Second proof

I start in name of God...


In my previous post I gave some reasons why I believe in God, I don't believe because we lack information on certain subject like where did life arise when we can't make it in labs, because that simply doesn't make sense as tomorrow we might just be able to find the right formula to make life in labs or we might not.


Proof as for my understanding is based on our current knowledge in Science about life needing water and big bang or expanding universe, tomorrow if something else is discovered and these ideas are wrong, than I was wrong and this blog would need correction but for the time being this is what we know.


We know that life needs water and universe is expanding and was originally part of a single body, which went bang (or maybe not) and expanded into Earth and whatever else we have in the universe.


These two things are proof enough in my opinion because its a challenge where it says "don't the unbelievers see?".


Lots of people are ready to pounce on atheist using this statement, see you were wrong. Frankly speaking lots of people are wrong, people who believe in God are wrong too because they believe in something else, first of all there is no difference between other religion and there is nothing against other religions in Islam.


2:62 Those who believe (in the Qur'an), and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians,- any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord.


5:69 Those who believe (in the Qur'an), those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Sabians and the Christians,- any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness,- on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.


22:17 Those who believe (in the Qur'an), those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Sabians, Christians, Magians, and Polytheists,- Allah will judge between them on the Day of Judgment: for Allah is witness of all things.


All the verses above say that it doesn't really matter what religion you follow as long as you do righteous deeds, it doesn't matter if you are a Jew or a Hindu or Christian but if you are doing something that isn't even in your book than you seriously have problem, you are following your own will or will of someone else.


For Muslims who wouldn't understand me, let me give you an example, lets assume someone is born Muslim, but he drinks alcohol, goes to bad women, cheats people and steal others share, but he is Muslim because he prays sometimes and prays Friday prayer for sure. Is this person Muslim? Most of the Muslims will say "yes", in my opinion if you want to call this person a Muslim for sake that we shouldn't call anyone non-Muslim that is fine but if you want to call this person Muslim because he prays Friday prayer I seriously don't understand what you are talking about.


If you look at the above verses it says "Those who believe", for sake of understand (in the Qur'an) is added but it really doesn't exist in Arabic text, person who believes, really believes 100% without doubt, but if his need to impress people around him by drinking comes between him and commandment of God than this person really doesn't value commandment as much as his need to impress others. If this person biological and evolutionary urge is more than commandment of Allah not to do Adultery, that urge is more than commandment of Allah and so on.


Thus this person only prays because he wants to show he is Muslim but really doesn't do it because he fears the punishment after day of judgement, because if he did fear he wouldn't do wrong things, impressing someone wouldn't be as important as protecting himself from fire of hell. Lets put fire in front of this person and tell him, this is a bottle of Alcohol but if you drink it you'll complete burn your insides, will he drink it? Of course not because now he knows this is why he believes, so belief is not praying or acting as if you are a believer but belief is knowing that it would happen and staying away from it.


So it doesn't matter what any person says if he doesn't believe he doesn't but if that person does, it doesn't matter what his religion is, for sure some books are more accurate than others and for sure I'm a Muslim and I believe Quran is most accurate but if a Jew, Hindu or Christian does things righteously than that person will get reward from Allah (The God). "...shall have their reward with their Lord."


Now you can say what you like but this is what Quran says so as a Muslim you have to follow what Quran says otherwise you really don't believe that this is a commandment from Lord of the worlds.


Let me before I continue establish something for people, some Muslims and most non-Muslims, people think Allah is a name, they think God named "Allah" does something like giving Quran to prophet Mohammad etc, frankly its not a name, it simply means Al = The ... Illah = God, mixed together in Arabic its called "Allah" or "Alillah", The God.


As Muslims we don't believe in many God and we surely don't believe there are God's beside God, so this is what we prefer to use, like many Arabic Christians who call God, Allah. That doesn't mean they believe in God named Allah but it simply means God to them, its not because they picked it up from Muslims but actually Muslims picked it up from Christians. 


Lets move on to main topic, proof of God.


Lets move ahead and give a another verse from Quran that talks about science that couldn't have been known to anyone at that time, the discovery is very recent and wasn't even known till 1950s.


41:11 Moreover He Comprehended in His design the sky and it had been (as) smoke: He said to it and to the earth: "Come ye together willingly or unwillingly." They said: "We do come (together) in willing obedience."


The verse talks about comprehending the designing of the sky when it was smoke, smoke?


I have no clue how many of you who will read this would know cosmology but I'm sure person from 1000 AD wouldn't know what this verse mean, its an amazing fact that we today know that stars are formed in great big clouds of gas and dust, smoke is gas and dust, instead of using 2 words Allah used only one.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_formation


"Star formation is the process by which dense regions within molecular clouds, commonly referred to as "stellar nurseries", collapse into spheres of plasma to form stars." 

When did we come to know about it? Not before we launched Hubble Telescope to peek into the stellar nurseries to see formation of stars.


But wait a minute it doesn't end there, the verse also says "He said to it and to the earth: "Come ye together willingly or unwillingly." They said: "We do come in willing obedience."


Lets put other line instead of this, "collapse into spheres of plasma to form stars.", I'm sure words like plasma weren't invented in 600 AD when Quran was revealed. "Come ye together" "collapse into sphere".


Quran does talk about planets because planets are formed around a star, theory of star formation, takes it for granted.


But its amazing that Quran actually talks about star formation or formation of our solar system, saying clearly that formation happen in gas and dust (smoke).


So is it just luck that Quran got two verses with 4 different ideas right?


1. Big Bang
2. Water needed for Life
3. Star forming in gas and dust
4. Collapse of these gasses into star and planets.


Either this proves to me that Quran is Book of God or Prophet Mohammad was the smartest guy who ever lived but didn't give a clue about cure for cancer. Now I'm not saying you'll not find such things in Upanishads, Vedas, Bible or other religious books but accuracy changes.


Secondly Quran clearly says as I remind you in 3:7 that Quran is not supposed to be taken literally, laws are clear but other things are allegorical and only people who have knowledge will know what these verses mean, I'm not claiming person with knowledge but these are few things I know, I don't know what whole Quran means, part I think I do understand I will try to share it here. As for the laws, they are very very clear, from who to marry to how to divorce, what you should eat to what you should not, what is forbidden to what is allowed, punishment for things one does, etc.


May Allah save us from wrong deeds and do righteous things as he told us to do, may Allah give brain to every person so he wouldn't cause mischief in this world and help us live in peace and harmony.

First proof

From my last post we have to follow 2 simple rules while understanding Quran.

1. The laws are clear and do not need someone to explain what they mean unless you have no translation or do not understand Arabic.

2. Anything other than laws in Quran is "allegory" (mutashabihat...un) secondly no one knows its meaning other than Allah (The God) or people who are knowledgeable (in my opinion on that subject), thus for instance I wouldn't know what is talked about when it comes to formation of a baby in mother's womb or other things that are beyond my knowledge. Somethings today have become common knowledge, others are still hidden and because of our lack of information on the subject we have no idea what the verses are talking about, some we could assume but it will be very hard to know.

Some people believe that stories in Quran are real, which is not as Quran itself says that its not true, I'm not saying this, but its part of the book, maybe it happened like what Quran says but maybe it didn't, it is just allegory.

Some people believe that certain selected people have knowledge of Quran like people from time of prophet or people who have knowledge about Quran, I'm quiet sure that they didn't and don't, even if they claimed they did, they had wrong information. Anyone can claim anything but some information in Quran wasn't even common knowledge till 1900s and as these other people didn't write any book or scientific papers on the matter I'm sure they really didn't think on this line of thought.

Before I start let me tell you a story about myself, I was students hostel in Mumbai in 1992, I went to pray Maghrib (evening prayer) and after that there was usually someone talking about going to villages to convert people, so you have to say if you could join them or not, it wasn't only converting people but  was also about showing people what is right and wrong or called "dawah" (invitation).

So we were told to stay back and listen to the imaam (leader) what he wanted to talk about, the guy stood up and started talking, I don't remember exactly what he talked about other things but two things that really made a difference that is something I do remember clearly, first he said, "Whats the big deal if man went to moon, so small creation of God could go to moon". I assumed 'small creation' is man who went to moon, though I wanted to ask what he meant but I kept quite. Than he said, "Science is nothing, they have done so much but still they don't know how moon splits into pieces and joins together", I thought he was talking about "Shakkal Kamar" (splitting of moon) in Quran.

But I couldn't resist myself and I asked him, "What do you mean by moon splitting into pieces and joining up?", He answered, "Oh come on, moon on 14th of the month is full than it breaks up and becomes smaller than joins up again and becomes full". I was seriously surprised, that this person doesn't even have idea about phases of moon, so I asked what did he mean by first statement about small creation of God going to moon. He said, "Small creation, like a small sparrow it can fly to moon and back".

At that point I remember telling him that he should shut up because its a students hostel and don't say such things if he has no knowledge. My friends stopped me and pulled me out of the mosque, but the guy invited me to his room after Isha (Last prayer) and argued with me for 15 minutes why we shouldn't study science but for sure I was defending science and telling him that how wrong he was.

After 15 minutes he asked me, "What is your madhab?", I had no clue what he meant, I didn't know what was madhab, I asked "What do you mean by that?", he asked, "Are you hanfi, shafi, hanbali etc.", I said "I'm none, I'm Muslim only", he answered, "Oh my God you are totally lost (Gumrah - meaning lost in religious sense out of religion)", I told him, "Yes I'm Gumrah like Omar, Ali and Abu Bakr, they were not any of the things you said" (i.e. they were not hanfi, shafi etc.).

So he kicked me out of his room (not literally), but point being if you don't follow people you are considered wrong, you simply don't believe in God because you say that I need someone to explain me what God has sent me, God doesn't know what I need and people who have no knowledge about what is science talk about things they don't even understand.

Overall the indecent was a jolt, I had never come up against any person who had so little knowledge and was standing in the mosque and dictating to people what he believe to be true, if these people are considered to know the meaning of Quran, I seriously doubt that person who consider have any kind of logic or understanding. These people don't know anything, they have no idea about whats happening in domain of current science and technology and for sure they can't understand Quran if they can't even understand simple things like phases of moon which people long before prophet Mohammad could understand. These are our leaders!

Islam today as we know is like religion created by people, we don't follow book of God but we follow what we think is right from other books that were written in name of Islam, most of them assumptions, because simple test could be applied to them, 


4:82 Do they not consider the Qur'an?  Had it been from other than Allah they would surely have found therein much discrepancy.

Why am I saying that to you? Because like science needs proof, God needs proof, I can't go on and say "God exists" because I have blind faith, prophet didn't come to us to give us blind faith, he gave us faith, that we could test, check and recheck.

I don't believe in God because my dad said so or because people around me believe in God, I believe in God because I got my proof as needed, it may be proof for you or might not be its an open question but what I have could be tested, checked and rechecked.

So as I said before God can't be proven using knowledge or lack of knowledge, I can't say that we don't know where the universe started from and that we have no answer to it so God made universe, it doesn't make sense at all because its based on lack of knowledge, I can't say we don't know how male and female evolved so that is proof of God again its a lack of knowledge.

For me the God exists because of few verses in Quran.

First of all lets consider for a time, prophet Mohammad didn't get Quran from God but he forged it he wrote fake things just to make us believe that it came from God. We have some idea that prophet came from Makkah at that time it had hardly 5,000 people, which is less than many villages in India, this is just a rough estimate based on information from Internet, I'm not saying it has to be true but it can't be more than that as we have some idea that size of current mosque is more size of Makkah at that time. So we could call it a small village of today. Looking at literacy rate of that time would be around 5% but prophet wasn't one of them who was a learned person. It is Quran and for those who don't agree with Quran it simply means prophet himself is saying it to people, if he was literate for sure he can't say it if he go against himself.

Quran

62:2 It is He Who has sent amongst the Unlettered an apostle from among themselves to rehearse to them His Signs to sanctify them and to instruct them in Scripture and Wisdom although they had been before in manifest error.

So prophet was from a village of Makkah that had a population of around 5,000, its population had a very low literacy rate and he himself was illiterate, overall he wasn't a scientist who had dedicated his entire life for science but from age of 40-62 he managed to give Quran.

Overall its impossible for someone to give accurate scientific ideology and claim things that weren't know to be true till 1900s, but in case he was a super genius and he says "God exists" I have no problem with that either because he is smarter than smartest people on Earth till 1300 years after him.

First verse:

Quran

21: 30 Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of Creation) before We clove them asunder? We made from water every living thing.  Will they not then believe?

You could check the translation on http://quran.com/21/30

Lets take second part first "We made from water every living thing".

Most of the people would say, "So what's the big deal", yes old times in desert water was a very important thing and so its written, nothing so amazing. Problem is today no matter what planet we search, from Mar, Venus or moons of Jupiter and Saturn. We look for water.

http://www.space.com/13510-water-mars-search-life.html

http://www.space.com/7962-search-water-planets-takes-giant-leap.html

Water covers 70.9% of the Earth's surface, and is vital for all known forms of life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water

So we are looking for water because we want to look for life, but isn't this obvious? Problem is for life we could say sun is needed, soil is needed, etc. So why water? Because we today know that these things are optional and life can exists without these things in total darkness, plants can grow without soil . ( http://aces.nmsu.edu/ces/yard/2002/121402.html ).

This is why we are looking for only water, because its the thing that can produce life, if its droplets of water in air or small amount of cold water within the frozen container, like on Europa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent

We today know that life exists deep in the sea where no light reaches, these hydro thermal vents were first discovered in 1977 but Quran was written much before that, thus the claim that life was created out of water is amazing by itself as the above link claims,

"Life has traditionally been seen as driven by energy from the sun, but deep sea organisms have no access to sunlight, so they must depend on nutrients found in the dusty chemical deposits and hydrothermal fluids in which they live."

So Quran claims, "We made from water every living thing", which is small part of the book a single line, its not even a verse its a part of a verse but means a lot when it claims something like that.

Now Prophet Mohammad could have said it, it could be lucky guess, lets analyze the first part of this verse.

"Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together before We clove them asunder?"

Here the verse says, Heavens and the earth were joined together, before they were broken apart, doesn't that sound clearly like big bang? The heaven (everything above) and earth were joined and than it broke apart. It does sound like Big Bang but I'm sure the translator did it on purpose, he wanted it to sound like that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang

"After the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964, and especially when its spectrum (i.e., the amount of radiation measured at each wavelength) was found to match that of thermal radiation from a black body, most scientists had become fairly convinced that some version of the Big Bang scenario must have occurred."

So scientist became convinced of this idea of big bang in 1964 but translation given above was done 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_Yusuf_Ali

"Yusuf Ali's best-known work is his book The Holy Qur'an: Text, Translation and Commentary, begun in 1934 and published in 1938"

So for sure it can't be that be that he got the idea in 1938 and publish it in his translation that isn't possible, unless he was impressed by the idea in 1934 when it was first proposed and not famous with people in 1927 and by 1934 he put it in his translation, but the major issue is that its not a wrong translation no matter how many translation you look at its same and if you speak and understand Arabic its great because you can read it and understand it yourself.

So where a verse that is so powerful that is talking about something we discovered just this century, got the idea from, if its from Prophet Mohammad, I said he has to be the smartest person ever, if not than it has to be from God.

Leaving everything aside, verse says, "Do not the Unbelievers see that..."

So don't the unbelievers really see? The proof is right in your face and still you don't see? If it was a mere coincidence than a challenge wouldn't be place in front of it, challenge means very clearly that this is a proof a sign as prophets are suppose to bring sign from God.

The other verse we will talk about in my next post, for time being its a challenge to unbelievers who reject existence of God that we have no proof, in my posts I will talk about many other challenges not only to people who reject existence of God but to others who worship men and think they are worshiping God.

First Call

I start in name of the God, who would help me to pass the understanding that I have.

I am a Muslim, I do not like to tag myself different sects as Allah has told us not to follow any sect.

6: 159 As for those who divide their religion and break up into sects, thou hast no part in them in the least: their affair is with Allah: He will in the end tell them the truth of all that they did.

Thus I believe in book that was sent to me through prophet Mohammad and follow what is within.

One of the major problem today is religion cannot compete with science, its like a fashion that most of the scientist are atheists another problem is created by creationist who don't understand simple thing, asking question doesn't solve the problem.

If they are asked how can you prove Earth is 6000 years old when there are so many fossils that could not have happen in past 6000 years and why would God create fossil of a being that he doesn't intend to keep, they would simply say, carbon dating methods are wrong.

Now for sure carbon dating has nothing to do with the question, If I don't believe in Earth being 6000 years old or 4.54 Billion years old, I just want to know how did you come up with this number. There is simply no answer, that is creationist, problem is if you are a religious person you follow the creationist camp, you dare not venture into evolutionist because you say "God didn't create the living beings" and the "almighty man" evolved from pathetic little chimp.

Thus a person who believes in God also believes in primitive ideas of creationist and has nothing to do with science, many Muslim scientist who believe in God have same opinion about Muslims and Quran. They simply say that Quran is a book of Hidaya (Guidance) and not science and surely its not.

So how do you believe in God, science says things have to be provable, if things aren't provable they are false. Like did Jesus died on cross and was raised from the dead? Can it be proven or should I only take word of others for this? It can't be proven anything that can't be proven is false, proof has to be repeatable, you can't simply say something like XYZ happened but that same thing can't be repeated and tested experimentally.

Some people believe that they can have out of body experience, maybe but it can't be proven, there is no test that you could do that could prove that someone really had out of body experience or not, maybe you just programmed your brain to believe in something silly or maybe it really happened but it can't be proven.

Similarly God, God can not be proven.

You could claim something like I had such and such experience but that is your personal experience, using that experience I can't prove God exists. People in old times had no idea how humans formed thus they just simply said, "God made humans". But because you don't have answer to something doesn't automatically proves that that thing is made by God, we have no clue about universe, you can't jump to conclusion that there is no explanation so only explanation is that God made it, end of story, all done, go home.

Yes we today have no idea how it was made, but lack of knowledge doesn't prove anything and it doesn't disprove anything either.

If science can't prove God, it can't disprove it either.

Thus there is no valid way to prove God using method of lack of information, it simply doesn't work, it doesn't prove anything.

In following post, I'll try my best to consolidate science with religion, I'm not talking about Islam, yes I'm a Muslim but that in no way make me against any religion, I'm for all religion, of which rules have to be followed.

But before I end I would like to explain something that before reading Quran we have to understand that many people have failed to understand. Quran is not a book that has to be taken literally all the time, Quran has laws and stories, laws are to be taken literally no deviation from it at all, while stories and examples are not to be taken literally at all.

This is made clear in 3:7

He it is Who has sent down to thee the Book: in it are verses basic or fundamental (of established meaning); they are the foundation of the Book: others are allegorical.  But those in whose hearts is perversity follow the part thereof that is allegorical seeking discord and searching for its hidden meanings but no one knows its hidden meanings except Allah and those who are firmly grounded in knowledge say: "We believe in the Book; the whole of it is from our Lord"; and none will grasp the Message except men of understanding.

I believe the book is from our lord, whole of it, but I assume that I know meaning of few verses and that is what I will explain, without breaking this rule it will be very hard for me explain what I'm talking about.

Lets hope things work out fine and not run into a problem.