Where are the Morals?

[Tartarus Sauce]

I'll look for the morals once I find the beef.

[Whateverist]

Oh shit. I had the morals in my back pocket, forgot and sat on them. Pretty sure they were the universal and objective ones too. Oh well.

[paulpablo]

Study meiosis and mitosis. Try to understand what role both these processes play in the division of cell and building of a tissue and organ. Study how variations in similar population occur. There you will find how a man can be tall or short and why parents have not similar children.


At least Adam and Eve are a solid logical foundation on how human race began on earth. It is not like guessing under the hood of abiogenesis how life began and how first life form looked

Adam and eve is not logical in the slightest, it's a laughable myth, it belongs with other myths. abiogenesis is only a hypothesis, but is still much more genuine, honest, less laughable than getting information from an ancient arabic book.
The theory of evolution as the name suggests is a reliable scientific theory.
It's quite easy to spot the odd one out when you put a scientific theory in with a group of ancient myths.

Ancient myth

Faro created all the world that mankind has come to know from the descendants of Mangala's original egg seeds. He caused the land to flood to wash away the impure seed of his brother, Pemba. From this flood, only the good were saved, sheltered by Faro's ark.

Ancient myth

The goddess Nüwa then used clay to form humans. These humans were very smart since they were individually crafted. Nüwa then became bored of individually making every human, so she dipped a rope in clay and the blobs that fell from it became new humans. These new humans were not as smart as the original ones.

What modern day Muslims actually believed happened and is definitely not an ancient myth.

He created Adam from clay and He breathed life into him. He created Him from dust; then He said to him, "Be," and he was. From Adam he created a mate, and from both of them many men and women.

(Oh and I don't need to study meiosis and mitosis at all, I have good old trusty Islamic hadith explanation as to the diversity of human kind on the planet.)

Hadith transmitted by one of Muhammad's companions.

"Allah created Adam from a handful of dust taken from different lands, so the children of Adam have been created according to the composition of the land. Therefore, from mankind we have white, red, black and yellow ones; we have good and evil, ease and sorrow, and what comes in between

Ok and now......

Scientific theory.

Evolution is the change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.
All life on Earth is descended from a last universal ancestor that lived approximately 3.8-3.5 billion years ago. Repeated speciation and the divergence of life can be inferred from shared sets of biochemical and morphological traits, or by sequencing shared DNA sequences. These homologous traits and sequences are more similar among species that share a more recent common ancestor, and can be used to reconstruct evolutionary histories, using both existing species and the fossil record. Existing patterns of biodiversity have been shaped both by speciation and by extinction.

I'm not saying everything about evolution is definitely 100 percent right and I believe in it religiously, or that I even understand 100 percent everything about it because I'm not a biologist.
BUT I think I can see the difference between an ancient myth and a genuine, honest scientific attempt to try and discover the truth about something.

[bennyboy]

Study meiosis and mitosis. Try to understand what role both these processes play in the division of cell and building of a tissue and organ. Study how variations in similar population occur. There you will find how a man can be tall or short and why parents have not similar children.


At least Adam and Eve are a solid logical foundation on how human race began on earth. It is not like guessing under the hood of abiogenesis how life began and how first life form looked.

Yes. Fairy tales are often simpler than reality-- "logical" is not the right word, though-- "simple" is.

The problem is that your simple story lacks evidence, any explanatory value of how we have become what we are, any predictive value for possible future states of humanity, and it's tied into a mythology about a Sky Daddy who punishes children, "even to the fourth generation," for the sins of their fathers. And then, after all this baby-torturing, sends messengers to tell us that God is pure good and perfectly all-loving. Yeah-- totally logical.

[robvalue]

Did I just read the phrase, "rapist is atheist"?

I think atheism may be the most misunderstood concept in today's world. Atheism certainly doesn't achieve any of these arbitrary goals, since it makes no attempt to.

However, generally atheism is more likely to lead to personal accountability, so if you rape someone, you have to live with it. You don't get a free pass thanks to sucking up to someone, and not the person you raped, later.

Holy books are a bunch of crap as far as morals are concerned. The bible for example is just one long story of atrocity, and we have had to make secular laws to stop people doing most of it. Do you think we were wrong to do so? Should we still be stoning people to death for gathering sticks on Sunday? If something is moral because someone says its moral and you just follow blindly, you have no morals at all. You are just being obedient to someone who may or may not actually be moral.

Morals = empathy + reason

If something is moral and happens to be in some old book, then it's not moral because it's in some old book. You could write a book about morals, and it could be wonderfully accurate as far as possible, without it having anything to do with gods or mythology.

I have heard many times that people think if they gave up religion they would just go around murdering and raping. This is the result of brainwashing. People are more moral than the religions they follow preach (at least most people are) because they apply their own morality to it to pick and choose what is and isn't right. There may be a few severely mentally unstable people for which the idea of accountability to god is the only thing keeping them from pillaging, but I would be fairly certain this is a tiny minority of people with such fears.

As children, we need a level of guidance because we don't yet have the full mental capacity to make good decisions. But once you are an adult, you should be able to figure it out for yourself.

---

Wow, OK I just can't let this go. Barbarians and creative writers 2000 years ago know stuff about morality that we don't?

Also, religion teaches morality in a very black and white way. This good, that bad. Don't do that, I'll stick a spike in you if you do. Real life is in the grey area, and such bold statements can only act as a very rough guide. And generally not a good one. Did you know "thou shalt not kill" isn't even in the ten commandments? I know most people think it is, but it isn't. Are they all gonna start killing each other now they know this? (It made god's first draft of over 200 commandments, but he decided to leave it out for the final draft onto the tablets to make more room for his ego and stuff about boiling goats in milk. Oh, and stealing didn't make it either.)

So... really? Not so long ago gay people were illegal because of religion.

[DramaQueen]

I asked the cousin marriage thing cause I thought someone else can post some evidence that it isn't really a good idea. And Zakir Naik is an idiot, I thought you'd like him

And I didn't leave Islam because it's immoral nor because it was (it isn't btw), I left because it didn't convince me anymore and it contradicted science (especially the Hadiths)

[Esquilax]

Dude, guys, seriously: Harris is literally posting links about the things we're talking about because they contain negative words, regardless of the context. He's not reading his own stuff, why should any of us think he's reading ours?

[Harris]

I admire your childlike simplicity. However, I'm truly confounded by your notion that a person chooses his or her beliefs about the reality that is fostered upon them. I didn't chose to disbelieve in God. I chose to consider the evidence pro and con and as a consequence, was forced to doubt the credibility of those arguments in favor of Its existence.

I said “You have chosen to disbelieve,” whereas after giving some explanation you said you doubt the existence of God or in simple words you disbelieve in the existence of God. Yours and mine conclusions are same.

I agree with you. There are many illogical things written in the corrupted scriptures and many religious people are involved in bad deeds. However, you cannot bring human corruption to justify your denunciation of God.

For example, because native language of Stalin was Georgian and he killed millions of people brutally, that absolutely does not give you any reason to disregard Georgian language.

Logical and organized universe is out there and you are a product of that universe. Your own conscious in this rational universe is a miracle that no science can explain. It is only a matter of looking straight at the facts instead of meandering due to your personal preferences.

If you really are searching for the reality then read Quran, at least once. It is not a corrupted literature and it will give you right picture of God and His creations.

After reading Quran if something is not clear to you then ask me and I will try to clear your confusion.

http://www.qurantranslations.org/english/index.html

Fyodor Dostoevsky indeed spoke many great truths ("Rebellion" is one of the finest statements on the Problem of Evil that I've ever read) but again, you're simplistic understanding shines through when you confuse the views expressed by his fictional characters with a) his own views (which one can still rightly disagree with) and b) facts and/or generalizations about one person's POV as it relates to all of society.
The weak man suffers his cross. The strong man suffers his worm.

In above paragraph you wrote:

“Fyodor Dostoevsky indeed spoke many great truths ("Rebellion" is one of the finest statements on the Problem of Evil that I've ever read)”

Little further, you wrote:

“You confuse the views expressed by his fictional characters with a) his own views (which one can still rightly disagree with) and b) facts and/or generalizations about one person's POV as it relates to all of society.”

Is not this paragraph self-contradictory? After all “Rebellion” is also a personal view of the same writer, which one can still rightly disagree with!

Then, of course, you falsely equate homosexuality with "pleasure seeking behavior," including, as you describe it, incest (Oh yeah? Care to tell us more?) and "all other forms of illegal sex," demonstrating that not only are you a dunce but also a douchebag.

Sex seekers are in fact pleasure seekers.

Just admit it: you didn't read the whole thing, did you? You just scanned for individual words that you thought might agree with you, right? You didn't even read the complete sentences seemingly, because everything you highlighted that you say says one thing, says literally the opposite.

I have read the article and only after carefully reading, I had provided you the link. You love to force people to act in compliance with your wishes.

The following phrase is the heart of the article:

“REGARDLESS OF THE SMALL NUMBER, BASED ON ONE OR THE OTHER RELIGIOUS IDENTIFICATION SURVEY, ATHEISTS AREN’T PROPORTIONALLY REPRESENTED IN PRISON, AS A MATTER OF FACT THEY ARE BY FAR MISREPRESENTED, WITH A VERY SMALL NUMBER OF INMATES PER OVERALL ATHEIST POPULATION.”

But you initially posted this article while claiming that it shows the data we gave you is wrong. The article, all throughout, says that the data we gave you does say what we said it did. You were wrong, and now you're continuing to be wrong.

“REGARDLESS OF THE SMALL NUMBER, BASED ON ONE OR THE OTHER RELIGIOUS IDENTIFICATION SURVEY, ATHEISTS AREN’T PROPORTIONALLY REPRESENTED IN PRISON, AS A MATTER OF FACT THEY ARE BY FAR MISREPRESENTED, WITH A VERY SMALL NUMBER OF INMATES PER OVERALL ATHEIST POPULATION.”

I said it because it conveys an expletive in Western English. Don't think you get to tell me what I believe, you fatuous imbecile.

In Soviet Union “Боже мое!” (Oh my God) is the most commonly used phrase among atheists. So this phrase is not only specific to WESTERN ENGLISH. The use of word “God” as an emotional expression is common in almost all cultures of the world.

Believe or not but the concept of God is rooted in the human conscious.

I'd remind you that the last sentence in the article, the conclusion, says that "people’s assumption that atheists lack morals, are mostly unsubstantiated. "

Does that sound like the conclusion of an article that disagrees with literally that sentiment, when we gave it to you earlier in the thread?

That is not conclusion rather justification.

Sure! Things are getting better by applications of secular laws.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/bulletin_of...gster.html

Um... you linked me to a four year old abstract to a medical article about incest, which has nothing to do with secular laws, and whose conclusions don't even mention secular laws or behavior as a cause for that, so... irrelevant.

Please check this article.

http://www.thelizlibrary.org/site-index/...erica.html

If the link takes you to the index page then in that index look for “Unspeakable: Father-Daughter Incest in American History, by Lynn Sacco” under the heading: “Child Abuse and Domestic Violence”

This introduction will provide you sufficient information, which you can better understand.

Actually, you can if you read your own damn links: the first one was a side by side comparison of various things between Australia and the US. I suspect you stopped at the very first comparison, because it said Australia had 67% more of it than the US and that number fits into your predrawn conclusions if you don't think about it at all, but that comparison was over the age of criminal responsibility, not anything to do with actual crime rates. What it means is that Australia holds youths responsible for their crimes at a higher rate than the US. If we go to the "crime level" comparison, what do we see? Oh, we see that the US has "21% more" than Australia. Drug use? "29% more" than Australia. Violent crime? "6 times more" than Australia. Violent crime, specifically murder? "57 times more" than Australia. In fact, if you go down the list- and I recommend you do so!- you'll see that every single crime type is statistically higher in the US than in Australia. In your own link that you decided says the opposite.

As for your second link, it's some guy's blog. Not just any guy; some random gun advocate trying to spin Australia's lack of guns as being bad for law. It's biased.

Dear, I am saying that if Australian Secular Laws are so good than why people over the net comparing crimes in Australia with crimes in US (no matter in whatever context). This simply shows that secular laws are not effective in Australia. Crime rate is high and secular laws are not able to combat crimes effectively whether in US, Australia, or in any secular country. If secular laws were so effective then countries like Australia and US should be the most peaceful countries in the world. However, statistics show the opposite facts.

Why? You were making an argument about the rise in crime correlating with increasingly secular laws in a specifically secular country. Your claim was wrong, but more importantly it wasn't about comparing countries. Stop all these distraction tactics, or maybe actually remember what your own damn arguments are next time.

Australia and US are one of those countries which have highest crime rates. That is simply indicating that man-made secular laws are not working effectively.

Humans didn't come from monkeys, humans and apes have a common ancestor.
They evolved along separate pathways, and there's no one-way climb to intelligence. If you think that's what evolution describes you are sorely misinformed, but that's hardly shocking anymore.

Can science give you any verifiable evidence on how human and monkey evolved from one common source? Or like STUPID Dawkins you work on guesstimates only.

According to Wikipedia, Plato was born about 2437 years ago. Can you prove Plato even existed?

More distraction tactics.

Guys, I think it's pretty clear by now: Harris has no idea what he's talking about, and he doesn't have any interest in honest discussion. He's not even reading his own links, he's just including them on the basis of individual words rather than content. He's a liar, a conman, and aside from the amusement one gets from shooting fish in a barrel, I doubt he's worth seriously engaging. I think I've pretty conclusively proved he's not paying attention even to the things coming out of his own mouth, in his mad rush to disagree with the atheists.

Oh yeah! You see how it felt! When you said about Prophet David:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David

“Shocker, another source which doesn't provide any real evidence that the person in it even existed.”

That was the “honest discussion”. When I asked you the question:

“Can you prove Plato even existed?”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato

That question suddenly becomes a “dishonest discussion.”

This is known as “Double Standards!”

Wow, this thread has some really long posts. Anyway

Can you disprove existence of God by using your REAL SCIENCE?

We don't disprove something which hasn't been proven in the first place.

What scientific evidence do you have to support your opinion on evolution? Why you believe unempirical postulates without having verifiable scientific evidences.

http://humansarefree.com/2013/12/9-scien...ry-of.html

Quote:If there is no God what else can justify existence of this Spatiotemporal Universe.

You can believe in an eternal god, but not an eternal universe?

There is no other logical and convincing explanation for the existence of this temporal and intelligible universe than Mighty Intelligent God. Every scientific discovery only affirming and strengthening Intelligent Design, Fine Tuning, and Cosmological Argument.

If you are so sure that universe is eternal then use your REAL SCIENCE to prove and support your idea. Let me see what guts you have.

Quote:"If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one...”

Quote mine? really? did you even bother to read the entire page where you copied that from?

You guys love to throw riddles. Here I give another quote from the same old Nobel Prize Winner. This time this quote is almost a page long. I hope that after reading this quote you will not left with any doubt anymore.

Quote
Look at the five “words” below, knowing that they were written with an alphabet of 20 letters:

ILDIGDASAQELAEILKNAKTILWNGP
GLDIGPDSVKTFNDALDTTQTIIWNGP
GLDVGPKTRELFAAPIARAKLIVWNGP
GLDCGTESSKKYAEAVARAKQIVWNGP
GLDCGPESSKKYAEAVTRAKQIVWNGP

If I were to tell you the words were typed separately by five different monkeys, would you believe me? Not if you have taken more than a passing glance at them. “All five words end with WNGP,” you would point out to me, “and for monkeys hitting keyboards independently, this cannot be.” Actually it can. But the probability of such a coincidence is one in 655 billion billions. You would need a pretty large number of monkeys for five of them to have a reasonable chance of coming up with the same word ending. Surely, a more likely possibility is that the monkeys cheated. They copied! … If you look more closely, you will see that four other letters, in addition to the terminal four, are the same in all five words (LD in position 2 and 3, G in position 5, and I in position 22). This lowers the odds of a fortuitous coincidence to one in 429,500 billion billion billion billions. Trillions of planets like ours could not possibly provide enough monkeys. And this is not all. Five other letters are the same in four out of the five words (G in position 1, S in position 8, A in position 13, and AK in positions 19–20). Even more striking, the two last words have 25 out of 27 letters in common; they differ only in positions 6 and 17. There can be no doubt. If monkeys there were, they most certainly did not hit their typewriters’ keys at random.

The words shown are not inventions. They represent real things, fragments of molecules called proteins, which are very long chains of up to several hundred units called amino acids, of which 20 different kinds are used in the assembly of the chains. Each word represents the sequence of a 27-amino acid piece (each letter standing for a given kind of amino acid) present somewhere in the heart of a large protein molecule containing more than 400 amino acids. This protein is an enzyme, or biological catalyst, known as phosphoglycerate kinase, PGK for short. PGK is a key participant in one of the most fundamental processes that take place in living organisms, the conversion of sugar to alcohol (or lactic acid), which occurs in virtually all forms of life, whether microbes of various sorts, plants, molds, or animals (including humans).

Now comes the central piece of information, which explains why the words serve as an introduction to this book. The five structures shown belong to the PGKs of five widely different organisms. The first one belongs to Escherichia coli, or colibacillus, a common microbe that we all harbor in our gut. The others are from the wheat, fruit-fly, horse, and human PGKs, respectively:

Colibacillus:------ILDIGDASAQELAEILKNAKTILWNGP
Wheat:-----------GLDIGPDSVKTFNDALDTTQTIIWNGP
Fruitfly:----------GLDVGPKTRELFAAPIARAKLIVWNGP
Horse:-----------GLDCGTESSKKYAEAVARAKQIVWNGP
Human:---------GLDCGPESSKKYAEAVTRAKQIVWNGP

What our monkey parable has brought to light is that the similarities among the PGKs of our sample organisms could not possibly be due to chance. A possibility could be—this, no doubt, would be the “creationist” view—that the similarities betray the intervention of a “hidden hand.”

End Quote

Life Evolving: Molecules, Mind, and Meaning
Pages 3-4
Christian de Duve

Quote:Correct! Adam’s children were getting married together in order to spread human race on earth. There was no miracle and there was no evolution. That was the requirement then. However, neither Adam nor Eve were touching their off springs in obedience of God’s commandments.
You do know what 'incest' is right? And why it is bad to produce offsprings via incest let alone populate the entire world?

Today in the world, many people are those who were born because of the act of incest. Those people are normal human beings by all medical definitions.

In animals, incest is a very common act. Yet, in general, we do not see any medical disorder in the animal kingdom. In reality, we observe something opposite to what we think and say.

At the time of Adam and Eve, marriage among their children was the only option and it was the requirement until sufficient number of human beings spread over the earth.

In today’s world, incest is harmful morally. It has the power to destroy whole human psychology even if it is based on consensual relations.

Quote:I repeat that anxiety arising out from adultery is a universal feeling and every normal person hate such feelings. For that reason, adultery is a crime and immoral act.

You do know that there are several tribes in Africa, who willingly exchange wives and husbands, and even some where the wife can belong to multiple husbands? So no, it is not a 'universal' feeling, rather it is how our modern societies have come to feel.

You are talking about African tribes; I know there are some places in Siberia where host offers his wife as a sign of hospitality to his guest.

However, do you think they are normal people? Is it a normal practice to exchange wives in any developed society? Can you share your wife with your friend?

Before you give some abnormal example, put your own self in that example and judge whether it is a normal trend in the high end societies or not.

In my response, I have explicitly used the expression “Normal person”.

You also do know that quran and other religious texts support the idea of concubines and sex-slaves, right?

You guys do cherry picking when you start characterising Islam. You pick a topic and present it as your argument without knowing what the topic is saying. Let me give you little taste of what concubine is.

It is a war custom to take men and women as captives and use them as labour. In the past, these captives were turned into slaves. Islam did not initiated that slavery rather it tried to reduce it bit by bit.

In the modern world solders commonly, rape captive women or women in the occupied territories. For example, Allied troops in German occupied territories conducted mass rapes in the last stages of World War II. The soldiers who took part in those mass rapes were US, English, French, and Soviet army servicemen. According to an approximate estimation, the soldiers of allied force raped over 2 million German women and young girls.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during...of_Germany

That was the exact practice at the time when Islam started in Mecca. To stop such inhuman behaviour of soldiers, Islam has imposed certain rules for treating war captives. These laws are perfectly applicable to the modern world.

The basic purpose of these laws is to eradicate fornication and rape during the war times when there cannot be any check and balance over individual soldiers. A soldier motivated by Islamic laws would never let himself to go for unjustified acts during or after the war.

Primarily Concubines should not be confused with that of female servants or maids as maids are free people and not slaves. Therefore, it is forbidden to engage in sexual relations with maids except through an Islamic marriage. Likewise, mistress and prostitute take a payment by their free will for giving pleasure to some hungry man. Therefore, they are not concubines either.

According to Islamic laws, a man has no right to force a concubine for sexual relations. If a man started sexual relation with concubine based on consensus, she automatically gets the status and all rights of a legitimate wife. She is the authentic and respectful family member. The children of a concubine are not treated as born out of wedlock and grow up without the name and shadow of father. The children of concubine are known as the children of the master, grew up with his other children, and had exactly the same rights in inheritance as the other offspring.

“And let those who find not the financial means for marriage keep themselves chaste, until Allah enriches them of His Bounty. And such of your slaves as seek a writing (of emancipation), give them such writing, if you know that they are good and trustworthy. And give them something yourselves out of the wealth of Allah which He has bestowed upon you. And force not your maids to prostitution, if they desire chastity, in order that you may make a gain in the (perishable) goods of this worldly life. But if anyone compels them (to prostitution), then after such compulsion, Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful (to those women, i.e. He will forgive them because they have been forced to do this evil action unwillingly).”
An Nuur (24)
-Verse 33-

Quote:Rapist is a rapist because he has no guilt and threat of moral accountability. Rapist do not care about the existence of God at least at the time when he commits the rape. Therefore, rapist is atheist. I had never heard any case that someone raped in the name of Jesus.

Ah I didn't know you were a psychic able to read a rapists mind during a rape. Also raping in the name of jesus? You should really follow the news sometimes.

In place of throwing some riddles, you can simply provide citation. That would work more effectively.

Quote:To help any starving person or give medicine to some sick person who cannot afford medicine for his cure due to whatsoever reason is not stupidity. Atheism kills conscience and pushes people to arrogance and barbarism.
You have no idea about empathy.
Helping the needy is not dependent on religion. People all over the world help those who are in need, irrespective of their faith or lack thereof.

On the other hand forcefully 'helping' those who don't want or need it, is one of the most prominent feature of abrahamic faith systems.
Skype: aoi.magi
add me if you want to get annoyed by me personal.

“On the other hand forcefully 'helping' those who don't want or need it, is one of the most prominent feature of abrahamic faith systems.”

You are wrong here. In Islam, there is no compulsion. The job of a Muslim is to convey a message in an intelligible manner. Once the meaning and truth exposed to the listener, the job of a Muslim is done. After that if the listener accepts or rejects the truth, it is his free choice.

Normally, if I want to help someone then I first inform him about my intensions, if he refuses then he is free to make his choice.

Adam and eve is not logical in the slightest, it's a laughable myth, it belongs with other myths. abiogenesis is only a hypothesis, but is still much more genuine, honest, less laughable than getting information from an ancient arabic book.
The theory of evolution as the name suggests is a reliable scientific theory.
It's quite easy to spot the odd one out when you put a scientific theory in with a group of ancient myths.

Ancient myth
Quote:Faro created all the world that mankind has come to know from the descendants of Mangala's original egg seeds. He caused the land to flood to wash away the impure seed of his brother, Pemba. From this flood, only the good were saved, sheltered by Faro's ark.

Ancient myth
Quote:The goddess Nüwa then used clay to form humans. These humans were very smart since they were individually crafted. Nüwa then became bored of individually making every human, so she dipped a rope in clay and the blobs that fell from it became new humans. These new humans were not as smart as the original ones.

What modern day Muslims actually believed happened and is definitely not an ancient myth.
Quote:He created Adam from clay and He breathed life into him. He created Him from dust; then He said to him, "Be," and he was. From Adam he created a mate, and from both of them many men and women.

(Oh and I don't need to study meiosis and mitosis at all, I have good old trusty Islamic hadith explanation as to the diversity of human kind on the planet.)

Hadith transmitted by one of Muhammad's companions.
Quote:"Allah created Adam from a handful of dust taken from different lands, so the children of Adam have been created according to the composition of the land. Therefore, from mankind we have white, red, black and yellow ones; we have good and evil, ease and sorrow, and what comes in between

Ok and now......

Scientific theory.
Quote:Evolution is the change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.
All life on Earth is descended from a last universal ancestor that lived approximately 3.8-3.5 billion years ago. Repeated speciation and the divergence of life can be inferred from shared sets of biochemical and morphological traits, or by sequencing shared DNA sequences. These homologous traits and sequences are more similar among species that share a more recent common ancestor, and can be used to reconstruct evolutionary histories, using both existing species and the fossil record. Existing patterns of biodiversity have been shaped both by speciation and by extinction.

I'm not saying everything about evolution is definitely 100 percent right and I believe in it religiously, or that I even understand 100 percent everything about it because I'm not a biologist.
BUT I think I can see the difference between an ancient myth and a genuine, honest scientific attempt to try and discover the truth about something.

The problem is that having aversive attitude and little knowhow you think you can see the difference.

Keep the following verses from Quran at the back of your mind:

AND FOR EVERY UMMAH (A COMMUNITY OR A NATION), THERE IS A MESSENGER; when their Messenger comes, the matter will be judged between them with justice, and they will not be wronged.
Yunus (10)
-Verse 47-

Verily! We have sent you with the truth, a bearer of glad tidings, and a warner. AND THERE NEVER WAS A NATION BUT A WARNER HAD PASSED AMONG THEM.
Faathir (35)
-Verse 24-

MANKIND WAS ONE SINGLE NATION, AND ALLAH SENT MESSENGERS WITH GLAD TIDINGS AND WARNINGS; AND WITH THEM HE SENT THE BOOK IN TRUTH, TO JUDGE BETWEEN PEOPLE IN MATTERS WHEREIN THEY DIFFERED; but the People of the Book, after the clear Signs came to them, did not differ among themselves, except through selfish contumacy. Allah by His Grace Guided the believers to the Truth, concerning that wherein they differed. For Allah guided whom He will to a path that is straight.
Al Baqarah (2)
-Verse 213-

Whoever goes right, then he goes right only for the benefit of his own self. And whoever goes astray, then he goes astray to his own loss. No one laden with burdens can bear another’s burden. AND WE NEVER PUNISH UNTIL WE HAVE SENT A MESSENGER (TO GIVE WARNING).
Al Israa' (17)
-Verse 15-

According to these verses, scholars of Islam state that there was not a single nation and race on earth among whom Allah had not sent His messengers and books. All those messengers had given good tidings to the believers and warning to non-believers.

However, Quran precisely talks about 4 scriptures and 26 prophets out of about 124,000 prophets and messengers who came to guide all nations of the world.

Let us now analyse few myths in relation to “creation of man from clay.” These myths I selected randomly from different nations of the world:

Prometheus
He is a character of Greek Mythology. According to the myths, he played central role in the creation of the human race out of clay.

Khnum
Character of Egyptian mythology one of the earliest Egyptian deities, originally the god of the source of the Nile River. Since the annual flooding of the Nile brought with it silt and clay, and its water brought life to its surroundings, he was thought to be the creator of the bodies of human children, which he made at a potter's wheel, from clay, and placed in their mothers' wombs.

Earth-Maker myth
This myth comes from the Native Americans of California, also called the "Story of Creation.” According to Myth, Men and women were created out of soft clay into which Earth-Maker "breathed life".

Nüwa
Nüwa or Nügua is a goddess in ancient Chinese mythology best known for creating humankind and repairing the pillar of heaven. There were no men when the sky and the earth were separated. Thus, Nüwa used yellow clay to make people. Nüwa molded figures from the yellow earth, giving them life and the ability to bear children.

Pundjel
In Australian aboriginal mythology, Pundjel is a creator god. Several tribes believe that in the beginning, Pundjel formed two males from clay

Juok
Juok is the name of god for the tribes on the upper reaches of the Nile. For some including the Shilluk, Dinka and Nuer, he is the Creator God and is omnipresent. According to the myth Juok travelled north and found some white clay, out of which he fashioned Europeans. The Arabs were made of reddish-brown clay and the Africans from black earth.

Cheremiss
The Cheremiss of Russia, a Finnish people, tell a story of the creation of man, which recalls episodes in the Toradjan and Indian legends of the same event. They say that God moulded man's body of clay and then went up to heaven to fetch the soul, with which to animate it.

As you see the “creation of humans from clay,” stories are common throughout the world, including places like Australia and the Pacific Islands, which were not in contact with Islam or any Abrahamic faiths until recent times.

At close analyses, it becomes obvious that there was no link among these mentioned nations especially in time when those myths developed.

In all these myths “creation of human from clay” is a common factor, regardless of geographical settlements of these nations. This is the evidence that someone in these nations had taught people the same creation story. He should be the same person or if not then the source of these storytellers should be the same.

The verses of Quran that I had quoted at the beginning enlighten a fact that all these myths about “human creation from clay” are nothing more than the distorted versions of what different prophets had preached in different nations in different times. The source of information of all those prophets was one and that was God.

Evolution is not a scientific fact as scientific facts are all based on technical data acquired from experiments and observations. Evolution is not an observable process. All evolutionary hypothesis and postulates are totally based on speculations and conjectures.

For more details, you can go back and read my article “Is Evolution a science or a faith.”

Yes. Fairy tales are often simpler than reality-- "logical" is not the right word, though-- "simple" is.

The problem is that your simple story lacks evidence, any explanatory value of how we have become what we are, any predictive value for possible future states of humanity, and it's tied into a mythology about a Sky Daddy who punishes children, "even to the fourth generation," for the sins of their fathers. And then, after all this baby-torturing, sends messengers to tell us that God is pure good and perfectly all-loving. Yeah-- totally logical.

I agree that no child in the world should get punishment for the sins of his/her parents. According to the teachings of Islam no one is born in sin and every individual would be accountable only for his/her own deeds. A person become sinner when he starts running after his desires blindly and shows no signs of patience.

As for the evidence, you cannot give even a single verifiable evidence that supports the theory of evolution.

See what one of your own atheist colleague is saying about theory of evolution:

“I would like to defend the untutored reaction of incredulity to the reductionist neo-Darwinian account of the origin and evolution of life. It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection. We are expected to abandon this naïve response, not in favor of a fully worked out physical/chemical explanation but in favor of an alternative that is really a schema for explanation, supported by some examples. What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that the story has a non-negligible probability of being true. There are two questions. First, given what is known about the chemical basis of biology and genetics, what is the likelihood that self-reproducing life forms should have come into existence spontaneously on the early earth, solely through the operation of the laws of physics and chemistry? The second question is about the sources of variation in the evolutionary process that was set in motion once life began: In the available geological time since the first life forms appeared on earth, what is the likelihood that, as a result of physical accident, a sequence of viable genetic mutations should have occurred that was sufficient to permit natural selection to produce the organisms that actually exist?” …

Since the questions concern highly specific events over a long historical period in the distant past, the available evidence is very indirect, and general assumptions have to play an important part. My skepticism is not based on religious belief, or on a belief in any definite alternative. It is just a belief that the available scientific evidence, in spite of the consensus of scientific opinion, does not in this matter rationally require us to subordinate the incredulity of common sense. That is especially true with regard to the origin of life.

MIND AND COSMOS:
Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
Introduction
Thomas Nagel

“I have argued patiently against the prevailing form of naturalism, a reductive materialism that purports to capture life and mind through its neo-Darwinian extension. But to go back to my introductory remarks, I find this view antecedently unbelievable—a heroic triumph of ideological theory over common sense. The empirical evidence can be interpreted to accommodate different comprehensive theories, but in this case the cost in conceptual and probabilistic contortions is prohibitive. I would be willing to bet that the present right-thinking consensus will come to seem laughable in a generation or two—though of course it may be replaced by a new consensus that is just as invalid. The human will to believe is inexhaustible.”

MIND AND COSMOS:
Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
Thomas Nagel

Did I just read the phrase, "rapist is atheist"?

I think atheism may be the most misunderstood concept in today's world. Atheism certainly doesn't achieve any of these arbitrary goals, since it makes no attempt to.

However, generally atheism is more likely to lead to personal accountability, so if you rape someone, you have to live with it. You don't get a free pass thanks to sucking up to someone, and not the person you raped, later.

Holy books are a bunch of crap as far as morals are concerned. The bible for example is just one long story of atrocity, and we have had to make secular laws to stop people doing most of it. Do you think we were wrong to do so? Should we still be stoning people to death for gathering sticks on Sunday? If something is moral because someone says its moral and you just follow blindly, you have no morals at all. You are just being obedient to someone who may or may not actually be moral.

Morals = empathy + reason

If something is moral and happens to be in some old book, then it's not moral because it's in some old book. You could write a book about morals, and it could be wonderfully accurate as far as possible, without it having anything to do with gods or mythology.

I have heard many times that people think if they gave up religion they would just go around murdering and raping. This is the result of brainwashing. People are more moral than the religions they follow preach (at least most people are) because they apply their own morality to it to pick and choose what is and isn't right. There may be a few severely mentally unstable people for which the idea of accountability to god is the only thing keeping them from pillaging, but I would be fairly certain this is a tiny minority of people with such fears.

As children, we need a level of guidance because we don't yet have the full mental capacity to make good decisions. But once you are an adult, you should be able to figure it out for yourself.
________________________________________
Wow, OK I just can't let this go. Barbarians and creative writers 2000 years ago know stuff about morality that we don't?

Also, religion teaches morality in a very black and white way. This good, that bad. Don't do that, I'll stick a spike in you if you do. Real life is in the grey area, and such bold statements can only act as a very rough guide. And generally not a good one. Did you know "thou shalt not kill" isn't even in the ten commandments? I know most people think it is, but it isn't. Are they all gonna start killing each other now they know this? (It made god's first draft of over 200 commandments, but he decided to leave it out for the final draft onto the tablets to make more room for his ego and stuff about boiling goats in milk. Oh, and stealing didn't make it either.)

So... really? Not so long ago gay people were illegal because of religion.
I never mean my words to be insulting to anyone. I don't hate religious people. I hate religion, and I hate the hold is has over people's ability to reason clearly. And I hate the harm that is done in its name, especially the forcing of it onto children.

I appreciate your emotional stuff. However, Atheism in reality is very cruel.

If we use biblical numbers only then according to that Christianity has killed 2,821,364 people in the name of Christianity.

Jerusalem conquered 7/15/1099 more than 60,000 victims (Jewish, Muslim, men, women, children) were killed by Christians

One million killed by Crusades as estimated by Wertham

Rough approximation is about 3,881,364 people killed in the name of Christianity within 2000 years.

Whereas Atheists have killed about 130,000,000 people within 100 years only in the name of atheism.

If we take the killings caused by all monotheistic religions in the name of religion then the number cannot even come closer to what atheism had done to humanity in the name of atheism.

Above figures are obvious to conclude who is barbaric, religion or atheism.

I asked the cousin marriage thing cause I thought someone else can post some evidence that it isn't really a good idea. And Zakir Naik is an idiot, I thought you'd like him

Why you are looking for evidence from someone else? If you had no evidence then how comes you are so sure that cousin marriage brings bad consequences from a medical point of view.

For your information, cousin marriage is not considered as incest if you know not.

Zakir Naik knows how to expose truth and reality by condemning the unjustified ideas based on the comparison of different scriptures. He is convincing the people by leaving no margin of doubt, which is a significant fact. I appreciate his efforts.

And I didn't leave Islam because it's immoral nor because it was (it isn't btw), I left because it didn't convince me anymore and it contradicted science (especially the Hadiths)

Please quote that Hadiths that pushed you out of Islam.

[paulpablo]

I thought you were pretending to sound scientific before by talking about meiosis and mitosis, now you have gone back to believing the diversity of humanity is due to them being made by different coloured clay.

It could just be that clay was used to create things in lots of cultures and that's why god created man from clay in many primitive myths.

Each myth is not distorted, they're just fictional, created by locals and so therefore reflect the mentality of the locals.

Notice how each nation had a prophet that was speaking the true message of Islam, some of them remembered the bit in which they were made from clay, but most of them forgot about the specific rules of Islam. And then there were others who made their own completely non related creation stories completely independent of Islam too.

Superstitious drug dealers will believe in a god of drug dealing, superstitious people living near the nile will believe in a god of nile. Superstitious people living near clay will make myths about clay. That's the only connection here.

And you also believe biologists believe in evolution because of conjecture.

You haven't still haven't convinced me yet that it's more logical that the diversity of mankind is due to different clay being used during our creation. I still believe in evolution and natural selection. I feel the compulsion to side with the professional biologists and paleontologists and such. Rather than the ancient clay myths.

[Firewalker]

In the article I will discuss, why an atheist who adopted a moral way of living is more vulnerable to immorality compared to a religious person. But, before I go further, two points I want to make here. For me there is no difference between any religious person who does not follow his religious laws and rituals and an atheist. Secondly, I would keep myself refrain from going into intricate details of morality and keep my focus purely on the reasons why a person can be moral or immoral.

I perceive human body as an interface comprises of different sensory receptors. The job of these receptors is to collect and process data from the outside world into meaningful information and provide sensibility to a person. Life is intelligent as it can receive data, read data, understand data, and issue commands based on data. This interpretation of data is in fact the cause of feelings of pleasure and pain in people.

Pleasure and pain is the core of all human activities, in general. Every person desires pleasure, joy, and comfort in his life and everyone put the utmost efforts to escape pain, anxiety, and discomfort. Here the exception goes to the concept of sacrifice where embracement of pain is premeditated.

MORALS
Now the question is why rational beings (humans) should live a moral life. Short answer to that is because humans are dependent beings. A person cannot be tailor, engineer, doctor, teacher, etc., at the same time. Man finds his personal fulfilment only in relations with other people. Why be good? Because being good--living virtuously--is the only way to a fulfilled, self-actualized life.

Morals develop through the needs and the fulfilment of those necessities, in human life. I can say moral is the innate quality of each person. However, there is a black side to this scenario.

Human nature, in favourable circumstances, is also clearly constructed for icy selfishness cruel exploitation, uncontrollable rage and a range of other less desirable traits. So the dilemma is this: How do we choose between good and bad instincts?

Although atheism fails to answer this dilemma, it sternly criticise morals based on religion by undermining the fact that religion is the only institute in the entire human history that successfully delivered and implemented efficient rules for a moral life.

Some have argued that a morality based on obedience to a divine will is ‘infantile’ (Patrick Nowell-Smith 1966); others see it as ‘prehuman’ (Erich Fromm) or ‘bad faith’ (Simone de Beauvoir), or as promoting a ‘loss of self’ (Karl Marx).

However, these condemnations do not have any validation because atheism is only a belief in the non-existence of God, which instinctively eradicate any moral rules given by God. Conversely, atheism has nothing to offer to fill this moral gap. Maximum it says:

"Obey your evolutionary instincts,"
"Respect your brain chemistry," or
"Follow your mental wirings"

By Logic Atheism gives no ground for morality. In atheism when you look at the bottom of the universe there is no good there is no evil there is no justice and DNA is just is and we dance to its music. By definition, this undermines all morality.

The message one may draw from this knowledge is this: You have a limited number of days, hours, and minutes. Therefore, you should strive to fill each of those days, hours, and minutes with meaning. You should strive to fill them with learning and gaining comfort, joy, and pleasure as much as you can.

Therefore, living in an Ethical and rationally governed society would afford everyone the best chance of achieving any rational plan of life, including immoral ones. Transgressors are often actually socially and legally rather morally, prim apart from their own immoral behaviours. In effect, they are civil freeloaders, happy to endorse morality and law for others while selectively exempting themselves from them.

People can and do have rational plan of life that include desires to achieve things that they morally ought to refrain from doing. For example,

Joseph Stalin kill 42,672,000 people
Mao Zedong kill 37,828,000 people
Adolf Hitler kill 20,946,000 people
Chiang Kaikillshek kill 10,214,000 people
Vladimir Lenin kill 4,017,000 people
Hideki Tojo kill 3,990,000 people
Pol Pot kill 2,397,0003 people

Their rational plans of life-involved goals, such as genocide, were the integral part of their rational plan of life, and hence doing that had the highest value for them; but it does not follow that they morally ought to have pursued that end. So, insofar as Ethical Rational justification uses the motivation to realize rational plan of life, any rational plan of life, Ethical Rationalism would, at least in some instances, legitimize immoral rational plan of life.

In contrast to atheism, religion give definite laws for a moral life. The relationship between religion and morality is important for questions of practical moral decision. Religious ethicists have a long record of attempting to relate theory to practice in moral discussion. The ability of a moral system to provide practical guidance is especially important during times of extensive moral confusion.

Religious activity extends, of course, well beyond the range of specifically moral concerns. Religious scholars have typically insisted, however, that religious teachings provide the larger context in which the claims of morality find their proper place.

Compare religious teachings to the infinite stretch of time, and think that person will cease to exist, that he will be no more but an infinitesimal moment, a spark in the infinite blackness, a spark that flickers and dies forever.

Critics of religiously based moral perspectives undermine the fact that Religious teachings are narratively rich. These narratives provide the believer with an expanded sense of what is morally possible: the belief in miracles and a Final Judgment, and a sense of access to divine sources of strength and blessing, can have an important impact on moral motivation.

Atheism abandon the scriptures without providing any alternate model for moral code of conduct. Hence, atheists are left with no other choice than to peek into religion in pursuit of moral guidance. There is no academy in the secular world that gives awareness on morals in a scientific way.

On the other hand, I believe that whole structure of morals in secularism is based on the religious teachings because only it is religion that had given knowledge on human values in a systematic manner and people have enjoyed the wisdom of morals based on religion throughout the human history.

Please listen to this inspiring talk by Alain De Botton (an atheist) on how religion is important for Atheism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Oe6HUgrRlQ

You need to correct your list. Hitler was a practicing Catholic. Interestingly, he identified with a militaristic view of "Jesus". He admired JC's extreme reaction with the moneylenders in the temple.
Also, this is a tired argument, as the Communist ideal is used as a guise. Communism will never come about and is never meant to. It is just totalitarian regime holding the country in "escrow" til a day when Communism takes effect. That day just never comes. Equating atheism with a totalitarian regime is useless.

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In contrast to atheism, religion give definite laws for a moral life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Oe6HUgrRlQ

They do not. Case in point. "Lo tirtzack" of Ten Commandment fame. (Thou Shalt Not Kill) is incorrectly translated. It means "Thou Shalt Not Kill Anything Whatsoever" and was a dietary edict. Followers of Moses were fruitarian. Why the change?

Also, "wicked" in the bible did not mean evil. People who did not follow the Torah were called wicked. Do you follow the Torah? Why the CHANGE?