Hotel Babylon: The Marriot Hotel Explosion What makes me sick is the excuses we tend to see on forums such as this; worse, comparisons with 'christian' fundamentalists and the usual rants about 'proxy' american involvements ..... it is denial at its worst

I only wish these morons have the moral courage to acknowledge the fact that there ARE these elements in our midst, more than capable of carrying out such atrocities, and take responsibility for their existence .... and also have the guts to take the necessary actions (or advocate such action) against such elements ..... My question to all Pakistanis is what are you going to do about it? ....

.... unfortunately with denial one is prone to absolve oneself of the 'responsibility' .... hmm... responsibility; a concept that appears to be alien to our culture in the first place (perhaps ... though I remain optimistic .. cautiously!)

Khuda Hafiz

The God Delusion Re: # 160; masadi sahib

whatever happened to the TNI sir? no need anymore?

one quick question ..... does acknowledgement and ownership of the TNI title imply that there WAS a need/room for "newness" and "improvement"?

Regards.

will check your response later

The God Delusion Re: # 154; hamidm sahib
[[just tell me what alif, lam, meem means]]

Sir I can't help you on that personally but quin sahib here tells me one can forget about the "lam and meem" quite safely .........

......... according to him "ikko 'alif' tere darkaar"! ..... now it would be his turn to tell us all what that "alif" is??

thanks for the latest in the al-lah/gabby saga sir!

Khuda Hafiz for now

The God Delusion Re: # 47; pinku

I think he did try .... he said "hu" ... the "ultimate" sound .... on par with "om"!!

(as used by Sultan Bahu in his poetry)

OR ... he may NOT have meant that!

Khuda Hafiz all

The God Delusion quin sahib, [[All you need is one Alpha – let go of all this scholarshipping” ]]

may be you have come to the wrong place looking for that "Alpha" sir ..... we only have a "CreateAlpha" here .... would that do?

The God Delusion Re: # 41; quin
[[No one has said about Alam-Online who is inciting people to kill Ahmedis.]]

you had to go ON-LINE for that??!!

The Cry of Karachi Fatima .... you CAN write poetry (whether someone can understand what you write is a totally different matter! ... another topic for another time)...

..... we can either sweep it under the carpet and coccoon ourselves in our own little worlds (new OR old) or we can actually think and attempt to provide realistic solutions to the problems ..... and that only comes with acknowledging the "problems" and facing/fighting them with courage .... including the appropriate use of liguistics such as poets/writers etc have done through the ages ... especially in our part of the world (perhaps because they had so much to talk about! ... another digression, sorry)

on the other hand, if the purpose of poetry is merely a collection of nice (and polysyllabic) words that rhyme well together .... than that's probably OK too ... only let's not use it for any "purpose" but for the linguistic beauty herein

will talk soon ..... Khuda Hafiz for now

The God Delusion .... btw, has anyone noticed at the number of "versions" of the "same" there are?? ..... surely only one can be right? no? ..... if so, by what criteria? ....

.....then again we are in the realm of fairytales so I wouldn't hold my breath for a logical answer any time soon! .... I only hope God is enjoying his own sadistic joke!!

The God Delusion Re: # 33; Rabia

you make a good point in the second para of your post. The "God of Religion" as perceived by muslims/christians/jews and the "God of the Philosopher/Scientist" are two very distinct entities .... lightyears apart from one another. When one denies the existence of God, one rejects the "God of Religion" ... which is an exclusive concept.

I wonder what quin or other sufis etc would think about this "exclusive" nature of the God he is so in love with?? It is very clear from the "Book" as to what that "God" wants its followers to do ... trying to give it a "fuzzy warm feeling of love" is a state of denial at its best ... less said the better on that!

I'd also like to quote another atheistic scientist (since Dawkins has been thought to be "a biologist commenting on the 'wrong subject'"! ... It is none other than Albert Einstein:

“It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems.”

(Albert Einstein, 1947; from Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein Creator and Rebel, New York: New American Library, 1972, p. 95.)


“I am a deeply religious nonbeliever.… This is a somewhat new kind of religion.”

(Albert Einstein, in a letter to Hans Muehsam, March 30, 1954; Einstein Archive 38-434; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 218.)



“I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”

(Albert Einstein, upon being asked if he believed in God by Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the Institutional Synagogue, New York, April 24, 1921, published in the New York Times, April 25, 1929)

.................................

For someone to suggest that we are talking about the "same .. same" God as the God of Religion is a fallacy and quite frankly stupidity of the highest order!!

Like I said before, the two concepts are lightyears apart!! ... and Naqshbandi sahib has captured the soul of the "interventionist God" by acknowledging that "no two religious philosophies are the same" ... that would be absurd. One "believes" in one by rejecting (conciously or sub-conciously) the other! ... can't do "both" together .... that'd be just absurd!!

as for true "sufism" .... not the piri/muridi type but the "true" version ... it is nothing but pantheism (or sexed up atheism!) .... with all the "overflowing love" attempting to smother others (whether they want to be smothered or not!) ... they just din't/don't have the opportunity/courage to say it out loud!!

...............................

as for hamidm sahib's post .... LOL sir! some of us are also waiting for the new episode in the al-lah/Gabby/mo saga too ... in your own time of course! .... I remembered Ghalib whilst reading the first para from Genesis (hamidm version) ...

"na tha kuchh tau khuda tha, kuchh na hota tau khuda hota;
daboya mujh ko honey ne, na hota mein tau keya hota".

take care and Khuda Hafiz all

The God Delusion Re: # 5

... and the last line was addressed to TaureanKhan and not quin

apologies again

The God Delusion Correction ... that was

.... Rumi-esque ..... (not Runi)

apologies

The God Delusion Hi Taurean ... long time man!

I just came back to leave you guys with a few more beautiful quotations by my "spiritual" mentor Professor Dawkins (a Chair at Oxford is nothing to be sneezed at I reckon!) He says (quite appropriate here):

"If death is final, a rational agent can be expected to value his life highly and be reluctant to risk it. This makes the world a safer place, just as a plane is safer if its hijacker wants to survive. At the other extreme, if a significant number of people convince themselves, or are convinced by their priests, that a martyr's death is equivalent to pressing the hyperspace button and zooming through a wormhole to another universe, it can make the world a very dangerous place. Especially if they also believe that that other universe is a paradisical escape from the tribulations of the real world. Top it off with sincerely believed, if ludicrous and degrading to women, sexual promises, and is it any wonder that naïve and frustrated young men are clamouring to be selected for suicide missions?"

On the 'God' explanation! he says:

"I don't think God is an explanation at all. It's simply redescribing the problem.
We are trying to understand how we have got a complicated world, and we have an explanation in terms of a slightly simpler world, and we explain that in terms of a slightly simpler world and it all hangs together down to an ultimately simple world.
Now, God is not an explanation of that kind. God himself cannot be simple if he has power to do all the things he is supposed to do."

and as far as the ongoing 'suffering' in this world that gets the juices flowing for many ... including my Runi-esque brethren, here is what goes on in HIS universe;

"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference."

I just thought a "recap" for quin sahib was in order ....

... Khuda Hafiz Taurean, Eklavya and Quin .... btw quin, regarding your comment about not having likeminded "pakhtoon" company, good riddance to old rubbish my friend ... their loss, definitely NOT yours! though I am hoping for a compromise but it takes time! (take it from me!)

The God Delusion [[When the true spirit of religion (the pain and anguish which you can see in every Sacred text) get so perverted, when the man become devil incarnate in the hands of religion, when the earth is turned into hell, ....]]

this IS the "true spirit" of religion .... any religion but specially the ones that revere "death more than life" ... when the suiciders claims being hurt "less than a gnat's bite ... before they take their final journey to the promised gardens with rivers of milk and honey ... amongst other things" ..... wake up and smell the coffee quin .... this has been going on since time immemorial .... you have only just caught up with the memo!

September Morning Re: # 202; Bhatti sahib

kuchh khuda da khauf karo paaji! why would I do something like that .... look, perhaps I didn't phrase it well ... I have a lot of questions on this subject and it is probably best we discuss this after I return next week (away at present) .... perhaps on UP

as for the "impartial" bit ... it WAS intended as perceived!! .. applies to us all to a greater or lesser extent!

September Morning Re: # 197

.... will return later to check your responses ... thanks in advance

September Morning Re: # 187; hamidm and Bhatti sahiban

Salaam-e-masnoon hazaraat!

sorry to butt in ... private conversations and all that .... the "ahmedi mas'ala" aside, I still haven't heard a consensus on the "shiites/Ismailis" despite my endeavours to achieve one through Chowk (my mistake!) .... Now if one is to regard Ahmedis non-muslim (as Bhatti sahib insists from time to time), I'd like him to clarify his poisition on the latter group mentioned above ... and if they ARE muslims (which I don't personally begrudge either group), then by what criteria? ... since the fundamental differences are immense from mainstream Sunni Islam (in both). .... I have listed those "differences" many a times here before ... and being a well-read and "impartial" student of history, Bhatti sahib doesn't need education on them anyway.

As for the mullah with bad breath at you nikah ... much better at the registry office I reckon .... completely secular and no hang ups!