“The Problem of Evil” in atheism and in Islam

[Harris]

This is factually incorrect. Transcription errors can insert additional base pairs, which is another way of saying -- you guessed it! -- additional information.

Along with the definitions of different TYPES OF MUTATIONS you should give proper examples from real life that can testify those definitions. I hope someday you or any geneticist would find some good example to justify the claim that “information content increase over evolution.” Until today, there exists no such example.

Time to read some proper scientific material and not apologetic psuedo science nonsense.

You should read about Blind Algorithms of Natural Selections. It is a precise and proper science.

Yes and the point I'm maintaining is that there are literally hundreds if not thousands of strange illogical cults that still manage to attract well educated people.

Cult roughly refers to a cohesive social group devoted to beliefs that the surrounding culture considers outside the mainstream.

God Exist is the mainstream belief in the world. Atheist community is a relatively small group of people who are not part of this mainstream belief. In this sense, atheism is a cult.

You are understanding me poorly, not the other way around.

IN THIS POINT I AM NOT TRYING TO CRITICIZE ISLAMIC LAWS OR ANYTHING TO DO WITH ISLAM.

I'm criticizing you when you make an appeal to numbers by saying that there are so many billion Muslims in the world and I'd be going against them by saying there is no God.


My point is that yes my beliefs go against theirs, but in a billion Muslims there are vastly different opinions about what being a Muslim is, so while on paper they will all be classified in as the same thing, the reality is they are not all one big unified group.

A person is a Muslim if he/she performs five basic acts (The Five Pillars of Islam) which are mandatory to be a Muslim. They are:

1. SHAHADAH: declaring there is no god except Allah, and Muhammad is Allah's Messenger
2. SALAT: ritual prayer five times a day
3. ZAKAT: giving 2.5% of one’s savings to the poor and needy
4. SAWM: fasting and self-control during the holy month of Ramadan
5. HAJJ: pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime

If anyone rejects even one of these acts then he/she is not considered as a Muslim.

You may find many Muslims who are not punctual in performing these obligatory acts but because they do not reject them, therefore they are considered as Muslims (not good ones). These type of Muslims may sometimes use reasoning for the justification of their laziness and that reasoning usually is not compatible with the principles of Islamic laws.

If one Muslim perform SALAT by putting a cap over his head and other without then this is not a principle difference.

Harris Wrote: I also wonder what atheism has to do with “The Problem of Evil?” Yet, people like Dr Russell frequently use it to disprove the existence of God.

Chas Wrote: Then you neither understand The Problem of Evil nor the argument.

Have you read my Article “The Problem of Evil in atheism and in Islam” if not then read it before you give any opinion about my understanding.

http://atheistforums.org/thread-30896.html

Harris Wrote: Sure! Genes can replicate and mutate and that is the main cause of diverse looks of the same species. However, there is no scientific evidence that one type of species can develop into another by means of “increase in information content over evolution.” Replication and mutation do not increase the information in the genome. If someone is saying that “information content increase over evolution,” then he is fooling you.

Chas Wrote: Mutation is a change to the existing information - that is new information.

You are fooling yourself.

Green and Red are two distinct facts. When you see at Green Apple and at Red apple that means you are looking at different variants of apple. Although Green and Red equivalently applicable on tomato but in no sense apple is tomato. Likewise when you are looking at a white man and at a black man that means you are looking at human beings not at monkey. Variation in the outlook does not mean change in the principle structure of a particular type.

If you think mutation and replication is the cause of transforming one type of living being into another then bring proper scientific evidence for that. For example, bring proper scientific reasoning on how an ape transformed into human. Your example should be testable and observable. I would not mind if you would take some help from professional geneticists for that purpose. However, remember the words of Dawkins:

“Almost all of evolution happened way back in the past, WHICH MAKES IT HARD TO STUDY DETAILS. But we can use the “LENGTH OF BOOK” THOUGHT-EXPERIMENT to agree upon what it would mean to ask the question whether information content increases over evolution, IF ONLY WE HAD ANCESTRAL ANIMALS TO LOOK AT.

The answer in practice is COMPLICATED and CONTROVERSIAL, all bound up with a vigorous debate over whether evolution is, in general, progressive. I am one of those associated with a LIMITED FORM of yes answer.”

http://www.skeptics.com.au/publications/...challenge/

First demonstrate God's existence, then show how you know its attributes so well.

Logically, nothingness cannot be expressed in any logical form because there is no way in which nothingness can be defined in terms of being. The universe can only function because it is not nothingness. Since pure nothingness is an impossibility, there never was a time when Being did not exist. In short, Being is eternal. Thus, Being possesses the divine attributes of necessity, eternity, omnipresence, and infinity. Consequently, Being is God Himself.

How I know about the attributes of God so Well, the answer is Quran. Quran provides all necessary information about God.

Quran is the only scripture in the world, which has the largest number of memorizers. No one in the world was able to corrupt Quran in last 1400 years.

Do they not consider the Qur an (with care)? Had it been from other Than Allah, they would surely have found therein much discrepancy.
An Nisaa (4)
-Verse 82-

We have, without doubt, sent down the Message (Quran); and We will assuredly guard it (from corruption).
Al Hijr (15)
-Verse 9-

If somehow, all copies of Quran get lost then in a matter of only few hours, Muslims would reprint exact original Quran with the help of millions of people who have Quran in their memories (word-by-word and dot by dot without any discrepancies).

People had successfully corrupted all previous scriptures by using their intellect due to their wishful thinking and lustful desires. Now the same human intellect is guarding Quran against any corruption. Such an intellectual shield cannot be designed and managed by any human. Quran is a living miracle. Quran is the Word of God.

I hope I have given you logical proof about the existence of God and a hint about Quran is a word of God.

Harris Wrote: Prophet Mohammad died around 1,400 years ago but Islam is continuously spreading around the world with success even today. After the deaths of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao the spread of communism and atheism falls drastically. So what happens to communism and atheism?

Chas Wrote: Except for the fact that there are increasing numbers of atheists. So, there's that.

After the fall of Soviet Union, more than 60% of atheists dramatically turned their faces to churches, mosques, and synagogues in former Soviet Republics including Russia and Baltic countries. Huge number of former atheists converted into believers of God with the fall of Soviet Union.

You are saying atheism is spreading go and study about what is happening in Eastern and most part of Western Europe including UK and Germany.

In response to a Question:

You’ve been travelling to the States from the U.K. for a number of years. Have you noticed much of a change in the place of religion in the two countries over that time?

Dawkins Answered:

Notoriously, the United States is the most religious of the Western advanced nations. It’s a bit mysterious why that is. In Britain, Christianity is dying. ISLAM, UNFORTUNATELY, ISN’T. In Western Europe generally, Christianity is dying. Even in America, the figures show that religious adherence is being steadily reduced, and the people who now record themselves as having no religious affiliation is something like 20 percent. Many people don’t recognize what a high figure it is, and so politicians here who feel they have to curry favor with religious lobbies should maybe take a look at those statistics and realize that not everyone in this country is religious.

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/...l-compass/

Harris Wrote: If you prove that human intellect is man made by the use of which man is making science then I have no trouble in accepting that science is manmade.

Chas Wrote: That was incoherent. Human intellect evolved.

If you think that “human intellect evolved,” perhaps by “blind and unguided natural selection” then does that give any proof that human intellect is manmade?

I don't much give a rat's ass what a non-scientific philosopher says about that. No one says the mind is identical to the brain - that's your straw man.

There is no evidence that the mind is anywhere but in the brain.

If I give piece of my physical brain to you then do you think you will get piece of my thoughts with that?

Harris Wrote: So it is clear that the mind cannot be identical to the brain. If that identity held, then every brain state would be mental, which is obviously false. But what is wrong with holding the converse, namely, that every mental state is a brain state?

If every mental state is a brain state, then every belief is a brain state. But beliefs have properties that brain states cannot have. One is the property of being either true or false; another is intentionality. So no belief is a brain state.

Chas Wrote: Straw man. Unsupported assertions.

You have improperly rejected my reasoning by declaring it imprecise. Better if you give correct counter argument instead of rejecting abstractly.

Natural selection was Darwin's term for the mindless algorithm of differential reproductive success. There is no entity doing any selecting.

What is “MINDLESS ALGORITHM?”

Harris Wrote: Now I am sorry that I am giving you such questions knowingly that you do not have a biological background but your explanations are not giving me any options than to ask you these questions.

Chas Wrote: You have no clear understanding of evolution, so you are in no position to judge.

If the foundation of evolution is MINDLESS ALGORITHM then for sure I do not have clear scientific facts on evolution.

Harris Wrote: You are right on spot in saying that Natural Selection is some kind of blind god. The reason behind this assumption is that there no scientifically discernible explanation for Natural Selection.

Chas Wrote: See above where I describe precisely what it is.

You mean precise scientific explanation of evolution is MINDLESS ALGORITHM.

It isn't selecting anything, there is no selection being made by any being, creature or entity.

As I said before no I don't have a background in biology but I do read up about nature in a non scientific way and can relate that to some scientific information I know about.

Natural selection, to my limited understanding of biology, is like a process of elimination, no one is selecting anything.

Animals with beneficial traits bred into them by their parents live and those with none beneficial traits die without breeding.

This isn't the only type of selection though because there's also sexual selection, in which case the traits which evolve due to sexual selection won't have many benefits against predators or benefits in gaining food but just purely give the creature more mating success.

Again the same example I used last time, this is an explanation for the flightless birds on isolated islands, they didn't need to fly, flying takes up a lot of energy, they had no predators on land so they lost the use of flight.

If the selection had been by some all knowing entity, it would have told the birds to carry on flying because there are predators out there on other islands that will soon come and get them.

All that you have explained sounds like a myth.

In nature, behind every action, there is a cause and science gives explanation about that cause. Science tells why and how something is happening. So, what is the scientific explanation for the ELIMINATION.

In other words, you should first give proper scientific definition of natural selection then you should explain how natural selection knows what to select and why then you should give mechanics how that selection is made and how that elimination process took place. You cannot simply say that survival in nature will be for the strongest and the fittest. Without scientific details and supporting evidences, Natural Selection is not a science it is a myth a blind god.

If we use logic to understand natural selection, then we have blind unguided process to start with and for sure, that makes no sense in logic.

This information bares no relevence to to the questions I asked you in relation to what you originally said.

You were originally saying that you noticed that many animals that aren't humans seemed mechanical and seemingly without a will or soul.

I asked you a question, have you noticed that animals with more intellect and brain power seem to be less mechanical, for example any great ape, dolphin and so on, compared with a jellyfish.

What you seem to be implying is that if a jellyfish had human will power or soul, it would be no consequence that it actually has no brain, it would still make decisions of good vs evil and be able to think complex thoughts.

Brain of an elephant is the largest contained by any living land-dwelling mammal. The adult male elephant's brain can grow to be a whopping 12 pounds (5.44 Kg). Now compare it with the normal human brain 3.1 pounds (1.4 Kg). Elephant’s brain is 400% more in mass than the brain of human or take the brain of adult sperm whale which is 8,000 cubic centimetres whereas human brain is about 1,300 cubic centimetres. Yet poor elephant and poor whale cannot have fun by watching a documentary on wildlife. The intellect that humans have does not depend on size of brain. Size is not a point of reference for human intellect. Human intellect is by no means a match with the intellect of any living organism on the planet earth. Bigger is not always better.

The main question is why humans have a matchless intellect why elephant and whale do not have the similar intellect when they have much bigger brains than human.

The answer lies in the understanding of intellect, consciousness, and power of will, which are not properties of physical bodies. In my previous responses, I had given you logical details on how these qualities transcend physical states of human bodies.

But no one would consider the loss of the leg to be a "good" thing. Necessary perhaps, and better than the alternative, but not good. And maybe it's time that we recognized that a god who creates something as terrible as gangrene is a pretty miserable person.

Here you are not making differentiation between suffering and Evil. Suffering and Evil are not same concepts.

By the way, you are correct in saying that God has made gangrene but based on that if you say God is bad then you are wrong. I ask you to read my main article again and there you will find why.

Do you think Death is an Evil?

That doesn't have anything to do with my claim that he doesn't deserve our worship. Indeed, it shows that we are given the choice to worship or cease to exist. And even those who worship him suffer, and they accept it because they think it's better to let god kick you around than stomp on your skull. That's not a choice between a good option and a bad one, that's a decision on just how dearly you hold your personal dignity.

According to Quran, human life is a trial. For that reason life is short however, sufficient for our understanding of good and bad actions.

The concept of trial is not a valid notion without the belief in the punishment and reward in the afterlife.

Suppose there is no God then this conception makes human existence ultimately (as opposed to proximately) meaningless, purposeless, and valueless. If there were no God and no afterlife in which to receive reward or punishment, then life would be (to quote Shakespeare) “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

In Islam, the human sufferings of this present life are termed ‘a trial’ – a test, an evaluation and a validation to measure the success and strength of each human soul, its capacity to do good deeds. So, according to the Quran, all the negative events that we may have to go through in this life are actually TESTS AND TRIALS FROM GOD. If we pass the test by holding on to our faith and remaining patient, showing complete trust in God during the period of suffering, and we continue to do good deeds and avoid evil thoughts and actions, then the end result is that God grants us boundless rewards in the next life.

If you have interest in knowing why man is under a trial and who have chosen that trial for man then read again “The Problem of Evil in atheism and in Islam” from “The Problem of EVIL and Islam” until its end.

http://atheistforums.org/thread-30896.html

That is a punishment for eating an apple.

In Islam, there is nothing similar to “ORIGINAL SIN.”