Searching for GOD...

[Alan Burns]

Not really - I suspect you reject the faith claims promulgated by all sorts of faiths over the millennia to support the existence of thousands of non-christian gods to be lacking 'credible evidence'. Yet their faith claims are, or were, based on identical subjective experiential claims lacking objective evidence as yours. It seems rather arrogant of you to declare that your subjective experience of a particular god represents 'credible evidence' for the objective existence of that god, while others subjective experience of allah, vishnu, thor, zeus etc etc doesn't represent credible evidence.

You cannot have it both ways AB.

You can't use the fact that there are many other faiths as an argument against Christian faith - that is an Ap Pop fallacy.
The credible evidence for the Christian faith lies in the Gospels and in the lives of those who accepted Jesus as their Lord and saviour - from the Acts of the apostles, to the conversion and ministry of Paul, to the life stories of the many Christian saints, to the countless miracles performed in Jesus' name, to the simple truth that the son of a carpenter from Nazareth, who never wrote a word of His own, who spent most of His life in obscurity, who suffered and died a criminals death - became the most influential person who ever lived!  Why?  In one word - the Resurrection.

[ProfessorDavey]

You can't use the fact that there are many other faiths as an argument against Christian faith - that is an Ap Pop fallacy.

No it isn't - they could all be wrong, arguably all subjectively right or just one right.

My point about other faiths is that they will typically base their belief in a god on exactly the same faith-based experiential subjectivity as you do. In no case is there credible objective evidence for any of these purported gods.

So my challenge to you isn't ad populum, but double standards - why is your faith-based experiential subjectivity 'credible evidence' for the existence of the christian god yet someone else's similar faith-based experiential subjectivity not 'credible evidence' for the existence of some other god.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

You can't use the fact that there are many other faiths as an argument against Christian faith - that is an Ap Pop fallacy.

No it isn’t. The ad pop fallacy is the mistake of thinking that the popularity of a belief is an indicator of its truth, like this:

You would be in a tiny minority of ONE!
The number of people who honestly claim to have encountered Jesus in their lives is vast.

What was explained to you here though was that when you declare subjective experience to be a reliable guide to objective truths, then you have no grounds to deny the same treatment to any other experience-based faith claim – which isn’t an ad pop at all.
 

The credible evidence for the Christian faith lies in the Gospels and in the lives of those who accepted Jesus as their Lord and saviour - from the Acts of the apostles, to the conversion and ministry of Paul, to the life stories of the many Christian saints, to the countless miracles performed in Jesus' name, to the simple truth that the son of a carpenter in Nazareth, who never wrote a word of His own, who spent most of His life in obscurity, who suffered and died a criminals death - became the most influential person who ever lived!

 

No, that’s just credible evidence for there being Gospels and for there being people who believe them to be true, but not also for their content being true.

Try to understand where you went wrong here.

Why?  In one word - the Resurrection.

Er, no. In two words, survivorship bias:

“Survivorship bias is a type of sample selection bias that occurs when an individual mistakes a visible successful subgroup as the entire group. In other words, survivorship bias occurs when an individual only considers the surviving observation without considering those data points that didn't survive in the event.”

https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/survivorship-bias

This shouldn’t be hard for you to understand by now AB, it really shouldn’t.
 

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

The Roman and Josephus accounts talk about Christians, not about Christ himself - from context it's presumed that they existence of Jesus is accepted at the time.

If you don't think Homer's accounts of the events during and after the Trojan War are 'mutated' then I'm curious as to why you worship the Christian God and not the twelve Olympian Gods.

Islamic accounts talk about, to my admittedly limited knowledge, Mohammed flying away at his death on a winged horse - you think that's an accurate account of someone that scholars universally accept was a real person.

This 'mythologisation' of real figures is not even close to uniquely a Christian artefact.

O.

Um no - a technical point - the winged "horse" a.k.a Buraq is a story about a night journey supposedly undertaken by Prophet Mohammed where he is supposed to have travelled on Buraq to Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem  and prayed and then ascended the 7 stages of heaven and encountered various prophets and come back to Mecca in a single night.

Nothing to do with his death, which was according to the traditional stories pretty unspectacular, though many of his companions and followers were deeply upset, and he was then given a simple burial. To calm people down when his death was announced, one of his closest companions quoted a verse from the Quran “Muhammed is but a Prophet before whom many prophets have come and gone. Should he die or be killed, will you give up your faith? Know that whoever gives up his faith will cause no harm to God, but God will surely reward those who are grateful to Him” (Qur’an, 3:144)

[Sebastian Toe]

You can't use the fact that there are many other faiths as an argument against Christian faith - that is an Ap Pop fallacy.
The credible evidence for the Christian faith lies in the Gospels and in the lives of those who accepted Jesus as their Lord and saviour - from the Acts of the apostles, to the conversion and ministry of Paul, to the life stories of the many Christian saints, to the countless miracles performed in Jesus' name, to the simple truth that the son of a carpenter from Nazareth, who never wrote a word of His own, who spent most of His life in obscurity, who suffered and died a criminals death - became the most influential person who ever lived!  Why?  In one word - the Resurrection.

..and what are you using as an arguement against all of the other faiths?

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Hi VG,


What are your views of Sufi beliefs?

Good point about Sufi Islam. I have encountered a lot of Sufis who follow the Naqshbandi path.

I understand the Sufi point/ method of remembrance of Allah through prolonged dhikr and meditation. Then it all becomes very mystical. Not sure what some Sufis mean if some of them think that meditation and dhikr leads them to think they have encountered Allah. Remembrance and focus on breathing and thinking about Allah's attributes and being aware of Allah and meditation and having what they feel is a transcendental experience seems to be a different concept to encountering Allah - so not really sure what is meant by that.

Again though, these are all subjective experiences - and would not constitute evidence that could prove for others the existence of Allah or if any encounter took place.

Religion and faith like other abstract concepts and experiences are internal experiences for the individual, which are interpreted by the individual. Language has been developed by the human brain to try to communicate and describe internal experiences to others but there is no way of verifying if any of these abstract concepts are experienced the same way by individuals as the interpretations of the experience by each person's brain/ mind are unique to the individual. 

[Outrider]

Um no - a technical point - the winged "horse" a.k.a Buraq is a story about a night journey supposedly undertaken by Prophet Mohammed where he is supposed to have travelled on Buraq to Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem  and prayed and then ascended the 7 stages of heaven and encountered various prophets and come back to Mecca in a single night.

I did admit that my knowledge of the details of Islam was, at best, patchy Thank you.

O.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Thank you for this timely and informative addition to the corpus of Forum Knowledge and wisdom. Hillside and others need their caricatures of religion pulled up.
I find this most productive and there are two points arising from your post concerning how you see Christians viewing God and supernatural encounters in Islam that I would like to discuss with you.

Thanks Vlad and ok. On another thread or here?

Not sure which part of BHS's response in this instance was caricature. He just seems like someone who doesn't get anything meaningful from these mystical stories and therefore his reaction is to discount them - given it is impossible to verify which parts of the stories actually happened as there is no objective evidence to corroborate the stories.

His point, which I think is valid, is that just because there are lots of different people repeating the stories and adding their own interpretations or explaining their subjective reactions to the stories, it still does not provide any objective evidence that important and fantastical parts of the story can be accepted as fact - such as the existence of a God or a God who is also a person as well as God being resurrected back to life after being dead. It would be like you being asked to accept as fact that Mohammed was transported on a Buraq to Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem in a single night and that he ascended to heaven and came back. Do you think that really happened?

I can see a point to these stories - in that stories can be a way of illustrating ideas. But I don't expect people to believe them as fact.

ETA - so I can see why those who find these ideas meaningful search for God through their practice of rituals and their inner experiences and talk about their experiences to others and think they should offer them the opportunity to experience something similar . But it would be odd for those who do not find the stories meaningful to have the same reaction as people who do find them meaningful - and it seems like a natural reaction to me for people who feel sceptical about stories they cannot verify as fact to discount fantastical stories, and wait for objective evidence and in the meantime take the position of "don't know".

[ProfessorDavey]

The credible evidence for the Christian faith lies in the Gospels and in the lives of those who accepted Jesus as their Lord and saviour - from the Acts of the apostles, to the conversion and ministry of Paul, to the life stories of the many Christian saints, to the countless miracles performed in Jesus' name, to the simple truth that the son of a carpenter from Nazareth, who never wrote a word of His own, who spent most of His life in obscurity, who suffered and died a criminals death - became the most influential person who ever lived!  Why?  In one word - the Resurrection.

No-one is denying that the christian faith exists, that some people believe these things. But none of that provides any credible evidence that these claims are objectively true - all of these are faith positions with no credible objective evidence that these things actually happened.

But it is interesting that you provide great story in the christian scriptures and what they say, yet there are many, many other religious texts which contain very similar 'fantastic' claims. So why aren't they 'credible evidence' AB?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Thanks Vlad and ok. On another thread or here?

I'm not sure given what you've said regarding Islam whether a thread entitled searching for God is the appropriate one. So another thread. I propose that the most useful way to start is for me to write my analysis of your post and for you to come back on that

Not sure which part of BHS's response in this instance was caricature. He just seems like someone who doesn't get anything meaningful from these mystical stories and therefore his reaction is to discount them - given it is impossible to verify which parts of the stories actually happened as there is no objective evidence to corroborate the stories.

I noted you had spotted that Hillside had the notion that ''encountered'' meant the same thing in all religions. I'm not sure he will show any more appreciation of a transformative encounter with the stories and the words of the Koran than he does of christian encounters, Hillsides subtext being religion = bollocks

His point, which I think is valid, is that just because there are lots of different people repeating the stories and adding their own interpretations or explaining their subjective reactions to the stories, it still does not provide any objective evidence that important and fantastical parts of the story can be accepted as fact - such as the existence of a God or a God who is also a person as well as God being resurrected back to life after being dead. It would be like you being asked to accept as fact that Mohammed was transported on a Buraq to Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem in a single night and that he ascended to heaven and came back. Do you think that really happened?

Isn't this though argument from incredulity though. Againi'm not sure an Islam with supernatural elements moderated and mediated by someone as progressive,sincere and reasonable as yourself will Garner support or agreement from certain areas.

I can see a point to these stories - in that stories can be a way of illustrating ideas. But I don't expect people to believe them as fact.

And hopefully you can see from what I have written here that I don't expect it either however as Hillside demonstrates his objections are coming from a place of confusion conflation and whatever con you care to mention, in my humble opinion.

ETA - so I can see why those who find these ideas meaningful search for God through their practice of rituals and their inner experiences and talk about their experiences to others and think they should offer them the opportunity to experience something similar . But it would be odd for those who do not find the stories meaningful to have the same reaction as people who do find them meaningful - and it seems like a natural reaction to me for people who feel sceptical about stories they cannot verify as fact to discount fantastical stories, and wait for objective evidence and in the meantime take the position of "don't know".

And it is this difference between God being an idea and God as something other than this that I'm sure we will cover in our discussions.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Hi Gabriella,

Not sure which part of BHS's response in this instance was caricature.

None of it. That was just Vlad straw manning again.

He just seems like someone who doesn't get anything meaningful from these mystical stories and therefore his reaction is to discount them - given it is impossible to verify which parts of the stories actually happened as there is no objective evidence to corroborate the stories.

Not quite. I’m perfectly capable of “getting things” from stories, but I don’t just accept that those stories necessarily indicate truths about objects in the world. Aesop for example wrote a fable about a hare and a tortoise having a race, and there’s a useful lesson to be had from that fable. What religions often then do though is to overreach to asserting that the story means a real hare and a real tortoise did have a real race, albeit sometimes only until they’re forced finally to retrench to “OK, so now it’s just an allegory then”.     

His point, which I think is valid, is that just because there are lots of different people repeating the stories and adding their own interpretations or explaining their subjective reactions to the stories, it still does not provide any objective evidence that important and fantastical parts of the story can be accepted as fact - such as the existence of a God or a God who is also a person as well as God being resurrected back to life after being dead. It would be like you being asked to accept as fact that Mohammed was transported on a Buraq to Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem in a single night and that he ascended to heaven and came back. Do you think that really happened?

Yes.

I can see a point to these stories - in that stories can be a way of illustrating ideas. But I don't expect people to believe them as fact.

Me too.

ETA - so I can see why those who find these ideas meaningful search for God through their practice of rituals and their inner experiences and talk about their experiences to others and think they should offer them the opportunity to experience something similar . But it would be odd for those who do not find the stories meaningful to have the same reaction as people who do find them meaningful - and it seems like a natural reaction to me for people who feel sceptical about stories they cannot verify as fact to discount fantastical stories, and wait for objective evidence and in the meantime take the position of "don't know".

Here we part company I’m afraid. Why would people who find stories meaningful and helpful as allegories also have to instantiate their casts of characters (gods for example) any more than I would have to instantiate the hare and the tortoise? I have no problem at all with treating all religious texts as myth and allegory, and if people find some of them educative at that level then well and good. Why some must also convince themselves that their characters are (or were) also real for that purposes though escapes me entirely.         

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

I'm not sure given what you've said regarding Islam whether a thread entitled searching for God is the appropriate one. So another thread. I propose that the most useful way to start is for me to write my analysis of your post and for you to come back on that

Sure

I noted you had spotted that Hillside had the notion that ''encountered'' meant the same thing in all religions. I'm not sure he will show any more appreciation of a transformative encounter with the stories and the words of the Koran than he does of christian encounters, Hillsides subtext being religion = bollocks

Ah ok - yes some atheists and theists think the words used all have the same meaning across all religious or spiritual experiences. Whereas you and I might used the words in different ways and might enjoy exploring that without coming up with any definitive conclusions either way - for BHS it probably could all be summed up as "bollocks" as he has not bought into the idea of a God due to lack of evidence. The lack of objective evidence for a supernatural entity means his position could probably be summed up as "don't know, can't verify, so not interested in the detail"

Isn't this though argument from incredulity though. Againi'm not sure an Islam with supernatural elements moderated and mediated by someone as progressive,sincere and reasonable as yourself will Garner support or agreement from certain areas.

No I don't think it is argument from incredulity because I am not making an argument for a claim - I am not claiming that the night journey did happen, nor am I claiming it didn't happen, because I can't know that either. So I am not making a claim here, nor arguing for either proposition.

Maybe Prophet Mohammed experienced something metaphysical, spiritual or in his mind and described his experience through these images because that was his internal experience. Or maybe he really did have a night journey where his body was physically transported to Jerusalem and back to Mecca in 1 night, since I can't rule out that possibility either. But given the lack of objective evidence for this widely-circulating story being fact, it's not surprising that many wouldn't believe it really happened.

And hopefully you can see from what I have written here that I don't expect it either however as Hillside demonstrates his objections are coming from a place of confusion conflation and whatever con you care to mention, in my humble opinion.

And it is this difference between God being an idea and God as something other than this that I'm sure we will cover in our discussions.

I use the term "idea" for 2 reasons  - (1) because God is considered intangible/supernatural so not a physical entity with properties that can be understood or verified using the methods we use to better understand the properties of other phenomena we experience; and (2) because all our perceptions of God are subjective and communicated by words  - hence they are thoughts and ideas about God. Similarly we have thoughts and ideas about other things, including other abstract concepts.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

I noted you had spotted that Hillside had the notion that ''encountered'' meant the same thing in all religions. I'm not sure he will show any more appreciation of a transformative encounter with the stories and the words of the Koran than he does of christian encounters,

Lying about this doesn’t help you here. I don’t much care about the doctrinal differences in meaning that religions have when they talk about “encountering”, “experiencing”, “meeting” etc the objects of their devotion, whether in person or in the written word. The point I actually made was that just adding up the scores from each religion of people who think they have done those things in whatever form tells you nothing about whether or not one claim of a deity is any more or less true than another.     

Hillsides subtext being religion = bollocks[

Hillside’s “subtext” (actually surtext) is that declaring subjective truths to be also objective truths with no justifying path from the former to the latter “= bollocks”.

Isn't this though argument from incredulity though. Againi'm not sure an Islam with supernatural elements moderated and mediated by someone as progressive,sincere and reasonable as yourself will Garner support or agreement from certain areas.

No – the argument from incredulity is something else entirely, as you’d know if only you’d bothered to address the corrections I’ve given you about this on several occasions.

And hopefully you can see from what I have written here that I don't expect it either however as Hillside demonstrates his objections are coming from a place of confusion conflation and whatever con you care to mention, in my humble opinion.

Then your (anything but) humble opinion is based on a straw man version of what I do think (and have consistently said), and so is both wrong and worthless.

And it is this difference between God being an idea and God as something other than this that I'm sure we will cover in our discussions.

Good luck with trying to substantiate the latter claim.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Not quite. I’m perfectly capable of “getting things” from stories, but I don’t just accept that those stories necessarily indicate truths about objects in the world. Aesop for example wrote a fable about a hare and a tortoise having a race, and there’s a useful lesson to be had from that fable. What religions often then do though is to overreach to asserting that the story means a real hare and a real tortoise did have a real race, albeit sometimes only until they’re forced finally to retrench to “OK, so now it’s just an allegory then”.

I didn't say you couldn't get anything from stories in general - but I don't think you get anything meaningful from these particular religious stories. It's  a matter of aesthetics.

Compared to a hare and a tortoise challenging each other to a race, which uses concepts that have properties that we are very familiar with, religions are talking about supernatural concepts i.e. with properties that are beyond natural that we cannot be familiar with or demonstrate to others. Therefore, there is a lot more room to believe in ideas of what might be possible. Though reality and whether anything outside our mind is real is a whole other discussion - e.g. how can we obtain knowledge of a mind-independent world?

Here we part company I’m afraid. Why would people who find stories meaningful and helpful as allegories also have to instantiate their casts of characters (gods for example) any more than I would have to instantiate the hare and the tortoise? I have no problem at all with treating all religious texts as myth and allegory, and if people find some of them educative at that level then well and good. Why some must also convince themselves that their characters are (or were) also real for that purposes though escapes me entirely.       

Presumably because some of us believe in the possibility of the supernatural entity because of subjective experiences, and that belief adds something of value to our lives. Also see above - we have no method to obtain knowledge of supernatural things that exist  through our experiences in our mind.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Gabriella,

Ah ok - yes some atheists and theists think the words used all have the same meaning across all religious or spiritual experiences. Whereas you and I might used the words in different ways and might enjoy exploring that without coming up with any definitive conclusions either way - for BHS it probably could all be summed up as "bollocks" as he has not bought into the idea of a God due to lack of evidence. The lack of objective evidence for a supernatural entity means his position could probably be summed up as "don't know, can't verify, so not interested in the detail"

Not quite. You can’t have “detail” about an objectively true object without establishing first that it exists at all. If you skip that step we could just as well be debating the details of which shade of green leprechauns prefer.

The details of myth and allegory on the other hand, and the different interpretations that can be placed on them are fine – just as Shakespeare has been subject to Marxist interpretations, to post-feminist interpretations etc without also asserting Hamlet to have been a real person.   

No I don't think it is argument from incredulity because I am not making an argument for a claim - I am not claiming that the night journey did happen, nor am I claiming it didn't happen, because I can't know that either. So I am not making a claim here, nor arguing for either proposition.

Maybe Prophet Mohammed experienced something metaphysical, spiritual or in his mind and described his experience through these images because that was his internal experience. Or maybe he really did have a night journey where his body was physically transported to Jerusalem and back to Mecca in 1 night, since I can't rule out that possibility either. But given the lack of objective evidence for this widely-circulating story being fact, it's not surprising that many wouldn't believe it really happened.

Yes – Vlad doesn’t understand what an argument from incredulity actually entails.

I use the term "idea" for 2 reasons  - (1) because God is considered intangible/supernatural so not a physical entity with properties that can be understood or verified using the methods we use to better understand the properties of other phenomena we experience; and (2) because all our perceptions of God are subjective and communicated by words  - hence they are thoughts and ideas about God. Similarly we have thoughts and ideas about other things, including other abstract concepts.

But you’re still I think claiming an objectively true god regardless of our beliefs about “Him” rather than a human-made idea of a god right? If that is right, that’s where we part company.   

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Gabriella,

Not quite. You can’t have “detail” about an objectively true object without establishing first that it exists at all. If you skip that step we could just as well be debating the details of which shade of green leprechauns prefer.

The details of myth and allegory on the other hand, and the different interpretations that can be placed on them are fine – just as Shakespeare has been subject to Marxist interpretations, to post-feminist interpretations etc without also asserting Hamlet to have been a real person. 

I don't think Vlad and I are debating with each other about what is true when it comes to religious beliefs - we are just exchanging ideas about our beliefs and seeing where we have common ground and where we differ in our beliefs.

For you that exercise is the equivalent of debating the shade of green of leprechauns. For us, although we're not interested in leprechauns for aesthetic and other reasons, Vlad and I are interested in God and the beliefs around a supernatural entity because of its impact on our moral choices and they way we interact and connect with others. Our experience is that those beliefs and the possibilities generated by these concepts add value to our lives in those areas, unlike beliefs about leprechauns. A leprechaun offers me nothing I find particularly useful to work with in relation to morality or social bonds or social interaction or in relation to anything of a more mystical nature such as transcendental experiences.

But you’re still I think claiming an objectively true god regardless of our beliefs about “Him” rather than a human-made idea of a god right? If that is right, that’s where we part company.

If you mean an unexplainable, unknowable supernatural entity that has an influence on the way I live my life because of a revelation or message - yes I believe in that. I can understand why you don't - I didn't when I was an atheist. And then at some point I just changed my mind. It had nothing to do with anyone evangelising to me - if anything their ideas and beliefs increased my lack of belief.

I think my "knowledge" or my "experience" of anything I perceive as supernatural-related is based on my mind's interpretation of inputs. One input for me was verses I read in the Quran, which had both allegorical and literal concepts. Another is my feelings and experience on reading the verses or practising something from Islam. These are inputs for my mind to interpret and construct perspectives about reality and morality that I use to make moral choices. I have the reality I can objectively demonstrate because it does not relate to abstract concepts, and then I have the reality I can't demonstrate objectively but believe in even though it relates to abstract concepts. My beliefs and moral choices will therefore often differ from others because of differences in how my mind interprets words and experiences and feelings compared to other people's interpretations.

[Dicky Underpants]

Mohammed himself claims to have encountered God, but his revelations about God differ greatly from those I know who have experienced personal encounters with God in the name of Jesus.

Seb has pointed out the inaccuracy of this. There has been a certain amount of setting the record straight, thanks to Gabriella. I feel justified in adding a little bit more, since when I raised the matter of Mohammed's first revelation with her, she was not certain of any specific details. Indeed, what I thought were the details of Mohammed's first revelation were in fact those of his second.
The first revelation involved hearing a voice that commanded him to 'read'. M shared this experience with his wife Khadijah, who directed him to her cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal. The latter assured him that this was the voice of Namus (Jibrel or Gabriel).
The second revelation involved Mohammed seeing a huge manlike form astride the whole horizon. This figure identified himself as the Archangel Gabriel. So, no encounters with God, but with an archangel.
For sure, this differs greatly from Christian experiences interpreted as experience of God, but these in themselves differ vastly. No doubt your Christian friends, belonging to the evangelical wing of your church, report similar experiences, but the  social reinforcement involved would lead one to expect nothing different.
As I said, trying to look for consistency in these details of 'divine experience' is a fools errand, even within the literature of the Catholic Church. Just try comparing the experiences of Hildegaard of Bingen, St Teresa of Avila or St Thomas Aquinas. The classic study which initiated comparisons of these phenomena is of course William James' Varieties of Religious Experience. If you have not read it, I recommend that you do.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Thanks for this added detail. There is nothing in the Quran indicating that Prophet Mohammed encountered God but there are 2 schools of thought about Miraj based on Hadith - sayings that are attributed to Prophet Mohammed - where there is a description of the Night journey and Ascension to heaven.

https://islamqa.info/en/answers/156077/did-allah-may-he-be-glorified-and-exalted-speak-directly-to-our-prophet-muhammad-blessings-and-peace-of-allah-be-upon-him

There is however significant contention amongst the opinion of scholars of Tafsir as to who the prophet peace be upon him saw , whether it was angel Jibreel that he saw or whether it was Allah Almighty that he saw. There are mainly two popular opinions here,
One is:
That the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ saw angel Jibra’el in his actual form , that is the opinion of those companions who negate the proposition that it is possible to have a vision of Allah Almighty hence they negate this theory and establish that prophet muhammad peace be upon him did not see Allah Almighty.
Second and the more popular school of thought is that :
The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ did see Allah Almighty at some instance of the Mira’j journey namely where the verses refer to the “ lote tree” and the “ gardens pf restfulness”. That indeed the Prophet ﷺ was given this ultimate blessing and miracle of all times to have a vision of Allah Almighty as Allah The most Powerful and Majestic Himself desired it to be.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Gabriella,

I didn't say you couldn't get anything from stories in general - but I don't think you get anything meaningful from these particular religious stories.

I’m not sure whether I get much that’s meaningful from them or not – “be kind to others” for example I couldn’t disagree with (though some of us don’t need to be told to do that), but there’s some pretty despicable stuff in the various religious texts too whether allegorical or not. The problem I think comes from jumping from Aesop’s fable-type “here’s a story that may have some educative content for you” straight to “the constituents of this story are factually real and inerrant too so you must do as the story says or you’re a “sinner” and will be punished accordingly” and suchlike BS.

It's  a matter of aesthetics.

At an allegorical level, I agree. Not though when you want to arrogate to the stories claims of objective and inerrant truths. That’s not about aesthetics at all – it’s about (supposed) hard facts.

Compared to a hare and a tortoise challenging each other to a race, which uses concepts that have properties that we are very familiar with, religions are talking about supernatural concepts i.e. with properties that are beyond natural that we cannot be familiar with or demonstrate to others. Therefore, there is a lot more room to believe in ideas of what might be possible. Though reality and whether anything outside our mind is real is a whole other discussion - e.g. how can we obtain knowledge of a mind-independent world?

But the problem is that religions aren’t just talking about supernatural concepts at all. “Homosexuality is wrong” for example is anything but a supernatural concept – it’s a real injunction about a real phenomenon in the real world. The authority claimed for it (“god”) is (supposedly) supernatural all right, but not the practical, real world claims made in its name.

That’s the difference between “religious claims = allegories” and “religious claims = facts”, which is the point I was making.   

Presumably because some of us believe in the possibility of the supernatural entity because of subjective experiences, and that belief adds something of value to our lives.

No, that’s not it at all. I have no problem believing in the possibility of anything – gods and leprechauns alike – because there’s no logical way to eliminate those possibilities (see negative proof fallacy, Russell’s teapot etc). My puzzlement is why so many religious people must also convince themselves not only of the possibility but also of the (supposed) fact of the objects of their beliefs.

I don’t need the hare and the tortoise and their race to have been real to get the point; (many) religious people on the other hand it seems do.   

Also see above - we have no method to obtain knowledge of supernatural things that exist  through our experiences in our mind.

That’s called begging the question. Before you get to “obtain knowledge of supernatural things” you need to establish that there are supernatural things at all, and for that matter you need to demonstrate even before that the there even is a “supernatural”. In other words, you’re reifying here.   

[bluehillside Retd.]

Gabriella,

I don't think Vlad and I are debating with each other about what is true when it comes to religious beliefs - we are just exchanging ideas about our beliefs and seeing where we have common ground and where we differ in our beliefs.

It’s very hard to know what Vlad thinks about anything, but I’m not sure he’d agree. He’s arguing (OK, asserting but it’s the same thing in his mind) that “God”, a resurrection etc are objectively real facts about the world. You on the other hand seem to lean more toward the allegorical, though presumably you think Allah and his messenger Angel was/is real too?     

For you that exercise is the equivalent of debating the shade of green of leprechauns. For us, although we're not interested in leprechauns for aesthetic and other reasons, Vlad and I are interested in God and the beliefs around a supernatural entity because of its impact on our moral choices and they way we interact and connect with others. Our experience is that those beliefs and the possibilities generated by these concepts add value to our lives in those areas, unlike beliefs about leprechauns. A leprechaun offers me nothing I find particularly useful to work with in relation to morality or social bonds or social interaction or in relation to anything of a more mystical nature such as transcendental experiences.

That’s well and good but it misses the point. We can all discuss what effect allegorical tales and their interpretations have on our lives, but some of us seek to impose a faux authority on them too by insisting that their deistic authors or their supernatural casts of characters were real too, and so the stories should be taken as authoritative, inerrant, binding etc.

If you mean an unexplainable, unknowable supernatural entity that has an influence on the way I live my life because of a revelation or message - yes I believe in that. I can understand why you don't - I didn't when I was an atheist. And then at some point I just changed my mind. It had nothing to do with anyone evangelising to me - if anything their ideas and beliefs increased my lack of belief.

I didn’t suggest that it did. I just find the leap from “I find these stories to be helpful/educative/whatever” straight to “therefore their author was divine” with no connecting reasoning or evidence to get you there to be odd. I also find it to be depressing given what so many (not you) then do with the unqualified authority they think this gives them in terms of how they treat other people. 

I think my "knowledge" or my "experience" of anything I perceive as supernatural-related is based on my mind's interpretation of inputs. One input for me was verses I read in the Quran, which had both allegorical and literal concepts. Another is my feelings and experience on reading the verses or practising something from Islam. These are inputs for my mind to interpret and construct perspectives about reality and morality that I use to make moral choices. I have the reality I can objectively demonstrate because it does not relate to abstract concepts, and then I have the reality I can't demonstrate objectively but believe in even though it relates to abstract concepts. My beliefs and moral choices will therefore often differ from others because of differences in how my mind interprets words and experiences and feelings compared to other people's interpretations.

This is the same trap in which AB is ensnared. You take your subjective experiences as being indicative of objective truths, notwithstanding the Grand Canyon-sized gap you'd need to bridge to get you from the former to the latter. To be fair to you, you (unlike AB) don’t presume to evangelise for the “if it’s true for me it’s true for you too” drivel he attempts, but I’m at a loss to know how you reconcile the problem even as a “true for me only” truth.         

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Gabriella,

I’m not sure whether I get much that’s meaningful from them or not – “be kind to others” for example I couldn’t disagree with (though some of us don’t need to be told to do that), but there’s some pretty despicable stuff in the various religious texts too whether allegorical or not. The problem I think comes from jumping from Aesop’s fable-type “here’s a story that may have some educative content for you” straight to “the constituents of this story are factually real and inerrant too so you must do as the story says or you’re a “sinner” and will be punished accordingly” and suchlike BS.

At an allegorical level, I agree. Not though when you want to arrogate to the stories claims of objective and inerrant truths. That’s not about aesthetics at all – it’s about (supposed) hard facts.

But the problem is that religions aren’t just talking about supernatural concepts at all. “Homosexuality is wrong” for example is anything but a supernatural concept – it’s a real injunction about a real phenomenon in the real world. The authority claimed for it (“god”) is (supposedly) supernatural all right, but not the practical, real world claims made in its name.

That’s the difference between “religious claims = allegories” and “religious claims = facts”, which is the point I was making.   

No, that’s not it at all. I have no problem believing in the possibility of anything – gods and leprechauns alike – because there’s no logical way to eliminate those possibilities (see negative proof fallacy, Russell’s teapot etc). My puzzlement is why so many religious people must also convince themselves not only of the possibility but also of the (supposed) fact of the objects of their beliefs.

I don’t need the hare and the tortoise and their race to have been real to get the point; (many) religious people on the other hand it seems do.   

That’s called begging the question. Before you get to “obtain knowledge of supernatural things” you need to establish that there are supernatural things at all, and for that matter you need to demonstrate even before that the there even is a “supernatural”. In other words, you’re reifying here.

Sure - by knowledge I meant the knowledge to be able to establish whether something supernatural exists or don't exist. There is no method to do that. The supernatural element is a core part of most religions. So in the realm of possibilities such as the supernatural, religions have various particular takes on the issues involved, and people may find something of value in one or all of them or they may not. That is the aesthetic part. There are very few hard facts in religion, none as far a s I know in relation to a supposed supernatural entity. There is belief and faith without objective evidence to make it fact.

Your example about homosexuality - yes it exists as do many other desires or actions or behaviours. People have opinions on abstract concepts as well as day to day actions and behaviours. Sometimes / many times (these opinions are expressed through people's various different interpretations of religions using religious language with reference to a supernatural entity. Sometimes these opinions are expressed without reference to a religion or the supernatural, since we can see that the people who do not follow a particular religion or believe in the supernatural, still have an opinion on the morality of behaviour and try to create a social norm around it using other social mechanisms - culture, politics, laws etc

[Maeght]

I looked for the most uncharitable dictionary definition of the term claims and came up with a statement made without having evidence or proof.
That suggests a distinction here between evidence and proof. I suppose they talking of proofs outside empirical or material evidence like mathematical proof or logical proof etc.

So I don't see we we should single out christianity here but apply it to agnosticism, materialism, empiricism, physicalism, atheism, and naturalism...which every fair minded person should do.

There is a difference between evidence and proof for sure.

Christianity isn't being singled out. Any thing which makes a claim needs evidence to support it for it to be accepted I would say. A lack of belief isn't a claim but a statement of belief. Any of those things listed which make a claim need evidence for that claim.

[Maeght]

As a Christian I am called to evangelise - to spread the Good News.
The ultimate aim of a discussion should be to home in on what is true.
As you rightly observe, I have already found God, and I hope I can help others find God too.

Unlikely I'd say.

[Maeght]

You can't use the fact that there are many other faiths as an argument against Christian faith - that is an Ap Pop fallacy.
The credible evidence for the Christian faith lies in the Gospels and in the lives of those who accepted Jesus as their Lord and saviour - from the Acts of the apostles, to the conversion and ministry of Paul, to the life stories of the many Christian saints, to the countless miracles performed in Jesus' name, to the simple truth that the son of a carpenter from Nazareth, who never wrote a word of His own, who spent most of His life in obscurity, who suffered and died a criminals death - became the most influential person who ever lived!  Why?  In one word - the Resurrection.

Belief in the resurrection.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

There is a difference between evidence and proof for sure.

Christianity isn't being singled out. Any thing which makes a claim needs evidence to support it for it to be accepted I would say. A lack of belief isn't a claim but a statement of belief. Any of those things listed which make a claim need evidence for that claim.

Ah, your doing it again...
You mean evidence and/or proof.