the nature of the elephant

Submitted by the Grand Infidel of Kaffiristan (Australia), Dec 30, 2008 at 01:13

Mr Bayezid writes:

"
GI wrote:
>>Have I induced hysteria in you? Or merely triggered a pre-existing condition? "

"....no i believe the credit is entirely yours."

So I have triggered your pre-exisiting condition?

" im surprised that you cant tell how much i enjoy wrangling you."

you're not 'wrangling' me - but I'm fascinated with how good at self-deception you seem to have become.

>>

"The question was do you agree that other and older civilizations had knowledge(amongst other things) of the passage of the sun? You claim Islam was the first to make this basic observation. I gave you two well-known examples, New Grange and Stonehenge in Europe."

".....i dont agree that the older civilizations had knowledge of the path of the sun. to do so would be foolish. a path you have wilfully chosen for yourself. il say it as clealry s possible : the ancient civilizations did not ! know that the sun moves along a pth which we call today the solar apex."

and I say - neither did the early arabs or any other variety of muslim prior to its discovery (by Infidels ) in the 20th Century CE.

>>
GI wrote:
"You obviously think that. I do not. And no - no teeth grinding. I am quite calm in fact far calmer than you would imagine.."

"......who are we kidding, right ?"

'We' kidding? About what? Me being calm? Does the fact that I am calm make you angry - because you have a fixed belief that only Muslims can be calm? I guess it would stick in your craw wouldn't it? I can take the point that if non-Muslims can actually experience inner peace then that would be a threat to your claim of Islamic religious hegemony.

1) you can obligate people to obey, taking away their rights and free will, and 2) you can show them by example with loving kinness how much better life can be

>>
GI wrote:
"I thought you were a Bangladeshi - my mistake. And I wasn't singling out 'my ancestors' for special approval from you
- I mentioned other civilizations efforts at astronomic systems . I mentioned Stonehenge and New Grange because they are well-known , reasonably 'ancient' and can still be fond to be working today. "

"....thats great. maybe we'll visit them sometime."
yes - you are free to - and no places are out of bounds - unlike Mecca etc in Saudi for us Infidels

GI wrote:
>> "I also pointed out the Muslims seem incapable of admitting when they get it wrong. Your silence tends to prove this."

"do all my replies that hit you a 100 mbps in your face tell you im silent ? i have replied to every ridiculous question you have asked me and if i missed any i remember replying to them later on. so what are you talkin about ? so do yourself a favor and give it your disbelieving best."
You are attributing attributes to yourself which you do not possess.
Nothing you have ever said has 'hit me in the face' as you put it but I am surprised at your credulity in some things. And you have not responded to every point I have made - you conveniently leave many in the 'too hard' basket.You need to strike a balance - have an open mind - but not so open that your brains fall out as the saying goes - and also things have to make empirical sense.

>>
GI wrote:
An absurd propostion which I'm sure others will comment on - but, OK, just off the top of my head - how about a head of state suggesting to wipe another country and all its inhabitants off the map. Does that count? "

"i thought you once said you never get desperate. well what is this ? so far weve been arguing about the authenticity of the miraculous al quran, and here you are spewing politics."

Incorrect. You made the statement ""...till now the muslims have not said anything wrong. or maybe you imagine things. please write to me saying one wrong thing muslims said about anything."
Saying anything wrong is NOT restricted to the Koran or anything else. I was not talking about the Koran. I am not spewing politics. I have just requoted what the head of the ISLAMIC Republic of Iran said about another state - and its people - when he said he would wipe them off the map.

I consider that genocide - and if you consider genocide 'wrong' then it is wrong. Agree?

".....a desperate attempt to look for escuses. and embarassing on your part , to say the least. the head of state in question, no doubt, had some really good reasons to say that. "
yes - I know - it would win him votes in the next election in the ISLAMIC Republic of Iran - and kudos around the Muslim world.

"since the people he was talking about wrongfully occupied a place not even theirs. i think you would have done the same if i went to your own house and kicked you out of it ."
Let's see - the Jews have been there for several thousand years and have always had it as their homeland - and lived under Romans - then alongside Christians until the mid 700's when marauding Muslim militias from the newly started Islamic religion arrived from what is now Sauddi Arabia. They claimed the Jewish Temple Mount and the surrounding area and built a mosque on it - stating that this was the 'furthest mosque' mentioned that Mohammed had flown to in one night from Arabia on the back of a winged donkey with the face of a woman. They then went on to slaughter hundreds of thosands of people in North Africa or force therm to convert from Coptic Christianity to Islam.

So, whose place was it again?

So let's turn it around. If I told you someone had flown to your place 1400 years ago on the back of a large flying mammal and claimed it was a holy shrine of that person - what would you think? Would you just agree and let me take over your place?

>>
GI wrote:
Your argument is based on the statement that the Koran is a verbatim dictation from God??? That cannot be proved and most rational people, even with good intentions and awareness of Muslim sensitivities on this point - do not agree with that statement.

"...my statement is based on the observations of countless wise and learned men who agree. "

But there are and have been countless wise and learned men who disagree.

"........and my sttement is based on reading the quran. a book where ALLAH speaks uncanny truths about us in a language that tells stories in single sentences. unlike yourself, i do not argue without considerable reasoning."

I think you should have said that ' you do not reason without considerable argument'.
And your arguments are based on faulty premises.

"if by rational people you mean people that still believe we came from apes and people that think everythjing came to be from chance, you are on the other side of rationality."
I did not mention the many and various beliefs of people neither was I talking about evolution. A logical argument is often described as "rational" if it is logically valid. The basis of the argument needs to be an initial fact - not an initial belief or wish that something was something it is not.

>>
GI wrote
So without getting too metaphysical here - and bearing in mind that some readeers of the forums hold beliefs in the non-existence of anything approaching the concept of a deity, 'God' (supreme consciousness) could not have used other people to communicate through?

"sure HE could. and HE did. "

but why can't you extend that concept to 'he does' ? Why the dogma that yours is the ultimate revelation? You cannot see the absurdity of that can you?

>>
GI wrote:
This gets down to the question of sharia and fatwas. I asked another Muslim poster on here to explain how two opposing fatwas can be issued by different Imams (or other fatwa issuers). Either one of them is right or neither of them is right. As an example - say your Sunni imam issued a fatwa on me saying I should be killed for saying Mohammed was not a prophet. And say another imam in Lebanon - a Shia - issued a fatwa saying I should not be killed because I do not believe Mohammed was a prophet. One or both of them thought their ideas agreed with what Allah wanted them to do. Otherwise they would be acting against the interests of allah (which we won't even consider, as they are good, devout Muslims.) "

".....yet another smokescreen . the question of sunnis and shias is hardly applicable here."

No - no smokescreen at all - although it did inadvertently bring out the raging division amongst Muslims.
Rephrase what I wrote - say a Sunni Imam in Banglasdesh says a fatwa to kill me because I do not believe at all that Mohammed was a prophet and another Sunni - in Egypt say - says no fatwa - I don't have to be killed.
Who is right? (I'll go with the Egyptian) .Both cannot be.
But both think they know what 'Allah' wants. So it is a totally arbitrary system. The blind leading the blind.

" besides, the groups dont have an authenticity of their own because ALLAH has fixed the laws and there is no scope of changing them."
so you are neither a Sunni nor a Shia. I have heard of the 73 sects of Islam - whch are you if you care to tell?

"no you wont be killed for saying he isnt a prophet. youll be receiving glances of pity as you walk by."
That's fine by me.But people have been for not saying he was a prophet.

"the question here was whether reigion should be seperated from state. state is a tool of administration. nothing more. the key word here is administration. according to you, administration is to be conducted independent of religious guidance. or guidnce from ALLAH. but fact of the matter is religion is there for this purpose also. for administration of people. how else will people be ruled as per GOD's laws? so saing that religion is incompatible with state affairs is a foolish and shortsighted claim. arrogant too. since when do we have the right to override the objectives that came down from ALLAH?"

that's fine for a mono-cultural, mono-religious society. But what if there was a Buddhist equivalent of the sharia - would you live under that?
Government needs to be secular because otherwise the various religious self-interest groups would be vying for supremacy.

"the secularist approach is also hypocritical since it claims to include religion in it but dos not go by it."
That is not hypocritical . It ALLOWS its members to hold various religions and does not seek the dominance of any.

" it is either arisen from misunderstanding of the religion or from sheer arrogance "
It has arisen because of practicality. Imagine if the West was ruled by Christian fundamentalists - there'd be zero mosques in our cities.

"and i think even according to you, both ignorance and arrogance are traints to be discarded.""
yes, they are

>>
GI wrote:
"We live life according to our current state of awareness and our realisation of what it true, moment to moment. "

"with all due respect, we do not have what it takes to know what is true and what is a mirage."
and with all due respect - we DO have an innate ability to recognise truth.

"we need ALLAH to tell it to us. our awareness is subject to our environments and our current store of information."
Awareness IS NOT information.
Most people are not aware that they are aware. If I asked you for a second to stop whatever it is you are doing, drop everything - and be aware of your awareness
, you might have a momentary insight into the fact that you are aware. But as soon as you drop it - you're back into your mind's thoughts and everything going on in your life and you mistake that for awareness. We do not need BUNJIL to tell it to us in a book. That source is within us. We need to recognise that there are far deeper parts to ourselves that are totally in harmony and that expanded harmonious awareness ('the Kingdom of Heaven' which Mohammed doesn't speak about) is within us.

"and with the change of the volume of information and change of the enviorment, our awareness also changes.
so what awareness shows now is not testament of truth since awreness may show something else later.
we also have a universal awareness that tells us that since we are wrong most of the time it must mean we need a reliable source of truth.
what better source than ALLAH?

And where is that 'Allah'? Where have all the great religious teachers ALWAYS said to look?

"animals live moment to moment. "
not relevant

"man is superior and so lives understanding his condition and thus goes about according to it."
man has the potentiality of being superior

>>

GI wrote:
>> What struggle?? Knowledge of the truth of one's real self is not a struggle."

"ever asked where our reason to ask about ourselves comes from? "
Yes - our being becomes dissatisfied with the distortions the mind attempts to satisfy who we are with.

".....we do indeed struggle to know the self, dont we? "
I wouldn't say struggle though initially the mind tries to wrestle control. It is a matter of focus - focus on illusion - that becomes true for you. Focus on truth the illusion (and struggle) dissolves.

".....it is an effort. "
Christ said "My burden is easy and my yoke is light". Buddha said something similar. It's an effort when you're not moving with you're inner being otherwise
it's an harmonious flow.

"and we do it fully realizing that it yields or will yield something profound in the end. so we seek to know the self because it shows us the truth. and ALLAH is the truth. so in knowing the self, we attain nearness to HIM. but knowing the self is never an end in itself, it serves the purpose of giving a better view of god."
OK, so of course then 'Allah' is also the light of awareness inside every human being?
Therefore the closer you are to 'Allah' the less likely you are to harm others - because for one, you realise there is no 'outside' so what you are doing to the apparent 'outside'
you are actually doing directly to yourself. And secondly - you have no motivation to harm others because you see how we are all connected.
Thirdly - you have a conscious recognition of the beauty of life and the uniqueness of everyone you meet.
Fourthly - you live consciously , moment to moment, with the insight that no dogma or beliefs that your mind clings to are 'right' for anyone else.

"as Muhammad peace be upon him has said that in knowing oneself, one knows ALLAH."
That is good if he did say that - but he should have just stuck to saying that and improved upon that message rather than (aside from his errant personal behaviour) being the source of a book that has ended up perpetuating illusion and promoting hatred of Jews , categorising people into lowly Infidels and the rather more 'special ' Muslims and everything else it does .

BTW which 'ayahs' did he say that in?

GI wrote
>> where indeed is the real goal and what is it?"

" it is ALLAH. our maker. the source from whom all came. it is a return to the source. where all struggle ends. where the purpose is fulfilled and there is no more to prove. it is completion"

I agree - but where is the source? Where have all the real prophets ALWAYS said it was? Nirvana, satori, the Kingdom of Heaven.......

"i am assumng that you are inquiring as to the location of god. THE GOD (ALLAH) is beyond having such limittions. attaining peace is annihilation into the infinite in a way only HE knows best.
if god had a how and a where and when, it would hardly make him god, wouldnt it?"

Why wouldn't it make him God?? Are you saying 'God' doesn't let people have peace? That you can only experience peace when you die or something??? What sort of a God are you talking about?
Wouldn't it be crazy to NOT let people experience peace in this life?

" among HIS other attributes ALLAH is known as al adheem(infinite, great), al shaheed (ever present)and al wasi (the vast, infinite). i dont know what 'real' prophets you are talking about, but MUhammad pbuh, jesus and moses and other prophets taught this."

I cannot speak for Mohammed and as you know - I do not think he was a prophet at all - but I will say other great teachers taught their followers how to find the God within.

"the word where for god is useless and futile."
yes - in a way it is a metaphor.

"GOD is near to all. yet HE is also there. HE is beyond being referred to as here or there "

Could be inside all , eh?

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