h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What are your believes/is your religion?

What is the view of God in the quraan in the way of loving or scary etc?

Greetings Yeliab,



I understand there has only ever been one 'religion', although the label or rituals may have varied. This 'religion' is basically trust/serve or whatever, the one God, and do upright/honest/decent things. (This is also a quraanic view).

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The quraanic answer to the first part is 'Say: He is God, singular/alone/one and only, God, eternal/absolute, He does not beget and was not begotten, and there is not a single thing equal to Him.'

This last phrase might be paraphrased 'whatever you think is God, that is not God'

One of the most frequent words in quraan is one of Rahmaan or Raheem (can't remember which one), but both are derived from the same root, and mean 'compassionate' or 'merciful'. quraan specifies if God were to punish for every error, there wouldn't be a single human left on earth! Important quraanic principle: If you do something wrong from ignorance, and later find out it is wrong, that's OK *providing* you then stop doing it. Also, individual responsibility is stressed. You have got limited free-will, but with it comes the consequences of your actions!. Also, nothing which is given to you by way of trial is actually beyond your capability. Also, to every people a messenger is sent speaking in their own language/idiom. Also you enter world after confirming truth, so you don't have excuse of pleading 'I didn't know'.

In other words, everything has been done to make things easy for you. All you need to do is use the free-will to take a step in the right direction. (Important point, 'There is no compulsion in religion, truth stands out clear from error' - so wars of religious conversion are totally unquraanic.)

Scary comes into the 'justice' bit. If you want to do wrong, just remember there is a repayment to be made. If you are fortunate, you get all your repayments during this life! Then there is no need for repayment when there are only two clsses of repayment left.

simon

>When my skepticism was cast aside my eyes were opened to wonders I never thought possible, simply because I had refused to see them.<

Joe, I've just found this conversation, years later! Well, I would like to know a bit more about your experiences, if you care to share them..

Thnaks for that responce, really cool. I must say that it does sound like the God of the Bible that you described there with just a few more bells and whistles on.

God is love:
Exodus 34:6
And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The LORD , the LORD , the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness,
As you say

>>You have got limited free-will, but with it comes the consequences of your actions
Well, according to Genesis of course we have complete free will, you can't limit it cos that's not free. We can do whatever, love God, hate him, kill people and God is there. He loves us so much that whatever we do that angers him he still loves us and if we turn and say sorry he is waiting to hold us and say "I love you my child, here is my son". But that's not to say he won't disiplin us.

>>If you want to do wrong, just remember there is a repayment to be made.
Err, yer wat?

>>If you are fortunate, you get all your repayments during this life!
Is this like purgetory?
Do you mean if you don't make all the repayments you don't get to Heaven untill you have? Hmmm, there are just 2 paths: sheep and goats, you choose (- free will)



OK, so that's God but what's with all the rules and regulations like praying facing Mecca and doing it 5 times daily etc?

Actually, I and many other Jehovah's Witnesses have discussed this many times. So there. I'd hardly say WE'RE ever the ones that 'run in terror', wanting to escape the subject of the existence of evil, when we come to discuss Biblical things with people, but some of those we try to talk to, especially those who already have a strong religion, usually do. Run in terror, or cower behind their 'God works in mysterious ways' shield.

Nothing is beyond God's grasp, but there will be things he will choose not to grasp. He wasn't grasping Satan when Satan turned evil. He didn't make Satan turn evil.

But that's not his ultimate impact anyway. The Bible says that Satan's ultimacy is to be hurled into the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, where he can't do any harm to the Earth anymore.

Anyway, I won't bother giving the whole explanation of why evil exists, because I've already explained it in various ways in verious parts of the Guide. In a forum in 'Evil and the Christian God', for example.

Yeah, so god created the angles including Satan. But I don't think they were created good or evil, just more made to do things like worship God and do things for him. When god made the whole sebang he obviously realised that there is good and bad, but I don't feel he perpousfully made 'evil' so that he could sit back and watch a free fight on 'BBC Earth'.

If good exists then naturally bad exists, as otherwise everything in creation would be one thing - God, so in order to make anything outside of himself it can't be all good (- all God as that's where he started) so it wasn't.

Anyway with good and bad, we and the angles were given the free will to do what we wanted, and so naturally went our different ways. God didn't want us to leave, we were there to praise him, and so as soon as we left he was allready geting stuck ito bringing us back.

Thankfully this culminated with him sending Jesus to save us - a job on the face of it he did rather badly, but it turns out was uber subtle and infact did exactly what was intended. Sadly most of the world seemed to miss this (now) glaringly obvious feat and continued to potter off in their many ways.



Back to Lucifer - if God created Lucifer as evil, as you say, then theres no real problem as it means that God simultaniously created his defeat, so in fact (as God is with out time and 1day is the same as 100 years) God wrapped up the whole problem with evil in one swoop

As I've probably stopped making sence I think I'll stop!
Nick

CATS http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/F215?thread=310947

WOT


WOT IS NOT GOD


WOT IS NOT GOD
CAN NOT BE KNOWN,
CAN NOT BE SEEN,
CAN NOT BE SHOWN

CAN NOT BE EARTH,
NOR BE STARLIGHT,
CAN NOT BE THE SUN,
SHINING BRIGHT


CAN NOT BE
CAN NOT DO
CAN NOT BE ME
CAN NOT BE YOU

Interesting!

Yeah OK then.... doesn't really get to the point or answer my questions / comment on my wierd thoughts.

GOD IS NOT VAIN

GOD IS NOT ARROGANT

GOD IS NOT IGNORANT

GOD IS NOT STUPID

GOD IS NOT PROUD


GOD IS NOT A MAN

I agree! Very good points...especially the last.

hello Yeliab

>I must say that it does sound like the God of the Bible that you described there with just a few more bells and whistles on.

Assuming there is one 'God' there is the same author to all prophetic messages. Of course, how much they have been corrupted by humans afterwards...

Free-will: you may have free-will, but nothing can happen except by permission of God, and God may intervene on your behalf to divert you from an error, or allow you to pursue unfortunate routes giving you a chance to learn or maybe serving another purpose in an integrated whole.

>> >>If you want to do wrong, just remember there is a repayment to be made.
>> Err, yer wat?

Balancing the needs of justice and mercy between humans. There is no such thing as 'harm to God' of course (only upsetting peoples' cults) but only one with total knowledge can do this mercifully and justly!


>>OK, so that's God but what's with all the rules and regulations like praying facing Mecca and doing it 5 times daily etc?

Looks like 'what was invented after'! The so-called '5 pillars of islam' are not from the quraan, but belong to human cult(ure) or Religious Business.

For example 1st pillar 'The Sheheda' (Or 'the witnessing') - according to religious authorities would be 'ash-shadu an la illaaha illa Allaah, wa muhammad rasool allaah' - 'I witness that there is no God but God, and Mohammad is His messenger' but quraan states that 'believers' make no distinction between any of His messengers (so should include Jesus, Moses, Abraham, Lot, Noah, Job, ........ etc. etc.). Also quraan states that 'unbelievers' get upset when God alone is mentioned and happy when others are mentioned with Him. And it also states that God himself, along with the 'angels' and 'people standing on justice' withness 'there is no god but Him'.

As for women, for example, quraan gives explicit equal promise of 'forgiveness and reward' by using both masculine and feminine adjectives.

BTW, I am putting words like 'believers/unbelievers/angels' in quotation marks as these words have been usurped by religious people into 'club/cult membership' terms which prevent many of them from understanding!

>>Yeah, so god created the angles including Satan. But I don't think they were created good or evil, just more made to do things like worship God and do things for him.

In Arabic, the word for 'angel' 'malaaikat' is derived from a verb 'was sent'

Also, in causing mankind trouble, two names are used, 'Iblees' and 'Shaytaan' - Iblees is derived from 'gloom/despondency' and shaytaan from 'rebelliousness'. You could look on these characteristics as causes of trouble!

PS just noted something else from quraan that relates to one of your questions:

2:177

It is not righteousness that you turn your faces towards East or West; But it is righteousness that you trust in God and the angels and the book and the messengers; To spend of your substance out of love for Him for your kin, for orphans, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask, [translation?],[translation?], to fulfill contracts you have made and be firm/patient in adversity...

God is .......
Conceptually that's all we need.

But grammatically it seems incomplete. So:
God is everything (the universe, muliverse, nature, or whatever name you want).

Thus we are god
Thus we are the universe.

What isn't God? .... Ø