The God Hypothesis

[Gawen]

It certainly doesn't help when many of their assertions are contradictory. 

[Tank]

It certainly doesn't help when many of their assertions are contradictory. 

Well it doesn't help them, but it does help us! 

[iSok]

The only thing a Muslim can say about God is what God says about Himself.
Even then the language gives boundaries and limits.

So, according to the Qur'an.

(24:35) God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. His Light may be likened to a niche wherein is a lamp, and the lamp is in the crystal which shines in star-like brilliance.
It is lit from (the oil) of a blessed olive tree. that is neither eastern nor western. Its oil well nigh glows forth (of itself) though no fire touched it: Light upon Light.
God guides to His Light whom He wills. God sets forth parables to make people understand. God knows everything.

The olive not being from the east or the west (since north and south have limits) is that He is beyond definition.
How hard that might be to swallow for the staunch atheist.

[Tank]

The only thing a Muslim can say about God is what God says about Himself.
Even then the language gives boundaries and limits.

So, according to the Qur'an.

(24:35) God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. His Light may be likened to a niche wherein is a lamp, and the lamp is in the crystal which shines in star-like brilliance.
It is lit from (the oil) of a blessed olive tree. that is neither eastern nor western. Its oil well nigh glows forth (of itself) though no fire touched it: Light upon Light.
God guides to His Light whom He wills. God sets forth parables to make people understand. God knows everything.

The olive not being from the east or the west (since north and south have limits) is that He is beyond definition.
How hard that might be to swallow for the staunch atheist.

ISoK, this does not constitute a hypothesis as it makes no measurable statements and thus can not be falsified. So we still only have a god assertion, which really should be ignored by everybody, be they atheist or theist.

[iSok]

The only thing a Muslim can say about God is what God says about Himself.
Even then the language gives boundaries and limits.

So, according to the Qur'an.

(24:35) God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. His Light may be likened to a niche wherein is a lamp, and the lamp is in the crystal which shines in star-like brilliance.
It is lit from (the oil) of a blessed olive tree. that is neither eastern nor western. Its oil well nigh glows forth (of itself) though no fire touched it: Light upon Light.
God guides to His Light whom He wills. God sets forth parables to make people understand. God knows everything.

The olive not being from the east or the west (since north and south have limits) is that He is beyond definition.
How hard that might be to swallow for the staunch atheist.

ISoK, this does not constitute a hypothesis as it makes no measurable statements and thus can not be falsified. So we still only have a god assertion, which really should be ignored by everybody, be they atheist or theist.

My reponse was meant for Stevil as he apparently knew what I thought....

Tank, not too be annoying but I'll continue this with you.
So you want to set up a hypothesis of God and with an experiment you want to either accept God as a theory (for now) or reject it?

What if God is a Being with no limits? Then the scientific method fails in case God exists, because the scientific method can only work with limits.

[Davin]

What if God is a Being with no limits? Then the scientific method fails in case God exists, because the scientific method can only works with limits.

The problem is determining if a god even exists: if there is no way to determine if a god exists, then what is the point of asserting that the god exists?

If the god cannot perform miracles that affect reality, then the god is powerless and it's meaningless to assert it. However if the god can perform reality affecting miracles, then we can detect the effects scientifically. The middle ground is that the god only performs miracles when it's not being watched... which could be said about anything.

[iSok]

What if God is a Being with no limits? Then the scientific method fails in case God exists, because the scientific method can only works with limits.

The problem is determining if a god even exists: if there is no way to determine if a god exists, then what is the point of asserting that the god exists?

If the god cannot perform miracles that affect reality, then the god is powerless and it's meaningless to assert it. However if the god can perform reality affecting miracles, then we can detect the effects scientifically. The middle ground is that the god only performs miracles when it's not being watched... which could be said about anything.

1. The scientific method does not detect God.
2. God doesn't exist.


right?

[Davin]

What if God is a Being with no limits? Then the scientific method fails in case God exists, because the scientific method can only works with limits.

The problem is determining if a god even exists: if there is no way to determine if a god exists, then what is the point of asserting that the god exists?

If the god cannot perform miracles that affect reality, then the god is powerless and it's meaningless to assert it. However if the god can perform reality affecting miracles, then we can detect the effects scientifically. The middle ground is that the god only performs miracles when it's not being watched... which could be said about anything.

1. The scientific method does not detect God.
2. God doesn't exist.


right?

Wrong:

1. We have no reliable means to determine the existence of a god thing.
2. Therefore there is no reason to assert there is a god thing.

That is more accurate. Also, you'll find this kind of reasoning is very effective in most situations when someone is asserting things without evidence. Otherwise why don't believe in the subatomic robot creators of everything that created everything in the universe (including light in transit and all our memories of the past), five days ago?

[Stevil]

My reponse was meant for Stevil as he apparently knew what I thought....

What if God is a Being with no limits? Then the scientific method fails in case God exists, because the scientific method can only work with limits.

Sorry iSok, I know it can be annoying when a person tries to speak for you. I was trying to assess your statement and position, knowing you would provide clarity.
Unfortunately your clarity sounds more like a riddle, "light"... WTF

If your god interacts with reality, in specific if it responds to an action of humans then we can test this response.
If you believe in answered prayer, then scientifically (statistically) it can be shown that prayer is never answered (not beyond statistical probability of normal events). Prayer beyond self meditation and self reflective benefits is a complete waste of time. People that dedicate their lifes to church e.g. nuns and spend a significant amount of time in prayer are wasting a significant proportion of their valuable lives.

[Tank]

 

ISoK, this does not constitute a hypothesis as it makes no measurable statements and thus can not be falsified. So we still only have a god assertion, which really should be ignored by everybody, be they atheist or theist.

Tank, not too be annoying but I'll continue this with you.
So you want to set up a hypothesis of God and with an experiment you want to either accept God as a theory (for now) or reject it?

What if God is a Being with no limits? Then the scientific method fails in case God exists, because the scientific method can only work with limits.

No problem ISoK. I want you to explain your god hypothesis. I will determin my reaction to what you write based on what you write. Please don't try and second guess what I want as I have told you what I want. If you want to I would like you to try to explain what you think god is, why you think your understanding is correct and what would make you change your understanding.

[Gawen]

I will go one step further than Tank, Isok. I don't want you to explain what you THINK your god is, I want to know what you know. I would like to know what your god is and what evidence you have to explain it. Any evidence at all will do.

Your hypothesis would be such:
1) My god exists.
2) Here is my evidence.

We will then weigh the evidence to see if your hypothesis has merit.

However, if this constitutes your evidence:

(24:35) God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. His Light may be likened to a niche wherein is a lamp, and the lamp is in the crystal which shines in star-like brilliance.
It is lit from (the oil) of a blessed olive tree. that is neither eastern nor western. Its oil well nigh glows forth (of itself) though no fire touched it: Light upon Light.
God guides to His Light whom He wills. God sets forth parables to make people understand. God knows everything.

The olive not being from the east or the west (since north and south have limits) is that He is beyond definition.
How hard that might be to swallow for the staunch atheist.

Well.........

[Crow]

What if God is a Being with no limits? Then the scientific method fails in case God exists, because the scientific method can only work with limits.

In religious document terms this would seem unlikely as all statements about god and his powers would all be feasible within the limits of current scientific understanding.

I agree with Gawen on what a hypothesis is. If you can find the time to write it I would certainly read it, as their are not many believers who have gathered their thoughts concisely enough to write a god hypothesis and would be very interesting to read.

[iSok]

Tank & Gawen

I edited an old response I posted a while ago on this forum and I add a few new lines.
Tell me whether this is the right direction.

Hypothesis:

In Islam God has 99 sacred names in order for human beings to understand Him (The Most Merciful, The Avenger, The Loving, The Light and so on..).
God rules and sustains the universe with the aspects of Tanzih and Tasbih. Tanzih is declaring incomparability of God with other creatures.
Tasbih is affirming similarity with other creatures.

All names of God contain Tasbih and Tanzih, but some names are overruled with Tanzih and others are overruled with Tasbih. But this can be better explained in a graphic way


Tanzih: All worlds have the same center, but the center (God) has no dimension.
Creatures are distant from God because of God's incomparability.
(42:11 - Naught in the universe is like Him).



Tasbih: It symbolizes God's concern over other creatures in terms of kindness, mercy, compassion, and love.
Every creature is connected to the Center, it gains it's reality from the Center.



Tasbih & Tanzih together is Tawhid, declaring the Oneness of God. It's how God governs, sustains
and controls the universe in an organized way by preventing chaos.

The worst sin according to Islam is shirk, setting up rivals with God, this is destroying Tawhid and ultimately destroying the reality of others, because it causes chaos. You set up other centers within reality which causes the unreal to lose its connection to the Real. This doesn't have to be just idols you worship. I'll quote two Hadith (sayings of the Prophet).

The Prophet came out to us from his house while we were discussing the AntiChrist.
He said, 'Shall I tell you about something that is more frightening to me than the AntiChrist?'
The people replied that he should.
He said, 'Hidden Shirk, in other words, that a man should perform the salat (prayer)
and do it beautifully for the sake of someone who is watching.'


'The most frightening thing that I fear for my Community is associating others with God.
I do not mean to say that they will worship the sun, or the moon, or idols.
I mean that they will perform works for other than God with a hidden desire.

So the most important saying of a Muslim is 'La iLaha il Allah' = 'There is no god but God'.
It rejects all other gods, idols, desires and egocentric thoughts that human beings have come up with and it testifies of the Ultimate Reality.
It's usually said with the last breath before death.


The down side is that they can make the wrong choice, but the good side is that the choice makes us more aware of reality.
Other creatures do not have this awareness.

If we take a look at the universe, everything has divine attributes of God, even minerals.
At the bottom there are minerals then there is microscopic life. They have certain divine attributes.
Next there are plants; they are for example 'Grateful' and 'Generous', when you give them enough water they'll give you fruit.
Then there are animals, for example the cheetah and the hyena.
If you see the Cheetah, it will kill it's prey with 'Mercy', by making it's prey is dead before starting to eat. (dominated by Tasbih)
The hyena just doesn't care, it acts more notorious. (Tanzih).
You could give an biological explanation, like the difference in jaws of both animals which gives the cheeta an advantage by
blocking the pipe that is used for breathing. But we do perceive the act in a certain way.

At the final stage there is the human being.

The human being has all the divine attributes.
The whole cosmos with all it's divine attributes has been placed within the human being, the human being is the micro cosmos.
Some of us are dominated by Tanzih, others are dominated by Tasbih.
The foremost are those who have balanced this and put everything in the right place, they are the prophets and the close friends of God.
We end up with people like Pol Plot (a mass murderer) and Bhuddah.
It's that Tanzih and Tasbih create this immense spectrum of human developing which cannot be found
among any other creatures since we have all the attributes that can be found in the Cosmos.
There's a cosmos (microcosmos) in each and every one of us that one has to dominate by Tasbih and preferably balance.

(2:143 - Thus, have We made of you an Ummat (community) justly balanced, that ye might be witnesses over the nations, and the Messenger a witness over yourselves.)

So according to the Islamic perspective acknowledging God is acknowledging oneself. A famous proverb says: 'He who knows himself knows his Creator.'
The Christians and the Jews say that Adam was made in God's image.
The Hindu's say that man's first parents were Mahadev and Parwati and they were made in the image of God.
This doesn't mean that God is an old man with a beard like we tend to see him in popular culture.
It means that the human being has all the attributes of God, like explained above.

The human being is the vicegerent of God according to Islam, he has to perfect the balance and put things in the right place within oneself.
A verse in the Qur'an explains that only the human being is able to carry this Trust of God.

(33:72 - We offered the Trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refused to carry it and were afraid of doing so; but man carried it. Surely he is wrong-doing, ignorant.)

The Heavens refused because they are the luminous, they are close to God and could not bear the Tanzih (distance of God) of that trust. The Earth refused because it could not bear the Tasbih (Nearness to God), the Earth is dominated by Tanzih. The mountains refused because they could not tolerate the extremes of either Tanzih or Tasbih. But the human being has accepted it.

(2:30 - Just recall the time when your Lord said to the angels, "I am going to appoint a vicegerent on the Earth." They humbly enquired, "Are you going to appoint such a one as will cause disorder and shed blood on the Earth? We are already engaged in hymning Your praise, and hallowing Your name".
(2:31 - God replied, "I know what you do not know." After this He taught Adam the names of all things. Then He set these before the angels and asked, "Tell Me the names of these things, if you are right (in thinking that the appointment of a vicegerent will cause disorder).

The names in this verse is generally seen as all the attributes of God.

From an Islamic perspective, the reason that animals like the tiger are going extinct is because their attributes within the human being is disappearing. We are destroying the Trust. Destroying that is denying who we are and makes us heedless of our balance. Our inward reality is always manifesting in the outward reality. It's ultimately a violation of our vicegerency. The ecological crisis in the modern times is a symptom for the Muslim instead of a sickness, the sickness lies in the heart of man.


Evidence:


Well I can be short about this, it's religious pluralism.
Most religions are teaching the same.
To give an example, the resemblance of the Mayah creation Myth looks a lot like the Abrahamic, not only that but just about
every  symbol or story that is used in one religion to make people understand is used in another.

Ironically, an article written by the Pakistani Atheists & Agnostics summs up the evidence for me.
Here's a part of the article.


One of the most interesting stories for me has been the great flood, represented in almost all ancient texts; from the story of Ziusudra hero of the Sumerian flood epic to Noah's Ark a biblical and Quranic account. The same myth can be found in Puranas, which is a part of the ancient Hindu, Jain and Buddhist religious text. In the great deluge in Hindu mythology, Manu saved mankind from the great flood sent by an avatar of Vishnu, Matsya. The commonalities in all these stories include a person who is aware of the flood in advance, an angry deity, a vulnerable population of animal and humankind and the hero who saves all.

My second favorite is the miraculous birth myth.  Like the story of Krishna, in which Vishnu descends into Devaki's womb and is born as her son; Vasudeva (Krishna). Similar is the story of Perseus, son of Danaë who was locked away so she does not have children, however Zeus turned into a shower of gold and impregnated her. The story of Danaë has actually a lot more to share with the story of Maryam or Mary in the Quran. It is mentioned in Surah Maryam 19:16 – 19:22 that while she was fasting in seclusion in a place facing east, she was approached by Gabriel who gave her the tidings of a son and she conceived.

Next is the story of Moses, who was found in a basket floating in the Nile, and the Sumerian King Sargon of Akkad, who was found in a basket floating in the Euphrates. Despite that many claim the myth was written after Moses's birth, the similarity in religious stories at least clarifies one thing, and that is, there is no such thing as an only true religion. All have branched out one from another, since almost all religious books tell the same stories and share the same myths with a bit of variation depending on geography, culture and language, dependent on human understanding.
http://www.e-paa.org/content/myth-divine-books


As I explained earlier in another topic and once again here, the similarity of religions or the themes
that are used within religion are mostly the same, this proves that there is more than materialism. Something beyond the scientific method.
If it's not God, then it's some sort of collective unconsciousness. I have a few reasons to assume that it is God, but I will go into detail later.

Sorry iSok, I know it can be annoying when a person tries to speak for you. I was trying to assess your statement and position, knowing you would provide clarity.
Unfortunately your clarity sounds more like a riddle, "light"... WTF

If your god interacts with reality, in specific if it responds to an action of humans then we can test this response.
If you believe in answered prayer, then scientifically (statistically) it can be shown that prayer is never answered (not beyond statistical probability of normal events). Prayer beyond self meditation and self reflective benefits is a complete waste of time. People that dedicate their lifes to church e.g. nuns and spend a significant amount of time in prayer are wasting a significant proportion of their valuable lives.

Stevil, would you agree that for every human being the most important aspect in life is happiness,; whether he is black or white, atheist or theist, male or female, old or young?

[Sweetdeath]

I have been reading this thread, and it's been super interesting.
Sadly, I sill haven't seen Isok provide any actual evidence other than quotes.
I might as well carve jesus on  some toast and sell em on ebay for some profit, which is all religion has been proven;  a great scam.

[Stevil]

Stevil, would you agree that for every human being the most important aspect in life is happiness,; whether he is black or white, atheist or theist, male or female, old or young?

Not meaning to be disagreeable, but I don't consider the emotional state of happiness to be the most important aspect of life.

Life is so complex I don't think it can be summed up into a desire for a single emotional state.
If happiness is your guide then you may be a perfect candidate for addiction. Addiction to food, to drugs and alcohol, to sex, to gambling. This behavior could lead to a somewhat empty and shallow existence.

Sometimes I act out of duty or responsibility, sometimes I do things for others, sometimes I do things because I want to be healthy, sometimes because if I don't, there is no-one else who will (e.g. throw out the garbage, mow the lawn, wash the car).

Some of the happiest people that I have seen have been mentally impaired, they seem to be outwardly very happy and easily excited. I don't envy them and their happiness though.