I should have known better than to pass you over for another lovely. I have high standards sister. But for keeping strong in the face of countless rejections I am confident that you will be amply rewarded by a just and intelligent God.

Born Again

I like a fiesty girl. If I desert my wife and ten barefoot chillun can I put my lips on you? I promise not to give you syphilis.

I don't think my views on Shariah are "distorted". Quite apart from the number of highly influential Muslim countries governed by Shariah, polls have consistently shown that even among vast tracts of Western Muslims there is considerable support for Towelheadism. Not a majority by all means, but nor the piddling minority which some Muslims would like us to imagine. Setting aside polls, I know this from my own Salafi adventures.

I much rather I heard the answer about evolution from your own seductive lips, but I will settle for another's thread on the question of Adam, Eve and the whispering agent of doom.

Jafar,

My significant other rules me autocratically by keeping yours truly on a tight, tight leash so how can I pounce on her? Do you wanna see my ten inch scars? I type this, gentle reader, from a wheelchair.

On a breezy day many winters ago, after denouncing the high gods for years without number, my flame-haired wife was struck thunderously by what's called an epiphany. "Quit your godless folly" she said, "or no copulation, no marriage, no children's visitation."

I rose up manfully and made a heroic stand for reason, but shortly therafter, tormented by the promptings of the flesh, I saw the folly of my way and bent the knee. A man does well to obey his wife. Let every man take note of the dangerous biological weapons of the Fairer Sex, their subtle designs, their cunning, their bite. For this we should stand? Bosh!

The only virtue of the beardo's creed for which I hanker is that it keeps the skirting-clutching feministas firmly in line. Stick it to 'em Mo! I wish I could pull out Sura 4 Verse 34 on the disobedient creature, but I'm afraid I'm no match for her muscle. What shall I do?

Incidentally, the Quranic passage you posted about the creation of Adam grabs my interest. It is a question I asked of Born Again, but I would like to add another element to the equation. One of the posters (I think Raging Gaijing) said that the Shaytan is a metaphor for one's ego, but this would seem to gainsay the story of Adam's expulsion from Jannah because the Quran says that Allah ejected Iblis out of the Garden when he refused to genuflect before Adam, so if Iblis can be physically thrown out of the Garden it can't be Adam's ego for Adam sinned after the Shaytan was driven out suggesting that his ego was very much inside the pearly gates.

So who precisely do you understand Iblis to be?

Born Again

How can I stop looking south of my belt when I meet a pretty young thing like you? Impossible. I was hoping we might finalise my Shahadah over a candle lit dinner washed down with a bottle of the finest red wine to ever kiss the lips of men. I'm Gutted.

Mistaken is the notion that I have a skewed picture of Muslims. I was jesting about the stoning as I thought was quite plain, but I suppose I will have to use emoticons from hence forward. How many do I need? Ten should do the trick.

Before you can make this ruggedly handsome gallant your hubby the halal way I need some theological questions urgently resolved. Are you ready my sweet? Let's play.

For one thing, if one believes in Darwinian evolution as I gather many of you heretics do, if man is not a fallen creature expelled from the shady groves of Jannah to live in weary toil for the rest of his days till his spirit takes flight, why does the Quran say that Adam?s prelapsarian existence was shattered by sin? Science maintains that man is an evolved creature and Islam that we have descended from a higher state of bliss. What is a guy to believe? Help me sister. I'm confused.

Going back to your question, will Islam make you a better person? Well open the Qur?aan, and ask YOURSELF if by applying Qur?anic commandments will make you a better person. Let?s push aside the ?wife-beating? or ?cutting hand? verses which can be subjected to different interpretation. Now see for YOURSELF, if you can see the wisdom behind commandments such as

• Treating the wives with kindness (419)
• Maintaining humility and speaking modest speech even to the ignorants (2536)
• Giving charity regularly, whenever you receive an income (6141)
• Honouring your parents (1723, 3114)
• Shunning usury (2278, 3130)
• Protecting the orphans (42, 2215, 436)
• Freeing slaves (9013)
• Maintaining modesty in the presence of the opposite sex (2430-31)
• Honouring your neighbours (436)
• Refraining from gambling (590-591)

And many other commandments that I cannot think off right now. Anyway, just ask YOURSELF if by following those commandments will make you a better person or not. Also, approach any Scriptures, which is not limited to the Qur?an, with a genuine intention to gain knowledge and the truth, and not merely to find mistakes and criticize, in order to make you feel superior about your pre-conceived beliefs and views. That?s all I can contribute.

Peace.

Very wise words. Can I put a ring on that finger sister? I need a second wife.

The rumour is that syncretic creeds are frowned upon on this board so why haven't you been stoned yet for flirting with other scriptures? I will report you.

There is much to recommend your brand of Islam; if I had to outfit myself in a flowing robe complimented with a black turban that bakes my skull in the summer heat and scrape my head on the floor of any Muslim school of thought it would be yours. It's the grandest, finest, smartest theology that ever set up shop on this globe of sin.

But I'm set aback by the modesty element. In my native village of Anatolia it is disreputable not to have a keen eye for pretty ankles. Our motto there is Repent not when thy semen gushes!

How does this gel with your moral code?

I have enjoyed lurking this thread rotfl

The advantages of following the truth are numerous. If you submit to God you will be among the successful ones on the day of judgment, earning a fantastic, endless reward from God. In this worldly life you will be rewarded with all sorts of good things that you ask God to bestow on you, including inner peace and patience. This will make you a better neighbor, husband and father.
You will still need to pick your nose though.

Peace!

Intriguing. I would like to have a share of inner peace. That sounds like a meritorious end. So what time can you take my kids off my hands? I will pay you handsomely.

But I've gotta say that the prospect of Jannah doesn't tickle my interest for I can't bear the notion of immortality. I think death is a release from the treadmill of desire, gratification, desire, gratification. To live in the cosmic brothel of the Islamic conception of paradise through which rivers of wine flow seems to me too great a carnality for even a Shaytan like me.

Can't you offer something more resposeful akin to Nirvana?

Sarah,

As a young man when I still had my own set of teeth my teacher said that I would go far in life; I think she would have been content with just the next village, but though I'm just a country fellow suffering intellectual famine I don't think I'm the only one to find the Quran hardgoing. To pick one of the shorter chapters for the sake of convenience, consider Sura al-Qureysh

For the taming of Qureysh.

For their taming (We cause) the caravans to set forth in winter and summer.

So let them worship the Lord of this House,

Who hath fed them against hunger and hath made them safe from fear.

If this is a communication from a supernatural power that wants to convey an urgent message in a language I can understand, what is this message intended to say?

Jafar,

Your cosmopolitan ethos seduces me like a woman in the night. Steady, this Beardo's married. Unfaithfully.

Your creed is very forward looking. Perhaps just a bit too modern. For if the divine truth may be plucked from the ether without ever looking between the covers of a book, why did Allah stay up all night to write his masterpiece?

To my eye the allure of faith is that it asserts a degree of moral oneupmanship. Buy into the One True God and all troubles will cease, the angels will become your poker buddies and the shapely young babes of Jannah will spread their legs. You know the gambit.

Question What is the advantage of reverting to Islam for one so constructed as me? Dangle the meat in front of me a little.

Will I be a better father, a better friend or a better neighbour; will I beat my wife less, pick not my nose and learn to quit slapping around my kids? Help me.

There are simple things to understand in The Quran, for which no-one has variance in interpretation, these are its core, e.g. speak the truth, be charitable, forgiveness, care for orphans etc. I find that people tend to focus on the peripherals yet have not even implemented the basics. See 37.

The Quran is for everyone, with varying degrees of intelligence, covering from individual self-growth to collective/societal, hence its scope and content.

Duly noted. The Quran seems time specific in many instances where it exhorts the believers to follow the Prophet. Typically other Muslims explain this away as a reference to the Sunnah as relayed in the Hadith. Since Quran Aloners reject any such interpretation, do you think parts of the Quran are outdated because you obviously cannot follow the prophet living after his demise.

I will fetch the ayats later because I don't recall the passages off the top of my head, but I wonder what you make of it.

You read numerous ayats where the Quran is clearly stated to not be poetry, but a Guidance and a Reminder.

What happens when you stop reading it like poetry and start reading it like an Instruction Manual?

Let us know what happens.

Peace.

To draw attention to the fact the Quran is poetically constructed, that a clear rhyming scheme shapes all the suras, that it is not written in conventional linear prose with a beginning, a middle and an end like the gospels is not to denigrate as Muslims seem to imagine. It's a transparent observation which is why the Quran is so easy to memorise The verses end in rhyming couplets.

It makes for a pleasant recital like all rhymed compositions and like I noted chanting the Quran was one of the few pleasures of being a Muslim, but if the meaning proves as slippery as a burglar making off with his neighbour's loot the instruction manual won't be the most handy.

Suppose you were tasked with the job of composing a message on which hangs the fate of humanity; would you not choose a less ambiguous style than "Alif Laam Meem" ? I'm just a country boy who is intellectually barefoot. Help me.

Now let's discuss some of the basic concepts..

Presumably through the Salaful Al-Salih ('The pious ancestors&#039 indoctrination (readintoxication) you've been told that the Quran is God's last revelation in a sense of Him saying

"Look dude ! Yes it's only dude! As I don't give a sh%t about the chicks! I've enough of trying to transform your bad-ass ape-ish attitude for centuries.. now this will be the last effort from me trying to enlighten you and reveal something to you... I previously told you things in Hebrew but I got bored of that language.. beside... you silly apes has made a lot of ridiculous additions to My words in Hebrew.. so I thought hey let's try using Arabic this time around.. which I plan to declare as the 'lingua franca' in heaven very soon, as thus from this moment on any prayer which is not in Arabic will be rejected by My kingdom in heaven and will not even received the slightest attention for further processing. And please do understand that I'm busy.. I have a bunch of universes to attend to... so take this as the last gift of revelation and enlightenment from me.. Kapish??"

Which is not the case...

Yes, that is how I was nurtured to approach the Quran.

So if you believe that God's moral code like human rights are best enshrined in Freedom's Land instead of Absurdistan, does that not make the Quran superfluous? That's interesting.

Human suffering is not a test of conviction, as we are given the right of self-defense after fleeing from persecution. The idea of 'turn the other cheek' is a Christian concept, not upheld in the Books revealed by Allah.

We are to endure patiently with the knowledge that deliverance will occur to those who believe, but we are not taught anywhere in the Quran that suffering is a test of conviction. Allah is very clear on what we are to do, and not to do, in the Quran.

point well taken.

Such is life. Whereas you see horror, I - being raised on a farm in my youth - see the natural cycle of life. Even the plants you rip out of the earth must die for those that consume them to live. They no longer grow, nor suckle water from the soil or branch that held it. Is their death easier because you cannot hear their screams?

Plants do not have nervous systems that can register pain my cherry blossom. Only animals are sentient because pain and pleasure are the products of a brain. The notion that plants can suffer is one that is common to Muslims who don't seem to have paid much attention in anatomy class; were you flirting with the boys? I thought a Quran Aloner might know better than to recycle pre-modern ideas. Come, come, you're letting the team down.

I hear a lot of 'Why does your God allow suffering?' Because man wanted to be left alone to their own desires. What steers the rudder of a man who does not believe he will be called to account for his deeds - both manifest and hidden? What will that man do when he believes he can get away with it? How many crimes would not be committed if people realized they will be called to account after we have completed the term of this test called Life? How much needless suffering occurs from the hands of men?

I'm not sure you've understood my question. To pre-empt confusion I focused my question on the ethics of animal predation. Not human suffering. And nor animal suffering caused by human agency. I know well that human suffering in mainstream Islamic theology is a trial to be patiently borne till the Last Day when the souls of men shall be judged.

My question was given that animals will face no such post-portem accounting, how is their suffering justified?

Or does the Compassionate One not give a flying toss? For someone who espouses belief in evolution and that humans are late comers to the drama of the earth which was populated for eons and eons by dinosaurs and other extinct species how can you assert such an anthropomorphic view that ignores that the globe has been spinning for millions of years without humanity?

So while we are at the top of the food chain, even our Creator has made clear that suffering is not something He condones - even in the animal kingdom. Look to the predators and see how Allah has taught them to slay their prey. What do you find in your observance of their kills? I thank Allah for cattle, and the meat, milk, and leather they provide. There is so much good in the world He has created, I find it impossible to count His blessings.

If Allah does not condone suffering, why did he equip sentient beings who perish in agony by the billions every year with a nervous system with pain receptors instead of making them as insentient as plants? Outfitting them with pain receptors is a conscious decision on his part which he did not have to do.

It usually is hard to penetrate when you already have concepts in mind at odds with the concepts in the quran which is why you spoke about the vagueness of "daily prayers". With that you tried to fit one concept with a quranic concept that's not there

Joe

I speak not of alien concepts. Just plain intelligibility. As the Quran reader will note, the book has a distinct rhyming scheme. The difficulty is that too often it sacrifices clarity for poetry with cryptic verses like ?Alif Laam Meem? and whole chapters whose meaning is elusive. Amusingly, the very next verse of that ayat is ?Thaalikal kitaabu laa rayba fee? meaning here's a book in which there is no doubt as though anyone understands what the preceding verse meant.

If the book is an extra-terrestrial communication designed to enlighten the race instead of bamboozle why not something which any schoolboy of ten can follow in this fashion

"Dear Sons of Adam,

I wanna share something with you. Many light years ago when I was bored stiff in my bachelor pad I had this notion of inventing some trousered apes to regale me out of which you featherless creatures grew. You?re welcome. I am God by the way. But you may call me Allah.

Now kids, a few cardinal rules. You must tongue my name every day and whoop me up, don?t be mean to each other, and try not to romance the barnyard animals.

Breach any of these rules my young things and you will breakdance in the lowest rung of Jahannam. Got that?

Till my next revelation, so long!

Sincerely,

Allah. ?

Whatever you make of that message, you cannot fault its clarity.