To think that belief in Father Christmas is not comparable to religious belief.

[Throughthelongnight]

Just that really. I have noticed that the expectation is that we all go along with the pretence of FC for the sake of parent's children's sensibility, but the same is not afforded where religious belief is concerned.

Kitten: you asked, why challenge not to criticise, offend or insult?
I do not know how to answer that. Either you have misunderstood, or i have.

Like some previous posts have said. Everyone is entitled to their beliefs. An atheist can put their point across about their views on theists without the need to resort to offensive or insulting language.

Still don't get you, defuse. The thing is, you make claims, we cannot counter them without being considered offensive as ANY criticism is deemed offensive.

Yeah right.

crescentmoon I like the idea of having every copy match the original and I've heard that before. It's just struck me though that this surely can't be 100% true.

I'm willing to believe that if I sent off for a copy from amazon or whatever it would match yours, but there's nothing to stop someone making an altered copy mistakenly or maliciously is there.

It doesn't really detract from your overall point. It just made me wonder if there was another, non-official, version out there

On the 'no hierarchy' thing that would be a point in its favour - given the behaviour of most organised christian churches, but you have uluma do you not who 'explain' the hadith and so on? and I see clerics waving their hands and issuing edicts so perhaps not quite as simple as individual muslim Allah

And you have at least two kinds of Islam last I looked. Not sure what the differences are, but I never understood how christians can admit to having 100s of different denominations without admitting that all but one must have it wrong.

All of the possible combinations of Arabic words, letters and grammatical rules have been exhausted and yet its literary form has not been matched linguistically.

Don't be silly. "All possible combinations of words" is, obviously, infinite. It would require infinite time to enumerate them. How can they possibly be "exhausted"? All possible finite-length combinations of words is not infinite, but why don't you nip away and work out, say, the number of thousand word documents you can derive from an lexicon of a thousand words, and tell us how long they would take to evaluate at one document per second?

any grammatically sound expression of the Arabic language will always fall with-in the known Arabic literary forms of prose and poetry

That's absolute, utter, nonsense on so many levels it's hard to know where to start. Are you seriously saying that Arabic is resistant to the rise of any new form of prose or poetry as all possible forms have been already used? Doesn't that make it a bit dull for writers?

Friday, feel free to produce a chapter then.

defuse and crescentmoon - I don't have to respond to your challenge, I just KNOW you are so totally wrong. I don't have to prove you are wrong or give evidence in support of my arguement because I have FAITH.

I believe my God is the one true God so therefore you must be wrong.

You believe that my holy book is not the word of God but I believe it is. I feel like you are calling me stupid and gullible for believing this.

I find this attitude very offensive.

And quite possibly racist.

The problematic verses? Anyone? Written by God?

Friday, feel free to produce a chapter then.

You really don't get it, do you?

I cannot produce a chapter that reads like JK Rowling.

That does not mean that JK Rowling is divine.

It is unlikely that anyone can produce a chapter purporting to be like JK Rowling that would pass a reasonable battery of modern linguistic analysis tools.

That still does not mean that JK Rowling is divine.

I realise that the arguments that you are advancing are convincing to people who are convinced.

But, seriously, standing there saying "produce a chapter, then" is convincing no-one but yourself. I cannot produce a chapter that would withstand modern analysis and be indistinguishable from that written by any literary writer for whom there is a large authentic corpus available. That does not mean that the authors are divine. It just means that literary analysis is sophisticated.

I have have admired people on this thread that are trying tonhave a rational discussion and respect them for their patience and tolerance but I am just totally fed up with trying. What is the point? Some people's minds are closed.

I am fed up with pussy footing around trying to be polite and respect peoples beliefs that I find ridiculous, nasty and dangerous.
If someone said they held Nazi beliefs, or sexist beliefs, I would be able to say what I think about them. I want the right to criticize someones religious beliefs in the same way.

I object to to the privilege religious people have when it comes to criticism of their beliefs.

I really don't want to upset people but I just feel that I have a right to express my strongly held beliefs as much as any religious person does and if you come out with a comment like this - The quran is not the work of man then I think you are stupid, and very gullible.

Sorry.

I can't help it, but I really believe this.

"What makes the Quran stand apart is that it is impossible for a human being to compose something like it, as it lies outside the productive capacity of the nature of the Arabic language"

What does this mean? Surely if that was true, nobody could read or understand it?

btw this is off topic really, but I mentioned earlier hearing that the koran contained the speed of light and other scientific knowledge. I found a site if anyone is interested that lists these 'gems'.

Miracles of the Quran

redshifter for every poster there could be dozens or 100s of people reading these threads. Some of them may be put off accepting religion blindly because of what they read here. If it makes one person re-examine their position it's worth it.

defuseOk, let's assume the Koran is indeed written by a god and is the only absolute truth about anything.

I am an ignorant infidel who will in some way I can't be bothered to Google suffer for all eternity. Why do you care what I think or say about your book?

I'm not of your faith. It can't possibly be harmed or diminished by anything I do.

What does this mean? Surely if that was true, nobody could read or understand it?

It's apologetics. People who have already convinced themselves like to throw around phrases that they don't understand but they think will be unanswerable weapons against the unbelievers. As you say, what does "lies outside the productive capacity of the nature of the Arabic language" mean? If you know anything about natural languages, you ponder Shapir-Whorf and the like. If you know anything about formal languages, you start muttering about various undecidable problems in language theory, like Universality. If you ask for a definition of what it means, you rapidly realise it means "you are not meant to understand this, but it's impressive, isn't it?"

I am confident that none of the people saying "lies outside the productive capacity of the nature of the Arabic language" have the slightest knowledge of what it means, or would be able to explain it. What does "productive capacity" of a language mean? That the grammar that defines the language is closed? That's quite a claim...

Friday - you may find this of interest: www.hamzatzortzis.com/essays-articles/exploring-the-quran/the-inimitable-quran/

I post it not to convince you, but to provide an overview of the argument that the Qur'an is inimitable.

Love the link. Very entertaining :)

"The implication of this is that there is no link between the Qur’an and the Arabic language; however this seems impossible because the Qur’an is made up of the Arabic language. "

You think?

That's interesting, GoshAnne

Defuse:

"What makes the Quran stand apart is that it is impossible for a human being to compose something like it, as it lies outside the productive capacity of the nature of the Arabic language. The productive capacity of nature, concerning the Arabic language, is that any grammatically sound expression of the Arabic language will always fall with-in the known Arabic literary forms of prose and poetry. All of the possible combinations of Arabic words, letters and grammatical rules have been exhausted and yet its literary form has not been matched linguistically."

The essay GoshAnne cites:

"What makes the Qur’an a miracle, is that it is impossible for a human being to compose something like it, as it lies outside the productive capacity of the nature of the Arabic language. The productive capacity of nature, concerning the Arabic language, is that any grammatically sound expression of the Arabic language will always fall with-in the known Arabic literary forms of prose and poetry. All of the possible combinations of Arabic words, letters and grammatical rules have been exhausted and yet its literary form has not been matched linguistically. "

Isn't that interesting that defuse should coincidentally come up with such a similar paragraph? I mean, obviously, someone with the high morals and principles of the faithful wouldn't just cut and paste and then claim it as their own, uncredited, because that would obviously be wrong. It must be another of those miracles, must it not?

That's why the people citing all this nonsense can't argue about it: they're just cutting and pasting it.

Otoh it explains a lot

"I can't write 'women should be equal' in this chapter because it doesn't fit the rhythm"

"How about 'women should be silent' that fits"

Friday yes the same thought occured to me reading that link! It's also a bit of a cheek to expect others to study Arabic to see this miracle for themselves, whilst seemingly not having done this study themselves...

Friday - plenty of unacknowledged C+Ping from you noble atheists too. As I said upthread, some charmer on another thread C+P'd screeds from an anti-Muslim hate site. Or is it different when atheists do it?

Back - you will not find "women should be silent" in the Qur'an.

"Friday - plenty of unacknowledged C+Ping from you noble atheists too. As I said upthread, some charmer on another thread C+P'd screeds from an anti-Muslim hate site. Or is it different when atheists do it? "

How is what somebody did on another thead relevant?

Th issue with c and ping stuff like this is the time it very difficult to understand. I don't. And I asked if somebody could explain it to me- but they couldn't. Because I suspect they don't understand it either. I just don't see how something written in a language that people can read and understand can be completely uncopyable. In what way? Who judges that the copy has failed? By what criteria?

plenty of unacknowledged C+Ping from you noble atheists too.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

You will find it recommending that men marry, and have sex with (rape) child brides, though.