"The number one cause of atheism is Christians. Those who proclaim God with their mouths and deny Him with their lifestyles is what an unbelieving world finds simply unbelievable." - Karl Rahner

Businesses may come and go, but religion will last forever, for in no other endeavor does the consumer blame himself for product failure.
~Harvard Lamphoon, "Doon" (paraphrase)

"For the world to tackle truly important problems, people have to stop looking to religion to guide their moral compasses"

"These are issues which tremendous swings in human well-being depend on. And it's not at the center of our moral concern."

"Religion causes people to fixate on issues of less moral importance"

"Religion has convinced us that there's something else entirely other than concerns about suffering. There's concerns about what God wants, there's concerns about what's going to happen in the afterlife,"

-philosopher Sam Harris.

see what im trying to say? Because afraid of 'wasting our time for a 99% chance of it appears to be a hoax' .Do you understand the exact meanings,the words and sentence in the holy Quran?Okay nevermind bout that.You probably end up saying the same thing anyway.

off topic:

I have one argument on IF the holy Quran is made by a man(An atheist once told me),how could the big bang theory appeared already in the holy Quran already?Thousands of years where there is no such rocket ship and super telescopes?

I wanted to know the answer from an Atheist not from a religion people. Need to clarify this one as its been 'whirring' in my head.

no idea what verse you are referring to, brief google turns up these verses:

And the heaven We built with Our own powers (aydin) and indeed We go on expanding it (musi'un).

Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were a closed-up mass (ratqan), then We clove them asunder (fataqna)? And We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?

Remember the day when We shall roll up the heavens like the rolling up of written scrolls .

seems like some poetry verse that can be interpreted to mean nearly anything. sound like the horoscope syndrome.

are living things made out of water? shouldnt it be "coal"? as we are carbon based lifeform. did the universe split into two (clove asunder)?

and btw, big crunch is a less popular theory now. current observation data shows it is more likely the universe will expand forever until entropic death.

but this thread isnt about the truth of religion, it is about the necessity of religion regardless of its truth

When you write something, you are trying to convey some message through your writings. That is the goal of written text. If you write something and that confuses people so much that no one really understand truly what was written, or no one really understand the meaning of those texts, then you can forget about it. Because if you were to understand the standard and archaic usage of the language that actually describes the meaning contained within, the problem lies with those obscure texts. Not you or the translator. So this aptly describes the above problem

Businesses may come and go, but religion will last forever, for in no other endeavor does the consumer blame himself for product failure.
~Harvard Lamphoon, "Doon" (paraphrase)

I don't see you read and understand the quran here too. You get the question from somebody told you.

Every decade/century or yrs, outstanding people, geniue people, professor, sciencetist etc, will or like to predict, talking, write about future. Base on anything they research, observe, etc. After hundred yrs or so, some theory prediction will come true and some are bullshit. Than they become legend, highly respect people or what you call now as god. This thing will go on and on for every yrs, decade and century. So it is not a big deal. Check back the history what genius did document down their theory and come true now. There is a lot. And why you never pray them as god?

And remember one, the quran you read now is not 100% the founder write. How am I know you the one add in some this theory.

You also can bullshit hundred of theory now. And after thousand yrs, if one of your bullshit theory come true, people will pray you as god too. But makesure is bigger than big bang theory.

of course human need religion...

First, we don't worship the prophet Muhammad p.b.u.h as god. Second, the prophet Muhammad p.b.u.h doesn't have any education about this astronomy and science stuff, he doesn't even know how to write. Third, there other things that are mention in the Quran other that the big bang theory that can only be known in the modern world like the creation of human in mother's womb.

What is the difference between us human and animal??? One of it is the sense of moral. What is moral? How do you consider an activity is immoral? What are our moral concern? How do you know which issues is less moral importance or high moral importance? (If human really evolve from something else)Why and How our moral sense develop? Before we ask about do human need religion, we should try to answer everything regarding moral sense.
Salam..

With all due respect, perhaps I'll need to further clarify the intent of my sarcasm on the last para from my last response.

The intent is to question your own, and self proclaimed understanding of your holy book. Do you, while questioning others for not understanding your holy book, do understand it in a correct way, and the same way, as those of your other friends, that have the same faith in your holy book?

Bible is a hoax to Buddhism, as with Quran a fake to a Christian. Yet "well versed" Christians, Muslims and Buddhist alike all proclaimed that they reached the real understanding of their own belief and believe it to be so true that other religions are merely works of mortals.

Ironically, from Christianity, there are Catholics, Protestants, Anglican. From Islam, there are Sunni, Shia, Kharijite.

A twelve years old boy can shout out that his religion is so true that all other religion followers are wrong, yet fail to understand what it means to be a muslim/christian.

Badly enough, some thought that they fully understand, and engineered a plan to suicide while killing others in believe that they do so for religion.
So have you study and understand every word in your holy book? When you have done so, how would you react to a Sunni or a Shia or Kharijite muslim?

And about me, you have no idea yet if I myself have studied every word in Quran and came to my own conclusion from my own understanding.

Your understanding to my intent is already wrong. But I've a part to play as well, because I used too much sarcasm and didn't reveal much information.

See the irony here?

No wonder the quran is full of inaccuracies and archaic moral values that are not applicable today.

what proof or how do you know muhammad does not have knowledge on astronomy and science?
as for the creation of human in mother's womb i am sure it is no way near accurate to what we know today. also test about that actually appear earlier than quran.

moral appeared before religion. enough said. philosophy about moral appeared long before religion.

also, the presence of many atheist leading a moral, just life is enough to show that we don't need religion for moral.

It was the 20th century that when a schoolboy can utter the word "big bang theory" on their mouth. But are people talking about that from 7th century to 19th century?
Does Avicenna or Ibn Khaldun hums about big bang theory?

One would always wonder why the claim that big bang theory was already in Quran only came after the theory was published worldwide by a Roman catholic priest. Why not before that?Isn't that such a nice coincidence?

In the end its still a theory, please do not be too hasty to claim this theory to be true to support the credibility of your religion, for when this theory is revealed to be false, you would have a hard time looking for obvious clue in your holy book that says it supports the new theory and reject the old theory and that you have interpret it wrongly the previous time when everyone believe big bang theory to be so true.

Or,

you can be confidence enough with your understanding right now, and citing words from Quran, that Big Bang is indeed the ultimate real event and a fact proved by Quran, not merely a theory, and that all muslim should embrace it as the real truth, now and forever.


On a more technical approach, I assume the claim come from the following intepretation from Quran 21:30:

Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were joined together as one united piece, Then we parted them? and we have made water Every living thing. will they not Then believe? Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before we clove them asunder.... Will they not then believe?

It sounds familiar to a chinese theory written during the 3rd century, by Xu Zheng:

Heaven and Earth were once inextricably commingled like a chicken's egg, within which was engendered P'an-ku .............this inchoate mass split apart, what was bright and light forming Heaven, and what was dark and heavy forming Earth.


I see the similarity here.

The development of embryo and the importance of semen had been known by greek philosopher Aristotle in about 300+ B.C.E,which was a millenium before the quran came to be,sorry to burst your bubble,this may seem 'scientific breakthrough discovery' at first glance,but in fact it wasn't something new...
morality is influenced by society norms,what is deem right to you may not be regarded as the same to some other cultures and their respective practices,and if your statement about all forms of morality come from god makes sense,then we should ascribe cannibalism,nazism,etc to god as those who embraced these ideas thought they're justified actions and according to them,should be performed...

This post has been edited by CleverDick: May 1 2010, 09:48 AM

Since this a is a 'smart discussion' group then I think its right that I say this here. Ever heard of what's called confirmation bias?

People develop theories or see patterns from what may seem as seemingly random events (read hunches) and say I know whats going on here. Then they come up with a test to see if they are right. We don't prove that we are wrong and thats the problem.

To me all religions are essentially the same. They ask us to do good etc. etc. some because we should (eg. Buddhism, Hinduism) some because of a promise of a better afterlife (sounds like bribery/threat to me). I personally take it as a form of guidelines that I should follow.

It's all depend on you only.

If truth depends on a person's view, we would have a haphazard world.

this is wat i feel.
religion is to make u strong.
for those hu dun haf religion.
they know wat is rite and wrong.
that's why they are no afraid to be in the real world w/o believing..
i myself is a free-thinker =)

i don't need a religion.
i need Truth...something i believe in
I believe in God...i believe there is purpose in life....and i wan to learn more about it...

Truth with the capital T always needs some believing, isn't it? That goes with god with capital G too.