Let us see. Mountain splits open and a pregnant camel walks out. A bird of clay is made by hand, and by the Command of Allah it turns into a living bird. Literally, the dead are raised back to the living. A human being survives scorching fire without any injury. A flowing river parts, such that water on each side remains standing without any support.
David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty 'disappeared'. Am here in Vegas and there are no shortage of spectacular 'magic' feats. And this is the time where people are educated, unlike the time of the prophets. All you have are the typical "fisherman's tales" where the fish get larger and more vicious with each retelling.
The relationship between God and His creations is very different from parent and child. Wrong analogy here.
How is it wrong when religionists -- like yourself -- consistently tell everyone that the parent-child analogy is appropriate. God is the Father and we being His creations are akin to being His children. Even the pagans uses the parent-child analogy, re: Mother Earth.
I don't understand what you are trying to even say in the above paragraph. How am I making myself a 'prophet'? What is the contradiction? Please explain.
By telling me -- in this discussion -- that what God (Allah) is, is not, wants, needs, and characteristics, you are passing yourself off as at least a minor prophet. All evangelists are ambassadors of God, correct?
First of all, since God is Perfect, hence none of His Decisions are flawed. What is misguiding you is the seeming complexity. Look, a religion is a way of life. It is laying down the rules for the life of humans, not a Goldfish living in a bowl. Because humans are complex, their life is complex, it stands to reason that religion will be complex.
God should have known better that His message
WOULD be filtered. That is 'would', not 'could'. The word 'would' indicate inevitability. God is Murphy, as in "Murphy's Law" where if something can break, it
WILL break, and humans are always at the %50 line of breaking or obeying the laws, moral or anything else.
Yes, science and engineering are very precise, but what about social sciences? What about medicine and health? Let us see: initially they told us fats are bad, then they told us actually it is cholesterol, then they told us there is bad cholesterol and good cholesterol, then they discovered ketosis and, and, and...
At least each time, the scientists have documentation to back up their declarations, even if those declarations maybe wrong and later proven wrong.
Do you really want to apply that standard to religions?
Some genius invented Socialism, someone tried Communism, others championed Democracy. The 'Mine is better than yours' debate cost millions of lives, led to poverty and misery, yet nobody says 'Oh this is more complex than IKEA furniture'.
Ideological and political conflicts that ended up with those millions of lives lost are perfect corollaries to religious wars. But the difference is that we say 'better', not 'perfect'. So when religionists portrays whatever their religions as 'perfect' we will assess the results to match.
Humanity is happy to bumble around, updating hypotheses after getting burned. Religion provides a guarantee that there will be no bumbling around. Strangely enough, people find it complex!
Why is that -- the highlighted? My question is not meant for
YOU in particular, but mainly rhetorical and towards religionists in general.
How often have you in your role as ambassador for Islam, repeated the line that the Quran is 'perfect'? Same goes for the Christians and the Bible.
'Thou shalt not kill'. So said God. But why the human need to interpret 'kill' as 'murder'? Because for every rule, no matter how simple it maybe, we want exceptions.
SELFISH exceptions. A 'murder' is an exception to the broad 'kill'. We want the freedom to kill and violations of that commandment to be narrowly restricted to circumstances.
If I received this commandment from a messenger that I know to be as flawed a human being as I am, especially if I know that messenger have killed, then inevitably I will make that commandment more complex in execution to find other selfish exceptions, to the 'Thou shalt not kill' commandment and to other commandments.
This is why God, His versions, and all His 'holy' texts are increasingly under questions and re-interpretations. This is why Gutenberg and his printing press were initially labeled by the Christian priests as from the Devil because they believe that if the people can read, they would question the priests' interpretation of biblical texts. Whether Islam have similar issues or not, I do not care. My point is that if God is omniscient, as in knowing everything there is to know and being all wise as well, then surely God would have known whatever messages He allows to be filtered thru the human agency
WOULD be corrupted.
Blaming the human agency no longer works and the Christian priesthood largely came to accept it, however, they have no choice but to continue blaming the people because to remove the human agency would leave the 'holy' texts as the only thing standing for their religion. And criticisms of the Bible to the point of admitting the Bible as flawed is unacceptable.
You are doing the same thing for Islam.
We cannot leave Humans to decide the 'way of life' on their own. Humans have shown time and time again that they are appalling at deciding a way of life. And thus, the best way of life is the one Revealed by Allah the Almighty.
What came before this paragraph is -- reasonable. But with this paragraph, you are treading on the line of saying that religion in general is essentially -- a scam.
Because, as the argument goes, humans consistently make a mess of the world, we need an overriding set of morality and rules whose origins cannot be suspect at any level. So what we ended up with are the concept of the 'divine' or divinity, the notion that there is another life after this one, and a mysterious entity whose nature is beyond our comprehension. All other items like Hell, angels, demons, and prophets are merely enforcement mechanisms.
