So according to that law, technically even a 75 year old grandfather can marry a 1 month old infant? so how would you go about getting consent from an infant?
Again time and time again , one of the conditions to marriage is consent ! Maybe you do not know that infants cannot consent , hence the answer to your question is to stop being silly.
HAHAHA!
MAKES PERFECT SENSE NOW!
And I say again prophet was a thug... he did torture captured thieves etc.
dude
I hope you do know that during that time , the early days of islam these persecuted muslims were actually living amidst their enemies within the city of Makkah ! Picture it like LTTE members living in an army headquaters ! If any one of them wanted to change sides ,it might as well would have spared them their lives. The enemies were waiting to offer the rejectors of Islam riches ! All they had to do was renounce Muhammed(pbuh.)Infact they even tried to offer Muhammed (pbuh) wealth and buy him out of his cause.The muslims had no economic or military power whatsoever at that time.So please..'tortured' .. If you view punishment to a rapist and a thief as 'torture' and 'thuggery' then so be it.
There are other ways to measure right and wrong other than what GOD says!
I don't understand why would you take GOD as the yard stick when it comes to figuring out what's right and what's wrong.. that's TOTALLY ABSURD!
When you take Allah's word for what's right and what's wrong.. what will happen to people of other faiths? should they believe what Allah says is right and wrong?
How about a common yard stick to measure right and wrong that depends on implications of one's actions to the society.. so that no matter what faith you belong to you will have to obey it..
For an example, by today's law in almost every country there's a minimum age for marriage, WHY? because it has been proved that underage marriages can be complicated and not safe, this is proven SCIENTIFICALLY!
Hence, here is a perfect example that what's right and wrong is defined by science... NOT by GOD, and is applicable to all humans regardless of their faith!
The kind of right and wrong you talk about only applies to you and your brotherhood!
Please don’t start name calling and start this game of mocking abuse unless you actually answer the issue.
Your argument about minimum age of marriage is not 'a common yardstick'
and here is why. Firstly if that is the case then all the countries that apply that rule should have the same minimum age . Otherwise what is perceived a legitimate marriage in some countries will be considered breaking the law in other countries ! Secondly , if both the persons are capable of marriage well before the set minimum age then how is this consistent .Thirdly , if the both the persons are above the minimum age of marriage but are still not adults then there is also a conflict between science and legislation .Fourthly , within the same country or region people reach adulthood at varying ages , hence science is not a 'common yardstick'
Besides science does not provide us with a perception of morality. It only induces this survival of the fittest concept. If a poor man robs and kills and another in order to feed his starving family , science cannot tell us whether this is right or wrong. Just like when a lion hunts downs a deer or a calf , rips its throat and then eats it. Science does not call this murder does it ? In the end we are all animals under scientific categorization.
Science cannot provide the ultimate yardstick for good or bad. Only the very Creator of Science and Humans i.e. God can.
To quote from a website -
God is the only conceptual anchor that transcends human subjectivity, so without God there is no rational basis for objective morality. Therefore if in a secular society God is divorced from these issues then, in His absence, there are only two possible alternative conceptual foundations.
Evolution is problematic, in that it dictates that we are just accidental by products of a lengthy evolutionary process, and that we acquire moral understanding gradually. Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science from the University of Guelph, writes,
“Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth… Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory.”
In other words we are just animals, and animals have no moral paradigm. When we see a tiger chase a deer eventually catching it and then ripping its flesh, we do not say that the tiger is acting immorally, rather we are saying that it was acting in accordance to its nature. Evolution as as a basis for objective morals is without foundation because according to this perspective we change our morality as we change in nature.
Social pressures provide no basis for objective morality as they change with time and place. Any reader in social science and social constructionism will easily conclude the relative nature of social pressures.
So without God there can be no rational basis for morality. God as a concept is not subjective therefore having God as basis for morality makes them binding and objective. The following statement by Richard Taylor, an eminent ethicist, correctly concludes,
“Contemporary writers in ethics, who blithely discourse upon moral right and wrong and moral obligation without any reference to religion, are really just weaving intellectual webs from thin air; which amounts to saying that they discourse without meaning.”
This question is philosophically, theologically and scientifically wrong and ill tell you why. If you are to ask the cause of THE CAUSE (God) , then you have to ask the cause of the cause of THE CAUSE and by further regressive theory the cause of the cause of the cause of the THE CAUSE...... i hope you get where I’m going with this. So what this question implies is that there is NO BEGINNING, and that is wrong on all precepts mentioned above. We do know that this universe did indeed have a beginning and we attribute to THE CAUSE of all causes, i.e God.
I would also like to pose a question since you believe in 'karma' , what is the cause of karma ? If you choose to say, it just exists then i can also say that i also 'just believe God exists' but that is not the argument of the Muslim. We are asked to question this universe and concept of God many times in the Quran and hence we have in conclusion Rational Faith! I’ll explain further in the answer your point further below...
I don’t think you listened to a link I posted regarding this previously.
Intelligent Faith - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VQ9U-P9Ysg
To summarize it , we are asked to ponder in the quran the existence of God , the creation of the universe , earth in many instances in the Quran.These verses are immediately followed by the command to submit.
We have rational faith.
Rational - because we have to come to scientific , theological , philosophical conclusion that God does exist and this is the God of the miraculous Quran. (This is another debate on its own and we can embark on that too if you want) So this is the bedrock of our faith.
Faith - because we understand that the Creator knows better than the creation and hence we acknowledge Him and obey Him. Sometimes the wisdom behind this is very evident , sometimes we learn through time and some times it is incomprehendable by our finite human created mind !
To understand God in totality would not make that entity God so although the wisdom behind 'Prayer' might be partially comprehendable to us , we cannot WHY every command or attribute of him.
To put this point better let me quote from that website again
.... The reason for this is because I learnt a lot about the mentality of some people who reject religion from a statement that was made by a member of the audience. It went something like this “We do not want to submit, submission is dangerous and backward”. I thought about this for a while and I gave the following response. Since then, I have called it the ‘logic of submission’.
The word logic comes from the Greek word ‘λογική’, and in philosophy, it concerns study of the principles of valid inference and sound reasoning. Logic is very important because its use allows us to effectively present and refute an argument. Now in the context of arguing that submission to God is the way forward, I used the following:
1. Submission to a higher being is more rational than submission to a human being
2. Islam requires humans to submit to a higher being
3. Therefore Islam is more rational
I pointed out that the above is almost irrefutable. The only way to respond to the argument is by dealing with some of the presuppositions. In this case the presuppositions are,
1. A higher being (i.e. God) exists
2. This higher being requires us to submit to it
I continued by saying that we would have to shift the debate to the existence of God and the miracle of the Qur’an, because if it can be proven that God does exist and that the Qur’an is a miracle, in other words, it has come from God, then the humanist should also submit (since the Qur'an tells us to submit to God). However the chair, Dr Mark Vernon, interrupted and reminded me it was not the topic of the debate.
I agreed, but it left me thinking that we Muslims do not have to answer all the questions anymore, such as “Why do you not eat pork?”, “Why do you fast?”, “Why do you pray five times a day?” All that we have to do is just tell people ‘because God said so’ and if people frown or suggest that we are crazy, then we should tell them about submission. Because it’s more rational to submit.
If they question us further and scratch the intellectual surface by highlighting our presuppositions, in other words our belief that God exists and that the Qur’an is a miracle, then all we have to do is show them.
And if you need some help, please see the links below:
Does God Exist?
The Miracle of the Qur’an
http://hamzatzortzis.blogspot.com/2009/07/debate-on-religion-logic-of-submissio.html
ill cont this when time permits (God willing)... laters
