YHVH's Wife (What, You Didn't Know He Was Married?)

[Davin]

Wow iSok, I'm not sure you can fit another straw man in there. I think you've gotten every inaccurate fundamentalist theistic stereo type about atheism in just that last post.

[iSok]

Wow iSok, I'm not sure you can fit another straw man in there. I think you've gotten every inaccurate fundamentalist theistic stereo type about atheism in just that last post.

The post is for Tank, not for the common atheist.
Feel free to respond and highlight the 'straw man'.

[Tank]

Wow iSok, I'm not sure you can fit another straw man in there. I think you've gotten every inaccurate fundamentalist theistic stereo type about atheism in just that last post.

The post is for Tank, not for the common atheist.
Feel free to respond and highlight the 'straw man'.

You can't restrict wh responds to your posts iSoK.
I'll respond to your post in due course but not for a few days as I have assignment deadlines. I'm sure you know the feeling  

[iSok]

Wow iSok, I'm not sure you can fit another straw man in there. I think you've gotten every inaccurate fundamentalist theistic stereo type about atheism in just that last post.

The post is for Tank, not for the common atheist.
Feel free to respond and highlight the 'straw man'.

You can't restrict wh responds to your posts iSoK.
I'll respond to your post in due course but not for a few days as I have assignment deadlines. I'm sure you know the feeling  

Of course, take your time.
I have to say that the previous post took me almost an hour....this is quite time consuming.
(What are you studying btw?)

[Tank]

(What are you studying btw?)

Business Computing final year assessments  

[Stevil]

Since God has given you life, He has also the right to take it.

Where's the logic in this?
If i give a child a sweet then do I have the right to snatch it away?
If I donate one of my kidney's do I have the right to take it back?
What about my baby, I gave her life. Do I have the right to end it?

[Crow]

I understand that most of the posts were made in reference to Tank but its not a one-on-one debate so I'm going to chip in. I also understand that iSok is away from the forum at the moment due to his post in the introduction section but am going to post anyway.

So I'll quote a few western scholars with an unbiased view, some of them are Christian.

I think this quote works better to describe Muhammed's success in implementing his beliefs. "The best soldier does not attack. The superior fighter succeeds without violence. The greatest conqueror wins without struggle. The most successful manager leads without dictating. This is intelligent non aggressiveness. This is called the mastery of men." - Lao Tzu, from  the Tao Te Ching. The quotes you used from western scholars aren't saying anything interesting, they are simply stating he attained the necessary traits to become a leader and they recognised him as such. To say that Muhammad had divine knowledge because he was charismatic seems foolish to me, he understood human nature and exploited it to his will, he was from a family of distinction and therefore respected in social standings backed up by his professional dealings, He worked in a trade that would require him to learn the mastery of men to become a successful merchant (he himself was a part of materialistic trade that you seem to dislike from reading your prior posts), we can gather that he was successful due to the records on the quality of his marriages and the nickname he was given by his peers in business "al-Amin".

I disagree with Tanks regard to Muhammed being a "greedy merchant" (even though greed would have been required for his trade and most likely accurate as a professional term) in my view an occupation does not define a person but there actions throughout life do and is therefore wrong to label him as such. As you will know Muhammad first revelation was in a cave on Mount Hira where Gabriel appeared before him, he went into seclusion for three years after this revelation then he began to preach. This is where I have my first problems with Mohammed being a prophet of god, Three years is easily enough time to refine theories gathered through life and make them presentable to the masses using structure from the judo-christian mythology, also it is written that Muhammed upon receiving a revelation went into a "mysterious-seizure" (not unlike Ellen G White) which can also be described as a partial-complex seizure or temporal lobe epilepsy  (from the written accounts they seem like the latter and if happened today would be diagnosed as such), there is possibly more evidence that may back up the theory that Muhammad suffered from epilepsy as in some traditions after his first vision he was deeply distressed, this is also a side effect of temporal lobe epilepsy as it has a large impact on the person who receives them, it may also explain his death as well. I personally do not think he had malicious intentions with his preaching but rather his epilepsy (which i think he had) and consultation with family members lead him to believe his vision was divine as seizures were greatly misunderstood. Through the action of prayer he refined his own theories and deemed those to be divine due to the prior experience and the act of prayer which he would have been considered an act of communicating with god. To clarify my opinion on prayer; I believe it is no different than meditation, in no way spiritual, the only difference between the two is prayer focuses the brain on issues but done under the guise of god, whereas meditation focuses the brain on issues without this god perception. This is my own theory to why there was no spiritual intervention in Muhammad's teaching but rather his own philosophy that he wrongly believed to be divine (but also understandable to why he thought so).

Epilepsy wouldn't have hindered his effectiveness as a leader either (epileptic leaders) and if people saw these events happen would have strengthened his leadership.

Due to the skills learnt in life as mentioned in the first paragraph and his total belief in his teachings helped grow them into a global institutionalised religion, "Believe in yourself and others will believe in you" (no idea who said that first). Well that and a few other factors such as military action, believe or die persuasion, governmental control, and indoctrination from a young age with the fear of death if they don't believe.

If you have a goal, you have a purpose, a vision, I want to know what your vision is, what your purpose is for mankind, you clearly see a goal.

There is a difference between an individuals goal and a purpose for humankind (gender correction as we aren't just men there are women as well), from my knowledge there is no goal in any religious document for humankind except maybe to serve god, which would make that goal pretty pointless for non-believers and if the case would hail back to the akkadian and somarian religion where humans were created as slaves to serve the gods, which wouldn't be the only part of there mythology that the judo-christian-islam religions have borrowed from.

As individuals we have goals for things in life, mine is to simply enjoy each day as it comes and follow what I'm interested in, this comes from a belief that when I die that is it. So may as well do what I enjoy as long as it doesn't impede on others enjoyment of theirs.

I could get into the whole quantum particle debate about how at sub-atomic level there is no order or structure as we know it but just watch this documentary if you have time Everything and Nothing: Nothing

The theory of evolution is not something that Charles Darwin started or came up with.

This is correct but came well before the dates you mentioned, it was first debated in Ancient Greece with Aristotle and Plato being the most famous of philosophers to debate the subject however there view of the subject was nothing more than talk, and was echoed through the following centuries in the same manner. It wasn't until Darwin that a full theory backed by rigorous testing and evidence made his theory so substantial, not only that but natural selection was something new that hadn't been mentioned before and is why he is considered so highly. It is similar to Galileo, he wasn't the first to come up with the theory about the planets orbit but he put together two different older theories that had gaping holes and using mathematics and observation proved the theory correct. I see what your trying to get at saying that Islamic scientists came up with the theories first using it as a method to add intellectual weight to your religion but the problem is a lot of the examples used by students of Islam didn't originate in the Islamic world either, the majority came from Ancient Greece or China, there is also another problem with harking back to science of old as there science was nothing more than philosophy without any evidence to back it up.

I don't see this as an argument in favour of atheism or theism but rather in favour of intelligence over blindly following old scriptures that have by large been debunked.

if we see what happened when governments deliberately tried to introduce a structure based on atheism it lead to devastation

I totally agree that atheism shouldn't be forced upon people such as communism has done, as its equally as bad as forcing a religion onto people, governments and education system should be secular with no religious involvement whatsoever whilst allowing the people to follow what they want. If you try and force something upon somebody there going to push back twice as hard ending up in a tit for tat situation with neither side backing down.

The ironic thought is that Islamic countries rarely have invaded western countries or almost never have.
But the west has invaded countless times a muslim country and now muslims are accused of Jihad...

Only a small minority of muslims are accused of terrorism and there the ones invoking jihad, not the west. Islam has tried to invade the west in the past but has failed (except for Spain), the wars that have happened from the west to the middle-east have always been about resources and nothing else (except for that bollocks catholic war, can't remember the name off the top of my head). However Tank is correct in terms of charity, Islamic states only help those of the same faith, whereas none islamic states (not just the west) give to all.