Abdullah Sameer

أَلَا يَعْلَمُ مَنْ خَلَقَ وَهُوَ اللَّطِيفُ الْخَبِيرُ Does He who created not know, while He is the Subtle, the Acquainted? (67:14)

Darwin’s beliefs

Abdullah Sameer

Do you know Darwin started by studying religion? He was studying at Christ’s College, Cambridge in 1827 for a Bachelor of Arts degree as the qualification required before taking a specialised divinity course and becoming an Anglican parson? He studied William Paley’s Evidences of Christianity, becoming so delighted with Paley’s logic that he learnt it well.

“Darwin’s discovery caused him great, personal grief and serves as an exemplar of a scientist following the evidence wherever its leads and whatever the consequences.”
– God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist by Victor J. Stenger, Christopher Hitchens

In one 1860 letter to Gray, Darwin expressed his doubts about the teleological argument which claimed nature as evidence of god, though he was still inclined to vaguely believe in an impersonal God as first cause:[60]

With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.— I am bewildered.– I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I [should] wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe & especially the nature of man, & to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.— Let each man hope & believe what he can. – Darwin, Wikipedia 

The universe in relationship to Genesis

Abdullah Sameer

The cosmological universe bears no resemblance to what is described in Genesis. Indeed, the biblical myth is more akin to what one might expect from a perfect creator. But that is not what we see. Earth is not the flat, immovable circle at the center of a firmament or a vault of fixed stars, circled by the sun, moon, and planets pictured in Genesis. Rather, Earth is one planet among ten or so (depending on how you count) revolving around an atypical star, our sun. On the distance scale of human experience, the solar system is immense.

– God the failed hypothesis

Text of Genesis:

1 In the beginning, when God created the universe,[a] 2 the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the Spirit of God[b] was moving over the water. 3 Then God commanded, “Let there be light”—and light appeared. 4 God was pleased with what he saw. Then he separated the light from the darkness, 5 and he named the light “Day” and the darkness “Night.” Evening passed and morning came—that was the first day.

6-7 Then God commanded, “Let there be a dome to divide the water and to keep it in two separate places”—and it was done. So God made a dome, and it separated the water under it from the water above it. 8 He named the dome “Sky.” Evening passed and morning came—that was the second day.

9 Then God commanded, “Let the water below the sky come together in one place, so that the land will appear”—and it was done. 10 He named the land “Earth,” and the water which had come together he named “Sea.” And God was pleased with what he saw. 11 Then he commanded, “Let the earth produce all kinds of plants, those that bear grain and those that bear fruit”—and it was done. 12 So the earth produced all kinds of plants, and God was pleased with what he saw. 13 Evening passed and morning came—that was the third day.

14 Then God commanded, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate day from night and to show the time when days, years, and religious festivals[c] begin;15 they will shine in the sky to give light to the earth”—and it was done. 16 So God made the two larger lights, the sun to rule over the day and the moon to rule over the night; he also made the stars. 17 He placed the lights in the sky to shine on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God was pleased with what he saw. 19 Evening passed and morning came—that was the fourth day.

20 Then God commanded, “Let the water be filled with many kinds of living beings, and let the air be filled with birds.” 21 So God created the great sea monsters, all kinds of creatures that live in the water, and all kinds of birds. And God was pleased with what he saw. 22 He blessed them all and told the creatures that live in the water to reproduce and to fill the sea, and he told the birds to increase in number. 23 Evening passed and morning came—that was the fifth day.

24 Then God commanded, “Let the earth produce all kinds of animal life: domestic and wild, large and small”—and it was done. 25 So God made them all, and he was pleased with what he saw.

26 Then God said, “And now we will make human beings; they will be like us and resemble us. They will have power over the fish, the birds, and all animals, domestic and wild,[d] large and small.” 27 So God created human beings, making them to be like himself. He created them male and female,28 blessed them, and said, “Have many children, so that your descendants will live all over the earth and bring it under their control. I am putting you in charge of the fish, the birds, and all the wild animals. 29 I have provided all kinds of grain and all kinds of fruit for you to eat; 30 but for all the wild animals and for all the birds I have provided grass and leafy plants for food”—and it was done. 31 God looked at everything he had made, and he was very pleased. Evening passed and morning came—that was the sixth day.

 

Abu Hurairah (May Allah be pleased with him) said:
The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) took hold of my hand and said, “Allah, the Exalted and Glorious, created the earth on Saturday, the mountains on Sunday, the trees on Monday, the things entailing labour on Tuesday, light on Wednesday, He spread out animals of all kinds on Thursday, and created Adam in the afternoon on Friday, and it was the last hour of Friday between the afternoon and the night.”

[Muslim]

 

Genesis Creation Myth Video

Genesis Text

Evidence for Revelations

Abdullah Sameer

Shouldn’t we be able to verify the stories in the Bible and Quran historically?

If the statements it [the Bible (or Quran)] contains concerning matters of history and science can be proven by extrabiblical records, by ancient documents recovered through archaeological digs, or by the established facts of modern science to be contrary to the truth, then there is grave doubt as to its trustworthiness in matters of religion. In other words, if the Biblical [or Quranic] record can be proved fallible in areas of fact that can be verified, then it is hardly to be trusted in areas where it cannot be tested. —Archer L. Gleason

Our observations, in this case our reading of biblical and Qur’anic statements about the natural world, look exactly as you would expect them to look if there was no new knowledge being revealed—just what was the human understanding of the day. That is, they look as if there is no God who speaks to humanity through scriptures or other revelations.
If a person undergoes a religious experience that truly places her in communication with some reality from beyond the material world, then we may reasonably expect that person to have gained some deep, new knowledge about the world that can be checked against the empirical facts.

It could have been different. The scriptures might have contained revelations that, while incomprehensible to people at the time of the revelation, may have still been recorded as mysterious, esoteric knowledge. That knowledge then might have become less esoteric as science and the other knowledge arts, such as history, developed higher levels of sophistication.

Quotes from Victor Stenger, God the failed hypothesis.

Khidr and Musa Story Matches Talmud

Abdullah Sameer
The story of Khidr and Musa, like many of the stories in the Quran, parallels the folklore stories found in the Rabbanical Jewish commentaries (The Talmud and Midrash for example) . Note, these are not considered to be revealed books btw..
The entire Talmud consists of 63 tractates, and in standard print is over 6,200 pages long. It is written in Tannaitic Hebrew and Aramaic, and contains the teachings and opinions of thousands of pre-Christian Era rabbis on a variety of subjects, including Halakha (law), Jewish ethics, philosophy, customs, history, lore and many other topics. The Talmud is the basis for all codes of Jewish law, and is widely quoted in rabbinic literature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talmud
Take a look here at the story of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi In The Company of The Prophet Elijah: http://bit.ly/1EWivaY
The below story may have been influenced by Islamic sources.  So this is not a claim against the Quran. I am leaving the post up until I can research this further.

khidrtalmud1

khidrtalmud2 khidrtalmud3

Reference: Mimekor Yisrael: Selected Classical Jewish Folktales

By Micah Joseph Berdichevsky, Dan Ben-Amos, Retreived on Google Books