If you are an atheist

[Anonymous]

Re 4:34. Islam has a long tradition of passages that interpret the Koran. Essentially since Mohammad's death, his followers, who knew him, have interpreted that passage to mean "beat." Sometimes you will see "strike lightly." There is a new translation of the Qu'ran by a woman, and this translation essentially does away with the traditional meaning, but it has been very controversial among Islamic scholars.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
The Qur'an mentions the actual shape of the earth in the following verse:

“And the earth, moreover, Hath He made egg shaped.”
Al- Quran 79:30

The Arabic word for egg here is dahaha, which means an ostrich-egg. The shape of an ostrich-egg resembles the geo-spherical shape of the earth. Thus the Qur’aan correctly describes the shape of the earth, though the prevalent notion when the Qur’aan was revealed was that the earth is flat. Thus the Qur'an and modern established science are in perfect harmony.

earth is oblate spheroid and? ostrich egg is prolate spheroid. To say they're the same shape is a bit like arguing that an orange and a football are the same shape. So many contemporaries of the authors of the Quran knew the Earth was not flat. The authors guessed and got it wrong. That's assuming the convoluted interpretation of "dahaha" as "egg shaped" is correct. The accurate translation is "flat & round". Like a pita bread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If there is god and heaven, I can just see him saying " I would not believe in me too! Welcome to heaven, please proceed to the rational people floor"

Yep

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If there is a God, I would ask him why he made Mary pregnant instead of making a man pregnant with the baby Jesus - that would have been a better miracle, no?

LOL OMG that is hilarious!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OK 9:42. I am going to be your friend here. You need to step away and take a break from this.

You definitely implied that Islam is superior to other religions because it's divinely revealed while other religions are based on speculation. You can't interpret away what you already said.

Likewise, nobody is impressed by long cut-and-pastes about how, when Mohammad was consolidating his takeover of Medina, he gave the iriginal residents there, the ones who refused to accept him and Islam, several months to make an unpalatable choice between conversion, fleeing, death in battle, or slavery. Yes, slavery was the outcome for people lost a battle against Mohammed, unless they converted to Islam in which case they could go free, and this is actually alluded to in your long quote above.

Likewise, it's hard to accept creative translations that turn "flat" into "egg-shaped."

We're all waiting for you to even acknowledge another PP's point about wife-beating.

Please, help yourself out here, and don't dig deeper.

No I did not imply Islam was better than other religions. I am sorry but I am not responsible for how you interpret what I write, that is your own conclusion created by your own brain. Nowhere did I write that or even mention other religions vs Islam, so how you came to that conclusion is quite weird, but that is your conclusion, your brain , your thought so own it, dont put it on my plate. I already responded to the wife-beating verse, I did not know you were all waiting lol quite interesting And why would I help myself out of here???? Am I a problem to your beliefs? LOL, i am not going anywhere, so you better get used to me I am not apologetic about what the Qu'ran says, the Bible, addresses stoning people to death, so maybe you should run and hide

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The Qur'an mentions the actual shape of the earth in the following verse:

“And the earth, moreover, Hath He made egg shaped.”
Al- Quran 79:30

The Arabic word for egg here is dahaha, which means an ostrich-egg. The shape of an ostrich-egg resembles the geo-spherical shape of the earth. Thus the Qur’aan correctly describes the shape of the earth, though the prevalent notion when the Qur’aan was revealed was that the earth is flat. Thus the Qur'an and modern established science are in perfect harmony.

It's funny. A quick Google turns up several translations if 79:30, but all of these translations use the word "flat" or variants thereof, not
"egg-shaped." Try this Muslim source, for example: http://Quran.com/79/30 which says "flat." Or other sources that look to be Islamic, like www.islamawakened.com/Quran/79/30/default.htm which translates this as, "and the earth, he expanded after that." I'm wondering how a single word could mean both "flat" and "egg-shaped" and why Muslim translators generally go with "flat" or variants like "extended."

Who has translated that? Do you speak arabic, and really Google is now the authority on this lol. ANYONE can translate anything on Google, now how about you go to a Christian or Atheist Arabic speaker who has no dogs in this fight and ask him/her what that Word means in Arabic? You can get 100 translated Qurans and get 100 different words, that is why muslims recite the Quran in its original form which is ARABIC, the arabic language is so complex that whenever you translate it a lot is lost in translation

These are MUSLIM sources. MUSLIMS did the translations. Go to the links yourself and check. In turn, could you please give a source got "egg-shaped"?

I just cliked on the link you gave and it says SPREAD,so where are you getting flat from? egg-shaped is from the arabic itself , the meaning of the word For dahâ means to "shape like an egg", its noun being dahiyah, which the Arabs still use to mean an egg. The same word can also mean spread out, and this is why i said, you have to understand the arabic word. Westerners who have written translation books on english-arabic will give you pages and pages of translation for one arabic word, it is not as simple as some make it seem. You can read this if you want about the egg-shape translation http://turntoislam.com/community/threads/egg.19312/

Yes, and the word for "virgin" is close to the word for "white raisin." There are issues with Arabic, which I studied for a year. However, I guess I'm not going to rely on a proselytizing site (turntoislsm.com, LOL) for an authoritative translation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think our souls are separate from our bodies. When you die, you cease to exist. The end.

I really don't think there is a God, so I'm not concerned about what will happen to me. If I'm wrong, surely God is forgiving and won't hold my thoughts against me but will instead judge me on how I lived my life. If you consider all the beliefs of all of the people across the world, the majority of people are wrong when it comes to religion. Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims can't all be "right." Is God going to punish people who believe what they believe largely based on their upbringing and culture?

He forgives everything but poeple who deny him, denying him is the only sin he doesn't forgive. How do you expect Someone you deny to forgive you?? What would be the point then???

Says who?

Says God

Says the Bible, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the purpose of God?

Why would God create people only if they acknowledge her/his existence and follow her/his teachings? Is that self-serving - to create some creatures only to pass judgment on them if they don't put you first?

Why are most religions beneficial to males and place females in the role of being subservient to males? What is the purpose of this?

Normally, when I meet an atheist, the first thing I like to do is to congratulate him and say, " My special congratulations to you", because most of the people who believe in God are doing blind belief - he is a Christian, because his father is a Christian; he is a Hindu, because his father is a Hindu; the majority of the people in the world are blindly following the religion of their fathers. An atheist, on the other hand, even though he may belong to a religious family, uses his intellect to deny the existence of God; what ever concept or qualities of God he may have learnt in his religion may not seem to be logical to him.

When a Muslim addresses this topic, we have to find our understanding from Divine Revelation and not human speculation. Because human speculation has no bounds; we can imagine all kinds of things and if any of you has studied philosophy of religion, you will know how many opinions there are about the creation of man and existence. Because of the variety of philosophies which are out there, no one can say this one is correct or that one is incorrect, because there is no guidance behind it. No Divine Revelation. It is only from Divine Revelation that we can determine the reality of our creation, because it is Allah who has created us and so He knows the purpose of our creation. We can hardly understand it ourselves, much less trying to understand the essence of things. So it is for Allah to inform us through the revelation in the Qur'an and the sunnah (the Prophetic traditions) which were brought to us by His Last Messenger and the Messengers before him.

Now if we are to look initially into revelation, to determine why was man created, there is a deeper question that we should be asking before that: "Why did God create?" This before we even get to man because man is not the greatest act of creation. Allah says:

"The creation of the Heavens and the Earth is indeed greater then the creation of mankind; yet, most of mankind know not."
[Al-Qur'an 40:57]
Man is not the greatest act of creation, this universe is far more complex and far more magnificent than man. So the issue of creation should then go to, "Why did God create?", as opposed to simply, "Why create man?"

Fundamentally, we can say that the creation is the natural consequence of the attribute of creator. Allah is the creator. That is one of his attributes. That is what he has informed us. That being his attribute, the creator, the natural consequence or the product of this attribute is his creation.

A painter, if we are to draw a similitude on a lower level, who tells you that he is a painter, if you ask him where are his paintings and he replies I don't have any. What kind of painter is this? The concept of a painter who doesn't paint, there is some thing not quite gelling together here, of course Allah is beyond this. But if we are to understand on the simplest level, the two go together. The perfection of a painter lies in his paintings. His quality and his ability to paint, is manifest in his paintings. And Allah, beyond all that, as creator, this quality of creation is manifest in the creation itself. Allah didn't create out of a need. No, the fact that he is the creator, is manifest in the creation.

Furthermore, consider the act of creation, this act, with regards to Allah is unique. Though we use the term i.e. So and so created a table etc, actually it is in a limited sense. Human beings don't really create, they manipulate, because they can only "create" what already exists. When we make a chair or a table, we didn't create the wood, we had to take it from a tree, we didn't create the metal, which makes the screws etc, we had to melt down rocks and take the metal out. So we are not creating from nothing. We are manipulating things which Allah has already created in to different shapes and forms which are useful to us. We call it "creation" but the real act of creation, is creation from nothing, and this is unique to Allah alone.

Therefore when we look for the purpose of worship, we have to look into man. Allah created us to worship him, because we need to worship him. It is something he has given us as a means of benefiting ourselves. We are the ones who benefit from it. Worship has been established, fundamentally for the growth, the spiritual growth of man. This growth takes place through the remembrance of Allah. When you look at all the different aspects of worship, you will see the core of it is focused on the remembrance of Allah.

"Establish the prayer for My remembrance."


Worship is there for us to remember Allah. And it is in the remembrance of Allah, that we achieve that consciousness. Because it is when we forget Allah, that Shaytan causes us to disobey Allah and fall into sin. So it is only in His remembrance that we can attain salvation. All of the various acts of worship from saying "Bismillah" when we eat is to help us remember Allah in order to grow spiritually.

Allah has said that he has created us to test us, to see which of us is best in deeds. He is not testing us to know, in the sense that he doesn't already know, but this world is a test for us in order again that we can grow spiritually.

We cannot develop this spiritual characteristic of generosity unless some of us have more then others and then we are required to give of the wealth we have. When we give, we grow. Similarly, if we were not in a position where others had more then us then we wouldn't have the ability to develop the higher spiritual quality of contentment, patience, satisfaction in what Allah has given us.

So it is all there in order to bring out the higher spiritual qualities, which enable us to attain the state, which makes us suitable and eligible to return to paradise. The paradise from which we were created, we were created in paradise and for paradise. Through our choices we have left, in this life, a field of testing, where we can grow to a state where we deserve paradise.

I'm an atheist who was raised Muslim. PP, how do you explain 4:34?

What do you mean by 4:34?

Do you know the verse? Look it up. How do you explain it? Do you really think god mandated that husbands hit their wives to keep them in line? If so, how do you rationalize it?

I did not know you were referring to a verse, I thought you were referring to a previous post lol. Ah the famous quranic verse that nonmuslims love. LOL Again, the word DARABA. Open the 10th reading of Edward William Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, a 3,064-page volume from the 19th century.Among the six pages of definitions for daraba, one of them is "to go away.". So my question to you is, why do people use whatever word they like when they translate the Quran? That's what is shocking to me. the "beat" translation contradicts another verse, which states that if a woman wants a divorce, she should not be mistreated. Given the option of staying in the marriage and being beaten, or divorcing, women would obviously leave. When the prophet had difficulty with his wives, what did he do? He didn't beat anybody, so why would any Muslim do what the prophet did not?" And I am a WOMAN, I am MUSLIM, I would never follow a religion that was detrimental to my essence as a woman!

Please cut it out with the "non-muslims" bullshit. This is a verse in the Quran and is for the reading by anyone. I was raised Muslim - I know the verse well, and there is no justifying it - in fact, many Quranic scholars have outright claimed that the verse is not authentic and was added later, because there simply is no explaining it. What's your take? Do you think the verse is divinely given, or was added by humans?

oK, You were raised muslim, so I guess you are the authority on this? FYI a lot of Muslims do not know much about their religion so being raised Muslim really does not point to anything... You pretend to know the verse well and your Quranic scholars told you whatever they told you, good for you. I do not beleive that, I have already given you the translation of that verse and how I understand it, you are free to believe otherwise , free to believe whatever you want, this freedom was granted to you by the Creator And no I do not believe anything was added by humans, I believe that the Qu'ran is the word of God

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

No I did not imply Islam was better than other religions. I am sorry but I am not responsible for how you interpret what I write, that is your own conclusion created by your own brain. Nowhere did I write that or even mention other religions vs Islam, so how you came to that conclusion is quite weird, but that is your conclusion, your brain , your thought so own it, dont put it on my plate. I already responded to the wife-beating verse, I did not know you were all waiting lol quite interesting And why would I help myself out of here???? Am I a problem to your beliefs? LOL, i am not going anywhere, so you better get used to me I am not apologetic about what the Qu'ran says, the Bible, addresses stoning people to death, so maybe you should run and hide

The New Testament most definitely says that stoning to death is bad. Have you ever heard, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"?Nobody is without sin, so that stopped a stoning that happened to be in progress.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:6:57 here. I am NOT 6:51, just want to make that clear!

651 here. What's your fucking point?

Trying to be tolerant here. Unlike you.

I don't have to tolerate you. You're an affront to humanity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the purpose of God?

Why would God create people only if they acknowledge her/his existence and follow her/his teachings? Is that self-serving - to create some creatures only to pass judgment on them if they don't put you first?

Why are most religions beneficial to males and place females in the role of being subservient to males? What is the purpose of this?

Normally, when I meet an atheist, the first thing I like to do is to congratulate him and say, " My special congratulations to you", because most of the people who believe in God are doing blind belief - he is a Christian, because his father is a Christian; he is a Hindu, because his father is a Hindu; the majority of the people in the world are blindly following the religion of their fathers. An atheist, on the other hand, even though he may belong to a religious family, uses his intellect to deny the existence of God; what ever concept or qualities of God he may have learnt in his religion may not seem to be logical to him.

When a Muslim addresses this topic, we have to find our understanding from Divine Revelation and not human speculation. Because human speculation has no bounds; we can imagine all kinds of things and if any of you has studied philosophy of religion, you will know how many opinions there are about the creation of man and existence. Because of the variety of philosophies which are out there, no one can say this one is correct or that one is incorrect, because there is no guidance behind it. No Divine Revelation. It is only from Divine Revelation that we can determine the reality of our creation, because it is Allah who has created us and so He knows the purpose of our creation. We can hardly understand it ourselves, much less trying to understand the essence of things. So it is for Allah to inform us through the revelation in the Qur'an and the sunnah (the Prophetic traditions) which were brought to us by His Last Messenger and the Messengers before him.

Now if we are to look initially into revelation, to determine why was man created, there is a deeper question that we should be asking before that: "Why did God create?" This before we even get to man because man is not the greatest act of creation. Allah says:

"The creation of the Heavens and the Earth is indeed greater then the creation of mankind; yet, most of mankind know not."
[Al-Qur'an 40:57]
Man is not the greatest act of creation, this universe is far more complex and far more magnificent than man. So the issue of creation should then go to, "Why did God create?", as opposed to simply, "Why create man?"

Fundamentally, we can say that the creation is the natural consequence of the attribute of creator. Allah is the creator. That is one of his attributes. That is what he has informed us. That being his attribute, the creator, the natural consequence or the product of this attribute is his creation.

A painter, if we are to draw a similitude on a lower level, who tells you that he is a painter, if you ask him where are his paintings and he replies I don't have any. What kind of painter is this? The concept of a painter who doesn't paint, there is some thing not quite gelling together here, of course Allah is beyond this. But if we are to understand on the simplest level, the two go together. The perfection of a painter lies in his paintings. His quality and his ability to paint, is manifest in his paintings. And Allah, beyond all that, as creator, this quality of creation is manifest in the creation itself. Allah didn't create out of a need. No, the fact that he is the creator, is manifest in the creation.

Furthermore, consider the act of creation, this act, with regards to Allah is unique. Though we use the term i.e. So and so created a table etc, actually it is in a limited sense. Human beings don't really create, they manipulate, because they can only "create" what already exists. When we make a chair or a table, we didn't create the wood, we had to take it from a tree, we didn't create the metal, which makes the screws etc, we had to melt down rocks and take the metal out. So we are not creating from nothing. We are manipulating things which Allah has already created in to different shapes and forms which are useful to us. We call it "creation" but the real act of creation, is creation from nothing, and this is unique to Allah alone.

Therefore when we look for the purpose of worship, we have to look into man. Allah created us to worship him, because we need to worship him. It is something he has given us as a means of benefiting ourselves. We are the ones who benefit from it. Worship has been established, fundamentally for the growth, the spiritual growth of man. This growth takes place through the remembrance of Allah. When you look at all the different aspects of worship, you will see the core of it is focused on the remembrance of Allah.

"Establish the prayer for My remembrance."


Worship is there for us to remember Allah. And it is in the remembrance of Allah, that we achieve that consciousness. Because it is when we forget Allah, that Shaytan causes us to disobey Allah and fall into sin. So it is only in His remembrance that we can attain salvation. All of the various acts of worship from saying "Bismillah" when we eat is to help us remember Allah in order to grow spiritually.

Allah has said that he has created us to test us, to see which of us is best in deeds. He is not testing us to know, in the sense that he doesn't already know, but this world is a test for us in order again that we can grow spiritually.

We cannot develop this spiritual characteristic of generosity unless some of us have more then others and then we are required to give of the wealth we have. When we give, we grow. Similarly, if we were not in a position where others had more then us then we wouldn't have the ability to develop the higher spiritual quality of contentment, patience, satisfaction in what Allah has given us.

So it is all there in order to bring out the higher spiritual qualities, which enable us to attain the state, which makes us suitable and eligible to return to paradise. The paradise from which we were created, we were created in paradise and for paradise. Through our choices we have left, in this life, a field of testing, where we can grow to a state where we deserve paradise.

I'm an atheist who was raised Muslim. PP, how do you explain 4:34?

What do you mean by 4:34?

Do you know the verse? Look it up. How do you explain it? Do you really think god mandated that husbands hit their wives to keep them in line? If so, how do you rationalize it?

I did not know you were referring to a verse, I thought you were referring to a previous post lol. Ah the famous quranic verse that nonmuslims love. LOL Again, the word DARABA. Open the 10th reading of Edward William Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, a 3,064-page volume from the 19th century.Among the six pages of definitions for daraba, one of them is "to go away.". So my question to you is, why do people use whatever word they like when they translate the Quran? That's what is shocking to me. the "beat" translation contradicts another verse, which states that if a woman wants a divorce, she should not be mistreated. Given the option of staying in the marriage and being beaten, or divorcing, women would obviously leave. When the prophet had difficulty with his wives, what did he do? He didn't beat anybody, so why would any Muslim do what the prophet did not?" And I am a WOMAN, I am MUSLIM, I would never follow a religion that was detrimental to my essence as a woman!

Please cut it out with the "non-muslims" bullshit. This is a verse in the Quran and is for the reading by anyone. I was raised Muslim - I know the verse well, and there is no justifying it - in fact, many Quranic scholars have outright claimed that the verse is not authentic and was added later, because there simply is no explaining it. What's your take? Do you think the verse is divinely given, or was added by humans?

oK, You were raised muslim, so I guess you are the authority on this? FYI a lot of Muslims do not know much about their religion so being raised Muslim really does not point to anything... You pretend to know the verse well and your Quranic scholars told you whatever they told you, good for you. I do not beleive that, I have already given you the translation of that verse and how I understand it, you are free to believe otherwise , free to believe whatever you want, this freedom was granted to you by the Creator And no I do not believe anything was added by humans, I believe that the Qu'ran is the word of God

Read up on Amina Wadud. She's a female scholar of Islam, and outright dismisses 4:34.

Keep in mind your authority is no more "valid" than mine. But if you want to continue to believe in a god that not doesn't only believe it's permissible - but, MANDATED that husbands beat their wives, that's your choice. But don't BS around "interpretation" - it's a very known, very controversial verse. There's no way around it, and there's no misconstrued interpretation. The verse speaks for itself no matter what translation or non-translation you use, in Arabic or any other language - it doesn't need human authority if god mandates that husbands beat their wives. I don't believe in any god, but I can never believe in a god whose word tells men to beat women.

[Anonymous]

The light of the Lord shines bright on this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

No I did not imply Islam was better than other religions. I am sorry but I am not responsible for how you interpret what I write, that is your own conclusion created by your own brain. Nowhere did I write that or even mention other religions vs Islam, so how you came to that conclusion is quite weird, but that is your conclusion, your brain , your thought so own it, dont put it on my plate. I already responded to the wife-beating verse, I did not know you were all waiting lol quite interesting And why would I help myself out of here???? Am I a problem to your beliefs? LOL, i am not going anywhere, so you better get used to me I am not apologetic about what the Qu'ran says, the Bible, addresses stoning people to death, so maybe you should run and hide

The New Testament most definitely says that stoning to death is bad. Have you ever heard, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"?Nobody is without sin, so that stopped a stoning that happened to be in progress.

PP here again. I should add that you are definitely not a problem to my beliefs, although it's obvious you take a lot of glee in thinking you're a problem to my beliefs. To be quite honest, I find your "defenses" of these verses usually laughable, and you personally seem rude and you also seem uninterested in honest discussion. No, nothing to tempt me here. And that was a generous interpretation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:6:57 here. I am NOT 6:51, just want to make that clear!

651 here. What's your fucking point?

Trying to be tolerant here. Unlike you.

I don't have to tolerate you. You're an affront to humanity.

WTF? Meds, stat!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

No I did not imply Islam was better than other religions. I am sorry but I am not responsible for how you interpret what I write, that is your own conclusion created by your own brain. Nowhere did I write that or even mention other religions vs Islam, so how you came to that conclusion is quite weird, but that is your conclusion, your brain , your thought so own it, dont put it on my plate. I already responded to the wife-beating verse, I did not know you were all waiting lol quite interesting And why would I help myself out of here???? Am I a problem to your beliefs? LOL, i am not going anywhere, so you better get used to me I am not apologetic about what the Qu'ran says, the Bible, addresses stoning people to death, so maybe you should run and hide

The New Testament most definitely says that stoning to death is bad. Have you ever heard, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"?Nobody is without sin, so that stopped a stoning that happened to be in progress.

Yeh since hte old testament is bad, lets just create a new one so we can look civilized, is that your point? The thing is, we Muslims don't have a new Quran or Old Quran. Its one, we've been having it for 1400 years+ and won't change it. And that is not the only verse in the Bible that is problematic, there are tons of them, but again like I stated earlier, I am not interested in bashing another religion, nor do I have the time ....