16 thoughts on “Interesting and challenging Inetractions among TF USA Affiliates!”

1. Honorable moderator has given an epithet to the honorable affiliates, keeping that in my mind I won’t dare to fiddle with giants.
   My comment was in private email to respected Noor.
   All professing atheists are more reactive and susceptible to such pointers than agnostics. It confirms tendency of volatility, since consciousness is continuously variable so we all need to reach at the higher level of consciousness by enrichment process.
   I will address misunderstood and misconceived responses one at a time.
   1. to find a god do we need an iota of evidence, how big that iota would be in the form of matter, any mass, any density? your statement is sensory spill out, I wish it was cognitive. How one can know Him who is “He encompasses all things” [41:54].

   “No vision can grasp Him, but He takes in over all vision; He is the Subtle and Aware One” [6:103].

   2. On denial: “I did not call them to witness at the creation of the heavens and the earth, nor at their own creation; I do not take as My helpers those who lead others astray” [18:51],

   “So, ask those who deny the truth if it was harder to create them than all the other things We have created? We created them from sticky clay” [37:11].

   “We created man — We know the promptings of his soul, and are closer to him than his jugular vein” [50:16]

   In this particular reference you are at primordial stage who will answer you on this question except agnostics’ theories. On “special being” no one has ever provided the evidence of the missing link, there is no need to carry that heavy stone, no one can, neither you. The very first creation was from clay, man’s brain and its physical evolution from those primates cannot be ruled out, so I don’t disagree with you. After all brain development needs time for enhanced plasticity. Quran does not give any information on this evolutionary process, hence I cannot be against evolutionary theory.

   3. On myths: my opinion is that divine revelation are the only resources that help pre-frontal activation in mind completely (brain is physical, mind is personalization of brain to create consciousness). I will prefer to ponder over, “Were they created out of nothing, or are they their own creators?” [52:35],

   “We have created you: why then do you not accept the truth”? [56:57]

   My references are divine, there are 49 verses on wisdom, 18 verses on thinking, 44 verses on analytical thinking, 261 on creation, 16 verses on deductive reasoning, 180 verses on cognitive activities, 148 verses on visual empowerment and so much more to enhance brain plasticity. Infect the sole purpose of all the divine revelations was to eliminate strong feeling, sensory responses, here and now complacency, little meaning, reduced sense of self.

   To study a single cell in brain; you need neuroscience, to study two you need psychology and to address issues of mankind emerging from their minds you need divine revelation.

   4. On building blocks: pertaining to creation, symmetry, order, definitive purpose of life there are 261 pointers, I don’t think here I will compare oranges with apples.
   5. On gratitude: The statement lacks in clarity and deliberation, it is not worthy to respond. You are ridiculing mankind, its potential and honor is acknowledged in the universe, “We have honored the children of Adam, and have borne them on the land and the sea, given them for sustenance things which are good and pure; and exalted them above many of Our creatures” [17:70].
   The chaos you see around is man-made, he has chosen it so he has to bear its fruit in all ages and time.
   6. On Eden or Africa: Eden is garden in Arabic, for sustenance one needs resources in abundance, what is wrong with that, it is fine going back to the origin with stability, eternity and optimal utility.
   7. On galaxy to planet: Refer to number 2 above, creation order is like that so we are not diverging on this point.
   This life is illusion, we create the reality here, the pre-frontal activation has already taken place, ” then inspired it to understand what was right and wrong for it” [91:8]

   Choice is ours, “Consolidating the truth is made easy, and renouncing the truth is also made easy” [92:6/7, 92:9/10].

   I won’t opine on a subject if I had not studied that thoroughly, it is essential to do justice to the topic.

   Saeed ul Hassan

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2. I read the comment by Saeed ul Hassan.
   Most of his arguments are quotations from Quran.
   My assumption is that Saeed ul Hassan believes that a statement/option/idea is true because it is written in Quran.
   As a believer he is entitled to believe in anything.

   Monotheistic (Jews, Christians, Muslims) believe that this universe was created by God at a certain point in time. Buddhists do not believe in personal God. The God of Torah, Bible and Quran. Hindus concept of universe is comparatively more philosophic.
   In essence all universal religions are based on Supernatural Phenomenon.
   Logic and analytical thinking is applicable to Natural phenomenon (Space, Time, Infinity, Probability, Randomness).
   Logic and analytical thinking can bring uncertainty which can be extremely discomforting to a believing mind.
   Belief systems bring certainty, illusions of TRUTH hence it needed for the masses.

   What if it will be finally proved scientifically philosophically and mathematically that the UNIVERSE/MULTIVERSES were never created.
   It/they exists eternally. The essence of existence is infinity, probability and randomness.

   A finite mind needs a purpose to exist.
   Hence a purpose is created/manufactured/hypothesized to make individual and social structures livable, peaceful and harmonious.
   All these fabrications are needed to compensate for human existential (intellectual, spiritual) limitations and short comings.
   It may be just the beginning of conversation.
   It depends on responses of other affiliates.

   You think what I have written is necessarily true.
   For me it is true until I am proven wrong.
   These are just opinions.
   Opinions are always subject to change if a flaw is discovered in the thought process.
   Opinions are based on available data.
   Human knowledge is expanding exponentially at present time.
   Why?
   Because human mind got emancipation from DOGMA after a lengthy and arduous struggle. The gene is out of the bottle. No one can put it back.

   nSalik

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3. Very well said Noor Salik Saheb.
   As to Mr Saeed ul Hassan, he writes coherent prose, period ! Since his assertions are based on scriptural references, one has only two choices to pick from. Either accept them reverentially or discard them blasphemously. Rock and a hard place. Where is the room for debate between sense and absence of sense? The only debate possible is between different faith-based debaters who can disagree on the exegesis of texts and quote more passages in support or in contradiction. History is replete with volumes and volumes of differing exegeses of holy texts. The entire phenomenon of sectarianism in all monotheistic religions is founded upon such variance. Of course, doctored history and majority of Ahadeeth, crafted to serve chosen purposes, have added to the confusion of Faithfuls.
   Debates between believers and atheists are counter-productive and only yield unnecessary polarization.

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4. There is not much left for me to say after the comments by Noor and Wequar Sahib regarding the arguments based on scriptures by Saeed Sahib. Since Saeed Sahib has addressed me directly point by point, I thank him for doing all the hard research and I owe him a response. I fully understand as a believer how important scriptures are for him, I wish he had opted to argue logically and rationally instead, realizing that for a non believer God hypothesis is unacceptable hence the so called “revelations” are even more unacceptable (pardon my English here as more unacceptable is probably bad English but it helps me emphasize) and carry no weight at all. Its like showing me dictionary and pointing to the word God written there as proof of God’s existence.

   Saeed Sahib need not take a swipe at “intellectual giants”, just as Mirza Sahib declined to accept the honor, I admit, I am no scholar or intellectual and very reluctant to be even considered a thinker. I am though certainly a follower or student of giant intellectuals
   (like Carl Sagan, Einstein, Darwin, Stephen Hawking and many more) and in awe, and borrow the arguments made by them in demolishing the God hypothesis because their thinking does not make me feel embarrassed whereas people whom theists follow are from thousands of years ago and who had no access to education (not their fault, its the fault of educated people of today who can not comprehend the times and backgrounds of so called prophets, and overall evolution of human brain by that time).

   I understand “an iota of any mass, density” can not be found to be an evidence of a hypothesis such as imaginary God, but any iota of rationality and logic will be acceptable.
   In fact the only logical point in favor of this hypothesis is of “creation ex-nihilo”, but that gets thrown out because it undermines the concept of God coming to exist from nothing too – an entity which is imagined to have all the powers that are imagined with it, not merely the simplest form of element like first on periodic table hydrogen for instance, which is much more likely to have come to exist than God by itself. And from hydrogen onward the universe is pretty explainable…. even hydrogen is explainable after theorizing big bang.

   About gratitude, frankly I had not understood why Saeed Sahib had brought up gratitude
   and I guessed may be he meant lack of gratitude and arrogance on my part hence I had tried to explain that how humbling it is to accept animals and plants as our kin. But if he meant to point out the “blessings” that we enjoy as humans over lesser animals then I must ask him to admit that God be held responsible for the unbearable misery the humans have suffered and still do like horrible diseases, plagues and natural catastrophe (floods, earth quakes etc.). That also reflects on the personality of a creator who thought of “creating” animals to be cruelly slaughtered by the “exalted” creation.

   Babar

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   • The mythical giants who were depicted as being charged by the sir knights–please allow me to say– have now evolved to reality and have been ‘charged with science.’ Some have been over-charged who see everything as science, science and nothing but science. These giants are like one winged birds who can run on the ground but cannot fly. Intellectualism is like a two winged bird which can walk on the ground and also fly in the skies. Intellectual Giants are not confined to a single branch of knowledge. In knowledge, intellectuals are ‘complete whole’ as they see, think, feel, and judge everything with much wider knowledge, within a broader perspective open mindedly. While arguing with the atheists, I have never quoted verses from the scriptures. It is like “throwing pearls before the atheists.” They are materialists and will pick them only when these have monetary value at the jeweler’s counter otherwise these are just words for them.
     For me knowledge is not only scientific know how. It is very vast, a shore-less sea, fathoming of an endless cosmos, and an unlimited dimension in the fields of philosophy, theology, social sciences, humanities, natural sciences, cyber-technologies and much more. Intellectualism is an inter-connection of all these branches of knowledge. For example, science can clone human beings, but it is the job of a thinker, a philosopher, or a sociologist or even theologist to figure out whether it is morally and practically good for the humanity. Science invents many useful as well as deadly weapons also, but it is the job of the thinkers, intellectuals, politicians and humanists when, where, and how to use or not to use them.
     Bertrand Russell was once asked if England is at the verge of being conquered and subjugated by another nation, should the country use atom bomb as a last option to save her liberty. Russell hesitated for a moment and said, “No not even at that point.” Now this is the role of a thinker and a philosopher! And this is an intellectual who loves humanity and will go for his own nation’s slavery rather than destroying mankind. He is an agnostic, proving logically and philosophically why he is not a Christian, but does not play the game of ‘mud-slinging’ on the religion. I am really impressed by his honest exposition of ‘Mohammedan Philosophy’ in his History of Western Philosophy, as he critically explains and discusses what is good and what is bad in Islam. Finally, with due respect to Noor Salik Sahib, I do not view atheists as intellectuals, because it is easy to say no to all other branches of knowledge. In fact none of us is an intellectual here. Every one of us is holding on to a single branch of knowledge one has.
     Mirza Ashraf

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     • I spent few good minutes thinking whether the comments need to be dignified with a rejoinder or not. For me its a decision based on a cost:benefit equation. I realized that there was no benefit to it but since ‘ the show must go on ‘ and interaction among the Affiliates is some times an entertaining proposition, at least for those who have that particular and subtle sense of humor, I opted to chip in. So here it goes for scholarly(??) Mirza Saheb. A lot of rhetoric is no alternative for logic and reasoning. One winged, two winged, or wingless altogether – your argument (?) is flightless and untenable for a discourse demanding critical thinking. If we were to rely on abstraction and imagination, and not empirical knowledge, then we will be lost in a imaginary world now and another imaginary world hereafter. Isn’t it bad enough that dishonest and immoral lobbyists offer winning dinning womanizing to the law-makers to legislate favorable laws, or, to block laws that will harm their Principal’s interest. Without meaning to be particularly mean to any Faith, I ask you a fair question. What kind of God dangles the carrot of same winning dining and womanizing to those who will do His bidding ? To make the tribal mindset of Jaahils of many centuries ago a beacon of light for rest of the life of humanity on this planet is beyond stupidity.
       Coming to the comments of Dr Fayyaz Saheb, I like to draw his attention to the fact that until the turn of the twentieth century, education was not compartmentalized. People were taught the 3 R’s plus a bit of astronomy, sociology, medicine, poetry etc etc. Therefore the thinking process of common educated persons was under duress to take into consideration all the above disciplines. Obviously an impossible task. That led to introduction of grey abstraction in discussions to cover for lack of logic. Reliance on Scriptures was one good subterfuge. What is astounding is that religious people, or those who feign religiosity, still hide behind that obsolete cover. In modern times, the Information Bank is so enormous that learning even one subject like history or Sociology or Philosophy, in its entirety, is not possible for one life-time. Now, one pursues the knowledge of one chapter of one’s chosen discipline for decades after completing a Doctorate in the subject. Bottom line – “Specialization ” A learned man is one who knows more and more about less and less. Process of elimination doesn’t lead you to GOD any more.
       I will not be surprised if my comments are edited out lest it displeases the Faithfuls by its scathing directness.

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       • As far as my rhetorical expression is concerned Wequar Sahib’s response is more rhetorical than mine. Reason and logic cannot be propounded without rhetoric.

         Since a materialist does not believe that man is a spiritual animal also, for him to understand what is God is beyond his realm. There is a god within every one of us, and I do not say this mystically. Within a spiritual man He is well understood. A stone is a matter devoid of a soul and passion with no life within it, concept of god or God is not there. I believe there is a god or God in Darwin, Einstein, and Abdus Salam. Whatever these great men and many other like them explored is not less than revelation. Even poets like Ghalib and Iqbal expressing through intuition are also displaying revelation. What is scientifically or philosophically or through any other branch of knowledge is revealed and is accepted by us, is “Revelation.”

         Please do not sift the verses of the scripture which cannot be understood with reason only but are also to be spiritually apprehended. One reason is enough for all of us that God (or you can give this power any other name) infused His own spirit into man and that spirit works within every one of us exploring, reasoning, loving, and so on. “God rests in reason and moves in passion.” An atheist has reason but no passion that is why God does not move in him. He is looking for God some one outside his self. He does not try to see that his own psyche, his own passion, and his own reasoning is coming out of him because of an intuition, an imagination, a feeling and a passion, which is only and only the asset of man; an asset infused in him from where? If it is from no where, then saying from God is the only answer we have.

         Mirza Ashraf

         P. S. I wonder why Wequar Sahib has to enter scholar (???) when there is no need of the word ‘scholar.’ We are all–which I mean the whole team of TF–seekers of knowledge travelling in the same boat.

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         • Mirza Saheb has very clearly explained the phenomenon of ‘revelation’ from within and I completely agree that it is a function of human brain which is still a 95 % mystery. However I raised the question of validity of revelation from without, through the Arch Angel, totally unsupported by credible witnesses, logic or reasoning. Its the revelation from without which is issue at hand. I hope Mirza Saheb differentiates between them. Human knowledge bank is growing in its deposits at an unprecedented speed, every moment of the day. However there are still infinite unknowns. To lump many unknowns together as spirituality is both escapism and denial of reality. All the solved mysteries owe their solution to the scientists who explored through logic(in most cases Mathematical calculations) and reasoning (Experimentation – observation- verification etc). None of them contributed to the knowledge bank through spirituality, an enigmatic phenomena that means a different thing to different people. If you wish to question my observation ask hundred different persons what they understand from the word ‘spirituality’ and then compare their answers. Spirituality comes handy when you run out of arguments.
           I am open to blame for being undiplomatic, materialist, and insensitive, even foolish, but I pride in my clarity of opinion and I don’t mince my words.

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     • Now that it is settled, that none of us is an intellectual here, I hope Mirza Sahib will stop proving that atheists are stones without passion and spirit or materialists hungry for pearls to sell at jeweler’s counter, or Dodo birds. If Mirza Sahib believes in his often quoted term “complete whole” then he should think science as one of the parts to learn to become complete and not lambaste science and scientists all the time implying that scientists are not capable of imagining if cloning is morally okay or are wicked who only explore the power or energy stored in an atom for destruction purposes. I understand Einstein regretted having written the letter to the President warning that Germans could make the bomb and I believe it wasn’t the scientists who made the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. I believe its the scientists who are warning about the global warming that will annihilate intellectuals and spirituals. I believe its the scientists who discovered vaccines when spirituals were hunting down sinners to end black death, I believe its the scientists who invented dynamites without which no mining or construction of roads and tunnels would have been possible. If there were no scientists so called spirituals and scholars of all other sources of knowledge would be still hanging from the trees.

       In one of the earlier remarks I read Mirza Sahib finally giving a “reason” of existence of God:

       “One reason is enough for all of us that God (or you can give this power any other name) infused His own spirit into man …… intuition, imagination, feeling, a passion which is the only and only asset of man; an asset infused in him from where? If it is from nowhere, then saying from God is the only answer we have”.

       Now I am at a loss and wondering from where Mirza Sahib found that God “infused” anything into man, and uses this “knowledge” later to conclude that since only man has these assets (which is outright wrong) and excludes all other possibilities of acquiring these qualities without discussing, that only God’s “infusion” could be the reason. Is this myth of the Bible acceptable that God blew his spirit into the nostrils of man he created in His own image?? Is this “reasoning” ? This is the ground he stands on?
       I am eager to gain flight.

       Babar

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5. My humble thoughts on GOD, Science and Pseudo-science

   Just because something cannot be proven directly, does not mean that it does not exist, is not true, is unscientific or is pseudo-science.
   In medicine sometime an illness is diagnosed by excluding other illnesses, even though there is no direct test available for the particular illness. It is called a diagnosis of exclusion. Some “scientific” theories have stood the test of time because other theories were proven false. They were better able to explain and resolve the conceptual problems without having been proven by direct evidence. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Darvon’s Theory of Evolution is the prime example.
   Larry Lauden, a well known philosopher of science, argues on demarcation of science and pseud-science that it is pointless and dangerous for philosophers to engage in demarcation projects. Pointless because it is not possible to come up with a sharp definition of science (or pseudoscience), dangerous because making public pronouncements about the rationality or irrationality of a given belief or practice has serious social consequences.
   The creation of universe is still a mystery and many theories have been put forward and discarded, The belief in GOD, the Creationist, and arguments behind it are neither un-reasonable nor pseudo-science. just like Theory of Relativity and Theory of Evolution, It does not require direct evidence, and will hold water unless proven otherwise.

   Fayyaz

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6. I would like to thank Dr. Fayyaz for bringing up the point of “proving something by exclusion”. I wanted to bring this up myself but the discussion had not warmed up to that point. When I started struggling with reconciling of science (however little science I had learnt) with holy books, my friends being Muslims, quoted heavily from Quran, the verses about the universe and the origin of life. Those references made it very clear that holy book had no clue about the universe or the origins of it or life. It is then that I started to realize how much is excluded from the holy books, not even the help of an often forwarded excuse of “metaphor” could justify the exclusion. The best Quran had to offer (and being written 600 years after the advent of Christianity I assume it to be the final version of “revelations”) about solar system was that, from my memory off hand, “the sun was set to revolve around the earth without any pillars and sun and moon were not to over take each other thus creating day and night….and then God sat on his throne..”, and about life the best is, life having been created from clay and baked … or from clot of blood/sperm. Not the exact words but basically the concept was this. All this corresponds to the prevailing knowledge or guess work of those times and for a reader at present it leaves every important thing out and there isn’t even a remote clue about how important the development of basic cells was, and how it took about three and a half billion years before cells were developed and Cambrian Explosion (of life diversity) occurred after that. The gravity was not understood by then perhaps so the reference to the marvel of moon and sun hanging without pillars and in accord with the pre-Copernicus idea of earth being the center of universe.
   I request the participants to just think how much was not included in “revelations”, and this exclusion proves that revelations were not “divine” at all otherwise the creator had to have known the facts and mentioned in some small way. I know what the theists say about it and that is the creator knew these things were too much for humans back then to comprehend but when we object to “Reconstruction through metaphors, like Iqbal” we are told that Quran is for all times to come….it doesn’t add up, if the revelations ceased having covered everything for all times to come then how come the revelations lack so badly about the very existence of the universe and life. As we know now that cloning is only a matter of time now and tinkering with DNA is going to bring on changes in species like we can only imagine in science fiction movies. Simply by comparing the present day knowledge (let alone even a hundred years from now) it is very clear that no holy book’s authors had any clue of facts. This exclusion is, for me at least, the biggest proof that these books are not divine, a mere reflection of guess work of humans of those times.

   Babar

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7. Some random thoughts:

   If a new TF member logged in today and saw this last comment, it would be hard for him/her to figure out that this discussion started with an article titled “life is plugged in” or something. Since then the discussion has veered in nine different directions. Every time, by the time i formulate my response to the last comment and type it, the discussion has already taken 2 right turns and 3 left turns and my response is no longer relevant to the current discussion. I have a feeling we can start a discussion about flying a kite and it would somehow drift into a common denominator – existence / lack thereof of God and why religious beliefs are good or bad. I wish there was a way of keeping the discussion more focused.

   A little after the original article Salik sahib really let the “genie out of the box”. For a while his comments made me wonder if Messrs. Azeem and Mustufa were going to sue him for plagiarizing their thoughts and comments. Until then I was not aware of his views.

   In our “common denominator” discussions we lump religion/s and belief in God in the same category. Actually the two are quiet separate. You can certainly believe in a Supreme Being without believing in a specific religion. To quote an example, Dr. Sheikh’s comments(3-4 comments ago) was re. God. I think he was saying just because we cannot “prove” God exists (or anything else for that matter) does not necessarily mean God does not exist. The response to that by Babar sahib was was to point to the “non divinity” of prophetic revelations to prove that God did not exist. I would like to argue that whether those revelations were divine or not is an entirely different discussion than the discussion about whether God exists or not. Some day we should have a non judgmental, non acrimonious discussion about just the existence of God without bringing religion into it.

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   • I agree with Dr. Shoeb that we have deviated from the original issue. I am really disappointed that whenever I have sent an article, both Wequar Sahib and Babar Sahib raise the banner of “death of God.” Friends we should not be allergic to the mere name of God appearing in any of my article. After all there are billions and billions of people in the world who believe in God. My articles are not carefully read and are attacked without giving a thoughtful consideration, as if just mentioning the word God is a crime.

     I take knowledge as a vast and shoreless sea in which I love to dive find whatever appeals to me. Coming Sunday in Fishkill, I am delivery my review on a book “The Judiciary of Pakistan and it’s role in Political Crisis” by a very famous jurist and attorney of the Supreme Court Janab Syed Sami Ahmed, who is going to deliver a lecture.

     Now the article by Khalil Gibran sent by me is going to meet the same fate. I may clarify here that by Priestess Gibran means Lady Wisdom, not a Maulviani.

     Mirza Ashraf

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   • I totally agree with Shoeb Amin Sahib that the original topic is forgotten and discussion has drifted from the course but I would like to assure Shoeb Sahib that not many affiliates are likely to discover this as hardly anyone participates.

     Now that the topic is already diverted and almost every one has given their concluding remarks or dodged the bullet, I would like to ask Shoeb Sahib one question before ending this; How is non divinity of prophetic revelations not connected to the existence/non existence of God? How did mankind find about God?
     Had there been no “revelations” would we (mankind) have worshiped
     God? I think God and revelations can’t remain standing without each other…If there is no God there can’t be any revelation by him through prophets, if there are no genuine revelations there is no way of invoking God. You disprove one, other is demolished too. Yes, only some power may be assumed to have created the universe but that power can not be conversing and having dialogue with humans and if that power did contact humans then that will be God and having contacted humans would be revealing himself.
     I certainly had turned Fayyaz Sahib’s argument around but by exposing the exclusions of facts in revelations was trying to prove revelations not divine hence proving non existence of any divine entity.
     Babar

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8. Shoeb Amin Saheb, ‘ Baat niklay go to door talak ja’aygi’. Your random thoughts too are an example of it.
   The debate between Agnosticism and Atheism is also a beaten track. All arguments have been worn out from excessive use. Please come up with a new polarized issue for a feisty round of exchange. However, its becoming kind of boring as only -43 Affiliates come up with their opinion while the majority remains silent. Too many perched on the fence – its not healthy for the fence.

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   • Disclaimer: This response is just to wequar azeem sahib’s comment of 12/14/13, 1.53 pm and bears no relation to any other discussion.

     Wequar sahib is right; my “random thoughts” should have been categorized as a separate topic and not been posted in the timeline of “a plugged in society”. something the editorial board(including me) should review as to where to post what comment or whether to post it all if it is not relevant to the main topic. even this comment is in the wrong place; until we figure out a way of keeping our discussions somewhat more focused.

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