The official Saudi position (the voice of organised Wahabism) has nearly always opposed the intifada (Hamas) suicide missions but that seemed to make no impact at all. I don't think that an almost unheard-of Mufti will make a huge difference either.


Anyhow it's not the Muslims in the West that should be targetted and forced to engage the issue, it's those in the Middle East, because there lies the source of the ideology that drives the wheel of terroist Jihadism.

Judging by the numbers of subscribers to the major Arab Atheist forums....there are thousands out there....

www.el7ad.org

There's already a translation of "The Genius of Darwin" and "The Root of all Evil" to Arabic on a youtube channel by a Canadian Arab

http://www.youtube.com/user/antiGoebbels



and to all Arabic speaking atheists, here's my youtube page...please lend us your support... but be ware..our Islamic audience tends to be a bit abusive....!

http://www.youtube.com/user/Godcreateddisease


:)

Good luck Prof

Everytime I hint to the science of evolution to an Islamic audience on my Youtube forum

All I get back is "your mother is a whore...your father is a monkey....what a joke..."

:(

EvidenceOnly

God will make you suffer if you don't do what She/He/IT wants (which I abbreviate to SHIT;

Chuckles !!

That's how I shall be referring to s/h/it too from now on !

Holy s/h/it :)

Brilliant!

Please check out his "Free Will God style Part 3"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0wSjJAsrAk

Good stuff !

Nevermind the video,

Halleu-Alexandra Burke !!

Well done.
Well done.

Brilliant !

Never heard on Minchin before but will look out for him from now on.

dan001

I keep saying, Neanderthals can't be extinct. I personally know two guys, one of them a previous boss, that make Neanderthals look pretty in comparison!

scary monster! Now, where the bleeding hell did this one come from?
And they've already figured out its bleeding genetic code? Good grief!!
I wonder if metazoans have gone through such a stage in the evolution of complex multicellularity.
Shudderrr..oh the thoght of it...

Excellent.

Does this sort of thing make its way to television?

Time and time again, Hitch lets theists get away with murder.

What applies to the part does not necessarily apply to the whole and the rverse is similarily false. I am made of trillions of particles that behave like particles and waves. I, as a whole, don't.

I need Oxygen and Water to maintain my structural integrity. My atoms don't.

If the universe as a whole is devoid of a particular purpose does not imply that there is no truth or whatever string of non-sequiturs that Wilson was inventing.

Apathy Personified

He goes on to say that his existence or non-existence can not be proven. The Hadith narrators count in the hundreds and the hundreds of different similar versions of their narratives, about anything from how he organised his army to what he used to do to his wife in private, when he used to urinated standing up or squatting (!!) can that all be forged ?

Maybe, but my skeptical alarm bells are screaming at me right now.

And that Quran, for all its worth, sounds very much like a one man show to me so, nah, nah.. will wait for the book, apparently it's coming out in English but not sure when.

Has anyone found a link to more detailed version of the man's arguments?

A coin appearing sixty years later doesn't mean he did not exist! Please, let me know if you find a proper coverage of the thesis.

Shock Horror!

mmmm tasty, now let's see what the article's on about!

Naturalist1

One Guantanamo proposal coming up...!



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081110/ap_on_el_pr/obama_guantanamo

Somalia has hit a dead end.

The living nightmare in that country is the fact that there is no competing culture to challenge their primitive beliefs. They identify themselves with none other than Islam. The lack of security and infra structure means that it is unlikely that civility will begin to flourish anytime soon.

Neuro

Shermer also debated D'Souza three times. Here is the most recent one and in my opinion is definitely worth seeing.


Part 1
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6H8ZP0DjJb8

EDIT this particular youtube user has uploaded the debate in 13 parts.

Congratulations Darwinspitsbull!

Nairb

I know of three references in the Qur'an, two addressed to Jews violating the Sabbath code (Chapter 2, verse 65 and Chapter 7 verse 166) and one addressed to both Jews and Christians from Chapter 5 verses 59 and 60:

Say: "O People of the Book! do ye disapprove of us for no other reason than that we believe in Allah, and the revelation that hath come to us and that which came before (us), and (perhaps) that most of you are rebellious and disobedient?"

Say: "Shall I point out to you something much worse than this, (as judged) by the treatment it received from Allah? Those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He transformed into apes and swine, those who worshipped Evil, these are (many times) worse in rank, and far more astray from the even Path!"

The references in the Hadith are several but that needs a bit of dedicated research to fish them out. Most are variations of the hadith I quoted above.



I can only speak for countries following the Maliki tradition (mainly North Africa) and those with substantial Christian minorities e.g Sudan, Egypt and Lebanon. With the exception of the occasional angry Friday sermon (usually following Israeli/Palestenian violence) the message in the mainstream media and in religious class tend to quote the following:

Chapter 2: verse 62

Those who believe (in the Qur-an), and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians, any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.

Chapter 29 verse 46

And dispute ye not with the People of the Book, except with means better (than mere disputation), unless it be with those of them who inflict wrong (and injury); but say, "We believe in the Revelation which has come down to us and in that which came down to you; our God and your God is One; and it is to Him we bow (in Islam)."

Chapter 5 verse 82:

Strongest among men in enmity to the Believers wilt thou find the Jews and Pagans; and nearest among them in love to the Believers wilt thou find those who say, "We are Christians": because amongst these are men devoted to learning and men who have renounced the world, and they are not arrogant.

Unfortunately, for those studying the Quran the beingn verses concerning Christians are hard to spot given the disproportionate number of harsh verses reiterating how blasphemous they are for claiming Jesus was the son of God and worshipping him.

Like I said I can only speak for countries which do not follow the Hanbali-Wahabbi school and although I've been aware of the derogatory verses in the Quran concerning the "People of the Book" at an early age I've never actually seen them in children's books and I'm concerned that they are still included in the Saudi curriculum especially after 9/11 and the consequent deterioration in Islam's image in the West.

NAIRB

Muslims think it acceptable that sinners among Christians and Jews were transformed into animals because it is one of those types of punishment that Allah applies to everyone, including Muslims.

Here is hadith from Bukhari (collection of authentic sayings and traditions of Muhammad):

"The Prophet PBUH said, "There will be (at some future time) people from my
ummah (community of Muslims) who will seek to make lawful: fornication, the
wearing of silk (by men), wine-drinking, and the use of musical
instruments....... Then Allah will destroy them during the night
by causing the mountain to fall on them, while he changes others into apes and
swine. They will remain in such a state until the Day of Judgement.

isthatclear

How come a model solar system needs a desıgner but the real model system has no desıgner

There is a little trick in such statements and it may take you some time and effort to see it.

Natural objects appear less designed the closer you look at them, in sharp contrast with man made objects.

Next time you come across a similar model you can be confident to proclaim that someone must have designed it, but look at the stars and the planets, the real thing, again. Completely different stuff. They provide their own energy (stars), they are self propelled (planetary orbits) and, as you see in nice pictures of the Hubble space telescope, they are born spontaneously in regions of dense gas in the universe and go out, poof!, just like that.

Among a billion or so attempts one appears to support a planet. Among many such planets only one, or so, will turn out to be hospitable for living beings. A disproportionate ratio of failures : success. Trial and error, isn't it? If there was a designer behind this then it certainly is playing dice.

Look at any watch or other instruments. See the perfect circles (e.g cogwheel), straight lines and orderly mechanisms. Then look at your own body. The are no straight lines or perfect circles. Your heart rate varies from beat to beat. Each cycle of cell replication produces some minor variation or genetic error. None of your cells look exactly alike and do not resemble any one else's.

Can you see that you were comparing apples with oranges all along?

Edited

It's actually, you can't be a Muslim that way. It comes from the heart.

Otherwise you'll be whipped in public.

A new avatar to celebrate...

"The Story Of Mathematics" is absolutely brilliant !

Dr Hameer

It is perhaps less confusing to describe the appeal to reason and objective facts as "objective rationality". In this way, irrational behaviour would be easily distinguished from the essentially non-rational choices we make based upon instinctive benchmarks such as the innate preference to certain melodic arrangement or some ill-defined taste for particular forms of artistic expression.

Bonzai

That's even "worse". That is like a plant race feeding on our sperms, ovaries and foetuses or something similar!!!

noneoftheabove

Meat-eating is certainly natural to humans - as are rape and murder.

But why kill-to-eat anything at all? Wouldn't it be nice to avoid the mass killing of plants by giving everyone total parenteral nutrition?

It sure is expensive but, to hell with money if it stands in the way of ethics!

I hope you see the point of the sarcasm.

To avoid such obtuseness creeping into the collective conscience let us define exactly what we base our ethics upon.

"We care for the environment" is great but needs to be further spelled out for very practical reasons. Should we give all environmental entities equal weighting or should we decide on planes of hierarchy that guide our ethical judgement?


You'd still have to kill-to-eat plants otherwise human life would not be practically sustainable. Humans will die, Humans will suffer. So? Your and my ethical reference point is primarily "human welfare".


Why do you allow yourself to disproportionally destroy and consume beings that live, sense (light stimuli), reproduce, respirate (not "ventilate")... such as plants but not animals? When making an ethical judgement you're allowing yourself to stratify living beings according to other characteristics such as nociception and psychological vulnerability.

It is nice to want to care for all aspects of the environment, living and non-living alike, but is this rational and prudent or muddled and naive logic?

tieinterceptor

Thanks for your kind comment but as long as I remain in the closet I don't deserve any credit but watch this space!

qomack

Actually, it is supposed to be thinner than a hair and sharper than the cutting edge of a sword for everyone. Depending on how virtuous you are you'll either run across, be dragged on your face or fall because of some clasp devices that try to throw you off your balance.

Of course no one knows how virtuous you need to survive unscathed.

Please refer to Ibn Katheer's explanation of Mary 71 and 72 for more details.