Thread: Angels
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  #18  
Old March 12, 2004, 08:32 PM
Arnab Arnab is offline
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Join Date: June 20, 2002
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Shubho, read carefully the points I make:

"Being open minded" has nothing to do "Believe something on faith". Just because you "believe in angels on faith" doesn't make you more open minded than me. Look, there are psychological patients who think they are drinking blood or seeing ghosts. Does that mean they are more "open minded" than I am?

I define open minded as being open to ideas that are consistent with whatever scientific knowledge we gathered so far. Something that can be provable by Science. Or something that science can logically pursue in near future. God or Angels aren't remotely scientific ideas. Believing in them require a tremendous departure from scientific notions, so much so that if you believe in them, you basically reject whatever science stands for.

On to your second point, if taking Quran literally makes a lot of intelligent people NOT subscribe to the religion, then so be it. What is your problem? Why does Quran HAVE to make sense? Why do you feel the need for this to happen? Why do intelligent people have to forego their intelligence and dumb down to find a mixture of symbolic and literal meaning to MAKE Quran work for them?

Third point, Quran wasn't meant to be a science book. Of course! That's why I vehemently disagree with anyone who tries to prove that Quran is "scientific." Whether Quran is really the mesage of God to mankind is a whole another issue.

On your fourth point I disagree. Let me give you an analogy. Let's say I claim that the sun will not rise in the east tomorrow. Now, it's not entirely a false claim. Maybe some cosmic catstrophe will happen between now and tomorrow's sunrise and may be the sun won't rise tomorrow. But the chance of it happening is VERY small, about 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000......00001 %
The possibilty of the sun rising in the east tomorrow is 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999. ...99999%

Both these claims are not "stupid" per se. But one of them has such an overwhelming possibility of happening that it is entirely rational to reject the other. My view on God/angels' existence follow the same probability scenario.

As for your final point, you are entirely at liberty to interpret the quran in whatever way you do. You think it's the word of God, to be taken semi-literally and semi-symbolically, according to the scenario of the age you live in. I don't think of Quran that way. I think it's jsut another "holy book" in a long line of religious scriptures form all around the world from different ages and I don't feel the need to interpret it just like I don't feel the need to interpret Torah, Bible or the holy scriptures the tribes of Papua New Guinea go by. I am not being close-minded. I have given them a fair chance before. And I reject them. Just as I reject the notion that the sun will not rise tomorrow or that right after reading this post, a god will strike you dead right in front of your pc to prove its existence to me.

[Edited on 13-3-2004 by Arnab]

[Edited on 3-13-2004 by chinaman : Please do not post too many characters in one line]