God is a Metaphor

Re: # 134

dear khurram....what did i miss? who are you responding to about depression and suicide.

sincerely sohail

...afterthought #132 .....

As a recent example, a known and admitted atheist said ``May she rest in peace`` on the obituary of a departed Chowk author. I had asked ``Peace ... where? And in which Land?``

Do you think it had nothing to do with the obituary? Or a trick question?

It was to expose the duality of the atheists who were just saying it to be politically correct while they profess to neither believe in a soul nor an afterlife. Because, believing in either of the foregoing makes belief in God inescapable. To them death ends all and God is a metaphor. So it would have been more appropriate for the atheist to condole by saying ``Hope she had a good life``.

BTW he never responded :)

Regards.

#119 by muh.adil Re: # 99

... people don`t talk about the thoughts written by the writer, they just start their own session ... why not you write seperately and invite Dr. Sohail to comment ...

What do you think I`m talking about if not the article? ... :)

Second what you have asked about weather it is ok or not, then i think after my answer i hope you get the answer which i have given to you.

No you didn`t give me an answer, and I can`t accept what you insist is an answer from your post # 97, for the reasons I gave in #99 addressed to your goodself.

... please start their seperate thread to talk if they have anything to share with the world, don`t exploit the reputation of others, and don`t answer by using name of ``author``.

muh.adil, I suspect you do not understand the nature of the forum that is Chowk. It is a debating forum. Unless you want us to agree with everything the author says, we are free to dispute his position by bringing up our own which falsify his.

In this case, I am bringing up issues which contradict Dr. Sohail`s (ok .. not author`s) position which he has taken by stating that ``...when humanity reaches the stage of mental growth and cultural evolution when most people can understand scriptures as folklore and not as divine revelations, can view them as mythology rather than stories .. ``

My position is that morality springs from ancient scriptures, and not mental growth and cultural evolution. Hope it is clear now.

Regards.

Re: # 132

Hello Zeemax, First of all thanks for clearing which sentence of article you are talking about and what point you are making.

So my straight answer is they are right about their struggle.

why i am saying so.
Since i believe what dr. Sohail said, and i also give you one example. One more thing, God name has been used for this purpose, but if we see from the Darwin`s Theory point of view we can better look into this how all this happen and it is not because some divine scripture that you do these things,
and if it so What Egypt was doing, actually they were also obeying some divine scripture so how you can defend them.

One more thing, how we can do some test editing while writing, can you help me in this regards

Thanks.

#109 by drsohail Re: # 98

Dear Dr. Sohail,

Thanks for your response, but I`m afraid my question remains unanswered. The question was `whether you will support the legal right of a brother/sister to have a sexual relationship`.

Your earlier response has already concluded (with help by Khurram) that you`re not in favour of incestuous marriages (from physical and mental health point of view as you have further elaborated in the captioned post) but would`nt want to interfere. It was the conclusion reached that since you wouldn`t want to interfere, you wouldn`t want the State to do so either in outlawing the practice.

It makes sense. After all, if a couple is not worried about the physical/social/mental well-being of their own or their off-spring, the State can`t enforce their well-being upon them. Direct analogy is with same-sex marriage which I assume would also be regarded as unfavorable by you for precisely the same reasons, and must have supported it`s legalizing.

Therefore, the conclusion to be reached as to my question would be that you support the brother/sister couple in their legal battle.

Is that correct? If it is, I have my answer.

If not, I would like to know why legality of same-sex marriage is right while legality of brother/sister marriage is wrong, and to which morality or human concern can the distinction be ascribed? Of-course assuming that you`re not in favor of legalization of same-sex marriage as well which is possible.

Regards

Re: # 131 zee,

Since I happen to be a member of the same clan dr sohail is, I can try to briefly answer your question:

If the state thinks that the offsprings of these incestuous marriages will be its future subjects, it will base the decision on their future wellbeing. So, the state will ban having children as a result of incest just because parents do not have a complete ownership of their children`s rights. This is just parallel to the law that you cannot physically abuse your own child in western countries.

A more interesting question would be, if incest is okay if it has zero risk of leading to offsprings. I think this is a trick question and my current stand on it would be to allow it if is backed by some good practical reasons guaranteeing its persistance. I hold that the disgust that people have against it is purely consequence based and has no rational value.

Dr sb, you can add on this.....

#105 by khurram Re: zeemax

I do have a question for you too. Would you support the right of a religious minority to practice incest if they claimed it as part of their religion?

To make this question fully analogous with mine to Dr. Sohail, at #6, it will have to be slightly re-phrased as follows:

Would you support the legal right of a religious minority to practice incest if they claimed it as part of their religion?

To the above, the answer is an unqualified and unequivocal `NO` with no mitigating circumstances.

Regards.

Error Message 32AF56:
9:22PM East Lattitude - 2007:04:12

This article is yet another attempt to undermine human spirituality in favor of whatever concepts are used to declare God as a metaphor. At least 85% of human population does not support the concept being advanced in this article. The author insists on declaring God a metaphor perhaps on the grounds of not being able to find God under his microscope.

Making statements, such as, ‘highly evolved minds interpret scripture metaphorically and interpreted literally by those not highly evolved’, appear to be a highly self serving proclamation. I wonder how any one is going to collect the necessary statistical data to support such assumptions. We all know, there are large number of (intellectually) evolved people in all walks of life, including science, who believe in a personal God or a higher being who created life and the universe.

Every religion and belief system does seem to have various folklores associated with it. The followers of a faith or a religion do not necessarily accept or support many of those tales. But mere existence of such tales does not undermine the central theme of a religion. There have been social, cultural and political reasons behind the origin of most folklores. One should not be throwing the baby with the bath water.

The terms like seven heavens have metaphorical meanings, but only the atheists perceive God to be a metaphor. Those who are not spiritually developed, often have difficulty in accepting the existence of God as they do not find Him directly under the microscope or in a mathematical equation.

The article, ‘God is a Metaphor’ is one of several, that I have seen, written by many atheists with the same bottom line - promoting author’s own thoughts and values. I wonder if the real reason of repeatedly harping on the same subject, using different words, is an attempt to strengthen their own uncertain convictions against some kind of inherent deep seated insecurities causing inner cognitive conflicts.

Regarding the notion holy wars – people always find some reason or excuse to wage wars on each other. If we look at all the current hotspots around the world, we see that the geo-political reasons are driving factors, no body is trying to save God or a religion.

Javed I. Chaudry

Re #122, ``How do you know that there is someone real behind this metaphor?``

If by `someone real` you mean a being that `exists` in the sense that its existence can be verified scientifically then I believe that there is no such being. I am not even taking the `green monkey` position that there may be a being whose existence cannot be disproved. I categorically state that there is no such being. What this metaphor expresses is the experience of ultimacy or unconditionality. It is not a subjective or objective experience like other experiences but a dimension of all experiences. Think of what concerns you ultimately. Or the unconditional imperative to act morally, whatever the content of your morality. Where does your concept of true and good come from. It is this reality, which is not an existent thing, but the `ground` of existence that is expressed in the symbol of the Supreme Being.

Re: # 126 khurram,

You seem to be connecting the innate human morality with a supreme being who inspires it and as other things to do with it in the enterprise called religion. Surely this is one of the plausible dimensions to pursue but I miss to see a strong connection between the two, especially when you say that you do not agree to the literal forms of god.

As far as my understanding of this question is concerned, evolutionary explaination of morality makes more sense to me. We are all, on average, moral and immoral to the optimized degree which determined by our existential reality.

Just think of an analogy that in any field of professions, businesses usually compete with each other but also form alliances to safeguard the overall interests of the sector they are operating in. In other words, they are adverseries as well as allies, exhibiting a type of morality which depends on their existence. According to the computational theory of mind, it is nothing more than a complex computer loaded with self-learning algorithms, trying to optmize the evolutionary ideals. And this is where morality comes from. And `the unconditional imperative to act morally` is explained to be the act of these economically simple algorthims are `decieved`.

This is quite a lengthy and complex argument with which I may not be able to do justice with. I am curious to know if you have pursued this line of thinking and analyzed it as a plausible explanation.

Re: #drsohail,
``ps...next question khurram...do you consider yourself a Muslim? if yes how do you define it? ``

Of course, I do.
And, I define it by the first kalimah.

GT: that`s right but those unverifiable green-monkeys didn`t inspire an Iliad or a Mahabharata or my fav. Faust.

Re: # 118

Raw:

Yes, I think both you and I understand each other perfectly. But what follows is for others:

How can you rationally refute the following:

1. ``God dictated the Koran to Mohammed.``

2. ``God induced Homer to write the Illiad.``

You can`t.

Now consider the following two verifiable statements:

1. ``If God does not exist then the Arabic Koran has Chinese characters.``

2. ``If the Koran wasn`t written by GT then the Arabic Koran has Chinese characters.``

Now note the interesting phenomenon. Suppose the Arabic Koran is serached and no Chinese characters are found. What do we conclude, ON THE BASIS of 1 and 2? We conclude that God exists or GT wrote the Koran or both. On the basis of 1 and 2, THIS IS A SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSION. To refine this conclusion we need MORE verifiable statements. With the addition of more verifiable statements, some conclusions would be refined but other questions would prop up. And so on and so forth. Can we have the entire set of ALL verifiable statements. The answer is probably No (for this see #107).

GT:
I agree. I was stretching the definition on that count. Although, God `notion` (with the meaninglessness inherent in its construction) can be entertained ironically, like getting into a willing-suspension-of-disbelief.

Re: # 115
Raw:
Right, but we cant do much can we? Can the following statement ever be negated logically:

``All the monkeys in chowk are green in colour``.

Best.