June 1, 2006

Question For The Muslim Blogging Community

OK, what is the real deal with the Koran and the expression Jews descended from apes and pigs?

I've done some reading up on the subject and I am a bit confused. It seems that at least some Saudis and Egyptians teach this to be a literal transformation. I've also seen where some Muslims state it metaphorically describes Jews, and I've seen some instances where Muslims have stated it was just a current day conflict at the time the Koran was written.

It also seems there is confusion as to whether Jews are descended by both apes and pigs or just apes while Christians are descended from swine. Something about non-believers in Islam but believers in the book get to be named descendents. How come Atheists don't get an animal to descend from too? I'm covered by also being a Jew, but I would feel left out if I was just a plain old Atheist.

I know that different interpretations exist all over the place. But nobody denies that the Koran actually at least compares Jews to apes and swine. But why are 3 year old Muslim girls being taught the literal translation? How sick is that?

I have no problem being a descendent of an ape from an evolutionary standpoint. In fact, man is classified by most biologists as a great ape. Even being descended from a pig isn't the worst thing to say about me. It is fact that pig and man share the same ancestor from a long, long time ago, as we do with all mammals.

But correct me if I'm wrong, most Muslims don't believe in evolution. I don't think Muslims are talking evolution when they say that Jews descended from pigs and apes. However, if they don't believe in evolution, how do they get around evolution on this issue? Is this like the Adam's rib turning into Eve kind of dealy? When did this transformation take place? Was it pre-Moses or post-Moses? So many questions, and so few answers.

And what percentage of Muslims are we talking about here, that literally believe Jews came from pig and/or apes? What percentage think it is a metaphoric term? And what percentage sluff it off as just something Mohammed said when he was having a bad hair day?

Anyways, until I get some reasonable answers I'll stick with the following club:


Join the Apes and Pigs Alliance

100 comments:

  1. Muslims were halted in their evolutionary process about fourteen hundred years ago. Mohammad told them "This is as far as we go." By believing, they managed to turn off the critical thinking skills necessary for evolved life. And with their collective heads pointed east and asses upthrust towards the west, nothing much is getting through. Nothing 'cept that good old time religion.

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  2. This is the first time I heard about the ape and pig. I thought that they allowed people of the book to marry the Muslims, and Jews are people of the book. So I wonder how this apy and piggy thing came in.

    Also can you check why they say Prophet Muhammad is the last prophet [ peace be upon him] as it really closes the door to other prophets as from the line from Prophet Abraham or Patriarch Abraham, came Jesus Muhammad and the last one we hear of Bahai'u'llah. Did the inclusion of Prophet Muhammad as the last prophet come from the followers or from Muhammad himself? I tend to think it comes from followers , but have no proof.

    Bahai'u'llah of Bahai Faith is a very open religion, a late comer as one of the world religions and off shoot of Islam and if Muhammad is NOT the last, then Bahai'u'llah would be the one for this time and age for the Arabs. I think he died in prison in Iran.

    By the way, I persuaded them to abandon violence suicide bombing on Steven's site and I wonder whether it has taken root or was doomed to fail.
    "Oh I see"

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  3. Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.
    --Revelation 4:11


    Friend, life is all about Jesus. If He's not the center and circumference of your life, you have missed the point of life!

    Now, by what right can Jesus claim to be so worthy?

    First, because Jesus is your Maker. Jesus is the One who is the Source and the Sustainer of the universe, the Creator, the Maker. He made it all…including you! Therefore He is worthy to be the focus of your life.

    Second, Jesus is your Victor. Revelation 5:5 says, "…the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals."

    Jesus is absolutely victorious over your sin…over your sadness…over any darkness that may be in your life right now. Christ is the victor! Therefore He is worthy.

    Third, Jesus is your Savior. Revelation 5:9 says, "And they sang a new song, saying, 'Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.'"

    Jesus is your Maker, your Victor, and your Savior. Which means you and I owe Him our worship…and our lives!


    LIFE IS ALL ABOUT JESUS!

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  4. Steven, when you have added another 30 years to your young life just out of college, then come and tell us the best way forward. Grow up and go out and know more of the real world, man. You are playing kid's games and do not even know that. Come back 30 years and sprout all your views on Palestine here. See ya' dude!

    Oh I see.

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  5. Steven, the Quran does state that Jews are protected people and the book AND they are also pigs and monkey.

    Suras 60 - "Shall I inform you of something worse than that, regarding the recompense from Allāh: those (Jews) who incurred the Curse of Allāh and His Wrath, those of whom (some) He transformed into monkeys and swines, those who worshipped Tāghūt (false deities); such are worse in rank (on the Day of Resurrection in the Hellfire), and far more astray from the Right Path (in the life of this world)."

    Suras 65 - And indeed you knew those amongst you who transgressed in the matter of the Sabbath (i.e. Saturday). We said to them: "Be you monkeys, despised and rejected."

    Not to say there aren't nasty things in the Torah and Bible, of course there are... but to deny Islamic hatred for the Jews is factually incorrect.

    You know my position. I like Canadian Muslims I have met but I do believe Islam to be an overly violent and hateful supremece ideology that has no appreciation for the golden rule. Whether you are an infidel or a moderate Muslim, most agree that a new reformed Islamic ideology (economic/social/political) is needed to stop the violence/poverty that dominates the Islamic world.

    Unfortinately, I believe radical (traditional) Islam is winning in key areas such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan. "Islamisation" is turning previously tolerant countries dark, devoid of liberty and freedom.

    How do you go after an ideology but not the people who follow it? Communism was defeated through its own violence and poverty. But Islam is far more successful in convincing its followers to give up their lives and their childrens lives to serve Allah.

    Either way, the front lines in this war have been set. Nigeria and Malaysia have already lost and know it. Europe will be key as they will be forced to make tough decisions that will test westearn tolerance. Innocent people will be hurt.

    I am not optimistic and thank g-d I live in Canada. Thank g-d my apostate girlfriend left Iran before it is too late.

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  6. Steven, again you are trying to pretend that something that does exist doesn't exist.
    I am asking Muslims here, and I've yet to get one response. Again, read the first question in this post.
    Read the articles, forget about the opinion in them, read them for what actually happened.

    And to blame the middle east woes on how the British and French carved out the middle east is too idiotic. Can't you give the Arabs any credit at working things out or any credit to have social responsibility?

    Sound like you think Arabs are lacking humanity. Shame on you Steven for implying that the Arabs aren't as good as the rest of the world:)

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  7. Dr. B, funny stuff, and very un PC....I like it.

    Oh I see(Anon), I'm wondering too, I'm looking for answers and haven't seen any yet.

    J, this is a warning. off topic sermons about fictional characters will be deleted from now on. I let it go for the first 10 times, but enough is enough.

    Jordan, you speak the truth, and Steven just can't handle it.

    One more thing, Steven hates Memri because Memri reports FACTUAL news out of the middle east that makes Muslims look bad. In other words he shoots the messenger as usual.

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  8. One more thing, Steven hates Memri because Memri reports FACTUAL news out of the middle east that makes Muslims look bad. In other words he shoots the messenger as usual.

    Didn't you know that MEMRI is a Zionist organization, BEAJ? At least that's what the Lefties keep telling me. You see, the Zionists scour the filthy bowels of the Arab world, dredging up the most extreme programs and viewpoints and holding them up to the world as examples of Arab/Muslim prejudice. Can you believe those damn dirty Jews? They even control STATE SPONSORED MIDDLE EAST TV. The Jews also apparently write and sponsor all of the official Iranian doom-tongued proselytizing that we've all come to love. Nonsense, you say? The Jews, I say!

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  9. Secondly, I can find in chapter 60 no references to jews at all, nor anything referring to monkeys, nor pigs

    Thus it must not exist! If Steve can’t find it, it doesn’t exist! When the ball rolls under the crib, baby forgets about it. Does he bother to look elsewhere? Of course not. His intellectual curiosity doesn’t lead him past his own nose.

    Quran 5:60

    PICKTHAL: Shall I tell thee of a worse (case) than theirs for retribution with Allah? (Worse is the case of him) whom Allah hath cursed, him on whom His wrath hath fallen and of whose sort Allah hath turned some to apes and swine, and who serveth idols. Such are in worse plight and further astray from the plain road.

    Quran 2:61 and on to 2:65

    PICKTHAL: And when ye said: O Moses! We are weary of one kind of food; so call upon thy Lord for us that He bring forth for us of that which the earth groweth - of its herbs and its cucumbers and its corn and its lentils and its onions. He said: Would ye exchange that which is higher for that which is lower? Go down to settled country, thus ye shall get that which ye demand. And humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them and they were visited with wrath from Allah. That was because they disbelieved in Allah's revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully. That was for their disobedience and transgression.

    PICKTHAL: And ye know of those of you who broke the Sabbath, how We said unto them: Be ye apes, despised and hated!


    Turning into apes and pigs, of course, isn’t just for the Jews either. In Bukhari (7/494) Muhammad (the perfect man) says:

    From among my followers there will be some people who will consider illegal sexual intercourse, the wearing of silk, the drinking of alcoholic drinks, and the use of musical instruments as lawful. And (from them), there will be some who will stay near the side of a mountain, and in the evening their shepherd will come to them with their sheep and ask them for something, but they will say to him, 'Return to us tomorrow.' Allah will destroy them during the night and will let the mountain fall on them, and Allah will transform the rest of them into monkeys and pigs and they will remain so till the Day of Resurrection."

    Steve, you can put that in your hookah and choke it.

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  10. Read the links I provided. It is Islamists that put stock in the whole thing. A 3 year old girl was quoted saying she hates Jews because they are pigs and monkeys. Iran's leader mentions it, Syrias Imans mention it.
    The 3 year old was told she is a great Muslim for saying it.

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  11. I just copied and pasted, I don't believe in lying or doctaring.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_anti-Semitism

    "A number of verses in the Qur'an refer to Jews being transformed into apes or pigs, specifically Suras 5:60-65, 2:65 and 7:166. "

    Links to http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/005.qmt.html#005.060 where you can read all the versus from a reputable source.

    Incedently, I like the verse prior to the pigs comments:

    005.059
    "PICKTHAL: Say: O People of the Scripture! Do ye blame us for aught else than that we believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto us and that which was revealed aforetime, and because most of you are evil-livers?"

    It really seems that the Quran is verse after verse of the most itolerant, incosiderate, supremece ideology I have ever heard. I mean, there are some things in the Torah and Bible I am not particularly proud of but this is nuts! I can't believe children are taught this stuff.

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  12. Here are just a few choice versus...

    Jews are the greediest of all humankind. 2:96

    Disbelievers are losers. 2:121

    Have no unbelieving friends. Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them. 4:89

    Don't be friends with non-Muslims. They all hate you and want to ruin you. 3:118

    Evil is the handiwork of the rabbis and priests. 5:63

    Christians and Jews are perverse. Allah himself fights against them. 9:30

    The "Religion of Truth" (Islam) must prevail, by force if necessary, over all other religions. 9:33

    -------------

    And no where in the Quran does it say "we love Jews, we just hate the evil racist apartheid 'Zionist' who stole our land"

    Again, I don't want to come off as someone who hates Muslims as individuals. I don't and I hope I never will. Too many good Muslims have shaped my opinion. But the ideology set out in the Quran promotes hatred and intolerance... even for religion! Its tough to believe Islamic ideology is not playing a key part in the wars/suicide bombings in the middle east.

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  13. The point is that I wouldn't even bring up pigs and monkeys if it wasn't being spoken like gospel by Muslim nations.

    Also, regarding evolution, there isn't a tear between Muslims regarding human evolution...Most do not believe in it.

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  14. There are say between 1.2 million to 1.5 million Muslims worldwide. Second to Christians, today in terms of global numbers. They span 57 countries, Islamic countries under OIC. But there are many Muslim minorities in non OIC countries.

    As many in the world today study science and thus biology and thus evolution, it would be that many Muslim students too would have taken biology classes in evolution. There would be those, who would see it that, science is science and Allah is Allah. Rightly so too.

    Muslims have kosher type of food restrains like Jews kosher food. Pork is one of Muslims forbidden food. Presumably too of Jews and thus your nickname Bacon the atheist? Ha

    Muslims live with people of other races religions in many places and there are places where they choose to have their personal laws applied, in matters of marriage family law divorce inheritance while other matters are governed by mainstream secular law. There is a diversity of thought. In progressive Egypt, marriage is monogamous because the Koran enjoins the Muslim married man to treat all his wifes equally and it was ruled it could not be possible to treat all equally and thus it was decreed it be monogamous. In other places, it is polygamous up to four at one time. In other places, where the personal law do not apply, then, they are subject to secular laws often monogamous.

    Apostasy varies from place to place, some have laws on statute book that impose strict punishment and others no such apostacy laws as it was given at a time when there was war and thus non Muslims were also enemy combatants and thus renounciation was also treason.

    The flaw or strength depending on how it is viewed, is islam creates an internal drive to create a theocracy. If the society is already progressive, then the form of theocracy is like any modern democracy, and if the society is not yet progressive it has the possibility of being pulled to 9th century or earlier version.

    Oh I see

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  15. By the way, there are Koran reading competitions and they are read in Arabic. Muslims are also trained to read and memorise the Koran and yet not really read write Arabic unless they are Arabic Muslims in Arab lands. There are probably more Muslims outside Arab lands. So, if it is rote memory of Koran, doubt they will know about the obscure phrases.

    The Muslim culture of praying five times a day, from dawn to night, daily, 365 times a year, for about 60 years and thats a lot of prayers and rememberance of Allah. The five pillars of Islam bond the Muslims together, and Friday prayers of men in mosques.

    Five times a day prayers means the siren from the mosque sounds five times a day for 365 days for every year in some places.

    Majority would be pleasant humble friendly adherents of the faith & they would look as friendly as atheistic Bacon ! truly :-)

    Oh I See

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  16. I am also a proud member of the alliance :-)

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  17. Shlemazl, you also join the International Zionist Web, see my sidebar under the flags of Canada and the USA.

    Anon, not to be anal but you mean 1.2 to 1.5 Billion, and I believe 400 million are Arab.
    There are just over 2.1 billion Christians.

    I realize Muslims are a diverse group, but with such a large number, it would be nice if some of the large numbers would speak up against violence instead of persecution.

    And it is possible to take a biology class and still believe evolution is BS.

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  18. Pimpette, Wikipedia gets a bad rap as it is constantly being scrutinized, I tend to look favorably at entries that have been there a long time and corrected.

    You are missing a zero when it comes to homo sapiens appearance on earth.

    And what does the Koran say about this?

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  19. Oh bacon that's real sweet anal, i am under stress and did figure that it was billion when typing 1.2 million. thanks for the reminder . and i like my bacteria.

    oh i see

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  20. whats that CP? roflmao? roof fly man over ? ha

    by the way you read one french scientist muslim by name of maurice ? who also picked up koranic verses and tied it with science?

    oh i see

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  21. 195,000 yrs ago homo sapiens .... johnny come lately for 4.5 billion years earth? thats why we are still largely bacteria :-)ha

    oh i see

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  22. comment pimpette, true the Talmud says some terrible things, but I can confidently state that less than 5% of Jews know what the talmud is! I mean, I am one of the relatively few Jews who went to a private Jewish day school for 8 years and we never opened the Talmud once... we barely touched the Torah!

    Judiasm/Christianity have evolved into secular ideologies where only a few take the scripture literally. Unfortinately, the same is not true for the Quran where literalism is very real in much of the Islamic world. I also protest against the idea that intolerance is found in all religions in EQUAL amounts. The intesity of hatred towards the other is much more profound in the Quran. Perhaps its just bad timing that Islam can refer to Jews and Christians and the Torah's hatred is against Canoninites who no longer exist, but lets not deny that it is a problem.

    According to my gf, in public school in Iran equal time is dedicated to theocracy and science. In Canada, religious schools are fine as long as the MAJORITY of students focus on subjects that tend to create strong economy but in places where the Quran is given equal importance there will be perpetual poverty and a need to scape-goat America for their self-impossed suffering.

    Finaly, for those who read the Vatican Daily (joke) the Pope has been calling for "recoprocity" in the Islamic world. To paraphrase, it is unfair for the Islamic world to demand the west to treat Muslims well while the Muslim majority countries treat Infidels so poorly. True there are exceptions to the rule, but in Nigera, Pakistan, Malaysia, Egypt, and most (but not all) Islamic countries the anti-infidel laws and culture are not fair.

    In Egypt there is one mosque for every 60 Muslims but only one church for every 2000 Christians. And when Christians pray in secret houses (not allowed to build new churches) they are beaten or arrested for not having a permit. Nigeria is even worse. This "creeping Sharia" is gaining strength because the Islamic world is taking advantage of westearn tolerance with no attention of abiding to the golden rule themselves.

    Like I said, there are exceptions. Dubai looks hopeful and we should support them. But overall things are getting worse not better.

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  23. I have never seen so many wicked verses attributed to the Koran, and wonder
    1] whether they are from the Koran
    2] if yes, whether they are man made than inspired text

    My earlier question of late, is did Prophet Muhammad himself [peace be upon him] actually say he is the last prophet or it was inserted by others after his death to close the door to other prophets and retain their power as they did when the closed the door to ijtihad around 12th century.

    This closure tends to stagnate the religion if Bahai faith is the successor as they claim to this tradition. It also makes no sense for the door to close when historically there have been a line from Abraham all the way down.

    oh i see

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  24. Thanks for the tip, BEAJ, joined these good folks.

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  25. Steve,

    "Fight and slay the Unbelievers wherever ye find them. Seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war."
    Qur'an, Sura 9:5

    Whereas unbelievers ALL non-Mulims.

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  26. You have been lied to and you are a spreader of lies about Islam (willing).

    Spencer said this came from the Qur'an: “Some of the people of the Sabbath were punished by being turned into apes and swine. Some of them were made to worship the devil, and not God, through consecration, sacrifice, prayer, appeals for help, and other types of worship. Some of the Jews worship the devil. Likewise, some members of this nation worship the devil, and not God.”


    This is a jew lie. Find the specific sura and verse or shut the hell up, you atheist jew liar.

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  27. Your whole argument, your proud alliance, your ideology is based on anti-muslim propaganda and lies.

    This is what I believed, and a short 2 minute fact check proved it.

    This is something YOU could have proved to yourself, but you are not interested in truth, you are a monger of lies and hatred.

    Maybe this DOES make you sort of a sick pig. But where is the ape part?

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  28. Anon, you are missing the point. I am not saying the what the Koran says or what it means. I am asking.

    You aren't too bright if you don't understand this.

    The fact is that it is some Arab Muslims that spew out the part about Pigs and Apes. Did you even bother reading the link about the 3 year old girl. Where did she get that from? Spencers blog?

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  29. Here is your openning two lines to this post:

    "Question For The Muslim Blogging Community

    OK, what is the real deal with the Koran and the expression Jews descended from apes and pigs?"

    If I'm not too bright, perhaps you are quite dim.

    Take a another peak at your post. You should be up on your own propaganda. I mean, you make a BIG DEAL out of this alliance thing as if it is a central tenet of Islam. You claim that it says so in the Qur'an and you refer to Robert Spencer who initiated the lie on Front Page.

    What does this prove? Islam is fine.
    Atheist Jews need to make crap up to attack Islam.

    Why? Cuz they are wrong in the head.

    That's all.

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  30. You should just busy yourself with bacon. It is your best attrtibute. Eat some bacon!

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  31. OK, now I have taken the (wasted) time to see what the 3 year old girl thing was about. It is about Spencer and more lies:

    "But author and researcher Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, says that while Ali's notes are particularly anti-Semitic, his rendering of the Quranic text largely is no different than any other version.

    "It's an indication that what we think of as extreme in Islam is not really extreme but mainstream," he told WND. "You won't find a translation that doesn't have Jews being turned into apes and pigs."

    Some Muslim scholars say the text refers only to particular groups of Jews, such as those breaking the Sabbath, and is not meant to apply to Jews today.

    But Spencer says the global, mainstream understanding regards this as a current, universal reference to Jews. "

    My answer to Spencer and to you is:

    SHOW ME THE VERSE!

    Or admit that you are both filthy liars.

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  32. And finally, I'm going to educate you, bacause that is what you really need: Facts.

    Here is an article on the subject by National Review, a source you should find perfectly acceptable since they are a bunch of zionists who slant truth all the time, but atleast they do some fact checking since they are widely read:

    http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg110102.asp

    This will give you some reason and some ammunition to call SOME so-called muslims bigots. But, to be truthful, that is no worse an offense than you are guilty of.

    So hypocrisy will be the next thing to wash out of your bacon grease filled brain.

    No more alliance. You are a human being, not a pig. But beware of becoming the Beasts
    the Qur'an talks about.

    That's it. We're done.

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  33. Hey, I'm just looking for answers based on real observations.

    It is a fact that Jews and Christians being called Pigs and Apes is in fact a reality.

    It is what they read from the Koran and are taught by their teachers.

    I'm not stating how it should be interpretted.

    Where have I lied?

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  34. Where have I lied?

    "It is a fact that Jews and Christians being called Pigs and Apes is in fact a reality."

    There is no source and no tenet of Islam that supports this. Maybe some people call some Jews and Christians Pigs and Apes. That sounds like racism, not Islam. Even you should be able to tell the difference. Show me a statement of any sort.

    IF you can find one, which I doubt, you will find that it is a religious bigot and not a valid Islamic platform.

    Hey, I'm just looking for answers based on real observations.

    I seriously doubt that. But if so, look for real sources. You are spreading and highlighting lies about Islam.

    It follows that makes you a liar. If you ask, "Where have I lied?," then start back at the beginning of the correspondence and then get your short term memory checked because that would just be repeating what has already been said.

    You, Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, etc. (in no particular order) are all manipulators of opinion on Islam. (Liars)(and you know it). It is odd, as a Jew, that after so much history of persecution, you would feel the need to persecute others. But that is an old story. Still polishing and worshipping the Golden Calf.

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  35. This took about 3 seconds to find. But I knew it wouldn’t take long on memri. I know memri is only further proof that jooz own islam and all of its media but I still think they make a fair source of from the mouths of the leaders that I know are owned by jooz.
    http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sr&ID=SR01102

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  36. Conveniently, none of those links work now. They are all invalid, like this argument. There is one in Arabic that I cannot find the reference.

    Take one example though: In an August 2001 sermon, Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi, Palestinian Authority official and imam of the Sheikh Ijlin mosque, Gaza City's main mosque, called on the Palestinian people to forget their internal disagreements and turn all weapons against Jews: "lances must be directed at the Jews, the enemies of Allah, the nation accursed in Allah's book. Allah described [them] as apes and pigs, calf-worshipers, idol-worshippers..."[5]


    I would call on Sheikh Ibrahim Mahdi, internationally famous "Palestinian Authority *official*" (like that non-descript touch) , to back up his words and explain where in "Allah's Book" it says such things.

    But this guy most likely does not exist!

    He is a further concoction of the liars about Islam. A fabrication expousing a fabrication.

    I will put THIS to you: Find me proof of Sheikh Ibrahim Mahdi and where he published or recorded such words.

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  37. And if you please, let's skip all Jewish and Christian fundamentalist sites. I am sure that FrontPage mag runs stories from Sheikh Ibrahim Mahdi all day long.

    I don't think anyone but Sheikh Ibrahim Mahdi gets published on FrontPage.

    Show me a Palestinian site who mentions his words on this.

    Give you an example: I went to Aljazeera.com, major Arab news source and did a search on Sheikh Ibrahim Mahdi.

    Surprise! No mention of him.

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  38. I will put this to you: You are an idiot if you don't think there are clerics all over the world who preach jews and christians are pigs apes and worse.

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  39. Cut the bullshit and print the fucking source or admit that you are full of crap!

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  40. okay I admit it you are full of crap!

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  41. That is a seriously childish response. If there are so many Sheikhs saying that Jews and Christians are this or that animal: SOURCE IT!

    Or are you all (Jews) feebly trying to sow the seeds of hatred between Jewish and Christian Bigots and innocent Muslims.

    Shame on you for such bonehead tactics.

    Pathetic!

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  42. And sign on Anonymous Bacon Boy and take your fucking lumps you little hate-meister....

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  43. “Here are the Jews today taking revenge for their grandfathers and ancestors, the sons of apes and pigs. Here are the extremist Jews demanding their rights. Some extremists even demand their rights in Medina....This is the extremist tendency of Jews. They are extremists and terrorists who deserve death, while we deserve life, since we have a just cause.”

    — Shaykh Ibrahim Mudayris
    Gaza Palestine Satellite TV (official PA station)
    March 12, 2004

    “We are waging this cruel war with the brothers of the monkeys and pigs, the Jews and the sons of Zion The Jews will fight you and you will subjugate them. Until the Jew will stand behind the tree and rock. And the tree and rock will say: oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

    — Dr. Muhammad Ibrahim Maadi
    Palestine Authority TV
    September 12, 2004

    Grade 4 book in Saudi Arabia:
    ‘love for the sake of God and to hate for the sake of God.’ The report says that textbooks instruct students that Christians and Jews are ‘apes and pigs’ and warns students not to ‘greet,’ ‘befriend’ or ‘respect’ non-believers.”

    Saudi officials say it takes a while to change a school system.

    Allah Decreed that Jews be Turned into Apes and Pigs
    Dr. Al-Shwey'ir writes frequently about the Jews and their "traits"; often, his articles include quotes from the Koran along with quotes from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.[4] In another article, he wrote: "…Allah decreed that the Jews would be humiliated; he cursed them, and turned them into apes and pigs. Every time they ignite the fire of war, Allah extinguishes it. They disseminate corruption over the face of the earth, and fight the believers [i.e. the Muslims] only from fortified villages or from behind walls…"

    the following quotes are excerpted from a sermon broadcast on Palestinian TV by Dr. Mustafa Najem, Dec. 6, 2002:

    "The Jews...are the brothers of monkeys and pigs...Allah has warned us against their evil and their arrogance, and has said: 'You will find that the most brazen among mankind, with hatred towards the believers, are the Jews and the Idolaters.' [(Quran 81:5)]...The Jews are Jews, and we are forbidden to forget their character traits even for a moment, even for a blink of an eye. O Servants of Allah! The Jews are those who tried to murder your Prophet in order to expunge the call (to Islam)....Prayer and blessing to the Imam of the Jihad fighters, Mohammed, who waged a Jihad against the Jews...The Jews...are Idolaters, heretics, whose faith is false."

    n the Muslim Aghlabid dynasty (9th through 11th century, North Africa) Jews were forced to wear a patch that had an image of a monkey, and were also forced to affix the same image to their homes. For Christians, the image was that of a pig.

    A May 2006 study of Saudi Arabia's revised schoolbook curriculum discovered that the 8th grade books included the following statements:

    They are the people of the Sabbath, whose young people God turned into apes, and whose old people God turned into swine to punish them. As cited in Ibn Abbas: The apes are Jews, the keepers of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christian infidels of the communion of Jesus.

    Some of the people of the Sabbath were punished by being turned into apes and swine. Some of them were made to worship the devil, and not God, through consecration, sacrifice, prayer, appeals for help, and other types of worship. Some of the Jews worship the devil. Likewise, some members of this nation worship devil, and not God.

    Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, the leading imam of the Grand mosque located in the Islamic holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, referred to Jews as "the scum of the human race" and "offspring of apes and pigs".[18] During his sermons he also said:

    * "The worst ... of the enemies of Islam are those... whom he... made monkeys and pigs, the aggressive Jews and oppressive Zionists and those that follow them: the callers of the trinity and the cross worshippers... those influenced by the rottenness of their ideas, and the poison of their cultures the followers of secularism..."[18]
    * "Monkeys and pigs and worshippers of false Gods who are the Jews and the Zionists."

    ReplyDelete
  44. Look I appreciate the time but I would like to hear it "from the horses mouth."

    I got a link that claims these were taken from L'Arche, October-November 2001, (No Pages)

    The source is
    http://www.mideastnewswire.com/archive/muslim_antisem_danger.html

    which still looks like total propaganda.

    L'Arche seems to be a site dedicated to "communities of faith and lifelong homes with people who have developmental disabilities."

    Am I to believe this is where said sheikh sends his khutbahs?

    Please....

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  45. OK

    I found the L'Arche source, it is a French Jewish Monthly Mag,

    http://www.col.fr/arche/article.php3?id_article=120

    Not exectly "independent."

    If I find the guy in an Arab or Palestinian source...I will definitely say so.

    But all that would prove is there is a crackpot who falsely claims the Qur'an says things it does not.

    Like you.

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  46. I'm looking. We should stamp out racism and ill will wherever it lies.

    Saudis can be kind of fundamentalist about Islam. Most religious fundamentalists preach a very narrow-minded and occassionally destructive slant on religion.

    As always, human beings are accountable. If you want to call Palestinians rotten bomb toting scoundrels...fine. As an Israeli, I might feel that way (even though most Palestinians probably have nothing to do with it.)

    But these things have nothing to do with Islam or Muslims except guilt by association.

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  47. So, if a muslim stops being a muslim and becomes a christian does that mean that his father and mother, although still muslims, must have at least a bit of pig in them to have passed on to their offspring? Fascinating.

    How about Christians that become muslims? How does that work? Is there some sort of special gene therapy that they have to go through to remove the pig? Brilliant. I never realised that islam had so much to offer modern genetic sciences.

    Or is it possible these tiny ideas never occured to the tiny mind that first invented this rubbish?

    Anyway, in the west we teach our children that they themselves are descended from apes and that pigs share many many similarities. This knowledge is not an insult. It's a gift.

    ReplyDelete
  48. Good for you and your hatred.

    May you both live long together.

    Do you also teach your children to hate Muslims?

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  49. Skip the question, choosedoubt. I realize that you in the "West" don't dwell on hate. Apparently you teach your children in the West to shoot Muslims. How civilized!

    Haditha marvels at your advanced culture. Shooting women and children and point blank range.

    Congratulation you brilliant moron!

    ReplyDelete
  50. Comment Pimpette wrote "It is indeed interesting, and along the same lines, to note that it was found that all liquid in our bodies ( blood, saliva, tears, sweat….etc ) contain the same percentage of salt as is found in the oceans."

    It would be very interesting to have foudn that since it isn't true. First of all, salt is a bit vague. Secondly blood, saliva, tears and sweat all vary in salinity between individuals and within an individual according to diet, health, etc. Third, ocean salinity varies over time as an overall average and varies locally also.

    The rest of your pseudoscience support for islamic creationism is no better. It's good that you have read the koran but you'll find information about evolution, geology and the fossil record has been concealed in other books written by people that used evidence to form and make their claims. Their claims may therefore be more informative than those of a dark age peasant.

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  51. "Haditha marvels at your advanced culture. Shooting women and children and point blank range."

    Must be something like how we in the west are amazed by people who renounce science yet learn to fly planes into buildings.

    ReplyDelete
  52. You heap lie upon lie ot defend your sick position.

    The difference between Islam and the West is that terrorist are marginalized and everyone knows they are sick in the head.

    With you and your people, the killers, liars and manipulators are mainstream and you blindly support them.

    Your feelings of superiority are assumed, unjustified and completely insane.

    Additionally, not only do you condemn the taliban when it suits your sick world view and support the taliban when it suits your sick world view, so that no matter what state, you are assured of being big fucking hypocrites ,

    BUT!

    when OBL kills a bunch of people, atleast, in his sick mind, he has the guts to stand up and be accountabler for it. In your sick society, the game is reversed and you allow your people to kill and kill and rather than revealing the truth, your government and your military try to hide the shameful truth of the filthy deeds from your eyes so that your completely misguided and tenuous feeling of superiority won't be shaken.

    You are sheep fleeced by neocon goons who have you and your sons and daughters kill others and be killed themselves just to steal your tax dollars from you.

    Imbeciles. You have nerve to criticize anyone you are so goddamned stupid. And you elect and re-elect enemies of your own people.

    America will finish itself. You are either too fat, too stupid or too manipulated by jewish and christian fundamentalism to survive.

    No terrorism necessary. It was all cooked up just to prop up a zionist scheme.

    You are in Iraq to FIND THE KILLERS OF 9/11?

    THAT!!! MY FRIENDS IS HOW GODDAMNED STUPID YOU ARE.

    Period. 'nuff said.

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  53. To the angry "Period. 'nuff said." dude.

    Most of your inane babbling aside, what exactly was "cooked up just to prop up a zionist scheme"? Who coocked it up and what evidence to you have?

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  54. To the "inane babbling aside" guy:

    Bite me.

    ReplyDelete
  55. Watcher, don't you know jooz control the world setup 9/11 made the US invade Iraq for ??? brainwashed everyone on the planet with the media they control run the PA Iran SA part of running the world ya know plan on destroying all life to bring about the end of time are devils but the ones who aren't zionist are nice people. R U ever stupid don't you watch the news?

    ReplyDelete
  56. Anonymous wrote "Apparently you teach your children in the West to shoot Muslims. How civilized! Haditha marvels at your advanced culture. Shooting women and children and point blank range. "

    That's fantastically beautiful. Thank you for responding so perfectly. You see, we don't teach out children to shoot anyone. It's very widely accepted across western society that shooting people is not a nice thing to do or particularly productive. We don't teach our children to hate. We try to teach them to be tolerant of differences and the result of that is that we as a society tend to bend over backwards trying not to offend 1.5 billion captives of a primitive and bloodthirsty oppressive and intolerant barbarian ideology. Please, try to find one church or school in the west advocating killing people. You will find them but you'll be lucky to find one if you leave out the muslim schools.

    Now look again at mosques. The same cannot be said. Not satisfied with that as an example? How about looking at Hamas and its fantastic youth outreach programs?

    I think Wafa Sultan hit the nail on the head when she compared non-muslim and muslim attitudes towards violence and this entire planet is one big example proving her point.

    Face facts. If you call yourself a muslim and you believe the koran is the unequivocal word of god then you have declared that you are 100% committed to murdering people simply because they do no share your belief. Aside from the fact that just like any other religion the whole thing is an antique pile of steaming primitive peasant shit with absolutely no connection to reality you are still faced with the fact that islam does not accept the liberty of others not to submit to islam and that means you, not the west, but you have picked a war. So please, feel free to continue to lecture me on how blood thirsty we are in the west whilst our schools teach children sciences, history, liberty and culture whilst the muslim world continues to preach martyrdom and murder and hatred. I welcome it more than you can imagine because it highlights an absolute inability to face the truth and take responsibility for your own house and that is exactly what we need to see. We need to see that there is no point talking to you. There is no point negotiating or appeasing people that can't even recognise their own need to change.

    History doesn't have a lot of room left for ideologies like that. Technology, economy and science are leaving you in the past where you belong and if we are lucky your children will be born free of the same oppressive, bloodthirsty, ignorant idiocy that has consumed generation after generation since one violent paedophile fucked your culture in the arse by placing you in a permanent war with everyone else on the planet that you will ultimately lose.

    So it's been beautiful to hear from you and I look forward to hearing from you again. But next time, please do add some examples of western barbarism to support your standpoint so that I can feel justified in opening up with a volley of links to beheaded school girls, murdered women and children (Beslan anybody?), bomb blast victims (some of whom I’ve known) and countless other wonderful examples of the religion of peace and tolerance in action. Let’s face it - you are lucky we don’t teach our children to shoot you all and even if you consider yourself a moderate then you are still lucky because we don’t see or hear many muslims standing against the atrocities of your "culture". And since that "cultures" objective is to enslave or kill everyone else so far you've been damned lucky that we're civilized enough to put up with you at all. Start denouncing violence and maybe you'll see less of it. Stop killing people because they disagree with you and the world would be a very different place. But unfortunately that isn't your religion is it.

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  57. This was a dishonest answer and I could only stand to read 1 paragraph before I had enough.

    You aspire to be the things you say, but in fact you are 10 times more savage than OBL will ever be. America and Israel kill 10x as many people as anyone else.

    You don't wamt tp face it. You want to say, "We bring you peace and freedom and liberty and advanced culture." That is all a covering. It is all bullshit. You bring aggressive capitalism and if the countries resist, you bring death.

    America used to be a marvel. People around the world wondered how you did it. That ended in the 70's. Now you are hated throughout the world and it is small wonder.

    Face it, you are an uncivilized country. Your leaders lie to you and do whatever they want. There should be no higher priority than finding OBL and hunting him down. Yet, when you have him within your grasp, as your own military and cia people report, you let him go.
    (Tora Bora)

    Why? Because the pretext for the "War on Terror" would be done and your government couldn't go about shooting and killing people and stealing their wealth.

    Witness: Have you imporoved Iraq? Have you improved the standard of living? Have you improved the energy, water, garbage, civil order? In any respect? NO!

    You have created chaos and you will leave chaos. Billions of dollars have poured in, but it was all sucked up by profiteer companies who steal from the very hand that feeds, the American people.

    You are a bunch of fuck-ups with no right to condescend down to anyone. You are attitude rich and achievement poor.

    It's really a disgrace. Shut the F up.

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  58. Enjoy your brainwashed propaganda about "Islam taking over the world"

    MORON!

    If it makes the lies your president tells you feel a little more truthful...go on and believe that a bunch of scraggly taliban types, the people YOU SUPPORTED in Afganistan and armed with weapons,

    if you think these people are such a threat, and you are all gonnan be dhimmis, dhimmis, dhimmis, dhimmis, dhimmis!!!!

    Ha ha ha! Terrifying! Idiots...

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  59. You Muslim Jihadi posters serve a purpose. You create so much Hate and animosity toward yourselves that it completely cancels out what you say and actually works against you. So keep up the good work you Muslim Bastards, you give us great joy when you cut your own throats.

    You Muslims don't like to admit it, but ISLAM simply cannot survive in a modern world, nor will it. ISLAM will self-destruct in due course. Already the Arab World is crumbling and ISLAM is in crisis. Your "intellectuals" know that but don't have a clue what to do about it. Or if they do know, they don't dare say it or even think it. ISLAM is your problem.

    ReplyDelete
  60. "You Muslim Jihadi posters..."

    You can't read moron!

    Jihadi! My only jihad is against ignorance.

    This puts Carl Nelson on the top of the Most Wanted list.

    Hahahaha!

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  61. Keep sucking your propaganda bottle, Carl. You are cutting your teeth on lies.

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  62. I have to admit Anon, you sound demented and you aren't doing Islam or Muslims any favor whatsoever by comparing OBL to the West, in fact, you are confirming stereotypes.

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  63. It is not my problem you can't process facts, you're gonna have to deal with it.

    All I am saying re: OBL and USA is OBL is more honest. USA: 2 faced.

    They both are killers. One admits, one lies.

    I sound demented. Only to people who can't process through propaganda and see truth.

    Deal.

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  64. I don't think facts go hand in hand with you. Israel? Zionists? How does Israel tie in here? What changed in the 70's to make the USA "evil" ?

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  65. I don't need to compare Bin Laden to USA. How outrageous!!!

    You people were kissing Osama's ass in the 1980's and help set up the repressive taliban regime in Afganistan in the 1990's.

    NOW you want to distance yourselves?

    Too late. Your part of the story.
    Lies....

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  66. Anon - let me share some facts with you. Two of the people inured in the the Delhi bomb in Pharganj were good friends of mine. They still are luckily. One of the people killed in the same blast was a shopkeeper I used to sit and have tea with when I was in Paharganj, which tended to be about oce a week. Now, I don't know if you've ever been to India and if you have if you've ever been to Paharganaj, but if you had you would know that it is a busy, entirely civilian, market street full mostly of Indian Hindu and muslim people including women and children who more lilkely than not have never even heard of the Taliban. Do these sound like legitimate targets to you?

    So ordinarily I don't like to lower myself just by degenerating into insult, but the thing is I lived in Madrid when the bombs went off there too and by coincidence I was in London for that too and every single time I've had quite a hard time believeing that the women and children, infact absolutely anybody around me on any of the streets, trains and buses of any of these cities (including muslims) represents a legitimate target. They do not.

    What's more, killing them progresses no cause. It's just killing. And if you think it's fine to spout your fucking bullshit about OBL is less evil because at least he's honest then you are mistaken. First of all, he's killing people with absolutely no direct involvement in whatever camelshit cause he thinks he's trying to progress. Secondly he is killing for a lie - there is no god . Even if there was and god was anything like the allah of the koran then we should very certainly jointly be trying to kill him, not bowing down to his viciousness like scared cowards. Third, even if you can someone find some legitimacy that helps you round the first two points then you ar still stuck with the fact that islam by definition cannot adapt because it cannot change. And since the real world (technology, science, economy, environment, population, fashion, education, etc, ect) does change then the seeds of it's own destructition have ben contained within it all along. So face it and stop supporting killing innocents to promote a vicious and ultimately doomed LIE just because you can't face the truth. I don't give a shit about what you can face. Believe whatever you want to believe and I really don't care - but start supporting killing for those beliefs and it's time to ask yourself what the fuck gives you the right to murder children and what the fuck should stop the parents of those children coming to murder you? So far you've been lucky that we don't live by your values. You've been lucky that we are no murderers and that we have organised our miliatary actions at national and international levels as opposed to put a gun in the hand of any idiot or a bomb around the waste of any idiot that feels a sense of disgust at you. You are lucky that we are not like you.

    ReplyDelete
  67. "Do these sound like legitimate targets to you?"

    No. Islamic terrorism is not Islamic and it is an outrage when it targets civilians. I am totally against such actions.

    The rest I will summarize: I am not for the War on Terrorism or George Bush's actions in the middle east. I am probably a Muslim

    and therefore I am a terrorist and want to enslave and/or kill innocent people.

    ok? Have I got all that right?

    "Camelshit" hints at racism.
    "There is no god" is an atheist assumption based on nothing but hopes and wishes.

    Most people should claim to be agnostics because gnosis is the only route to God besides death. We cannot say there is or is not a God.

    Define your terms and prove the hypthesis.

    You say there is no god. Good for you.

    I don't have to support terrorism to object to the US government.

    You don't know what my values are.

    You work on assumptions and run with them like they were fact. This makes you an ignorant person.

    That is a fact.

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  68. I can say there is no god and I can say it without feeling the urge or the need to kill anyone that disagrees with me. I can say very comfortably that there is absolutely no evidence for a god. I can say very very comfortably that it is insanity for people wtih education, people of the 21st centruy, to still be pushed to madness by the ravings of bronze age peasants and "prophets" who had less understanding of the universe than my son had when he was three years old. And yes, I assume you to be a muslim. No camel shit is not racist but if you want to take it as such I really don't give a shit because it's pales in comparison to your comments on how fat and stupid americans are. Yet another case of sitting in your glass house throwing stones.

    So let's talk about assumptions. You said "Haditha marvels at your advanced culture" thus defining me as being other than you and in doing so, along with your other comments, describing yourself. No assumption there. Let's talk about the atheist assumption that there is no god. OK, yes, that's an assumption in much the same way that you assume you that you are not a chimpanzee. Why? Because you see and have seen absolutely no evidence in your life that you are a chimpanzee. But hold on - my assumption that there is no good is actually far firmer than that. Chimpanzees and you (and me - this is not an insult) have a great deal in common physically, socially and genetically and lots of thosse similarities are simple to observe. There is actually quite a lot of evidence that we are chimpanzees because we share very many features that make up our unique definitions. However, there is not one single piece of evidence that even begins to suggest the existance of a god and the sources we have that claim that there are gods (holy books, oral histories, etc) excel in contradicting themselves, have traceable histories that make their supposed validity extremely suspect and directly contradict every observable fact in the natural universe. So fine, I assume there is no god, but it as much finer assumption than assuming that you are not a chimpanzee as there is absolutely no evidence to contradict the no god view. Not one bit.

    Furthermore, even if my assumption is wrong, god is still an unbearable arsehole by any account and submitting to gods will would be like prostituting yourself. It makes me sick. First of all to place what is clearly a LIE above the needs, lives and liberties of individuals is obscene, but even worse - it's not even a good LIE. It's vicious evil CAMEL SHIT (please switch that for polar bear shit unless you think it might offend some eskimos) that prevents human beings from behaving like human beings and living with intelligence and respect. So another assumption is that if you are a muslim, which you are, then you value a LIE more than you value truth and the lie you value is harmful to all people. Please, provide me with some EVIDENCE that this assumption is wrong?

    And before you get all upset about me picking on islam, all religions are stupid. I'm singling islam out for being more stupid and wrong than any other religion. I'm singling out islam because I don't see christian, jewish or buddhist suicide bombers anywhere I go, but I've been present for 3 bombings in 3 countries on 2 contintents all carried out by jihady murderers and all I hear from muslims is how evil america is and how it's all the fault of the Jooz.

    At the same time as criticising me for lumping all muslims together in the same toilet you are condeming all americans which I find hypocritical and hilarious. Literally millions of Americans, British and Spanish have protested against the war in Iraq. How many muslims have protested again the attacks of 9/11 or the bombings in Madrid, or Delhi or London or Balhi or Beslan? How many muslims have stood up and said "Hey - this is not our faith!!!" Well, almost none. Why? Because it is your faith and don't even begin to tell me that it isn't because I've read the koran and it's there in black and white for anybody and everybody to see.

    So instead of insulting all american (you racist) and sayin that at least OBL is honest, how about facing the facts and admiting that the muslim world would be a hell of a lot better off sorting out its own injustices and barbarities instead of getting upset when the rest of the world gets fucking tired your hate filled madness. It's fine for the muslim world to literally go mad and to murder over some fucking cartoons but when a school for of children are murdered or innocent people are killed on buses and trains then there isn't even a whisper of protest and that defines very very clearly how respectful the islam is of others beliefs and others right to life and liberty. There is no respect given, so don't expect any more in return. Yet, we still do not teach our children to shoot muslims no matter how many muslim children are being taught to martyr themselves to kill a few jews or how many jihady fuckwitts decide to "do good" by killing innocents anywhere in the world.

    You make me sick and it has been an enormous misrepresentation by the western media to represent the muslim world as victims of the west. You are victims only of yourselves. That's why India is booming despite it's colonial history. They chose progress instead of revenge an they had a religion that doesn't call on them to hate everybody all of the time. The muslims can't choose revenge legitimately anyway since they started the whole fucking thing when your idiot, paedophile "prophet" declared war on everyone else on the planet.

    Islamic terrorism is very definitely islamic. Don't take my word for it. Take the word of your stinking shit of a prophet. If you think he is the right role model for you and your children then I have absolutely no doubt that the universe is a better place without you in it.

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  69. Choose, that was awesome.

    You really need to get your blog up and running again.

    My small viewership here is wasting your talent. I mean it.

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  70. "....so instead of insulting all american (you racist)..."

    This was seriously too boring to follow, but some random thoughts

    Americans aren't a race-dumbass.Nationality.

    What was that about chimps? Yeah! Evolution. Who has a problem with it?

    God, just more of the same. You don't have any more idea than I do. You say no. I say yes. That's all.

    I am looking for God. I guess you are not. I'm OK with that. No use in proslytizing on you. Actually, you are the prosylatizer. You say there is no god. I say, you don't know what the hell you are talking about.

    You did not define God and you did not prove the non-existence. You just repeated yourself like a moron.

    Anyway...I have given you too much time. You think Muslims support terrorism and other religions don't and all that.

    Who cares. At the end, choosebraindeath, I am just bored with you. You are uninspired.

    Tah!

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  71. Anon, are Muslims or Arabs a race? You called him racist for the camel shit comment.

    God to an Atheist is as likely as any supernatural being. We see no proof or evidence of any supernatural being. Do you have proof? Lets hear it or see it.

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  72. Anon. Since I never specified a race when you suggested my earlier comment was racist you might notice that in now criticising me for suggesting that you are being racist against Americans that you have somewhat shot yourself in the foot. Try not to worry about that though, since walking in circles seems to be what you are used to anyway.

    The reference to a chimp was not about evolution. It was merely intended to display that whilst you detract from atheism as merely a an assumption that god does not exist that it remains a stronger assumption than an assumption that you are a not chimpanzee due to the fact that I can demonstrate many defining attributes that you and chimpanzees do share. On a subset of observations it would be quite reasonable to assume that you are a chimpanzee. The same does not hold true for the existence of god. There are no observable defining attributes of gods existance that have ever been observed and yet there are many observations that are contrary to events described in religious texts, such as miracles. So whilst atheism may be just an assumption it is a far stronger assumption than the assumption that you are not a chimp. Go and have a banana and think about it for a while.

    Bacon very correctly points out that muslims are not a race. So the camelshit comment could not have been directed against any race other than perhaps camels. Perhaps I'm a faunaist and not a racist. I'm prejudiced against camels. No, I don't think so.

    But I am prejudiced against hateful idiocy, although I wouldn't call it a prejudice. I would call it a conclusion. It is a judgement I have reached by summing the evidence provided to me by observation and it is quite clear that when a massive community of people with a shared ideology are prepared to murder over some drawings and yet will not raise a voice when a school full of children are murdered that this particular ideology must be rejected. And that is all I do. I reject your ideology. I reject it without hesitation or remorse. And I reject those who support it. It is a simple choice between that which I perceive to be positive and that which I perceive to be negative in terms of human mental evolution and rationality. I also reject it on an emotional level. It very literally disgusts and sadens me.


    And you disgust me. Yes, personally you. You state again "You think Muslims support terrorism and other religions don't and all that" and I will state again - YES. Yes. Yes! Yes, I do think that. I think it because that is what the evidence demonstrates. I think bhuddists, jews and christians are not carrying out indescriminate murders of innocent people in response to valid criticisms because they aren't. I think that jew, christians and buddhist are wrong, but I don’t think they are killing people over cartoons because they aren’t. I also do think that jews, christians and buddhists stand up and say it’s a bad thing everytime someone decides to bomb someone else because they do. The so called enemies of islam, the other religious leaders, are generally the first to stand up and condemn violence no matter who it’s against or whatever the reason.


    Absolutely none of what you have said has changed the simple truth. Islam makes enemies like cadburys make chocoloate, and there's only so much chocolate anyone can eat before they are sick of it. I am sick of it. I'm sick of you. I'm full to the brim with the vomit of disdain and sadness that is having to be faced everyday with the fact that I had to live in the same time as you. I'm sick of being constantly held in the dark ages by primitive mythology that absolutely anybody that wasn't mentally disabled by it would have the intelligence to see is nothing more than ridiculous and harmful lies – the ultimate answers on the nature of reality from a bunch of guys that thought that evil sprits where responsible when their sheep got sick. But you keep pushing for it anyway. Just pushing and pushing trying to make something true, trying to believe something is true, that you can't possibly believe if you just open your eyes. You are fighting reality which means you can never use reality as either weapon or shield.

    So, be tired, stop talking to me - you're the winner. You've won. Definitely. You deserve a prize. Possibly even some sort of medal. You beat me and now reality agrees with you of course. You've won. Have a prize.

    PS. Bacon, thanks for the compliment. I've been enjoying what I'v read and I'm pleased to have found your blog. I'm pleased you are on the planet =)

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  73. ps. Anon, you say "I am looking for God"

    All you will find is madness. You are looking for truth within the very very limited understanding of reality of bronze age peasants distorted by individual power and greed. That is madness and that is all that you will find.

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  74. "The same does not hold true for the existence of god"

    Wrong! Humans and chimpanzees are shared experiences. We can both agree and demonstrate that they share some characteristics and don't share other characteristics.

    "God" is a completely different story. Abstract. Einstein said my sense of God is my sense of wonder about the universe. To a idolator, God might be something very small and tangible and yet powerful like a talisman. Wiccans, Buddhists, Hindus.

    Which God are you talking about?

    Me? Creator. And there can be no question that there IS a Creator. You say siomething stupid about the bronze age or something and try to wrap up the possibilities into some straw man argument...that is bullshit.

    Your mind is limited and you see nothing. That is yours and bacon baoy's problem.

    I am open to possibilities and I have witnessed the unseen.

    But to be truthful, I have no complete concept of God. I am still looking.

    I will never give up.

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  75. Please don't confuse me with mad man anon I'm a different mad man.

    by Louis Renaldo
    Nobel laureate, Jacques Monod, has written: “Life appeared on the earth: what, before the event, were the chances that this would occur?… its a priori probability was virtually zero.”
    Constrained by reductionism, the scientist can draw only one conclusion; in the words of the Nobel laureate Salvador Luria, “each human being is the actualization of an extremely improbable chance – in fact, a series of improbable chances, extending all the way back to the unique event that more than 3 billion years ago started life on the earth on its chancy course.”
    Biology is forced by its basic premises to postulate that life began as a “unique event” – an event which has no possibility of occurring, yet which must have occurred – an idea which is not only absurd, but scientifically unsatisfying. Freed of this burdensome dogma, I could contemplate the origin of life without bias. Instead of attempting to convince myself of the unreasonable, I had to admit that for there to be a creation – the physical reality of existence – there could be, perhaps there must be, a Creator.

    You might have to live with the fact that some things are beyond mortal comprehension. That is the part of the religion that makes it most interesting to me. Religion and science can both live together in the same realm of reality in fact they are supposed to.

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  76. You do not appear to be very open to the possibilities because you ignore the possibility that there is no god. And you ignore that, even though you are unintentionally making my argument for me. I’ll explain.

    I pointed out that there are valid reasons to assume that you are a chimpanzee and in fact many more valid reasons than there are to assume that there is a god. We shall define god very widely as an intelligent supernatural being and an intentional creator of the universe as this is a broad definition that allows for many variations of a god. Finally, you got the point and came back with the valid criticism that there are observable characteristics that you can highlight that demonstrate that you are not a chimpanzee and thus disprove the Anon = chimpanzee hypothesis.

    Now let’s apply the same logic to god. First of all, we have a shared observable characteristic between the two hypothesis that god is the intentional creator of the universe and that the universe exists without being created by god. This shared observable characteristic is that the universe appears to exist. But it’s not a very convincing argument for anything other than stating that the universe exists. I could come up with a billion hypotheses that fit this observable characteristic. Here are some:

    - I made the universe.
    - You made the universe.
    - The universe is a simulation.
    - The universe was created by a chimpanzee.
    - The universe has always existed.
    - The universe was built by the people that made lego.
    - The universe was built by inhabitants of a different universe.
    - Etc. Etc. And so on.

    The observable characteristic that the universe appears to exist fits all of them, but proves none of them. But nevertheless we have one valid observable characteristic that actually does fit in with the god hypothesis. But it doesn’t go anywhere near to suggesting or supporting that the god hypothesis is correct in exactly the same way as suggesting that you are a chimpanzee because you have ten fingers goes nowhere towards proving the hypothesis that you are a chimpanzee.

    So let’s try to come up with some more observable characteristics of reality that fit the god hypothesis. Immediately we are in trouble. I can sit here all day and come up with observable shared characteristic between the Anon = chimp and the anon = human hypotheses and yet I can’t come up with another single one between the god = creator and observable reality. There is a very good reason for this. The reason is that everything god is claimed to have done has been in the past. There is not one observable action of god within the universe that I can look at today – nothing at all.

    But, there have been lots of observable actions that used to be attributed to the god hypothesis but thanks to learning and understanding we now have other hypothesis for and we have removed god from the picture. It used to be gods that pulled the sun across the sky. We now KNOW that this isn’t so and that in fact rather than the sun being pulled across the sky it is our rotating planet that correctly explains the same observable phenomena. God got cut from that particular scene – he turned out to be the wrong actor for the part.

    And gods acting career has done absolutely nothing but spiral downhill as human understanding has increased. More and more he is cut from the scene because observable reality continues to provide better actors to take his place. Lightning bolts used to be thrown by gods, but not any more. Again and again where once there was a deliberate act of god there is now an observable, measurable, explicable natural phenomena and the only examples we have of anything contrary to these natural phenomena are centuries old fables of miraculous events that absolutely no historian would regard as being reliable sources of evidence. It is not evidence at all.

    Yet, you describe yourself as open minded. This doesn’t appear to be the case. An open mind lets information in and there has been a torrent of information available for you to allow in and not one single example of that information supports the god hypothesis ad yet absolutely all of it fits perfectly with the no-god, no-supernatural hypothesis. Did you get that? Every single fruit of human learning, understanding and experimentation has failed to provide a single example of the supernatural. So how open is your mind if you cling to an explanation that not one piece of evidence directly supports? If you are muslim, christian or jew then vast amounts of the supposed reality of existence has been shown to be radically different from what was claimed in your texts and despite the fact that god has not scored a single point you still hold on to an hypothesis that has done nothing except for erode.

    And that my friend is madness. And it gets even worse. You criticise me for saying that your beliefs are bronze age. Well, I criticise you because your beliefs are bronze age and taking into account the origin of those beliefs provides a very powerful argument against supporting them. I mean, do you not see that it is ridiculous to expect the ultimate truth from people that really didn’t have much of a clue about anything at all? When your computer goes wrong would you ask a chimpanzee to fix it? No, because you accept that the chimpanzee has no understanding of the computer, its function, its components or the physical process upon which it operates. Yet, you trust people who had absolutely no understanding of their own planet, the universe, any of its components or really anything at all to define for you its function and to provide you with the ultimate truth about its nature. That is absurd.

    And not one single piece of evidence has ever supported any of their theories.

    So if you still cling to god and that’s what you consider to be an open mind then perhaps we need to defined openness with more urgency than we need to define god because from my perspective you are most definitely closed.



    You said “I am open to possibilities and I have witnessed the unseen.” An alternative way of saying that is that you have experienced a delusion and succumbed to fantasy. What have you witnessed that was unseen? How did you witness it? Your hope of something being real is not evidence that it is.

    On what grounds do you claim my mind is limited? I have quite a lot of evidence to demonstrate that my mind is far less limited than a vast majority of the population of the planet. My educational establishments reached the same conclusion. My employers consistently reach the same conclusion. My friends consistently reach the same conclusion. On what grounds do you disagree? On what grounds do you consider yourself to be more capable? This is territory that I am happy to tread.

    So this just leaves me with one final point from your comments.

    “And there can be no question that there IS a Creator”. Explain? All that we have jointly done is demonstrate is that there is no answer that even hints that there is a creator. If you think about it enough then the question of whether or not there is a creator becomes even more ridiculous than asking yourself if you are a chimpanzee.

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  77. Hi new non-mad anonymous.

    There's a few problems with what you've put forward there. The first is one of probability. What are the chances that the question "how improbably is it that we exist?" if we didn't exist? The only objective reality in which that question canbe asked is an objective reality in which we do exist and that somewhat negates the question as the only time hen we can marvel at how improbable our existance is is when are actually existing. The question simply hasn't been asked by all of those that don't and haven't existed in which they've got the answer "Oh, we don't exist so that pretty much fits with what the numbers would suggest".

    Additonally, the probablity of our existence is simply not known.

    The issue of attributing reality to a creator based on how improbable reality itself may appear is an extremely flawed argument. It is arguable that the creator is more improbable to exist by chance than observable reality and as previously mentioned we do not acually ave any idea of the probabilities involved, but a creator does not add anything towards reoslving that question.

    Now, it is a popular thing to say that religion and science can live together but I disagree with it very strongly. Religion is a providor of answers. Science is an explorer and revealer of questions. It is inevitable that religion must succumb to science because just as science asked the questions that revealed the flaw in religious answers to why the sun crosses the sky and where the lightning bolts come from, it will continue to erode the shaky ground that religion still proposes to call its foundation.

    It has been a great and powerful lie that even many great thinkers have failed to escape from that religion is anything more than the suspension of critical thought. Just because we do not have answers does not mean that religion has anything to contribute to void of our ignorance. Science reduces that void although it may never fill it. But it certainly has not been filled by god.

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  78. Regarding our existents and the odds of it. Actually scientists have been trying to create life in a lab environment using the elements of life gases amino acids etc supposed to be on primordial earth combined with electricity etc and have not been able to create life of any sort. Not bacterium nothing at all.

    I’m going from memory here but I believe they put the odds at something like a few billion to 1 that life would occur naturally at all. As you are aware earth has many hundreds of thousands of types of life. Some of which eventually evolved into us and everything around us. What some scientist some of the greats as well have contended is that not only did this 1 in so many billion oddity happen but it happened a lot here. Since science can’t answer that question it leads them to think that it may actually be that the creation story could be fact based.

    Your point of science eroding religion I also believe to be incorrect. From my perspective science has been proving religion. Science has only disproves those who have incorrectly interpreted religion. Some of the archaeology is all but undeniable to anyone with an open mind.

    I for a long time also believed religion was nothing more than a guide for people (mostly stupid people) to try to overcome their natural instincts to be animals. There is no denying many people and certain religions cling with a literal death grip to the worst aspects of their religions. There is also no denying that religion is a well spring of knowledge and faith that many millions if not billions find comfort in. A derivative of this is some of the very best of human values and morals based on those teachings.

    One more thing. If you deny religion are opposed to the way governments run society then you would be left with no rule of law leading to anarchy. Not that mob rules would be very different for many nations. The point being with no beliefs the unethical majority would probably destroy everything. I’m not putting you in that group just making the point.

    FYI I’m also a bacon eating jew just not an atheist.

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  79. Sane anon, you could sign up for free here or you can simply sign a name at the end of the post to avoid confusion, even if it is a made up couple of initials.

    The probability argument is ridiculous.
    What is the chance that you and choosedoubt would be having a conversation on my blog, considering more than probably less than 25,000 individuals on this planet have ever been to my blog, and most don't leave messages.
    Now lets go back to your ancestors from hundreds of millions of years ago. what is the chance that they all would survive and that all would be born the specific times they were born and all would meet and mate and reproduce and even live to reproduction age, avoid extinction all the way to when you were born and then do the same for me and choosedoubt.

    There is only one route that made all this happen but there were inifinite possibilities that all three of us wouldn't be having a conversation at this time.

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  80. By the way, I did a post on bacteria being the first life form and the most probable common ancestor for all life.
    I have links that give the possibilies for how life began, nothing to do with God.
    I am confident that in the near future bacteria will be produced in the lab but believers will scoff at the results regardless.
    Just because science doesn't have the answer today, doesn't mean Goditit by default. As Choose pointed out, this assumption has been defeated over and over because science finally explained the one time unexplainable, like lightning.

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  81. There are no problems with what I've written. There are problems with your analysis. Choosedoubt, don't choose a different argument to analyze.

    "The issue of attributing reality to a creator based on how improbable reality itself may appear is an extremely flawed argument."

    I made no such argument. You made that argument. You can't reframe my position and attack it according to your tastes.

    The FACT is:

    We live in a universe of causality (atleast from a material, visible universe) and that chain of causality recedes back to some initial Cause.

    We, ourselves, repeat this conundrum. Each living being, in some vague and poetic (not strictly scientific so back off), is a recapitulation of all of Creation.

    It is natural for some of us to question our connection to the Universe and its Cause.

    You can create a million bozo religious strawmen gods to debunk this and you are still avoiding the real issue. Human beings have a powerful intellect and many seem to have an innate curiousity about their origin and return.

    This is not superstition. It is (or certainly can be) rigorously scientific in a metaphysical sense. And by metaphysics, I don't necessarily mean anything different than Quantum or Astro Physics.

    I just don't know. But I search.

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  82. beaj, I like your blog. Only found you a week or so ago and have had a few good laughs thanks to you and some posters. I probably will get an id soon. I keep swinging between stopping reading blogs for more serious use of spare time but seem to be addicted.

    For now until science can disprove G-d I’ll stick with my belief system. A lot of science was theory until it was proven. Could be one day science will prove G-d (possibly already has proven through archaeology) or maybe he/she/it will just start a blog and set us all straight.

    For me religion keeps me humble and hopeful. And I haven’t had the desire to kill anyone so far so I don’t think it’s harming anyone as far as it influences my state of mind. In fact when I follow my religion and do something good for someone via auto response I think after that fact it is a good thing I study religion that it has influenced the way I do auto response for the good rather than when I was young(er) and used to occasionally screw someone over by auto response.

    I also find it interesting how life is created in places on ocean floors near volcanic vents that should kill anything according to science but by some mystery life thrives in places like that where it shouldn’t.

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  83. It is impossible to disprove God, 2 Gods, 5 Gods etc unless you give God specific characteristic. It is like disproving the unknown. Can you disprove that God isn't in my coffee cup right now?
    The only reason to believe in God is to give hope of a meaning that many people need. But there is no evidence that God exists or ever existed.

    "life is created in places on ocean floors near volcanic vents that should kill anything according to science but by some mystery life thrives in places like that where it shouldn’t."
    ******************
    You mean life exists in harsher environments that many scientists used to predict would have been uninhabitable by most or every life form.
    That is the beauty of science, it takes this observable data and either works it into existing theories or modifies existing theories and on rare occasions comes up with a brand new theory.
    But again, a scientific answer explains these new findings.....not godidit.

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  84. I'd like to respond in reverse order to what you've written if that's ok with you. There is a point to this which I will come to later. So let's start with a lack of belief leading to an unethical majority probably destroying everything which is identical to the statement before which proposes that religion is the source of human values and morality.

    This simply isn't true. Moral behaviour has been observed in other species such as chimpanzees. Mutually beneficial social behaviours are observed in many species of social animals. Symbiotic relationships are observed in virtually also species, including bacteria. The argument that religion is responsible for morality just doesn't add up. In fact, it rather defeats itself due to the contradictions apparent in religious texts in which one passage may call for the killing of individuals based upon certain criteria and another may state that killing is wrong. If religion were responsible for morality then it would be a very confused and unstable morality that would itself be tantamount to anarchic chaos.

    I take it from what you have said that you at least believe in evolution. Evolution is not just a matter of changing physical appearances or internal physiology. Behaviours also evolve and a very significant debate is how much are these behaviours attributable to the physical construction of a creature and how much is attributable to learning. On an individual case examining a specific behaviour the mix can of course vary very widely and no one pretends to have all the answers here either, but one observable fact is that at least some behaviour is not learned – it is built into the creature. The same pressure of physical evolution, such as efficiency in finding food, survivability and avoiding risks have modelled behaviours as much as they have modelled bodies. They have also modelled symbiotic behaviours, social group behaviours and “morality”. Just as trees play by the growing rules that provide the greatest likelihood of successful growth and reproduction so do animals play by the behaviour rules that provide the greatest likelihood of successful growth and reproduction. Behaviour is behaviour whether it is chemical or a group dynamic. Both are based on probabilities and both have evolved in the same way.

    There is another rather enormous flaw to the religion = morality argument and I am pleased to consider myself part of it, like many others. I have never had any religious faith, I have never believed in a god and yet I have never raped, murdered or stolen. I have lived in countries where the law is no significant challenge to a criminal intention and yet I have not once in my life chosen to commit any of these acts. However, I can search the news archives and history books and come up with an extremely large sampling of individuals that have committed what I would consider to be immoral acts who had very strong religious faith. Not only that but I can find many examples where the religious faith didn’t just fail to prevent them from committing their actions but actually provided the reason to do so. Religion has no claim to morality.

    Insert good me do good things, bad me do bad things here.

    Now, about science eroding religion. You say that science proves religion. I’m not going to get into this without you providing some examples – please do. Also, please mention about the archaeology that is undeniable t anyone with an open mind because that is also a very interesting topic. As a jew it might not be particularly relevant to you but a good example of the archaeology that is undeniable to an open mind would be the archaeological evidence that clearly demonstrates that Nazareth was a burial ground and not a city at the time of the alleged existence of Jesus of Nazareth. That’s rather an important example of science doing anything but proving religion and it is far from an isolated example.

    Now on to the meat of the discussion – the probability of life. First of all I think it might be a good idea to get at least a basic comprehension of the numbers we are dealing with here. As I’m sure you are aware, the universe is really big. We don’t know exactly how big it is but the cosmic light horizon is generally agreed to be around 13.7 billion light years. This is by no means a measure of the size of the universe. It is simply a measure of how much of the universe we can see from earth. This is due to the age of the universe being 13.7 billion years. However this is not the size of the universe. The universe may be infinite, we simply don’t know, but we do know a minimum size.

    Light reaching us from 13.7 billion years in the past is the limit of what we can see due to the fact that there wasn’t any light being emitted before then and it’s taken that long to get here. However due to the expansion of the universe we know that the point at which that light was emitted 13.7 billion years ago would now actually be 78 billion light years away, so we know that the universe extends for at least 78 billion light years in every direction. So, even if we were slap bang in the centre of it we know that the universe is at least 156 billion light years wide. If you search for the Wilkinsons Microwave Anisotropy Probe you will find a host of information about cosmic background radiation and specific studies based on data from this probe that confirm the minimum universal size.

    So, anyway, we’ve established that the universe is big, possibly even infinite. Billion to one or even one billion billion to one chances are not the barrier you might perceive them to be to something actually occurring when the number of opportunities for it to happen are so vast. If the universe is infinite then the chances of even the most improbable but possible event happening becomes one. It becomes a certainty.

    Now, even the basic building blocks of life occur naturally on earth, on other planets and in space. They occur because the chemistry involved is nothing special. Amino acids have been found in ancient meteorites and have been recreated from their base elements within the lab. We are actually very close to being able to create life from nothing more than the elements they are constructed from – in fact we are so close that synthetic biologists have already literally built a polio virus from individual genes and genes are just building blocks made of the amino acids that naturally form anyway. Incidentally one of the hotspots for synthetic biology is Israel. It’s a matter of years, not decades, before life is created from scratch within the laboratory and then we will know more about how improbable it is. But regardless of how improbable it is, when we do it that will not make us god. It might make god a bit less god also since we take away his monopoly in the life creation business.

    You say “Since science can’t answer that question it leads them to think that it may actually be that the creation story could be fact based.” after talking about how life occurred a lot here on earth. Well, there is no evidence that life started more than once, although it may have. There is a great deal of evidence that all life on this planet shares its origin and it is rather interesting that this should be the case if a creator was simply capable of creating everything how he wanted it to be. He would have no need to restrict himself so much and could easily have created organisms with no relationship to each other, but we don’t see this. What we see everywhere is dependency. We see organisms that depend on ancestors and that through their ancestors are clearly related to other current and extinct organisms that have diverged greatly. We see communities of organisms that live symbiotically with and off of each other thus defining rules of existence and survival, investing these communities with complex behavioural dependencies that make human morality look like the very simple end of it all.

    But what we don’t see anywhere is god – not even when we admit that there are questions that we cannot yet answer. But calling upon god to then be a valid answer to these questions is ridiculous because it is actually no answer at all. If god is responsible for it all then how did god do it? What was gods process? How does gods process work? And even if god is kind enough to grant this particular interview and spill the beans it still leaves us with the aching chasm of gods unsuitability as an answer of forcing us then to ask “what about god”? If life and the universe are so unlikely to just occur through chance then how unlikely is something that can design and create it all to occur just by chance out of nothingness and to just suddenly exist fully formed and capable of creating such incredible complexity? No, it just doesn’t work.

    God is not an answer. God is an excuse for not facing the tough questions and the irony is that by accepting a god all you do is pile up even tougher questions that the god hypothesis doesn’t answer at all.

    So why have I answered your comments backwards? It’s because I want to turn your opening statement round to face your last. You start by saying that life is so improbably that the creation story could be fact based. You close by talking about an unethical majority destroying everything because they don’t have gods morality to prevent them from doing so. What is the probability of life flourishing that lacked the rules to prevent it from mass suicide or mass murder in sufficient numbers to drive it to extinction? The answer of course is very very very low. Rather species have evolved with behaviours that constrain their own selves and their behaviours into a survivable niche. Where they do not control themselves other species provide control. It is a process of mutual dependency. Now with technology we perceive that man is somehow removed from this process but we are not. If we eradicate ourselves we have provided out own method of control and other species will fill niches that we leave behind. God has done absolutely nothing to provide that control. Rather god has driven us to wars and murders, irrational behaviours and brutalities that are part of the process of our evolving understanding and our evolving consciousness. God has been and continues to be a risk, not a saving control. God is disease of the mind that ultimately education and understanding will cure. The god hypothesis has been around for a long time and in all that time there has not been one piece of supporting evidence provided in favour of a god. There have been many erosions of the god hypothesis as we have continued to discover and understand the real process that are responsible for phenomena we previously attributed to the supernatural and that process continues. God has yet to score a single point.

    I suggest it is time to abandon the god hypothesis and leave ourselves free to really understand and question and make use of our lives and our minds.

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  85. Maybe G-d is in your cup. Do you love coffee? Do you have a parent that passed away? Did you love them? Can you prove it? There are people who say they have had prayer answered.

    Not everything has hard empirical proof. That doesn’t mean it isn’t so.

    I see choose left a long one there I’ll get on it. Almost lunch here so I might be awhile.

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  86. Morality definitely evolved. Just look at ants.
    The 10 commandments and bible morality is simply a way to put obvious moral ways on paper to prevent anarchy. No species would be here today if the ancestors acted with anarchy and "immorally"

    The age of the universe is 13.9 billion years old, but that doesn't mean time started then. Many theories include multiple universes and even expanding and contracting universes. We don't know yet. Our universe could have expanded and contracted multiple times.

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  87. Anon said "We live in a universe of causality (atleast from a material, visible universe) and that chain of causality recedes back to some initial Cause."

    This is part of an argument put forward as a logical proof of god. I'm preparing an article for my own blog right now to debunk this and other "proofs" but to save you waiting let me just ask you how placing a god at the beginning of the causality chain solves the problem? Don't we then need causes for god? Rather beautifully this line of reasoning is also firmly contradicted by real oberservation (real eveidence) provided by our growing understanding of quantumn physics within which causality takes a holiday as virtual particles are seen to randomly come into and pop out of existence. Incidentally the full text of the logical proof that was proposed argues that the components that make something can not come into existence within that which they create based on precisely the same logical grounds. Real observations have already proved this to be untrue.

    Causality offers no proof of god whatsoever and the suggestion of god only serves to shift the focus of the question from something we can observe and do have evidence exists (the universe) to something we cannot observe and have no evidence exists (god). I would not be convinced that the route to understanding is best travelled by removing your signposts.

    I don't see that I substituted the argument. You quoted others suggesting that the complexity of a question lead to the validty of creation being a suitable answer. That is precisely the argument I responded to.

    You said "You can create a million bozo religious strawmen gods to debunk this and you are still avoiding the real issue. Human beings have a powerful intellect and many seem to have an innate curiousity about their origin and return." and that is precisely my point. Bozo religious straw men have done nothing at all to satisfy that curiosity because the bozo religious strawmen, the gods, provide no answers. The real and observable universe has provided litterally billions of answers that have moved us closer to understanding ourselves, our universe and how it all fits together. Real and obseravable evidence has moved us to having at least some idea of the universe back to within seconds of it's creation, even milliseconds on a very theoretical by evidence supported basis.

    So is it right to believe in somethintg that answers none of the questions simply because we haven't answer all of the questions? Is it right to believe in something that has over time had aspects of it absolutely disproved (such as the 6000 year old earth theory), has it's origins in a world far more ignorant than the one we inhabit now, has a traceable history of political and selfish manipulation to suit individual purpose and has not once ever provided even a single thread of evidence, either real or logical, that actually substantiates in anyway its existence?


    Keep your faith if you want to, that's up to you. But don't pretend that is anything more substantial than a personal and unsupported belief because then I'll expect you to provide the supporting evidence and we both know without any doubt that you can not do that. Life around vulcanic vents is not proof of god, it's proof of the adaptability of life. It's proof of how limited we were in thinking that life must exist how we exist. For life around vulcanic vents it is you that lives in the harsh enviornment that surely it was impossible for life to exist within. And it was scientists that discovered this life. It was scientists that have begun to understand the processes by which this life survives. This life isn't covered at all by any religous text because the humans that wrote the stories didn't know about it. Just like they didn't know what the sun really was or what lighting really was or why people got sick or why there was night and day or how animals and themselves had evolved or any of the other things we do know now thanks to discovery and science. It's raher amazing that god didn't think to mention any of this when he was providing humans with the ultimate answer and understanding of reality don't you think?

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  88. BEJ Anon said...
    When I got to the no claim to morality I stopped there for this comment. That’s a stretch. One way to look at religion is as a set of laws. There are those who break and abuse laws secular or ideological you can’t fairly condemn everyone for the not so few who try to hide their actual bad deed be trying to cloak them in something that was meant for good. That is why laws change and religions have gone through reform. That point could be interpreted as all must suffer for the crimes of the one or the few. That is biblical type justice oddly enough.

    Archaeology, there was a recent documentary I keep forgetting the name I keep thinking it is Exodus uncovered or unearthed but keep having a hard time finding it on the net. (Exodus is uncovered and unearthed are pretty common terms to search engines) By the title you can gather it is about the exodus story. It’s pretty convincing documentary of the exodus story with mud brick houses coins showing evidence of descendants of Jacob in Egypt, a timeline and disaster phenomenon coinciding with the eruption of a volcano in the Mediterranean and more with a good bit of detail.

    There is of course remains in Jerusalem of what is claimed to be the original temple built their or perhaps the 2nd. And the 600,000 or so Jews who claim to have been in the desert and saw and heard G-d on the top of the mountain which then had them all go to Jerusalem etc.

    To your last points. According to scientific study the last ice age ended somewhere between 70 and 13 thousand years ago. And the estimate of all of humans at that time was around 70,000. There is no telling how many species of man ape or the like were around before the last ice age ended, but they certainly didn’t have the kind of success we have had if you call modern societies a success. It’s not likely without farming and specialization they ever made it to 6 or so billion. There would probably be more evidence of them had they had such big numbers as we achieved this time between ice ages.

    G-d can’t be a disease there is not enough of him around. It is us that is the disease. We by the use of free will choose to be far too often violence and being unreasonable. Through the use of free will we can choose to be more G-d like and get in touch with our spiritual beings and over come our propensity for violence and the like.

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  89. "G-d can’t be a disease there is not enough of him around. It is us that is the disease. We by the use of free will choose to be far too often violence and being unreasonable. Through the use of free will we can choose to be more G-d like and get in touch with our spiritual beings and over come our propensity for violence and the like."

    Oh puh-lease! Let's break that down.

    "G-d can’t be a disease there is not enough of him around"

    Absolutely none of him around if you would choose evidence as a measure of his presence. Far too much of him around if you would choose individual belief in his existence to be any measure.

    "We by the use of free will choose to be far too often violence and being unreasonable."

    The use of free will has been used to follow dogma and make moral judgements not on what is likely to provide most benefit to people during their lives but on what we think they should be respecting after their deaths. Quite ridiculous. And as for being unreasonable can you please try to explain to me why it is reasonable to base your philosophy, moral judgement and behaviour on the rantings of some centuries dead ignorant peasants and polticians? There is nothing reasonable about that at all.

    "Get in touch with our spiritual beings"

    How about getting in touch with your ability to reason instead.

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  90. The only evidence that the Exodus occurred is apologies for why there isn't any evidence.
    "The Egyptians didn't write about humiliations" Yeah right, not one word.

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  91. Does both of you getting angry and sarcastic with me mean I’m doing a good job defending the religious position? BEAJ you might have to change your handle to ASBEAJ Angry Sarcastic BEAJ. That’s a lot to chew on.

    One school of thought is the Exodus was recorded as The Hyksos Expulsion. It happened about 300 years before what is considered by historians to be the time of the exodus.

    Looking for it to be recorded at 1200 BC instead of someplace between 1500 and 1700 BC would be like trying to find the record of the Wright brothers written at the time of the Spanish inquisition.

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  92. I'm familiar with the Hyksos Expulsion. However it was minor in comparision to the numbers in the bible. Find me an Orthodox Rabbi who believes the Hyksos Expulsion was the Exodus. The Egyptians kept pretty good records of the pharoahs, and the their order and history can be pieced together pretty good. Plagues are not written about. And the Expulsion of the Hyksos was more of a migration. Basicially, the Hebrews took part of history and made the Moses myth out of it.

    Again, you need to invent reasons why the bible might be true based on hypotheticals and you are actually rewriting the bible using some real history.....but history that makes the bible a lie.

    Why would the word of God not mesh with real history?

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  93. Hi Anon, by "both" would you also be meaning me? If you are then please read what I wrote agian. It's not angry. I can see how you would interpret it as sarcastic but in honesty I wrote it more with a sense of despair than sarcasm and the reason for the despair is the inevtibale sensation of talking to a wall that talking to someone hell bent on truth being faith and yet still claiming to be open minded brings about.

    So anyway, I'm neither angry nor sarcastic, but I would like you to asnwer a question I previously asked. Here it is again:

    "Can you please try to explain to me why it is reasonable to base your philosophy, moral judgement and behaviour on the rantings of some centuries dead ignorant peasants and polticians?"

    Now, before you think that this is angry or sarcastic let me just point out the following:

    1) The alleged original reporters of alleged communication with god have been dead for centuries.
    2) They were incredibly ignorant of very many facts that are taken as read by modern people that have at least had some basic education. These facts might have been quite important when deciding to come up with an all encompassing theory of everything (god).
    3) The jesus of the bible was a peasant despite all the talk about being a king. Muhammad was a peasant and later politician. Please note, I am limiting this only to the alleged initiators of two cults and not widening this to include the signficant number of individuals involved in the oral tradition of both cults and their subsequent transposition to written form.

    I'd appreciate it very much if you could answer that question because I want to know on what reasonable grounds you consider it to be valid to defer the responsibility for an understanding of your existence to people that didn't even have an understanding of hygene, iron, steel, electricity, geography, oh forget the list. The list is too vast to even hint at it. More than 99% of all human understanding has come after these guys lived and that's my point. So please explain why it is reasonable to defer the numebr one decision about absolutely everything into their hands? On what reasonable grounds do you assume that they had the slightest clue?

    Thanks.

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  94. I'm sarcastic, but not angry. Well, except at Blogger for the technical difficulties.

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  95. Anon- sorry, I was forgetting that you previously mentioned being jewish, so please don't limit that just to jesus and muhammad. It works for everyone so add away.

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  96. I think you might be holding me to a double standard. Science can deconstruct religion. But you aren’t allowing for archaeology to say man got the time line wrong.

    Egyptologists are not in agreement amongst themselves about the dates for the reign of Pharaoh Ahmose I who expelled the Hyksos. I haven't seen anything about the numbers of Hyksos"ites" but I think they did at one point defeat or come close to defeating the Egyptians so there must have been more than a small number of them. That is sort of beside the point a bit anyway in that they were semites like the people that became Israel which I think is the point on that topic.

    Choose it was more the get in touch with reason comment that made me think you were getting angry. Besides I was at least attempting to be sort of funny and sarcastic myself.

    I appreciate you I think letting me off the hook on Jesus and Mohammed. I know a little about both but not much. Probably the majority of what I learned about them is from the net and probably biased if not propaganda.

    I’m not going to do the Hyksos math there are plenty of site with it for those interested and there probably aren’t that many that agree with each other anyway at least not exactly.

    The wall thing might be a fair comment but you’re equally as guilty. For the record, I hope you don’t think I have some kind of intention to try and convert you or anyone else. You seem a pretty intelligent person and how you choose to live your life is your business.

    As far as I’m concerned if you aren’t out killing raping stealing and the like you’re probably decent people and if you are not into the religion thing fine. Good for you if you’re happy I’m happy. The way I look at it some old guy with a white beard isn’t going to be sitting there going well BEAJ and Choose you are both bad so to hell with you literally BWAHAHAHA! If you lead a good positive life and raise a family with happy well balanced little copies of yourselves then that is great.

    As for the moral question and the difference of modern life to todays society. I would think morals were more important then than now. Life would have been a lot tougher without 7/11’s on the corner running water etc. There by making morals and ethics a much more important thing then they should need be today.

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  97. I don't need to prove anything to anybody but myself.

    I have no investment in you athiests and openning your closed minds.

    Proving something to you and having you accept it or failing to prove something are both completely the same to me.

    My opinion is you always create some bullshit anthropomorphic god to shoot down. Basically, you are anti-idolators.

    That time was officially over more than 2500 years ago.

    For you to say, "I don't believe in these idols, I don't believe in these idols, I don't believe in these idols......" is the Anti-Chicken Little syndrome.

    The Sky is NOT FALLING!!!

    Good for you, genius.

    Not everyone who looks for God is limited to the primitive images you project on people of faith or belief.

    But who cares! Live well and die with your doubt and skepticism.

    I does not make a bit of difference to me.

    I'm out. I prefer to spend time with people who are more like me.

    Call it a selfish religion.

    Adios!

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  98. Atheists are the most open minded people on the planet. New information is never denied. It is processed.

    There is no evidence in, or necessity to, believe in God.

    How is that being close minded?

    All we ask for is some proof. Even a little proof. I see none.

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  99. Anon, thanks for your replies.I know nothing of Hyksos, but I will learn and then maybe I will see the relevance. I am open minded. However, did you notice how you didn't answer my question?

    It's really quite important that people claimng to provide the ultimate truth had a world view that was limited by the avilable understanding of thier time and that there is nothing in any of the religious texts that indicates god told them anything outside that understanding, anything that they could not have known. There's also rather a lot in which ever religious text you choose that is contrary to the understanding we now posses. There's also an incredible dearth of evidence, actual proof including written accounts by those involved, that there was a lot of lying and creative editing going on. All I wanted to know is how something you have no evidence for the validty of, tonnes of evidence for the invalidity of, and are yourself better qualified in terms of a having a more detailed and complete world view can be something you can be glibly content to ignore reason on? You seem intelligent also and all I am asking is as an intelligent person what are your reasons? I don't think you even began to answer that question.

    I am trying to convert you. I don't expect to succeed. I want to convert everybody. I don't exepct to succeed. If you want to know why I want to try anyway, read this.

    You see I don't care what happens to you at all when you die, or to me, or to my children because I see no evidence at all that suggests that anything happens at all. I do care what happens to you in life, and to me, and to my children. I care that we are able to overcome artificial differences that have no basis in reason so that we can live in the sort of society and experience the fascination and rewards that only reason and rationality can provide.

    Anyway, if you are off you are off. Peace.

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