Can we call God a s__t?
They're kinda genuine questions though - I'm curious what religion teaches about this. Or is it just not mentioned?
Religion, what's the point?
- Thread starter TheRedFlag
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They're kinda genuine questions though - I'm curious what religion teaches about this. Or is it just not mentioned?
Mysterious ways which we can't understand and stuff
Do you want the answer in terms of a biological breakdown in how our brains function differently, or why it hasn't been replicated in other species?
I'm sure someone has been philosophising (or theologising?) about it in the modern era, but there is understandably not a jot about it in any traditional holy scripture.
Right because conflict and fanaticm only occurs with and because of religion? That's a tired argument and historical source texts show that
Hmm good point - they didn't know a whole lot about stuff back then.
Th one you were talking about happened because of religion.
Ignorance is bliss. Who cares about people getting killed. We are the good guys for keeping it going.
A few on here love the mysterious ways
You are from India and you believe this? I know you have no love for religion but come on
Pakistan and Bangladesh share the same religion. How do you explain that?
I'll go to sleep if we are at the point of denying the role of religion in partition of India.
Great job in proving how religious people are so amazingly open on criticizing religious books. Was great.
I clearly answered you directly with the cultures answer.
That was just slightly later in the timeline…
Forget religious text do you accept any text? Say historical one?
My father was born before the partition. Technically my grandparents were Indian. My brother's father in law came to UK as a Pakistani but is now bengali. These are a small group of people I have spoken to personally about certain things. But they are family and so can be and sometimes are biased. I then look at history and historical documents. I even did Afro Asian studies (as a hobby at university level) because I realised how little I knew about my own heritage/background etc.
It is accepted, and historical documents back this. That religion wasn't a big factor in that region for conflict. Even conquests in the 11th century weren't written about or described as being about religion. They were based on other factors like linguistics and ethnic affiliation.
For a long time the cultures mingled and borrowed from each other and adopted each others ways. Sufi shrines were visited by all and some of the early mughals translated the Gita into Persian etc.
Then the British raaj arrived and initially started the whole favouring of communities over others. Defining them into religions and giving political authourity to one over the other. But even then partition wasn't the answer. Only when it was time to beat a hasty retreat did partition become a solution. A solution that had the locals killing each other en mass, yet the ruling force which had faced many an uprising left with hardly a bullet fired and iirc 7 casualties.
Those at the "heart" of the partition all happened to be western educated, having attended the same institutions and the belonging to the same party in India initially.
Strangely one thing not mentioned a lot, but is historically true, was that the Muslims didn't want Jinnah as leader. He was a man as far removed from Islam as possible. He drank whiskey, didn't practise eg visit the mosque, married a non Muslim etc. I think it was Iqbal or Ali who said we are not looking for a religious leader so we have a lawyer instead.
Even stranger was this was a man who had been once hailed as ambassador for Hindu Muslim unity. See Lucknow pact.
Anyway I've gone on a bit so will stop
Yes it was and I mentioned in an earlier post. This was a response by me later as the conversation progressed.
I get that, but the convo went like this…
Moby was definitely talking about 1947 and you’re definitely bringing up 1971.
For what it's worth, my non-scientific "head cannon" explanation as to why the universe exists, is due to infinite time:
Firstly; a single photon passing through a crystal seems to interact with itself in all possible routes and ways, with utter disregard for things like the "speed of light".
Secondly; we can imagine a universe with greater or fewer dimensions than our usual 3 spacial and 1 time; just two spacial dimensions (like super-mario) or four or more spacial dimensions who's denizens must pity our compact little universe as a toy.
So let's imagine a thought experiment universe - set before our universe began - when the concept of time doesn't exist.
There is nothing in this little thought experiment. Nothing, not even darkness. How can there be darkness when there is nothing to be dark? No matter. No elecronic charge and no neutrality. No Gravity. No gravitational constant. No higgs to boson. Nothing. No blackness. Not a squiggly squiggle.
Eternal nothingness.
And with infinite eternal nothingness we are stuck. Forever. But there is no time, so forever doesn't exist. Nothing goes on and on forever except forever doesn't exist. From here with have no possibilities. Pure, nothing, forever.
Forever passes in an instant of nothingness.
And again.
And again.
Eventually (although eventually happens in an instance and it doesn't happen at all), something changes.
Of course nothing can actually change and nothing actually does. But the possibility of something comes into being, or the possibility of the possibility of something, or the possibility of the possibility of the possibility of something. Something could happen, right? Something, for some reason, could happen eventually? Maybe?
And just like the photon that travels through all possible paths at the same time, the possibility of something happening becomes the certainty of everything happening! In an instant, all possible things that could happen materialise and suddenly it is now, and you are reading this.
In infinite infinite time, anything that could possibly happen, does.
For the photon to travel all possible paths, every possibility must happen all at once. Hypothetical reality happens everywhere all in an hypothetical instant, and a hypothetical wave of being travels throughout hypothetical time.
And possibly there could exist a universe where a photon might exist to travel through all possibly paths through a glass screen into the eye of someone looking at an device powered by electronic charge. And because there is a possibility that this person exists, so this person does exist. And it could be right now and so it is.
And the photon could travel through all possible routes including to the edge of the universe and back and also to visit your grandmother when she was young and when your mother was conceived and also to last Thursday when you forgot your lunch and so it does.
And the universe exists although it actually doesn't and the nothingness is banished although it is still there.
And in the forever nothingness where nothing can ever exist, there is infinite time although time does not exist, for everything that ever was or one day could be or could have been, to exist or not. And because any of this could happen it does and the photon travels to all possible moments and times and realities and the photon doesn't exist at all.
And it is today and it is now and you are here and soon this will be past and you will not be here at all and now that time has past.
And reality will be gone although it was never here at all.
---------
I appreciate that this mad rambling isn't scientific or helpful, but as the uncertainty principle shows us, perhaps there is a limit as to what we can know.
Or as Douglas Adams said;
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
[And] there is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
I really don't get why one needs to 'cope' with questions that science can't answer yet. It is what it is. We don't know everything yet. No need to jump to a God to explain the gaps.
Maybe go back a few posts. Post #13080
It's a weak response in respect of the debate because what you've cited isn't limited to religion, or to the actions of religious people. Not only that but it applies much more to non-religious, secular actions.
I pointed out the following earlier in the thread for example. It concerns war and conflict, which very much includes the subjugation and eradication of cultures, but it's worth repeating -
...the authors of the 'Encyclopedia of Wars' who documented the history of recorded warfare, and from their list of 1763 wars 123 have been classified to involve a religious cause, accounting for less than 7 percent of all wars and less than 2 percent of all people killed in warfare.
But....... how. I can't visualize it. I can't picture it. I don't understand it. How can there be nothing then something. I just don't get it it hurts my brain and feels like my CPU will overclock
My point is, that's what I jump to and how I cope with it. Not that you need to, but how exactly do you.
I’ve read the whole convo. I know you brought up Bangladesh. My point is, he clearly wasn’t talking about Bangladesh there so it looks like you were dodging by bringing it back up.
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Kinda unrelated to the thread but you're bordering on some fringe theories there. I agree Islam and Hinduism weren't the only things involved, but that is absolutely the core of the 1947 partition. As far as muslims not wanting Jinnah as a leader, it all depends on which segment you're talking about.
There were (and still are) muslims who believe the western system of democracy is haraam in Islam. There are muslims who never accepted Benazir Bhutto as a leader for being female. You can't make a blanket statement about Muslims not wanting Jinnah as their leader.
Jinnah and his party were seculars and the ideology they dreamed of was bound to get opposition and still does to this day (look where Pakistan went).
I don't think anything about the rest is "strange". For most of the native population getting rid of the British was the main priority and then partition was a layer on top of that. Jinnah may not have been a practicing muslim but he 100% identified as one.
Thats how Quantum Mechanics makes me feel to be fair
Weve been around the houses but it all started with him saying we were from the backgrounds we were, as in from South Asia.
My focus thus became that region. And I clearly said Bangladesh came later.
However the point he was making was that religion is the reason we have strife in that region and my reluctance to acknowledge it because of source texts.
His argument falls apart with the Bangladesh example for me. So I added it again later.
Talking of dodging what happened to our conversations?
The biggest irony with Pakistan an India is how a secular Jinnah became the father of conservative Pakistan and a pretty conservative Ghandi of a secular India (well, until recently. But I don't think BJP aligns to Ghandi's ideals either)
Do you believe that your god never started to exist, and if so, how does your brain deal with that?
I do agree saying something like that completely ignores the ethnicities in South Asia. Not to mention, it was only after the British the divide really grew. They focussed on separate communities for Muslims and Hindus to form a divide but religion does play a part.
My argument to all these sort of questions is, do people really think if religion didn't exist there wouldn't be something else to form cliques and fight over?
That’s a precarious refuge for god, considering how the gaps keep getting smaller and fewer.
Don't want to derail the thread an make it about Jinnah. I disagree with you in most of those points.
If it hadn't been for the mullah who said he took Jinnah's testimony to Islam on his death bed he would still be seen as non Muslim by majority. The narrative was written later. This is easily checked.
I mean by definition we can't understand God. Faith comes into it
No, it's all just for us.
The gap can get as small as it can it doesn't change the fact it's unapproachable.
Let's listen to Dawkins:
"...look at the details of molecular biology or bio chemistry you might find some signature of some sort of designer and that designer could well be a higher intelligence elsewhere in the universe"
Also doesn’t mean a deity fills it.
But really, the god of the gaps is a great way to turn a tri-omni deity into a pointless one.