The Stage is Yours.

[Rayaan]

I can't say that I don't think there's anything wrong with mixing empiricism with metaphysics, as the way I understand it there can be no connection: hence the car crashes.

No connection doesn't necessarily mean that there are going to be "car crashes"/logical contradictions.

Secondly, metaphysics itself does oftentimes involve a lot of empiricism as it requires certain knowledge of the world that we acquired through years and years of investigation. Furthermore, I think that you and I wouldn't be able to come to any metaphysical conclusions if we didn't have any eyes, ears, knowledge, memory, and all those other things which give us access to the world that we are living in because all of our metaphysical beliefs are partly dependent on our observations, at least.

What I need to persue is why you don't have that car crash. But justification from you is up to you.

Sure, I'll explain it right now.

To put it simply, I don't feel that I have these car crashes of logic in my personal beliefs because my sensory perceptions + my knowledge of the physical world are not necessarily contradictory with my metaphysical thoughts. So, in other words, what I know and what I perceive in the world around me does not negate my faith nor my metaphysical views. I don't see why it should unless if you can explain to me why.

I don't need to reitterate my points for disagreement with Islam as a whole, as I don't think it's helpful.

Well, it might be a little helpful for the other members reading this thread because they are probably curious to know exactly why you disagree with Islam. But no pressure.

Suffice to say to Raphael: I logically deduce my own position and find it to be the only one that satisfies my enquiries; and those enquiries are constnatly ongoing.

I'll come back to this later in response to your other comments.

It leads back to the Christian description of God. It's how and why Christianity came about - to describe meaning and purpose, as it is the reason for most religious endeavour. I believe that the Christian model answers that perfectly, where other endeavours do not.

But I could say the same thing about Islam (i.e that it came about to describe our meaning and purpose). So, you should have more than just "meaning and purpose" as an argument for Christianity because the same argument can be made for any other religion. And you should also be able to explain to me why you think that the Christian model of God is only model that answers everything perfectly which you still haven't done yet.

Straight away (I think) you and I would dismiss those endeavours that have god as a destructive force. So it goes on and we find what makes sense for us.

Well, I believe that God is both a creative force and a destructive force. Maybe not so according to your belief, though.

I don't know what you've concluded on that, or if you've ever considered it. It doesn't predicate belief so there's no reason why you should IMO.

I did consider it, and yes, considering a particular model of God does not predicate that belief, but it is important to understand it.

I'm not sure I'm with your definition of metaphysical. Do you take it to mean a kind of macro physics? that's the impression that I get. Forgive me if thaqt is incorrect.

To me, anything metaphysical is something that refers to the nature of reality. And it may or may not include physics, but that's not necessary.

Well that's a particular problem that Muslims have with Xtianity isn't it.

Yeah, certainly one of the problems.

That wasn't at all the minutae I was referencing, but I'll entertain your question. I don't have to question the empirical implausibility of that statement. I address the question of a non empirical being. Why shouldn't God be 3 things at once? don't get me wrong... it is something that I've studied at length many times.

I didn't say that God shouldn't be 3 things at once, but my question was, what do you base that on and/or how did you "logically" deduce that as the only possible answer?

And why does it have to be that specific number "three" and not any other number?

Islam encompasses the book of Genesis IIRC. Where God says "we created this": clearly plural.

1. Maybe it does encompass the book of Genesis because, as Muslims, we believe in something known as 'progressive revelation' by which God revealed the Old Testament to the Jews, then the New Testament to the Christians, and lastly, the "Final Testament" (the Quran) to the Muslims, but the message is still for everyone. In that sense, according to Islamic belief, there is a divine continuity in religious belief between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

2. The Muslim contention is that certain widely-held Christian beliefs, such as the idea of Trinity, are associated not with the original words of scripture but with later alterations. In other words, we believe that the actual revealed words became mixed with the additions of human copyists and editors. And when this happened, God sent another book (and a final one), the Quran, as as an updated version of the previous scriptures that were tampered with over the course of time.

3. In the Quran, when God says something like "We created so and so," the "we" refers to God along with his angels, but God himself is never mentioned as a plural.

Now is God not plural, and Genesis wrong? Or is God one and many at the same time, as Christians assert?

I believe that God is only One. It is only Christians who assert that God is one and many at the same time.

Quite so. I'm not claiming exclusivity on that.

Good. No disagreements, then.

I tried several times

Well then maybe you have some reading comprehension issues if you still didn't understand any of that. And the summary is only a few paragraphs.

I've had such notions myself. The Matrix was an incredible film wasn't it?

Good film, I would say, but it's definitely not in my top 10.

Joking aside, I have no problem with the comparison. No objection to it.

I thought you would notice some "car crashes" there, but okay.

I don't see any unique ideas about faith and religion there, unless you could kindly point some out for me.

Then I will point out some of them by quoting just the summary from there, which is only 6 paragraphs, and I will even highlight some of the key points:

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Well, the whole post was mostly on how and why I think that the universe is some kind of an elaborate computer and how this seems to match with some of the Islamic beliefs. I explained that the stars, galaxies, planets, Earth, life, human beings, animals, plants, and everything in the universe are part of a massive computation and that these things are also able to store and process information. In that sense, the universe behaves like a giant computer, and I think that it really is a computer, so this is not just a metaphor. And that being said, I'm not saying that such a view of reality is necessarily true. It's just a metaphysical theory that makes sense to me.

Then, I started talking about my idea of how a master program which is running the cosmological computer might be a program that is "conscious" and "alive." It sounds pretty crazy, in my opinion, but I think it's still possible for a program to be conscious and have a mind of its own after reading the articles that I posted. So, the point is that the program can be thought of as an intelligent being that is controlling the entire universe. Of course, I don't know whether or not this is the correct understanding of God. I just think that all the complex and organized physical systems that exist in this planet are a result of some kind of a higher intelligence, not a result of blind and accidental causes. Most of the universe is probably cold, empty, and lifeless, but even then I still find it beautiful.

This master program, or God, has chosen certain people in the past as his communication channels [or prophets] to transmit his messages instead of speaking to everyone. This is like a sender-signal-channel-receiver model of God's word and this is something that correlates with the computational theory of the universe. Also, as you may already know, there are many similarities between the scriptures of the monotheistic religions, but there are also many differences between them. I think that the differences exist because the older ones were updated and/or modified by the later ones. I believe that the Quran is His last set of revelations and that the previous scriptures were over-written by the last one. And I think that this is something that is similar to the concept of data erasure through an overwriting process in a computer. The only difference is that this was happening the real world (which itself is another computer).

The rules and guidelines contained in the Quran are like the rules in a "game." The book tells us that there will be winners and there will be losers. And there's going to be only one chance to play. Winners go to Heaven and losers go to Hell. The game might be taking place in a simulated reality in which we are the players.

I also talked about a possible mechanism for resurrection. According to the Quran, we believe that a trumpet will blow and it will cause everyone to be resurrected. In this post, I hypothesized that the trumpet might be black hole because black holes are also known to create sound waves. Also, black holes may be extremely powerful quantum computers that exist in space, as explained in the links that I posted, and by performing a computation, I read that it is possible for them to recreate a human or an object that fell into the singularity. I think that this could be a similar physical process that allows resurrection. And resurrection might be a type of reversible computation that reconstructs our bodies.

Essentially, my point is that all these things are related to each other and I think that's why they further support the idea of the universe being a computer (or a type of simulation perhaps), and following from there, I think that the fact that these connections exist even though the people during those times didn't think of the universe as a giant computer (or maybe they believed that but only at a subconscious level if so) makes it more likely that these religious beliefs are a disclosure of the computer-like nature of the universe rather than being just a coincidence (although that is still possible).

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Good job finding that

Searching is quite an easy task for me. Thanks.

That's what I think exactly. God is not an existant being in that sense. He is what we refer to him as,

Not necessarily, and I think that no one can truly understand the exact nature of God.

and not what empiricists might want to insist, despite all of the rationalisations to the contrary.

I agree with that for the same reason as mentioned above.

Given a creator god, god is everything. From a vaccuum to the most solid of objects, it's all god. God is not separate.

God is everything? So are you some kind of a pantheist Christian or what?

Frankly, I think that you seriously contradicted yourself when you say that "God is everything" and that "God is not separate." It makes you sound like you're a pantheist. Why is it contradictory? Because all this time you were asserting that Jesus himself is God and a man at the same time and that God is a person (and you've said this in other threads as well) - but now you're saying that God is everything - even from a vacuum to the most solid of objects. If that's what you really believe, then it seems like you are mixing God (metaphysical) with all the material/empirical stuff as well, aren't you?

Now I assume that you will have no problem with that. I have a feeling that we both think the same thing on this.

See my comments above. I do have a problem with that.

I think you bolted on my comments to the other two very annoying posters.

I guess so, but that doesn't matter now.

So do you find you can dismanle my arguments now that you've heard them?

Yes. It's all right here.

If you run with the mob, then you should expect to be on the receiving end of retaliation against that mob. Maybe it was an accidental association with Raphael, and I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Whether it was an accidental association with Raphael or not, earlier you did say that he was pig-headed in this post and that you don't owe him an answer and that he was just trying to be on the center of attention and other stuff in this post. These are all negative personal remarks that you have made several times in this thread instead of answering his question.

Erm... no rayaan. I am perfectly capable of deciding what I respond to. No one else gets to dictate that.

Of course you are capable of deciding what to respond to. So am I. But there is a difference between deciding to reply or not to reply vs.repeatedly attacking someone's character/intelligence in order to avoid answering his or her question. You did the latter which is worse.

Dodging you mean?

No. I don't mean anything else than what I said.

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Frodo and Rayaan, two bald men fighting over a comb.

Then be entertained, please.

Well, seriously, even though these discussions oftentimes do not result in a change of perspective, they are at least interesting for me to engage in when I have some free time.