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Do you guys agree with Friedrich Nietzsche's argument: 1. Without God, humans are deprived of absolute values or eternal truths. 2. Absolute values and eternal truths rely upon the existence of God. Gay Science PS: by the way Mutakalim, you are bit childish.

Dr. William Hatcher , who is a self-proclaimed Platonist philosopher with a Ph.D. in mathematics, delivered a logical proof for the existence of God. Hatcher outlines a simple logical proof for the existence of God, an accomplishment made possible, he said, by reexamining a classic proof of God offered by the great Muslim philosopher Avicenna (ibn Sina, 980-1037) and applying to it some new logical tools derived from recent developments in mathematics. I wanted to post the short excerpt of his book here, but unfortunatly the forum would not allow me to paste the required symbols here. Instead here is a link. Go read it and lets do discuss it afterwards. http://www.onecountry.org/e102/e10214xs.htm

Can the designer – God- have such infinite attributes that he can elude the smartest of minds, with the deep motive to disprove him, that is to say those minds which lack objective motives, to actually elude them to the conclusion that they have disproved them, when they did not? In other words, God’s perfection not only comes from the creation of the world (which is clearly not ‘THE’ only masterpiece, if not a masterpiece at all, which you get when you read the Quran), but actually comes from the perfection of Free Will. That is to say, a mind set out to disprove God is correctly exercising its free will to do so and hence nothing will change it, till itself changes. peace

Sorry I was high on caffeine. I have just read over it, I think I was tad too aggressive. Anyway, please do comment.

Sophist, like always, out to exaggerate everything into a simple notion that is defined by his own priori definition. He is like a man who knows of a certain life, his own boring life. Who then comes to the conclusion that life is dull and meaningless, and that there is no point in thinking about it; nothing great ever happens, there are no heroes or villains—no point. Surely, such a man has no choice but to define life in such a way. However, if it the fact is pressed to him that every day someone wakes up, gets dressed and has breakfast, just to go and consciously take away life; to murder, to cause evil and terror to people who would otherwise may have happy and fulfilling lives. Or that someone else does the complete opposite: consciously sacrifices his own life for strangers. Willingly gives his own to the needy at his own expense. What would such a man say to such reality? How would he respond? Surely, if he is reasonable, he will swallow back his mischievous conclusions and change the very premises, his own life, which he used to arrive as such absurd conclusions. The point I’m trying to make is: who are you to question love. Honestly, how can you be so ungrateful as to judge the very thing which makes life possible? You were born, and bred, and have grown up, because somebody loved you. And you the work of its hands, its foster child, the pupil of its thoughts, its own proof, have the nerve to say itself has no meaning or that its all a mistake—and that person did not actually love you, but thought they did; there must be something wrong with you, you have made a mistake. And I think your mistake is that you have too narrowly defined love, although you claim it cannot be defined (like Allah, by the way I’m still trying to get over the bad taste it has left in my thoughts). It sounds like a women has broken your heart, and you came to a popular conclusion. The sad thing is, however, you actually believe this, this random jottings of immoral thoughts founded on nothing, aspire to something original; original enough to render a well established Truth such as love into nothing! Shame.

Mutakalim I think you are missing the point. The premises of your argument supports one particular conclusion, a conclusion derived by Western philosophers, based on their understanding of Christianity. Then you take this conclusion, which is vaguely related to the beliefs of Islam (or the undistorted beliefs the other two Abrahamic faiths), and then you build upon a special form of irreverence to arrive at your intended conclusion. You have to understand these people, these Western thinkers and refuters of the Objective God, have reasons in deitising logic and condemning religion. They are people made to believe, or were required to believe, the absurdities of the (distorted) Bible, such as the creation of light before the sun, the creation of the world six thousand years ago, and also that absurd sacrament, of which Voltaire even used to say, that though many different religions had existed and still exist, never before had there been one the principle religious act to which consisted of eating one’s God, or that God is one and Three in the same moment. Thusly, if men of strong spirit, like these you have mentioned and whose arguments you use, free themselves from the hypnotic influence in which they were educated in childhood and confirmed in maturity, will become the new priests of science and reason, and thus, this unprincipled man, instead of freeing revelation from the vile distortions, the same revelations that first of all ignited man’s reason, will be guided in life by the same principles which have distorted revelation itself. He will consider himself to be on the highest plane of mental development accessible to humanity. Alas they forget, all is irrelevant and is nothing more than ignorance built upon ignorance, uttered in the certainty of hope— faith in their own ignorance. To these man, and the same applies to you since your entire reasoning depends upon this established ignorance, faith is the realisation of things hoped for, and the certainty of things unseen. This is based on the impossibility of assuming faith to be just a hope, a hope of the un-unified internal state of mind with that of external events. Faith in Islam, however, is the unification of everything with the Infinite (not the separation of the internal from the external), That which has been before and will be after time, the unification of one’s will with that of God’s, the acknowledgement of tawheed. Faith is not hope, as Pascal says: we have nothing to loose from believing God, if He does exist then we will be saved, but if he does not, well then there is nothing, and since you are nothing, nothing which is now dead, I doubt it you will be whining about not finding the God you have ‘hoped’ for. Additionally, to further correct your misunderstanding, faith is also not confidence. Faith is man’s consciousness of his position and duty in the Infinite Will, his position in the Will of God, which imposes on him the obligation to fulfil certain actions, certain reasonable actions. And reason, which is that naturally understood by every thinking man to be good and that which is confirmed by revelation, makes us aware of our position and duty. I was going to go into discussion about revelation and the infallible evidence of God’s existence, but I will not. No point. Contrary to your mischievous attempts at originality by quoting the random jottings of immoral thoughts founded on nothing, professed by the half-mad Western thinkers who do not even represent anything whole and connected, all has been said before. Go back to your books, read some more, reflect some more and than read some more. Find Truth, do not just regurgitate others failed endeavours. My advice to you is don’t be like those men of the strong spirit who after having freed themselves from the clutches of ignorance, became the new head priests of the Church of blind reason. Don’t be that man who after having attempted to proof his knowledge only proofed that he knew nothing. Peace

verbosity doesn’t equal intelligence. I think that should be tattooed on Sophist's forehead. Sophist , I think you do have a point when you say Somalis tend to assimilate the negative aspects of western culture. However you need to be reminded that this phenomenon is not something particular to Somalis as it also happens to most migrants. You should not be dismayed. In time most migrants come to their senses, after having come to understand the pros and cons of the host nation’s culture, they have a tendency to make rational choices towards their future. What's more I don’t think the generalisation is entirely necessary, I have seen cases where two out of five brothers have worked hard through high school and subsequently through academia, whereas the rest became drop outs [in academic sense] and found work at local factories. So in any case there are variations, especially when there is such a vast exodus of Somalis to the west, you are bound to have those who get assimilated into other cultures and those who after [inevitably] having adopted some aspects of others cultures remain intact and benefit from the experience. Peace

My dear Somali-Girl, Do believe me when I say my intention was not to offend you. Rather it was to appease your hostility. Since you have quite a few times made crude and unworthy remarks about how others write. So do not be dismayed about my comment, for it was not short of a taste of your own medicine. Moreover, I do not consider anyone here inferior, nor do I take pride in writing in English -as apposed to writing in Somali. I employ whatever language I see fit, even though I grew up in the west I still consider Somali to be my first language, and always will have. Secondly, I think you should understand that any comment directed at Somali-Girl does not necessarily claim to be a fitting assertion of the person behind the handle. All I know you could be a cunning linguist, but as far as I’m concerned Somali-Girl’s prose is ghastly ungrammatical. Having said that, lets try to forgive and forget shall we. Peace

I don't think it has anything to do with conspiracies such as white supremacy or even Malthusian theories. Rather it is an outdated mode of development which reflects greed and corruption. Sure it is easier to blame population control than to admit that at any given point in time there are enough resources (food, medicine etc) to sustain twenty billions lives. If the west and the well off admit to this point, they will be depicting a morally repugnant view of themselves and this will not help them sleep better at night. Peace

Somali-girl, What is with the crusade? Let the man speak. Surely you don't see us complaining about your bad grammar and those hideous smiles.

Samurai Warrior, How are the public schools in England? Sophist, I have had only four hours of sleep for the past two days. Plus I just came out of an oral exam, on St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas’ notion of “Jus Ad Bellum”. I think the examiners liked the Islamic perspective that I shared with them. Anyway going to bed. Peace

Salafi_Online I think you are missing the point!

Mutakalim, You know you are right I should get my money back, they haven’t taught me anything that I did not know before. However, I’m glad you are fond of philosophy but I feel I should correct you. Karl Popper, I think, said, theory will be 'regarded more satisfactory the greater the severity of the independent tests it has survived,' but he insisted that falsification was the only way to finally eliminate an invalid theory, ‘If the theory fails a test, it has been falsified.’ In short the nature of the ‘knowledge’, which the inductive method yields, is what can be known for certain is ‘what is not true.’ But to be honest with you I don’t really understand the reason to why you have used this quote, I have never claimed that the topic in hand, dreams, was never a subject beyond philosophy. I simply said it was one befitting of a neurologist. If you feel the need, like most philosophy enthusiasts do, that you need to bring everything in posterity to philosophy, then by all means go ahead. Peace

Mutakalim, I have studied philosophy at undergraduate level, but I do not feel the need to proof myself to everyone. Surely, the concept that all events and objects that we encounter in real life come into existence as visions and feelings in our brains or that live can exist without the existance of concrete physical world is not a philosophical speculation. I think it is one fitting for a neurologist rather than a philosopher. To conclude what could be a long argument short, your shortcoming is not that you are too familiar with philosophy; it is that you are not familiar with anything else. I think this has always been the source of my intolerance towards philosophers as well as amateur philosophers.