Songs of Dissonance

Hamidm,

I think she was referring to the first in the order of revelation.

``Iqra`` = read.

aisha,

you said, ``While no votary of Islam talks of how we should obey the first verse of the Quran and make our people more knowledgeable `` ..................


alif laam meem ??????? what the heck does that mean ..... if you can`t explain the first three words in that book of spells and brews, how do you expect people to be ``knowledgeable`` ............. good try, though ......

#13- once again a series of unsubstantiated ambiguous statements. You claim that all religions are similar in their ``belief sets``- don`t know how you define ``belief sets`` (ambiguity again)-but that is certainly not the case: polythiesm, animism, monotheism and other variants, also modern ideologies that have religious characteristics- are definitely not the same in their ``belief sets`` or ``belief systems``.

Many of the conclusions in the Quran follow logically from sound premises, that makes it very logical, many rely on showing you empirical evidence in the physical world, which is very scientific. Freedom and fate are logical concepts within particular social structures and historical eras. I do not see them applied transcendingly by the Quran. Philosophers are often very clumsy with those concepts because they take them detached from human society and assume what is era specific as being transcending

You cannot dismiss over a decade worth of work at (http://www.rationalreality.com) by labelling it as an attempt to fool people without giving a single example. All that work, which you casually glanced over is highly documented and annotated. Similarly, packaging the social, political, economic and natural aspects of religion neatly under ``manifestation of fear`` is clumsy and deceptive, and unscientific (being reductionist). Also, a cursory look at human history does not translate into ``historical statistics`` by any definition whatsoever. When you say statistics give me statistics not claims about cursory glances.

Re: # 12

All religions r same in their belief systems. do u challenge this fact? they might be diff in org but not in belief sets.

what is logical about religion? I ask u? because u the one making the claim that there is osmething logical. To me, even the basic idea of freedom to sin, and fate is illogical.

I looked at ur `work`: which is not very diff from all thoelogists do: Make sense of scientifc discovereies (big bang, evolution, etc) from religous perspective, and of soemthing can`t fit, throw it out, and cast aspersions on it (like ID replacing theoruy of evolution). Very old strategy to `stay in business` of befooling ppl.

u want statistics of human fears and their manifestations in religous beliefs? Take a cursory look at human history on any continent. We have always been afraid of one unknown thing or the other in every year of our existence. That fear translates to surrender to God or Gods. That is ur historical statistics.

#10- you made ambiguous statements supported by an ideological belief (yes religious belief) in statistics, without mentioning what statistics- and then you over-generalize again by stating that there is nothing ``logical`` about religion- as if you`ve surveyed all of the thousands of religions and their teachings that have cropped up and disappeared. The scientific system of inquiry can be applied to religion or any other branch of knowledge to extract truth from falsehood. I have done some work on this check the links thru http://rationalreality.com

#11, the discussion did not involve the masses, it involved one person overgeneralizing using events mentioned in the Quran to unrelated events. Neither the understanding of the message nor the stories about the messengers have remained ``constant`` as you suggest- as a result many schools of thought have cropped up, as have sects, denominations and cults- we can use the system of science to extract truth from falsehood. There is no conflict between reason and revelation according to the Quran.

Re: # 9

I respectfully disagree.

There are at least 3 variables here - Masses (people), Message and Messenger.

We all know which one of these has remained constant and never been questioned. It is high time we stopped blaming the masses for weaknesses in the message they follow.

Let me tell you something else - in abusive relationships, the abused invariably believes that they deserved the treatment meted out to them - look up studies done on battered wives, children, rape victims, etc. It takes a lot of effort and time before the abused start to accept that they have been used and abused.

Re: # 9

The problem is not just with islam or quran, but across the board. Too many statistics to support this conclusion.

Your argument is used by all apologists for failed ideologies, including (but not just limited to) communism.

And nothing is `sceintific` or logical about religions.

#8, The problem is not with Islam or the Quran, the problem is with people taking a few instances of punishment mentioned in the Quran (within a specific context and history) and then generalizing from those instances to ALL instances. That is unscientific, illogical, ignores the history and context and has nothing to do with Quran or Islam.

Asiha,

The problem is not junaid jumshaid, but the religion itself. You have concentrated more on Junaid then the problems in belief set.

u said ``Misinformed on the frequencies of natural disasters, Mr. Jamshed’s conclusions seem to be inspired by the best seller evangelical Left-Behind novels. ``

I think not. He is inspired by Quran itself. Qaum-e-Lut (cities of Sodom and Gomorrah ) was annihilated by Allah for some reason. Several other incidents are in Quran, which explicitly tell readers that when Allah is pissed off, he does fire off his weapons of mass destruction

Self-aggrandizement of religiously devout is well deserved. Does anyone else has such CREDIBILITY???