Re: Creation in 2 days, 6 days or 8 days?

Altway wrote:


"Jews are good folks too" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote
The ability to create a hypothesis and prove it right or wrong is not a
material observation.

How can it be not material? Scientists use their senses, instruments
which
record physical parameters, etc. etc.

Comment:-
Hypothesis are created by inspiration, insight or guesswork.
They consist of an act of synthesis, not deduction, but induction,
that puts many data together.

Yes, but proving hypothesis right or wrong definitively require material
observation.


>> (1) That the Universe exists
While we know that, many religions claim different creators for this
universe. The origins of the universe as a creation of god doesn't
necessarily follow, and nothing obvious in the universe points to any
particular creator.

Comment:-
You make the same naive mistake as many scientists do.
God is not an object in the Universe.

What I said doesn't mean god doesn't exists,

From a rational point of view the belief that the cause of the Universe is
God
is just like the belief that the cause of changes is a force. i.e the
Second Law of Motion.



(2) That Messengers and Prophets have existed

All these prophets and messengers claim divine inspiration while not
being
compatible with each other.

Comment:-
Not true. They all have an experience of the transcendental

I wouldn't believe that.

but they verbalise it differently and convey it differently through the
mundane mind.

So then, we can believe in Joseph Smith, Rael and plenty of others?

Even if science is based on ultimately unprovable assumptions, there is
still the possibility of alternate explanations to 'revelations'. For
example, the qur'an was originally a recitation that was committed to
memory, before being transcribed into writing at a much later date. So
the hidden assumption here is that those original recitations were
transcribed faithfully. Whatever really happened, I'll leave that to
specialists.

Comment:-
You are speculating again. As the Quran says conjecture is not the same as
truth.

Speculations are not necessarily true, we don't need the qur'an to know
that. However, it's a way to come up with hypothesis such as: "how is it
plausible that the qur'an really is from divine origins rather than being
written by mankind?".

The Quran was written down as soon as recited.
Revelation means that something is "revealed" that was not given to the
senses
or invented by the ordinary mind. It refers to consciousness.
Something enters into consciusness that was not there before from
what was sub-conscious or unconscious before.
But all of us most certainly in interaction with the rest of existence
at the sub-conscious and unconscious levels.
But people differ as to how much conscious access they have to these.
That is why we can speak of higher states of consciousness,
namely self-consciousness, objective consciousness and cosmic
consciousness.

(3) That we posses a spirit, namely consciousness, conscience and will.
There is no obvious proof that the human consciousness was created from
any
god.

Comment:-
You want rational proof when it has already been shown to you
that proof refers to experiences, to sense data or conscious perception.
Have you not understood that that the rational faculty is controlled by
motives? It will go anywhere that your motives take you.
It dictates what facts you collect, how you interpret them, how how you
construct your premises and how you string your premises together to reach
a conclusion.
If you have a goal already in mind, a problem to solve then it is a good
instrument.
But if you wish to support a delusion or deny a truth then it will do that
for you also.

Motives or not, delusions or not, that doesn't change anything about the
origin of human conciousness. This kind of claim came from sacred books
which offer no proof of what they say. Scientifically speaking, it's
unfalsifiable.

We can't prove human consciousness was created by god. Same for the origin
of the earth. We can't prove god created the earth in a few days with Adam
and Eve created as adults or everything created with the appearance of a
very old age. We just have to take the sacred book as what they say (or not
at all).

No. In so far as we are all constructed from the materials, energy and
information
that also accounts for the Universe and we have arisen by a process of
interaction
with the Universe, then as conscious human beings we ought to have some
inkling of our ultimate origins.
It is this fact that makes religion into a Universal phenomena.
But as the degree of this awareness differs there tend to be different
ways of expressing
the experience.

If you have no such experience or what is more likely, you have suppressed
it under
a great amount of sensory experiences and rationalisations through
cultural conditioning
or diversion of interest and motives, then there is nothing much that can
be done about it.

The mind being what it is, there maybe experiences of higher consciousness
(and scientists can make experiences regarding these states of mind),
claims of such experiences, or maybe some mental disfunctions. I am aware
of such things as Out of Body Experiences, claims of alien abductions, Near
Death Experiences, telepathy, etc. Some of these things can be investigated
with science, and the explanation may not necessarily be spiritual. I heard
some of those efects (OBE,NDE) were reproduced by drugs.

However, there do exist a number of techniques by which awareness can be
enhanced.
But those who do not have the appropriate motives will not undertake them.
(One can show the horse some water but cannot make it drink)

That being the case any further discussion is clearly futile.

Hamid S. Aziz

--
JP

.

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