"...As we use our intellect to gain new knowledge about Creation, we come to see even more profoundly the depth and breadth of its mysteries. We explore unknown regions beneath the seas – and in outer space. We reach back over hundreds of millions of years in time. Extra-ordinary fossilised geological specimens seize our imagination – palm leaves, amethyst flowers, hedgehog quartz, sea lilies, chrysanthemum and a rich panoply of shells. Indeed, these wonders are found beneath the very soil on which we tread – in every corner of the world – and they connect us with far distant epochs and environments.And the more we discover, the more we know, the more we penetrate just below the surface of our normal lives – the more our imagination staggers. Just think for example what might lie below the surfaces of celestial bodies all across the far flung reaches of our universe. What we feel, even as we learn, is an ever-renewed sense of wonder, indeed, a powerful sense of awe – and of Divine inspiration"(Aga Khan IV, Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, Ottawa, Canada, December 6th 2008)For the full version of this quote see:
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/easy-nashs-blogpost-four-hundred-updated-with-quotes-from-the-opening-of-the-delegation-of-the-ismaili-imamat/
"The second great historical lesson to be learnt is that the Muslim world has always been wide open to every aspect of human existence. The sciences, society, art, the oceans, the environment and the cosmos have all contributed to the great moments in the history of Muslim civilisations. The Qur’an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God’s creation"(Closing Address by His Highness Aga Khan IV at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, Paris, France, October 17th 2007)
"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)
Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
In Charles Darwin's day (and for many years after), no fossils were known in the enormous, older rock formations below those of the Cambrian. This was an extremely unsettling fact for his theory of evolution because complex animals should have been preceded in the fossil record by simpler forms.
It took a very long time, and the searching of some of the most remote places on the planet — in the Australian Outback, the Namibian desert, the shores of Newfoundland and far northern Russia — but we now have fossil records from the time immediately preceding the Cambrian. The rocks reveal a world whose oceans were teeming with a variety of life forms, including primitive animals, which is certainly good news for Darwin.
Begin Slide Show:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/07/26/science/20100727creature.html
Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html
In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Monday, 2 August 2010
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
631)Teams of Physicists Closing in on the ‘God Particle’; Quotes From Blogpost Four Hundred.
"In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God"(Aga Khan IV, July 23rd 2008, Lisbon, Portugal)
"God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves. I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 1963, Mindanao, Phillipines)
"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
"The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being"(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)
"Every particle of the Creation has a share of the Command of God, because every creature shares a part of the Command of God through which it has come to be there and by virtue of which it remains in being and the light of the Command of God shines in it. Understand this!"(Abu Yakub Al Sijistani, 10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, d971, Kashf al-Mahjub("Unveiling of the Hidden"))
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
July 26, 2010
Teams of Physicists Closing in on the ‘God Particle’
By DENNIS OVERBYE
A thousand physicists working at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., reported in Paris on Monday that they had not found the “God particle,” yet. But they are beginning to figure out where it is not.
Its mass — in the units preferred by physicists — is not in the range between 158 billion and 175 billion electron volts, according to a talk by Ben Kilminster of Fermilab at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Paris.
And so the most intensive particle hunt in the history of physics goes on.
Over the last decade physicists working on two separate experiments at Fermilab have combed the debris from a thousand trillion (1 with 15 zeros) collisions of protons and anti-protons looking for signs of the Higgs boson, which is said to be responsible for imbuing some other elementary particles with mass. Rumors fanned by a blogger that the Higgs, dubbed the “God particle,” by former Fermilab director Leon Lederman in a book of the same name, had been detected reached all the way to Gawker last week and focused attention on the Paris conference, which also featured a speech by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.
The new results, combining the data from two separate Fermi experiments, DZero and C.D.F., narrow the range in which the Higgs, if it exists, must be hiding. Physicists had previously concluded that it must lie somewhere between 115 billion and 200 billion electron volts. By comparison a proton, the anchor of ordinary matter, weighs in at about a billion electron volts.
A new competitor is about to enter the hunt. Physicists from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, the most powerful accelerator in the world, announced that their machine, which started operating at half power in March, with 3.5 trillion electron volt protons, had rediscovered all of particle physics, most recently the top quark, and thus the table was set for it begin to look for new physics as well as the Higgs. The new collider has registered about 1.5 billion collisions, but with more energy at its disposal it hopes to catch up to Fermilab in a year or so.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/science/space/27higgs.html?_r=1&ref=science
Related:
The Large Hadron Collider Collection Of Posts On Easy Nash's Blog: A 10 Billion Euro Gizmo That Could Unlock The Secrets Of Genesis.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/05/620the-large-hadron-collider-collection.html
The 19 Grand Ideas Of Science: What Is The Universe Made Up Of And How Does It Operate? Quotes Of Aga Khan IV And Others.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/11/501-19-grand-ideas-of-science-what-is.html
New data suggest a lighter Higgs: Fermilab results heat up race for an elusive particle
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/61449/title/New_data_suggest_a_lighter_Higgs
Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html
In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
"God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves. I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 1963, Mindanao, Phillipines)
"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
"The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being"(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)
"Every particle of the Creation has a share of the Command of God, because every creature shares a part of the Command of God through which it has come to be there and by virtue of which it remains in being and the light of the Command of God shines in it. Understand this!"(Abu Yakub Al Sijistani, 10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, d971, Kashf al-Mahjub("Unveiling of the Hidden"))
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
July 26, 2010
Teams of Physicists Closing in on the ‘God Particle’
By DENNIS OVERBYE
A thousand physicists working at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., reported in Paris on Monday that they had not found the “God particle,” yet. But they are beginning to figure out where it is not.
Its mass — in the units preferred by physicists — is not in the range between 158 billion and 175 billion electron volts, according to a talk by Ben Kilminster of Fermilab at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Paris.
And so the most intensive particle hunt in the history of physics goes on.
Over the last decade physicists working on two separate experiments at Fermilab have combed the debris from a thousand trillion (1 with 15 zeros) collisions of protons and anti-protons looking for signs of the Higgs boson, which is said to be responsible for imbuing some other elementary particles with mass. Rumors fanned by a blogger that the Higgs, dubbed the “God particle,” by former Fermilab director Leon Lederman in a book of the same name, had been detected reached all the way to Gawker last week and focused attention on the Paris conference, which also featured a speech by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.
The new results, combining the data from two separate Fermi experiments, DZero and C.D.F., narrow the range in which the Higgs, if it exists, must be hiding. Physicists had previously concluded that it must lie somewhere between 115 billion and 200 billion electron volts. By comparison a proton, the anchor of ordinary matter, weighs in at about a billion electron volts.
A new competitor is about to enter the hunt. Physicists from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, the most powerful accelerator in the world, announced that their machine, which started operating at half power in March, with 3.5 trillion electron volt protons, had rediscovered all of particle physics, most recently the top quark, and thus the table was set for it begin to look for new physics as well as the Higgs. The new collider has registered about 1.5 billion collisions, but with more energy at its disposal it hopes to catch up to Fermilab in a year or so.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/science/space/27higgs.html?_r=1&ref=science
Related:
The Large Hadron Collider Collection Of Posts On Easy Nash's Blog: A 10 Billion Euro Gizmo That Could Unlock The Secrets Of Genesis.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/05/620the-large-hadron-collider-collection.html
The 19 Grand Ideas Of Science: What Is The Universe Made Up Of And How Does It Operate? Quotes Of Aga Khan IV And Others.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/11/501-19-grand-ideas-of-science-what-is.html
New data suggest a lighter Higgs: Fermilab results heat up race for an elusive particle
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/61449/title/New_data_suggest_a_lighter_Higgs
Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html
In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
630)"Plato, Platonism, and Neo-platonism" by Dr Nader El-Bizri of the Institute of Ismaili Studies; Quotes of Aga Khans IV and III and Others.
Quotes and Excerpts that include references to the Intellect and Soul of Neoplatonism:
"Time is eternity measured by the movements of the heavens,whose name is day, night, month, year. Eternity is Time not measured, having neither beginning nor end…The cause of Time is the Soul of the World….; it is not in time, for time is in the horizon of the soul as its instrument, as the duration of the living mortal who is “the shadow of the soul”, while eternity is the duration of the living immortal – that is to say of the Intelligence and of the Soul(Nasir Khusraw, 11th Fatimid Ismaili Cosmologist-Philosopher-Theologian-Poet)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/ismaili/
"The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry. The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)
"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
"The Intellect is the substance of (God's) unity and it is the one (al-wahid), both cause and caused, the act of origination (al-ibda) and the first originated being (al-mubda al-awwal); it is perfection and perfect, eternity and eternal, existence and that which exists all in a single substance"( Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, 11th centuryFatimid Ismaili cosmologist (Kitab al-Riyad, pp. 221-222))
"Tarkib' is composition as in the compounding of elements in the process of making more complex things, that is, of adding together two things to form a synthesis, a compound. Soul composes in the sense of 'tarkib'; it is the animating force that combines the physical elements of the natural universe into beings that move and act. Incorporating is an especially apt word in this instance. It means to turn something into a body, as in 'composing'. But it is actually the conversion of an intellectual object, a thought, into a physical thing. Soul acts by incorporating reason into physical objects, the natural matter of the universe and all the things composed of it"(Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani,10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, d971CE, from the book, 'Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary', by Paul Walker)
"God – may He be Glorified and Exalted – created Intellect ('aql) first among the spiritual entities; He drew it forth from the right of His Throne, making it proceed from His own Light. Then he commanded it to retreat, and it retreated, to advance, and it advanced; then God proclaimed: 'I created you glorious, and I gave you pre-eminence over all my creatures.'"(Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, Circa 765CE)
"The beginning of all things, their origin, their force and their prosperity, is that intellect ('aql), without which one can profit from nothing. God created it to adorn His creatures, and as a light for them. It is through intellect ('aql) that the servants recognize God is their Creator and that they themselves are created beings …It is thanks to intellect ('aql) that they can distinguish what is beautiful from what is ugly, that they realize that darkness is in ignorance and that light is in Knowledge"( Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, (al-Kulayni, Usul al-Kafi, Vol. 1, pp. 34), circa 765CE)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Plato, Platonism, and Neo-platonism
Dr Nader El-Bizri
This article was originally published in Medieval Islamic Civilization, An Encyclopaedia, Vol. II, p. 614-616, ed. Josef W. Meri, Routledge (New York-London, 2006).
Abstract
The school of philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century CE, based on the teachings of Plato and the commentators on his work, received a new intellectual impetus when its texts became available to scholars in the Islamic civilization through translations from Greek to Arabic, starting from the 9th century CE. Philosophers and thinkers in Islam assimilated this philosophical legacy, and innovatively expanded the theoretical and practical applications of its ideas, as well as brought new directions to its conceptual unfolding, which resulted in significant intellectual contributions, particularly in philosophy and ethics.
Download PDF version of article (32 KB)
Key words:
Neoplatonism, Syriac, Plotinus, Plato, Republic, Phaedo, Symposium, Aristotelian, Stoic, neo-Pythagorean, Enneads, Nous (intellect), methaphysics, Platonists, creatio ex nihilo, the World Soul, Laws, Sophist, Timaeus, history of ideas in Islam, al‑Madina al-Fadila (The Virtuous City), Corpus Platonicum, Tandhib al-akhlaq (The Cultivation of Morals), Ibn Miskawayh, Liber de Causis (Kitab al-Khayr al-Mahd), al-Kindi, Ikhwan al-Safa’, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, al-Sijistani, al-Kirmani, Suhrawardi, Ibn ‘Arabi, Mulla Sadra.
Plato, Platonism and Neo-platonism
Neoplatonism was a philosophical movement that primarily belonged to the Hellenist Alexandrian and Syriac schools of thought. Its founder, Plotinus (ca. 205-270 CE), an Egyptian of Greek culture, was profoundly influenced by Plato’s Republic, Phaedo, and Symposium, as well as being inspired by Aristotelian, Stoic, and neo-Pythagorean doctrines. Plotinus’ own monumental corpus, the Enneads, was partly drafted in response to the objections raised by Aristotle against Plato’s theory of ideas. Therein, Plotinus argued that the Platonic forms subsist in what Aristotle referred to as Nous (intellect). Giving a metaphysical primacy to abstract ideas, the realm of the intelligible was construed as being the ground of the ultimate reality, which was radically independent from sensible beings. This ontology led to a belief in the existence of absolute values rooted in eternity. Further elaborations of Plotinus’s teachings were undertaken by his disciple, Porphyry of Tyre (ca. 232-305 CE), and were supplemented by the work of the latter’s pupil, the Syrian Iamblichus (ca. 250-330 CE). However, Proclus (ca. 411-485 CE) introduced the most rigorous systematization of this tradition.
The impetus of Neoplatonism in philosophy confronted many challenges following the closing of the Athenian Academy (ca. 526 CE) by the Roman Emperor Justinian. The momentum of this tradition was renewed with the philosophers of the medieval Muslim civilization who imbued it with monotheistic directives. Following Socrates, in a critique of the Sophists, Platonists believed that knowledge cannot be derived from appearances alone, and that it can only be properly attained through universal ideas. Heeding the meditations of Parmenides, they held that the realm of being was unchanging, eternal, and indestructible; while following Heraclitus, they took the sensible realm as being subject to a constant flux of transformational becoming. Establishing a distinction between truth and belief, they asserted that the intelligible was apprehended by reason and the sensible by mere opinion. With this Platonist heritage, the ethical code of goodness became a cosmological principle.
Eventually, Neo-Platonists held that The One, as the indeterminate perfection of absolute unity, simplicity, and goodness, imparts existence from itself due to its superabundance. This event was grasped as being a process of emanation that accentuated the primacy of Divine transcendence over creation and represented an alternate explication of generation that challenged the creatio ex nihilo doctrine. Endowed with vision, the One, as the First undiminished Source of existence, imparts Nous, the immanent changeless Intellect, as its own Image. From this effused Nous issues forth the World Soul, which acts as a transition between the realm of ideas and that of the senses. Refracting itself in materiality, the Soul generates all sensible composite beings, while matter represents the last station in the hierarchy of existence as the unreal substratum of the phenomenal universe. Emanation, as a processional descent, was itself to be followed by an ascent that expressed the longing of the rational soul to return to its Source and a yearning to inhabit the realm of ideas. This reversible movement acted as the basis of the moral code of the Neoplatonist system, which advocated a dualist separation of mind and body, as well as affirmed the immortality of the soul.
Philosophers in medieval Islam came to know Plato through the Arabic translations of his Laws, Sophist, Timaeus, and Republic. His influence on the history of ideas in Islam is most felt in the domains of ethics and political philosophy, whereby his views offered possibilities for reconciling pagan philosophy with monotheistic religion in the quest for truth and the unveiling of the ultimate principles of reality. His Republic and Laws presented an appealing legislative model that inspired political thought in Islam, particularly the line in thinking that is attested in al-Farabi’s (ca. 870-950 CE) treatise al‑Madina al-Fadila (The Virtuous City), which gave prominence to the role played by philosophy in setting the legal arrangements and mores of the ideal Islamic polity. The Corpus Platonicum also impressed humanists like Ibn Miskawayh (ca. 940-1030 CE), who, in his Tahdhib al-akhlaq (The Cultivation of Morals) espoused the Platonic tripartite conception of the soul, along with its ethical-political ramifications. As for the Neoplatonist doctrines, these found their way into the intellectual history of Islam through Plato’s dialogues, as well as being channeled via the tracts known as Aristotle’s Theology and Liber de Causis (Kitab al-Khayr al-Mahd). Although both texts were erroneously attributed to Aristotle, the former reproduced fragments from Plotinus’s Enneads, and the latter rested on Proclus’ Elements of Theology. This misguiding textual transmission led to imbuing Aristotelianism with Neoplatonist leitmotifs, which impacted the thinking of authorities such as al-Kindi (d. ca. 873 CE), Ikhwan al-Safa’ (tenth century CE), al-Farabi (d. ca. 950 CE), and Ibn Sina (d. 1037 CE), who in their turn influenced the onto-theological systems of al-Sijistani (d. 971 CE), al-Kirmani (d. 1020 CE), Suhrawardi (d. 1191 CE), Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240 CE), and Mulla Sadra (d. 1640 CE).
Primary Sources
al-Farabi (Alfarabius). De Platonis Philosophia. Edited by Franz Rosenthal and Richard Walzer. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1943.
Galenus, Claudius. Compendium Timaei Platonis. Edited by Paul Krauss and Richard Walzer. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1951.
Plato. Plato Arabus. Edited by Paul Krauss and Richard Walzer. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1943.
Further Reading
Krauss, Paul. “Plotin chez les arabes.” Bulletin de 1’Institut d’Égypte 23 (1941): 236-295.
Netton, Ian Richard. Muslim Neoplatonists: An Introduction to the Thought of the Brethren of Purity. London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1982.
Rosenthal, Franz. “On the Knowledge of Plato’s Philosophy in the Islamic World.” Islamic Culture 14 (1940): 398- 402.
Walzer, Richard. “Aflatun.” In The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Vol I. Leiden: Brill, 1960.
— — Greek into Arabic: Essays in Islamic Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962.
http://iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=106602&l=en
Related:
Plato, Platonism, and Neo-platonism – Dr Nader El-Bizri Institute of Ismaili Studies
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/plato-platonism-and-neo-platonism-dr-nader-el-bizri-institute-of-ismaili-studies/
A 600-Post Blog Summarized: The Story Of My Blog Told Through Collections Of Posts To Date; Spring And Summer Reading For Those Who Are Interested
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/04/599a-600-post-blog-summarized-story-of.html
Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html
In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
"Time is eternity measured by the movements of the heavens,whose name is day, night, month, year. Eternity is Time not measured, having neither beginning nor end…The cause of Time is the Soul of the World….; it is not in time, for time is in the horizon of the soul as its instrument, as the duration of the living mortal who is “the shadow of the soul”, while eternity is the duration of the living immortal – that is to say of the Intelligence and of the Soul(Nasir Khusraw, 11th Fatimid Ismaili Cosmologist-Philosopher-Theologian-Poet)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/ismaili/
"The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry. The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)
"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
"The Intellect is the substance of (God's) unity and it is the one (al-wahid), both cause and caused, the act of origination (al-ibda) and the first originated being (al-mubda al-awwal); it is perfection and perfect, eternity and eternal, existence and that which exists all in a single substance"( Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, 11th centuryFatimid Ismaili cosmologist (Kitab al-Riyad, pp. 221-222))
"Tarkib' is composition as in the compounding of elements in the process of making more complex things, that is, of adding together two things to form a synthesis, a compound. Soul composes in the sense of 'tarkib'; it is the animating force that combines the physical elements of the natural universe into beings that move and act. Incorporating is an especially apt word in this instance. It means to turn something into a body, as in 'composing'. But it is actually the conversion of an intellectual object, a thought, into a physical thing. Soul acts by incorporating reason into physical objects, the natural matter of the universe and all the things composed of it"(Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani,10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, d971CE, from the book, 'Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary', by Paul Walker)
"God – may He be Glorified and Exalted – created Intellect ('aql) first among the spiritual entities; He drew it forth from the right of His Throne, making it proceed from His own Light. Then he commanded it to retreat, and it retreated, to advance, and it advanced; then God proclaimed: 'I created you glorious, and I gave you pre-eminence over all my creatures.'"(Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, Circa 765CE)
"The beginning of all things, their origin, their force and their prosperity, is that intellect ('aql), without which one can profit from nothing. God created it to adorn His creatures, and as a light for them. It is through intellect ('aql) that the servants recognize God is their Creator and that they themselves are created beings …It is thanks to intellect ('aql) that they can distinguish what is beautiful from what is ugly, that they realize that darkness is in ignorance and that light is in Knowledge"( Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, (al-Kulayni, Usul al-Kafi, Vol. 1, pp. 34), circa 765CE)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Plato, Platonism, and Neo-platonism
Dr Nader El-Bizri
This article was originally published in Medieval Islamic Civilization, An Encyclopaedia, Vol. II, p. 614-616, ed. Josef W. Meri, Routledge (New York-London, 2006).
Abstract
The school of philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century CE, based on the teachings of Plato and the commentators on his work, received a new intellectual impetus when its texts became available to scholars in the Islamic civilization through translations from Greek to Arabic, starting from the 9th century CE. Philosophers and thinkers in Islam assimilated this philosophical legacy, and innovatively expanded the theoretical and practical applications of its ideas, as well as brought new directions to its conceptual unfolding, which resulted in significant intellectual contributions, particularly in philosophy and ethics.
Download PDF version of article (32 KB)
Key words:
Neoplatonism, Syriac, Plotinus, Plato, Republic, Phaedo, Symposium, Aristotelian, Stoic, neo-Pythagorean, Enneads, Nous (intellect), methaphysics, Platonists, creatio ex nihilo, the World Soul, Laws, Sophist, Timaeus, history of ideas in Islam, al‑Madina al-Fadila (The Virtuous City), Corpus Platonicum, Tandhib al-akhlaq (The Cultivation of Morals), Ibn Miskawayh, Liber de Causis (Kitab al-Khayr al-Mahd), al-Kindi, Ikhwan al-Safa’, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, al-Sijistani, al-Kirmani, Suhrawardi, Ibn ‘Arabi, Mulla Sadra.
Plato, Platonism and Neo-platonism
Neoplatonism was a philosophical movement that primarily belonged to the Hellenist Alexandrian and Syriac schools of thought. Its founder, Plotinus (ca. 205-270 CE), an Egyptian of Greek culture, was profoundly influenced by Plato’s Republic, Phaedo, and Symposium, as well as being inspired by Aristotelian, Stoic, and neo-Pythagorean doctrines. Plotinus’ own monumental corpus, the Enneads, was partly drafted in response to the objections raised by Aristotle against Plato’s theory of ideas. Therein, Plotinus argued that the Platonic forms subsist in what Aristotle referred to as Nous (intellect). Giving a metaphysical primacy to abstract ideas, the realm of the intelligible was construed as being the ground of the ultimate reality, which was radically independent from sensible beings. This ontology led to a belief in the existence of absolute values rooted in eternity. Further elaborations of Plotinus’s teachings were undertaken by his disciple, Porphyry of Tyre (ca. 232-305 CE), and were supplemented by the work of the latter’s pupil, the Syrian Iamblichus (ca. 250-330 CE). However, Proclus (ca. 411-485 CE) introduced the most rigorous systematization of this tradition.
The impetus of Neoplatonism in philosophy confronted many challenges following the closing of the Athenian Academy (ca. 526 CE) by the Roman Emperor Justinian. The momentum of this tradition was renewed with the philosophers of the medieval Muslim civilization who imbued it with monotheistic directives. Following Socrates, in a critique of the Sophists, Platonists believed that knowledge cannot be derived from appearances alone, and that it can only be properly attained through universal ideas. Heeding the meditations of Parmenides, they held that the realm of being was unchanging, eternal, and indestructible; while following Heraclitus, they took the sensible realm as being subject to a constant flux of transformational becoming. Establishing a distinction between truth and belief, they asserted that the intelligible was apprehended by reason and the sensible by mere opinion. With this Platonist heritage, the ethical code of goodness became a cosmological principle.
Eventually, Neo-Platonists held that The One, as the indeterminate perfection of absolute unity, simplicity, and goodness, imparts existence from itself due to its superabundance. This event was grasped as being a process of emanation that accentuated the primacy of Divine transcendence over creation and represented an alternate explication of generation that challenged the creatio ex nihilo doctrine. Endowed with vision, the One, as the First undiminished Source of existence, imparts Nous, the immanent changeless Intellect, as its own Image. From this effused Nous issues forth the World Soul, which acts as a transition between the realm of ideas and that of the senses. Refracting itself in materiality, the Soul generates all sensible composite beings, while matter represents the last station in the hierarchy of existence as the unreal substratum of the phenomenal universe. Emanation, as a processional descent, was itself to be followed by an ascent that expressed the longing of the rational soul to return to its Source and a yearning to inhabit the realm of ideas. This reversible movement acted as the basis of the moral code of the Neoplatonist system, which advocated a dualist separation of mind and body, as well as affirmed the immortality of the soul.
Philosophers in medieval Islam came to know Plato through the Arabic translations of his Laws, Sophist, Timaeus, and Republic. His influence on the history of ideas in Islam is most felt in the domains of ethics and political philosophy, whereby his views offered possibilities for reconciling pagan philosophy with monotheistic religion in the quest for truth and the unveiling of the ultimate principles of reality. His Republic and Laws presented an appealing legislative model that inspired political thought in Islam, particularly the line in thinking that is attested in al-Farabi’s (ca. 870-950 CE) treatise al‑Madina al-Fadila (The Virtuous City), which gave prominence to the role played by philosophy in setting the legal arrangements and mores of the ideal Islamic polity. The Corpus Platonicum also impressed humanists like Ibn Miskawayh (ca. 940-1030 CE), who, in his Tahdhib al-akhlaq (The Cultivation of Morals) espoused the Platonic tripartite conception of the soul, along with its ethical-political ramifications. As for the Neoplatonist doctrines, these found their way into the intellectual history of Islam through Plato’s dialogues, as well as being channeled via the tracts known as Aristotle’s Theology and Liber de Causis (Kitab al-Khayr al-Mahd). Although both texts were erroneously attributed to Aristotle, the former reproduced fragments from Plotinus’s Enneads, and the latter rested on Proclus’ Elements of Theology. This misguiding textual transmission led to imbuing Aristotelianism with Neoplatonist leitmotifs, which impacted the thinking of authorities such as al-Kindi (d. ca. 873 CE), Ikhwan al-Safa’ (tenth century CE), al-Farabi (d. ca. 950 CE), and Ibn Sina (d. 1037 CE), who in their turn influenced the onto-theological systems of al-Sijistani (d. 971 CE), al-Kirmani (d. 1020 CE), Suhrawardi (d. 1191 CE), Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240 CE), and Mulla Sadra (d. 1640 CE).
Primary Sources
al-Farabi (Alfarabius). De Platonis Philosophia. Edited by Franz Rosenthal and Richard Walzer. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1943.
Galenus, Claudius. Compendium Timaei Platonis. Edited by Paul Krauss and Richard Walzer. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1951.
Plato. Plato Arabus. Edited by Paul Krauss and Richard Walzer. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1943.
Further Reading
Krauss, Paul. “Plotin chez les arabes.” Bulletin de 1’Institut d’Égypte 23 (1941): 236-295.
Netton, Ian Richard. Muslim Neoplatonists: An Introduction to the Thought of the Brethren of Purity. London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1982.
Rosenthal, Franz. “On the Knowledge of Plato’s Philosophy in the Islamic World.” Islamic Culture 14 (1940): 398- 402.
Walzer, Richard. “Aflatun.” In The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Vol I. Leiden: Brill, 1960.
— — Greek into Arabic: Essays in Islamic Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962.
http://iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=106602&l=en
Related:
Plato, Platonism, and Neo-platonism – Dr Nader El-Bizri Institute of Ismaili Studies
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/plato-platonism-and-neo-platonism-dr-nader-el-bizri-institute-of-ismaili-studies/
A 600-Post Blog Summarized: The Story Of My Blog Told Through Collections Of Posts To Date; Spring And Summer Reading For Those Who Are Interested
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/04/599a-600-post-blog-summarized-story-of.html
Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html
In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
629)How Canada's Conservatives Won The Immigrant Vote; Quotes of Hon Jason Kenney, Canadian Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism
Quote:
"New Canadians are naturally conservative in the way they live their lives: they are entrepreneurial; they have a remarkable work ethic; they are an aspirational class; they want stability; they are intolerant of crime and disorder; they have a profound devotion to family and tradition, including institutions of faith,” said Minister Kenney.
Tim Mak
June 7th, 2010
As center-right parties grapple with the problem of how to appeal to ethnic minorities without compromising their principles, they can look to the Canadian Conservative Party for a solution.
Without patronage, Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney has executed a minority outreach plan that, for the first time, has started a genuine conversation with immigrant voters – a conversation that has increasingly ended with these voters considering a Conservative vote for the first time.
* * *
Jason Kenney, Canada’s Minister of Multiculturalism, is on the line. He’s discussing how his ethnic outreach program has been more effective in conservative western Canada than in Liberal-heavy central Canada. There’s a pause as he reaches for an example.
“You’re from B.C., right?” he says. “Right,” I reply, slightly taken aback. He goes on to explain the characteristics of a riding in British Columbia in order to contrast it with a riding in suburban Ontario.
Kenney and I had only met on one previous social occasion, and I doubted mentioning my hometown then. But he did his homework before our interview.
To previously hostile ethnic groups, Kenney has reached out in ways that showed he understood their details. Through symbolic gestures, he could assuage antagonism – or at least get their attention.
And it has worked. In 2006, a visible minority voter was three times more likely to vote Liberal than to vote Conservative. By the 2008 federal election, ethnic minorities were about as likely to vote Conservative as they were to vote Liberal.
* * *
Through much of the 2000s, Canadian Conservatives wracked their heads, trying to engineer a constructive ethnic outreach program. They were mired in decades-old muck: minority voters tended to see them as racists, as xenophobes, and as anti-immigrant. On the other hand, the Liberal Party dominated this expanding segment of the Canadian electorate. In 2000, 70% of all visible minorities voted for the Liberal Party.
Patrick Muttart, the Prime Minister’s former Deputy Chief of Staff and now the Managing Director of Mercury, a US-based public strategy firm, explained that the Conservatives were desperate to build a new ethnic outreach strategy. Muttart looked at the record of the Conservatives who governed Canada between 1984 and 1993, and saw the problem grimly:
Although [the Mulroney Conservatives] were in power for almost nine years, they didn’t fundamentally change the way government related to ethnic communities. They basically replicated the old Liberal approach… after nine years… new Canadians were voting for Liberals in just as large numbers as they were at the beginning.
Muttart explains that the lack of Conservative appeal amongst new Canadians was untenable over the long term:
They were growing as a share of the Canadian population faster than we were growing our support… this was a structural political problem here that, unless we addressed it, would make us uncompetitive over the long term.
Desperate for answers, the Conservative Party convened a series of focus groups, run in the language of each of the targeted minorities – people were more comfortable talking about politics in their native language – and the results were shocking.
It turned out that “new Canadians are naturally conservative in the way they live their lives: they are entrepreneurial; they have a remarkable work ethic; they are… [an] aspirational class; they want stability; they are intolerant of crime and disorder; they have a profound devotion to family and tradition, including institutions of faith,” said Minister Kenney. “That whole spectrum of values is conservative – but they didn’t vote for us.”
The first efforts that the Conservatives made to engage with ethnic communities were remarkably humble, even comically so.
In the spring of 2006, Kenney was fresh off his appointment as a Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister with the portfolio of multiculturalism. Party strategists identified the Korean community on the west coast as one of the groups that were accessible to the Conservative Party – but no one knew any Koreans to get in touch with.
Minister Kenney resorted to calling up a friend of his, who happened to be Chinese. His friend got him in touch with a Korean businessman. As Kenney tells it, he called the businessman and started: “Hi, we’re the Government of Canada…”
* * *
The Liberal ethnic outreach model had worked swimmingly for the center-left through the 1990s, and helped to ensure Liberal rule for thirteen straight years. Their strategy focused on engagement with the leaders of ethnic groups, often distributing grants for ethnic-specific projects.
The Conservative Party went another way. “Instead of engaging on a patronage basis, [Kenney] appealed to the conservative instincts within some of these groups, often dealing with niche issues within different groups,” said Ezra Levant, a Canadian conservative commentator.
After the Conservative Party’s 2006 federal election victory, the Conservative Party went community by community to identify symbolic issues that were important to them, and then tried to deliver on those issues.
“They weren’t hearing our message on taxes, on crime, [or] on opportunity because there was so much static. We had to break through the clutter… That’s where we came out with a series of issues for each community… and by focusing on those issues… we were able to get them to tune in,” explained Minister Kenney.
For example, the Conservatives reached out to Canada’s Polish community by lifting visa requirements to visit Canada; in a nod to former Vietnamese refugees, they condemned the socialist government in Vietnam; the process of visa applications for Croatians was also simplified.
Most people outside of these communities would not notice these seemingly small gestures. But for each beneficiary group, the symbolic gestures gave them a reason to consider the Conservative Party’s platform.
Conservative strategists recognized that this strategy was merely an excuse to start a conversation. Patrick Muttart puts it this way:
We used a number of emotional and symbolic issues that were consistent with the conservative approach – but we always understood that these were door-openers. You can’t sustain your value proposition to these sorts of voters only by focusing on these peripheral, emotional, symbolic issues.
The Conservatives also refused to meet with groups they deemed were radicalized. “They… focused on bolstering moderates within certain communities… under the conservatives, [extremist] groups have been banned, and those who have not been banned have been marginalized,” says Ezra Levant. “For example, the Canadian-Islamic Congress, which had a big delegation at the Liberal Party convention in 2006 and [is led by someone] who went on TV and said any Israeli over 18 is a legitimate target for a terrorist attack – the federal government will not meet with them.”
To be sure, grants for immigrant groups continued to be doled out. But the focus had changed: grants would be strictly limited to projects that promoted integration, encouraged cooperation between different ethnic communities, and helped combat radicalization.
“We’re not in the business of picking and choosing winners and losers among ethnic communities through some sort of sordid Tammany Hall. That’s the Liberal way, it’s not the Conservative way,” said Alykhan Velshi, Jason Kenney’s Communications Director.
Of course, the Conservatives are in the business of politics, and as such, there are winners and losers. Conservatives targeted ethnic communities that would reap the most political benefit. This means that Hispanic, Italian and Greek voters, who either have voting habits that are ossified in favor of the Liberals or live outside of strategic ridings, were largely left out of Conservative strategies.
* * *
After Jason Kenney made his first overtures toward the Korean community, a group of six Korean community leaders assembled around a table for an initial consultation. Those who assembled had never voted Conservative, and in all likeliness viewed that possibility as mildly repulsive.
“They said that they had never met a Conservative… all they had ever heard was that we were racist and anti-immigrant, and could we respond?” recalls Kenney. He tried his best to explain the party platform under these circumstances, and turned to a woman sitting next to him. “Who knows, maybe you would be the first Korean-Canadian in the Parliament of Canada,” he said.
“Well, I’ve always voted NDP [Canada’s democratic socialist party],” came the reply. “I don’t really know why, but when we first moved to Burnaby, there was an NDP MP that came to our church, and always showed up at our events, and got to know everyone in our community.”
Kenney stayed in contact with the young Korean woman, and scored a coup by getting her to run in a district near Vancouver just eight months later. Though she lost, she managed to garner a swing of more than 6%, and was later appointed to Canada’s upper house as Senator Yonah Martin, the first person of Korean descent to hold federal office in the country.
The empirical results of Kenney’s outreach across Canada have been even more astounding. “We never expected to see electoral realignment in this cohort of twenty-five percent of Canadians overnight,” said Kenney. The Minister estimates that there are twenty-five to forty “ridings that have substantial numbers of new Canadians… [which] are now competitive but [were] not three elections ago.”
* * *
But what qualifies Jason Kenney to be the leader of the Conservative Party’s outreach to visible minorities? Kenney seemed taken aback by the question when I posed it. “Well, nothing qualifies me for the job,” he said.
And I suppose that’s the point. “The thing with Kenney is, I mean, his name is Jason Thomas Kenney,” chuckled Patrick Muttart. “He’s Irish Catholic; he’s Caucasian; he doesn’t fit the profile of a typical ethnic outreach guy.”
“There’s an advantage to having a guy who doesn’t come from one of the communities. I’m therefore not perceived as a token, I don’t walk into any community with baggage,” says Kenney. “The fact that I’m not a ‘token’ … and the fact that I was seen as an influential mainstream member of the party, said to people that they were being treated equally.”
“He is culturally sophisticated and culturally intelligent,” said Muttart. “When he goes to an ethnic event, it’s not, ‘oh, the food’s too spicy,’ or ‘oh, I don’t want to eat that,’ – he doesn’t look awkward.”
Kenney later added that perhaps, on second thought, he did have a qualification for the job. “Maybe I have a hard work-ethic, and it is hard work,” he mused. His colleagues, on the other hand, would have omitted the ‘maybe’.
“He is renowned. It’s been said that it’s hard to find anyone in Canada who doesn’t know him, because of his incredible industriousness,” said John Weston, an MP from a riding in suburban Vancouver.
“I’ve worked for several MPs, and I’ve never seen a schedule like this,” said his scheduler, Agnes Kim. “Even on his weekends… he often has days where he’s working from 9AM until 10PM at night because he has dinner events at night.”
Over the course of a typical two days in his schedule, Kim tells me that Kenney has events scheduled with Taiwanese, Chinese, Indian, Coptic, Portuguese, Turkish, Filipino, Mexican, and Polish groups. His schedule is so frenetic, in fact, that Kenney only gets a free weekend once every two months.
* * *
In executing this new minority outreach strategy, Kenney and the Conservative Party have been able to reach communities who would have never been accessible – and this outreach model manages to stay true to basic conservative principles.
The cost of the new conservative strategy can be measured in the cost of sending an MP to attend a Diwali celebration, or having the Minister present at a Portuguese Independence Day celebration – this in stark contrast to the free-wheeling patronage that was doled out under Liberal rule.
The Conservative Party has spent tens of millions targeting voters in Quebec, and millions more to establish Arctic sovereignty bona fides. All of this cash led to a net loss of one seat in Quebec and one seat gained in Nunavut during the 2008 federal election. With their ethnic outreach, they’ve managed far greater success, with a much lower profile and a lot less taxpayer money.
With the achievements of Kenney’s new model, one is left to wonder whether Tammany Hall style politics is still effective in the 21st century. Kory Teneycke, the former Communications Director for the Prime Minister, says the effectiveness of ethnic-based grants is decreasing:
If it’s not dead, it’s certainly dying… the thought that there is a paternalistic, ethnic hierarchy is less true today than it was last year. You have a greater range of media options, people are getting their information from a lot of different places, [and] people’s kids are integrating in the public school system… I don’t think that people are going to a local boss and getting a ballot that’s filled out for them.
Patrick Muttart, on the other hand, believes that the Tammany Hall model still works – but that Conservatives are just terrible at implementing it:
I think [Tammany Hall] still works for the left… [but] we are not particularly authentic in executing Tammany Hall style politics… when you’re offended by big government, being in charge of doling out big government doesn’t really work very well.
The growing accomplishments of the Conservative Party’s strategy offers hope for right-of-center parties around the world. Ethnic outreach can, in fact, be done in a conservative way by enacting low-cost symbolic measures to get the attention of minority groups.
But tokenism is not a long term strategy – eventually one has to sell immigrant groups on the party’s broader platform. Over the last few years, Jason Kenney has made stunning progress in appealing to minority groups – progress that will be critical to determining when the Conservatives stay in power, or are to be defeated. If Kenney has anything to do with it, one can count on the Conservatives being around a while longer.
http://www.frumforum.com/how-canadas-conservatives-won-the-immigrant-vote
Quotes Of Canadian Minister Of Citizenship, Immigration And Multiculturalism Hon. Jason Kenney(2009):
1)When you become a citizen, you're not just getting a travel document into Hotel Canada.
2)I think it's scandalous that someone could become a Canadian not knowing what the poppy represents, or never having heard of Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Dieppe or Juno Beach.
3)We mention freedom of conscience and freedom of religion as important rights but we also make it very clear that our laws prohibit barbaric cultural practices, they will not be tolerated, whether or not someone claims that such practices are protected by reference to religion.
4)I think we need to reclaim a deeper sense of citizenship, a sense of shared obligations to one another, to our past, as well as to the future, a kind of civic nationalism where people understand the institutions, values and symbols that are rooted in our history.
"New Canadians are naturally conservative in the way they live their lives: they are entrepreneurial; they have a remarkable work ethic; they are an aspirational class; they want stability; they are intolerant of crime and disorder; they have a profound devotion to family and tradition, including institutions of faith,” said Minister Kenney.
Tim Mak
June 7th, 2010
As center-right parties grapple with the problem of how to appeal to ethnic minorities without compromising their principles, they can look to the Canadian Conservative Party for a solution.
Without patronage, Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney has executed a minority outreach plan that, for the first time, has started a genuine conversation with immigrant voters – a conversation that has increasingly ended with these voters considering a Conservative vote for the first time.
* * *
Jason Kenney, Canada’s Minister of Multiculturalism, is on the line. He’s discussing how his ethnic outreach program has been more effective in conservative western Canada than in Liberal-heavy central Canada. There’s a pause as he reaches for an example.
“You’re from B.C., right?” he says. “Right,” I reply, slightly taken aback. He goes on to explain the characteristics of a riding in British Columbia in order to contrast it with a riding in suburban Ontario.
Kenney and I had only met on one previous social occasion, and I doubted mentioning my hometown then. But he did his homework before our interview.
To previously hostile ethnic groups, Kenney has reached out in ways that showed he understood their details. Through symbolic gestures, he could assuage antagonism – or at least get their attention.
And it has worked. In 2006, a visible minority voter was three times more likely to vote Liberal than to vote Conservative. By the 2008 federal election, ethnic minorities were about as likely to vote Conservative as they were to vote Liberal.
* * *
Through much of the 2000s, Canadian Conservatives wracked their heads, trying to engineer a constructive ethnic outreach program. They were mired in decades-old muck: minority voters tended to see them as racists, as xenophobes, and as anti-immigrant. On the other hand, the Liberal Party dominated this expanding segment of the Canadian electorate. In 2000, 70% of all visible minorities voted for the Liberal Party.
Patrick Muttart, the Prime Minister’s former Deputy Chief of Staff and now the Managing Director of Mercury, a US-based public strategy firm, explained that the Conservatives were desperate to build a new ethnic outreach strategy. Muttart looked at the record of the Conservatives who governed Canada between 1984 and 1993, and saw the problem grimly:
Although [the Mulroney Conservatives] were in power for almost nine years, they didn’t fundamentally change the way government related to ethnic communities. They basically replicated the old Liberal approach… after nine years… new Canadians were voting for Liberals in just as large numbers as they were at the beginning.
Muttart explains that the lack of Conservative appeal amongst new Canadians was untenable over the long term:
They were growing as a share of the Canadian population faster than we were growing our support… this was a structural political problem here that, unless we addressed it, would make us uncompetitive over the long term.
Desperate for answers, the Conservative Party convened a series of focus groups, run in the language of each of the targeted minorities – people were more comfortable talking about politics in their native language – and the results were shocking.
It turned out that “new Canadians are naturally conservative in the way they live their lives: they are entrepreneurial; they have a remarkable work ethic; they are… [an] aspirational class; they want stability; they are intolerant of crime and disorder; they have a profound devotion to family and tradition, including institutions of faith,” said Minister Kenney. “That whole spectrum of values is conservative – but they didn’t vote for us.”
The first efforts that the Conservatives made to engage with ethnic communities were remarkably humble, even comically so.
In the spring of 2006, Kenney was fresh off his appointment as a Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister with the portfolio of multiculturalism. Party strategists identified the Korean community on the west coast as one of the groups that were accessible to the Conservative Party – but no one knew any Koreans to get in touch with.
Minister Kenney resorted to calling up a friend of his, who happened to be Chinese. His friend got him in touch with a Korean businessman. As Kenney tells it, he called the businessman and started: “Hi, we’re the Government of Canada…”
* * *
The Liberal ethnic outreach model had worked swimmingly for the center-left through the 1990s, and helped to ensure Liberal rule for thirteen straight years. Their strategy focused on engagement with the leaders of ethnic groups, often distributing grants for ethnic-specific projects.
The Conservative Party went another way. “Instead of engaging on a patronage basis, [Kenney] appealed to the conservative instincts within some of these groups, often dealing with niche issues within different groups,” said Ezra Levant, a Canadian conservative commentator.
After the Conservative Party’s 2006 federal election victory, the Conservative Party went community by community to identify symbolic issues that were important to them, and then tried to deliver on those issues.
“They weren’t hearing our message on taxes, on crime, [or] on opportunity because there was so much static. We had to break through the clutter… That’s where we came out with a series of issues for each community… and by focusing on those issues… we were able to get them to tune in,” explained Minister Kenney.
For example, the Conservatives reached out to Canada’s Polish community by lifting visa requirements to visit Canada; in a nod to former Vietnamese refugees, they condemned the socialist government in Vietnam; the process of visa applications for Croatians was also simplified.
Most people outside of these communities would not notice these seemingly small gestures. But for each beneficiary group, the symbolic gestures gave them a reason to consider the Conservative Party’s platform.
Conservative strategists recognized that this strategy was merely an excuse to start a conversation. Patrick Muttart puts it this way:
We used a number of emotional and symbolic issues that were consistent with the conservative approach – but we always understood that these were door-openers. You can’t sustain your value proposition to these sorts of voters only by focusing on these peripheral, emotional, symbolic issues.
The Conservatives also refused to meet with groups they deemed were radicalized. “They… focused on bolstering moderates within certain communities… under the conservatives, [extremist] groups have been banned, and those who have not been banned have been marginalized,” says Ezra Levant. “For example, the Canadian-Islamic Congress, which had a big delegation at the Liberal Party convention in 2006 and [is led by someone] who went on TV and said any Israeli over 18 is a legitimate target for a terrorist attack – the federal government will not meet with them.”
To be sure, grants for immigrant groups continued to be doled out. But the focus had changed: grants would be strictly limited to projects that promoted integration, encouraged cooperation between different ethnic communities, and helped combat radicalization.
“We’re not in the business of picking and choosing winners and losers among ethnic communities through some sort of sordid Tammany Hall. That’s the Liberal way, it’s not the Conservative way,” said Alykhan Velshi, Jason Kenney’s Communications Director.
Of course, the Conservatives are in the business of politics, and as such, there are winners and losers. Conservatives targeted ethnic communities that would reap the most political benefit. This means that Hispanic, Italian and Greek voters, who either have voting habits that are ossified in favor of the Liberals or live outside of strategic ridings, were largely left out of Conservative strategies.
* * *
After Jason Kenney made his first overtures toward the Korean community, a group of six Korean community leaders assembled around a table for an initial consultation. Those who assembled had never voted Conservative, and in all likeliness viewed that possibility as mildly repulsive.
“They said that they had never met a Conservative… all they had ever heard was that we were racist and anti-immigrant, and could we respond?” recalls Kenney. He tried his best to explain the party platform under these circumstances, and turned to a woman sitting next to him. “Who knows, maybe you would be the first Korean-Canadian in the Parliament of Canada,” he said.
“Well, I’ve always voted NDP [Canada’s democratic socialist party],” came the reply. “I don’t really know why, but when we first moved to Burnaby, there was an NDP MP that came to our church, and always showed up at our events, and got to know everyone in our community.”
Kenney stayed in contact with the young Korean woman, and scored a coup by getting her to run in a district near Vancouver just eight months later. Though she lost, she managed to garner a swing of more than 6%, and was later appointed to Canada’s upper house as Senator Yonah Martin, the first person of Korean descent to hold federal office in the country.
The empirical results of Kenney’s outreach across Canada have been even more astounding. “We never expected to see electoral realignment in this cohort of twenty-five percent of Canadians overnight,” said Kenney. The Minister estimates that there are twenty-five to forty “ridings that have substantial numbers of new Canadians… [which] are now competitive but [were] not three elections ago.”
* * *
But what qualifies Jason Kenney to be the leader of the Conservative Party’s outreach to visible minorities? Kenney seemed taken aback by the question when I posed it. “Well, nothing qualifies me for the job,” he said.
And I suppose that’s the point. “The thing with Kenney is, I mean, his name is Jason Thomas Kenney,” chuckled Patrick Muttart. “He’s Irish Catholic; he’s Caucasian; he doesn’t fit the profile of a typical ethnic outreach guy.”
“There’s an advantage to having a guy who doesn’t come from one of the communities. I’m therefore not perceived as a token, I don’t walk into any community with baggage,” says Kenney. “The fact that I’m not a ‘token’ … and the fact that I was seen as an influential mainstream member of the party, said to people that they were being treated equally.”
“He is culturally sophisticated and culturally intelligent,” said Muttart. “When he goes to an ethnic event, it’s not, ‘oh, the food’s too spicy,’ or ‘oh, I don’t want to eat that,’ – he doesn’t look awkward.”
Kenney later added that perhaps, on second thought, he did have a qualification for the job. “Maybe I have a hard work-ethic, and it is hard work,” he mused. His colleagues, on the other hand, would have omitted the ‘maybe’.
“He is renowned. It’s been said that it’s hard to find anyone in Canada who doesn’t know him, because of his incredible industriousness,” said John Weston, an MP from a riding in suburban Vancouver.
“I’ve worked for several MPs, and I’ve never seen a schedule like this,” said his scheduler, Agnes Kim. “Even on his weekends… he often has days where he’s working from 9AM until 10PM at night because he has dinner events at night.”
Over the course of a typical two days in his schedule, Kim tells me that Kenney has events scheduled with Taiwanese, Chinese, Indian, Coptic, Portuguese, Turkish, Filipino, Mexican, and Polish groups. His schedule is so frenetic, in fact, that Kenney only gets a free weekend once every two months.
* * *
In executing this new minority outreach strategy, Kenney and the Conservative Party have been able to reach communities who would have never been accessible – and this outreach model manages to stay true to basic conservative principles.
The cost of the new conservative strategy can be measured in the cost of sending an MP to attend a Diwali celebration, or having the Minister present at a Portuguese Independence Day celebration – this in stark contrast to the free-wheeling patronage that was doled out under Liberal rule.
The Conservative Party has spent tens of millions targeting voters in Quebec, and millions more to establish Arctic sovereignty bona fides. All of this cash led to a net loss of one seat in Quebec and one seat gained in Nunavut during the 2008 federal election. With their ethnic outreach, they’ve managed far greater success, with a much lower profile and a lot less taxpayer money.
With the achievements of Kenney’s new model, one is left to wonder whether Tammany Hall style politics is still effective in the 21st century. Kory Teneycke, the former Communications Director for the Prime Minister, says the effectiveness of ethnic-based grants is decreasing:
If it’s not dead, it’s certainly dying… the thought that there is a paternalistic, ethnic hierarchy is less true today than it was last year. You have a greater range of media options, people are getting their information from a lot of different places, [and] people’s kids are integrating in the public school system… I don’t think that people are going to a local boss and getting a ballot that’s filled out for them.
Patrick Muttart, on the other hand, believes that the Tammany Hall model still works – but that Conservatives are just terrible at implementing it:
I think [Tammany Hall] still works for the left… [but] we are not particularly authentic in executing Tammany Hall style politics… when you’re offended by big government, being in charge of doling out big government doesn’t really work very well.
The growing accomplishments of the Conservative Party’s strategy offers hope for right-of-center parties around the world. Ethnic outreach can, in fact, be done in a conservative way by enacting low-cost symbolic measures to get the attention of minority groups.
But tokenism is not a long term strategy – eventually one has to sell immigrant groups on the party’s broader platform. Over the last few years, Jason Kenney has made stunning progress in appealing to minority groups – progress that will be critical to determining when the Conservatives stay in power, or are to be defeated. If Kenney has anything to do with it, one can count on the Conservatives being around a while longer.
http://www.frumforum.com/how-canadas-conservatives-won-the-immigrant-vote
Quotes Of Canadian Minister Of Citizenship, Immigration And Multiculturalism Hon. Jason Kenney(2009):
1)When you become a citizen, you're not just getting a travel document into Hotel Canada.
2)I think it's scandalous that someone could become a Canadian not knowing what the poppy represents, or never having heard of Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Dieppe or Juno Beach.
3)We mention freedom of conscience and freedom of religion as important rights but we also make it very clear that our laws prohibit barbaric cultural practices, they will not be tolerated, whether or not someone claims that such practices are protected by reference to religion.
4)I think we need to reclaim a deeper sense of citizenship, a sense of shared obligations to one another, to our past, as well as to the future, a kind of civic nationalism where people understand the institutions, values and symbols that are rooted in our history.
Saturday, 24 July 2010
Are included Contemporary Sources Problematic for the Qur'an?
A good question relating the previous thread was asked me on the Answering-Muslim blog, I think it is worth mentioning here:
Monarch man,
I agree with you. I am honestly not to sure about how problematic this is.
In fact in this thread, my main intent was to refute those who maintain that this idea was never known of prior to Islam which therefore renders the Qur'an as miracolous. I guess by know it should be obvious that Bucaille, Harun Yahay, Osama Abdallah have simply failed to do their homework or are willingly lying to and deceiving their readers.
Personally I have no problem with holy books utilizing its contemporary terms and language, the Bible does that. Otherwise the contemporary reader or listeners would be unable to perceive the message. That would especially go for OT or NT books which are not revelations but rather inspirations.
However, in this case of the Qur'an, in which the author is utilizing an ancient scientific idea it extends far beyond that.
If the Qur'an simply used these terms to signify cosmogony, I would have no problem with that. However, since the Qur'an refers specifically to the view of the unbelievers and connecting these terms to them, it appears that the Qur'an views cosmogony as an actual separation of the literal heaven and earth from an entity that priorly consisted of these; that is certainly a Qur'anic difficulty.
The second problem concerns those who view the passage as miracolous, since it predicts modern science. Firstly, the passage does not predict modern science, since in modern science the heaven and earth never separate, rather within modern science the earth evolves through accreation within an expanding universe. Furthermore, if the 'separation of heaven and earth' is described prior to Islam, then the idea does not promote the miracolous nature of the Qur'an.
I guess some might also suggest that since the Qur'an is a divine book existing in heaven, completely devoid of human or created interferance, why is the Qur'an then containing and depending on so many ideas that have human origin and that even wrongly postulate cosmological and earthly science. I realise that the Muslim might say that the revelation of God in e.g. Isaiah also contains terms that were perceived by its contemporaries in their scientific understanding, but then again, we do not claim that the book of Isaiah was contained in heaven but rather that the revelations to Isaiah were given to his contemporaries. Furthermore, the science of Isaiah much like elsewhere in the OT is metaphorical, there is no indication that the e.g. the heaven or the earth actually have pillars, while the separation of the heaven and earth in the Qur'an is referred to as an actual occurance.
Fifth Monarchy Man said...Hogan's reply:
Hey Hogan,
Do Muslims generally have a problem with ideas found in the Quran existing in contemporary sources?
I ask this because as a Christian I have no problem with Jude’s use of non canonical information in his letter.
Just curious
peace
Monarch man,
I agree with you. I am honestly not to sure about how problematic this is.
In fact in this thread, my main intent was to refute those who maintain that this idea was never known of prior to Islam which therefore renders the Qur'an as miracolous. I guess by know it should be obvious that Bucaille, Harun Yahay, Osama Abdallah have simply failed to do their homework or are willingly lying to and deceiving their readers.
Personally I have no problem with holy books utilizing its contemporary terms and language, the Bible does that. Otherwise the contemporary reader or listeners would be unable to perceive the message. That would especially go for OT or NT books which are not revelations but rather inspirations.
However, in this case of the Qur'an, in which the author is utilizing an ancient scientific idea it extends far beyond that.
If the Qur'an simply used these terms to signify cosmogony, I would have no problem with that. However, since the Qur'an refers specifically to the view of the unbelievers and connecting these terms to them, it appears that the Qur'an views cosmogony as an actual separation of the literal heaven and earth from an entity that priorly consisted of these; that is certainly a Qur'anic difficulty.
The second problem concerns those who view the passage as miracolous, since it predicts modern science. Firstly, the passage does not predict modern science, since in modern science the heaven and earth never separate, rather within modern science the earth evolves through accreation within an expanding universe. Furthermore, if the 'separation of heaven and earth' is described prior to Islam, then the idea does not promote the miracolous nature of the Qur'an.
I guess some might also suggest that since the Qur'an is a divine book existing in heaven, completely devoid of human or created interferance, why is the Qur'an then containing and depending on so many ideas that have human origin and that even wrongly postulate cosmological and earthly science. I realise that the Muslim might say that the revelation of God in e.g. Isaiah also contains terms that were perceived by its contemporaries in their scientific understanding, but then again, we do not claim that the book of Isaiah was contained in heaven but rather that the revelations to Isaiah were given to his contemporaries. Furthermore, the science of Isaiah much like elsewhere in the OT is metaphorical, there is no indication that the e.g. the heaven or the earth actually have pillars, while the separation of the heaven and earth in the Qur'an is referred to as an actual occurance.
Thursday, 22 July 2010
The Qur'an and the Big Bang Theory in Comparison to Ancient Philosophy and Religion.
This post includes an essay on the Qur'an and Cosmogony with a focus on the Big Bang theory, which I wrote five years ago. The purpose was obviously to debunk the various exponents of Islam (e.g. Bucaille, Harun Yahya and Osama Abdallah) who propagate their wishful imagination to what they deem as scientific evidence for the Qur'an.
Since then I have greatly expanded my insight into the matter and am currently preparing a more detailed work, which I may post in small parts or in a lengthy essay in near future.
Notice that my intention here is not to debunk the improbability of the Qur'anic view (that will derive in a later post) but to point out that the Qur'anic picture of the cosmological origin was a view that flourished centuries prior to the rise of Islam, and which the authors and composers of the Qur'an appear to have borrowed from circulating teaching or sources, sometimes (possibly) even word for word.
To assess the cosmology of the Qur’an our study has to begin with its concept of cosmogony, the origins. Here Muslims usually refer to Sura 21: 30:
‘Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them, and we made every living thing of water? Will they not then believe? (Sura 21: 30)’
The joining and separation of the heavens and earth is according to a range of Muslim writers a predication of the modern the Big Bang theory; Bucaille, expounds upon this:
‘The reference to a separation process (fatq) of a primary single mass whose elements were initially fused together (ratq). It must be noted that in Arabic ‘fatq’ is the action of breaking, diffusing, separating, and that ‘ratq’ is the action of fusing or binding together elements to a make a homogenous whole.’ (1)
Yet the text itself does not follow Bucaille’s line of thought! The phrase: ‘Have not those who disbelieve known…’ implies that the Qur’an describes and refers to a concept that was already familiar in the era prior to Islam (2); hence in all correctness we may need to leave out any notion of modern scientific discoveries, and consider what ancient science and belief had already concluded.
Cosmogony in Ancient Religions:
A range of ancient religions e.g. the Hermopolitan (3) appear to describe the origin of the universe as a primordial universal egg. In the Hindu writings, the Laws of Manu, creation begins with a seed placed in water. The seed grows into a golden egg, which divides into two halves, which initially forms into heaven and earth. (4) In the Upanishads, existence suddenly begins, gradually grows into an egg and when the egg has laid still for a year, it is split open, out of which the two parts appear, which initially became the heaven and the earth. (5)
‘Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them, and we made every living thing of water? Will they not then believe? (Sura 21: 30)’
The joining and separation of the heavens and earth is according to a range of Muslim writers a predication of the modern the Big Bang theory; Bucaille, expounds upon this:
‘The reference to a separation process (fatq) of a primary single mass whose elements were initially fused together (ratq). It must be noted that in Arabic ‘fatq’ is the action of breaking, diffusing, separating, and that ‘ratq’ is the action of fusing or binding together elements to a make a homogenous whole.’ (1)
Yet the text itself does not follow Bucaille’s line of thought! The phrase: ‘Have not those who disbelieve known…’ implies that the Qur’an describes and refers to a concept that was already familiar in the era prior to Islam (2); hence in all correctness we may need to leave out any notion of modern scientific discoveries, and consider what ancient science and belief had already concluded.
Cosmogony in Ancient Religions:
A range of ancient religions e.g. the Hermopolitan (3) appear to describe the origin of the universe as a primordial universal egg. In the Hindu writings, the Laws of Manu, creation begins with a seed placed in water. The seed grows into a golden egg, which divides into two halves, which initially forms into heaven and earth. (4) In the Upanishads, existence suddenly begins, gradually grows into an egg and when the egg has laid still for a year, it is split open, out of which the two parts appear, which initially became the heaven and the earth. (5)
The resemblance is obvious; yet interestingly, the Laws of Manu and the Upanishads provide a description which is much closer to modern science than the Qur’an; as both describe a chronology which includes the state from singularity to inflation. (6)
Following the thought of Bucaille therefore, the Qur’anic cosmogony depends upon an external and much more detailed theory, which reveals further scientific predictions; this does not render the Qur’an as necessarily being miraculous.
The ancient Mesopotamian and Babylonian writings contain the same concept, as is the case with Gilgamesh: ‘…when the heavens had been separated from the earth and the earth had been delimited from the heavens.’ (7)
Furthermore, the Emma Elish, describes the god Marduk creating the heaven and earth by separating the women Tiamat in two halves, which become the vault of the sky and the earth; next he fixes the courses of the stars in the sky. (8)
Cosmogony in Ancient Philosophy:
Yet the concept of one primary entity separating was not confined to the world of mythology only; the Greeks and the Romans speculated in the same lines but transferred the concept to the category of science. Aristotle (384-322 BC) in describing the proposition of Anaxagoras (500-428 BC), writes:
Cosmogony in Ancient Philosophy:
Yet the concept of one primary entity separating was not confined to the world of mythology only; the Greeks and the Romans speculated in the same lines but transferred the concept to the category of science. Aristotle (384-322 BC) in describing the proposition of Anaxagoras (500-428 BC), writes:
‘That is why they make statements like ‘everything was originally mixed together…others talk in this context of combination and separation…So the reason they say that everything is mixed in everything is because, in their view, everything comes from everything. (9)
This is certainly in line with Bucaille and Haruna, who applied the terminology of mixing and fusing and then separating. (10) If the earth was not presented in the original entity, the Qur’an might have been closely in line with Anaxagoras; yet the separation of the earth does not indicate that, or else the passage would render a clear description of a mere entity exclusive of its reference to heaven and earth.
Hence in the Qur’an it is not a cosmological globe that separates but the heaven and earth.
The plausibility is also that the reference to the heavens while still smoke in Sura 41: implies that the earth originated from the same material. Yet nothing in the passage explicitly reveals so; furthermore we would assume then, that the earth would distance itself from the smoke, yet the earth and smoke are brought to together, leaving us with no explanation for its occurrence.
In addition to a fused universe Anaxagoras and the Greeks also considered this mixing of the universe to occur in one place, as one entity before they separated.
Interestingly, Anaxagoras refers to the mixture as being comprehended by air and an element called aether.’ (11) Aether, was the mysterious matter of the universe, often referred to as fire or fiery fume (12); whether this can be interpreted into terminology such as gas or primordial gaseous clouds, (13) if we really wish to speculate, is probably overstating the matter, at least when considering the thought of Anaxagoras. (14)
Interestingly however, according to Zeller, various ancient philosophers considered this element, usually fire and air to be mixed inside a fiery universal glob. The globe exploded and the fire collected in fiery circles from which the stellar bodies derived. (15) According to Anaxagoras the earth was implausible at this stage, rather the separation occurs from rotation in which all matter gets included starts forming and are brought into orbit. (16) Compared to modern science, the analogy is still distant but yet surprisingly accurate. (17)
Yet, the most significant philosopher when it concerns the cosmology of the Qur’an and its use of ancient science is Lucretius. (18) His postulate involves the mixture and separation of the universe, but also in details describes a theory in which the role and contribution of the atoms is separating the heaven and earth and so expanding the cosmos.
As to the Big Bang, Lucretius describes a time in which nothing existed except for a congregated mass of atoms, compressed into one small entity:
‘At that time the sun’s bright disc was not to be seen here, soaring loft and lavishing light, nor the stars that crowd the far-flung firmament, nor sea nor sky, nor earth, nor air nor anything in the likeness of things we know – nothing but a hurricane raging in a newly congregated mass of atoms of every sort.’ (19)
Lucretius further describes a state of chaos and turmoil in which the atoms collide:
‘At that time the sun’s bright disc was not to be seen here, soaring loft and lavishing light, nor the stars that crowd the far-flung firmament, nor sea nor sky, nor earth, nor air nor anything in the likeness of things we know – nothing but a hurricane raging in a newly congregated mass of atoms of every sort.’ (19)
Lucretius further describes a state of chaos and turmoil in which the atoms collide:
‘From their disharmony sprang conflict, which maintained a turmoil in their interspaces, courses, unions, thrusts, impacts, collisions and motions.’ (20)
It is vital to consider that Lucretius envisages this early state of the universe to be a ‘newly congregated mass of atoms of every sort’; in other words a previous cause must have brought this congregated mass into its shape and function. Yet at this point the universe is still a congregated mass which contains the entire universe, the earth, the heaven, the stars, the sun and the moon, and possibly its space.
The next stage of the universe is the combination of atoms with other atoms which causes what Lucretius calls the ‘main features of a world’ to be composed. This might explain why the Qur’an refers to the heaven and earth rather than a cosmological globe. According to Lucretius, it is from this primordial state, that the separation of heaven and the earth and the expansion of the space between them take place:
‘…they (the atoms) began, in fact, to separate the heights of heaven from the earth, to single out the sea as a receptacle for water detached from the mass and to set apart the fires of pure and isolated ether. In the first place all the particles of earth, because they were heavy and intertangled, collected in the middle and took up the undermost stations. The more closely they cohered and clung together, the more they squeezed out the atoms that went to the making of sea and stars, sun and moon and the outer walls of the great world.’ (21)
Lucretius therefore describes the separation of heaven and earth as being caused by the composition of the primordial universe; particularly by the atoms.
The similarities between these sources and the Qur’an are significant; yet the Qur’an provides little insight into to the state of this primordial entity and the cause of separation.
Later commentators e.g. Kathir suggests the air between the heaven and earth was the cause, (22) while Mujahid suggests that the heaven began as smoke gusting out of the earth. (13) If is the case, then the Qur’an does not follow in line with Anaxagoras’ exclusion of the primordial earth. Following Mujahid however, and the reference to the earth and smoke (Sura 41: 11), the Qur’an certainly follows a range of philosophers on the centrality of the earth and its contribution to the cosmological structure. In addition the reference to smoke also suggests that the Qur’an is depending upon the earlier Greek theories of the elements, rather than the atomic theory of Lucretius. (24)
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Bibliography and sources:
1. Bucaille, 1975: 139; see also Harun Yahya, The Scientific Miracles of the Qur’an, Al-Attique Publishers, 2000:21-2. Yahya elaborates on Bucaille’s theory by suggesting that the verb fataqa implies the destruction or tearing apart of something to create something new. See also Muhammad Assadi, The Unifying theory of everything: Koran and Nature’s Testimony (http://members.aol.com/silence004/koran.html)
2. Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Abridged Vol. 6, Abridged by a group of Scholars under the supervision of Shaykh Safiur-Rahman Al-Mubarakpuri, Riyadh, Houston, New York, Lahore, Darussalam, 2000: 440.
3. The Hermopolitan cosmogony is depicted in several versions, one being a cosmological egg which was placed on the Primeval Hill by a goose from which Re appeared; see Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries, vol.1, St James’s Place, London: Collins, 1979:17-8)
4. G. Buhler (translation), Sacred Books of the East, XXV: 'The Laws of Manu,' 1, 5-16 (Oxford 1886), pp.2-8
(http://alexm.here.ru/mirrors/www.enteract.com/jwalz/Eliade/057.html)
5. S. Radhakrishnan (editor and translator), The Principal Upanishads: Chandogya Upanishad, III, 19, 1-2, New York: Harper & Row, 1953, PP. 151-2, 399, 447-9 (http://alexm.here.ru/mirrors/www.enteract.com/jwalz/Eliade/058.html).
See also Dr. E. Zeller, A History of Greek Philosophy: From the earliest Period to the Time of Socrates, Vol. I, London: Longmans Green and Co, 1881: 115; the Greek myth in which Chronos-Heraclis produces a giant egg which is divided, from which the heaven and earth originate.
6. Alan H. Guth & Paul J. Steinhardt, ‘The Inflationary Universe’ in (ed.) David H. Levy, The Scientific ‘American: Book of Cosmos’, London, Oxford and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000:361-62; the theory implies that the universe in a brief period of suddenly by some ‘extraordinary’ cause expanded, while the entire universe in its pre-inflationary state had been compressed into to a tiny volume.
7. Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the netherworld: 1-26 (Version A, From Nibru, Urim and elsewhere) in Babylonia and Ancient Near Eastern Texts, by Kenneth Sublett, Piney.com, Hohenwald, Tennessee; the text describes a multiple number of heavens and excludes the usual mythology (http://www.piney.com/BabGilgEnkid.html)
8. Mircea Eliade, AHistory of Religious Ideas: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries, vol.1, St James’s Place, London: Collins, 1979:71-2
9. Aristotle: Physics, A New Translation by Robin Waterfield, Oxford: University Press, 1999:17
10. see Sura 21: 30; the theory of Bucailleism implies that the passage predicts fusing and separation
11. Arthur Fairbanks, ed. and trans. The First Philosophers of Greece, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1898: 235 (Hanover Historical Text Projects) http://history.hanover.edu/project.html
12. See Aristotle, he applies the same terminology to a mysterious cloudy material, such as vapour and ether, similar to the Qur’ans reference of dukhan, which Muslim authors claim predicts primordial gasseous clouds (Aristotle, Aristotle Meteorologica, I. iii, translated by H.D.P. Lee, London: William Heinemann, Ltd & Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1962: 19-23, 31.
13. Fred Adams & Greg Laughlin, The Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity, USA, New York: The Free Press, 1999: 34-40; the entire galactic host of the Universe was originally composed and formed in clouds of hot gas.
14. This resembles the claim that the Qur’anic reference to dukhan is a prediction of the primordial gaseous clouds; the main problem however remains that the gaseous clouds did not derive from a central earth, but the other way round.
15. Zellar, 1881: 267; this was the view of Anaxagoras, but other philosophers, such as Plutarch and Hippolytus held the same view. Anaximander, however, applied this concept upon the earth and the heaven; he envisaged the sun, moon, stars and their circles to have originated from a fiery sphere that split from the earth; see Arthur Fairbanks, Plut. Strom. 2 ; Dox. 579, 1898: 14, 16
16. Arthur Fairbanks, 1898:241
17. Adams and Laughlin, 1999:35; the theory proposes matter that was pulled together into galactic structured by gravity, and then endowed with rotation.
18. Lucretius, The Nature of the Universe, (translated by R.E. Latham), Penguin Books 1957, ‘The Nature of the
Universe’ was written 50 BC, slightly nearer the ear of Islam, and reveals a cosmogony that has been significantly developed since Anaxagoras and Aristotle, as ancient postulates and the atomic theory are combined. See also 184-5; while earlier cosmogonies typically described the world being created from the elements; Lucretius rejects this view and combines the atomism concept with the concept of separation.
19. Lucretius, 1957: 184; Here Lucretius alludes slightly to Anaxagoras who proposed the inauguration of a small rotating motion, while Lucretius describes an atomic mass effected by a raging hurricane; considering modern science, this ancient postulate is remarkable. Furthermore Lucretius predicts an original fused entity. Comparing the picture to modern theories the picture does not resemble cosmological singularity but apart from earths existence, rather the later proposed cloud of radiation, from which the atoms and particles suddenly exonerated. See also Heather Couper & Nigel Henbest, To the ends of the Universe, UK, London: Dorling Kindersley, 1998: 24-7). The Qur’an makes no reference to the nature of this entity, such as Lucretius; yet the principle remains the same, this entity is combined by heaven and earth.
20. Lucretius, 1957: 184; According to modern scientific postulates this closely resembles the interval period between the Big Bang and the Cosmological Inflation; Couper & Henbest, 1998; 20-3: see also Carl Sagan, Cosmos, UK, London: Book Club Associates, 1981: 218-235, despite from the fact that the earth was not present at that stage of the universe.
21. Lucretius, 1957: 184-5; this is where the Qur’an comes in having excluded all the details; hence the reference of Sura 21: 30 refers to a already detailed description of cosmogony. Here it have to be noted however, that Lucretius’ postulate is only an option among many
22. Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Abridged Volume 6, Abridged by a group of Scholars under the supervision of Shaykh Safiur-Rahman Al-Mubarakpuri, Riyadh, Houston, New York, Lahore, Darussalam, 2000: 440-1
23. Mujahid commented on Allah’s statement 41: 9-12 which reveals the earth to be created and made inhabitable prior to the forming and rising of the heavens (compare to 21: 30-2). Based on Sura 41 Mujahid states that the earth was created first: ‘...and when He created the earth, smoke burst out of it.’ According to Mujahid this is why Allah turned to the heaven ‘when it was smoke’ Sura 41: 11’ Tafsir Ibn Kathir, vol.1, 2000: 180
24. Most Greeks held on to the a universe consisting of the basic elements, Democritus (470-380 BC) Epicurus (341-270 BC) and later Lucretius (95-55 BC) held on to the atomic universe; they rejected the significance of the elements; yet this theory remained a minority view and almost vanished until early fourteen century, when it became superior; see Isaac Asimov, Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos, UK, Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd: 1982: 265-8 93. See also Lucretius who stated that the elements are depended upon the atoms, and mocked those who believed the raw material to be air, water or fire (Lucretius, 1957: 47, 93)
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Bibliography and sources:
1. Bucaille, 1975: 139; see also Harun Yahya, The Scientific Miracles of the Qur’an, Al-Attique Publishers, 2000:21-2. Yahya elaborates on Bucaille’s theory by suggesting that the verb fataqa implies the destruction or tearing apart of something to create something new. See also Muhammad Assadi, The Unifying theory of everything: Koran and Nature’s Testimony (http://members.aol.com/silence004/koran.html)
2. Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Abridged Vol. 6, Abridged by a group of Scholars under the supervision of Shaykh Safiur-Rahman Al-Mubarakpuri, Riyadh, Houston, New York, Lahore, Darussalam, 2000: 440.
3. The Hermopolitan cosmogony is depicted in several versions, one being a cosmological egg which was placed on the Primeval Hill by a goose from which Re appeared; see Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries, vol.1, St James’s Place, London: Collins, 1979:17-8)
4. G. Buhler (translation), Sacred Books of the East, XXV: 'The Laws of Manu,' 1, 5-16 (Oxford 1886), pp.2-8
(http://alexm.here.ru/mirrors/www.enteract.com/jwalz/Eliade/057.html)
5. S. Radhakrishnan (editor and translator), The Principal Upanishads: Chandogya Upanishad, III, 19, 1-2, New York: Harper & Row, 1953, PP. 151-2, 399, 447-9 (http://alexm.here.ru/mirrors/www.enteract.com/jwalz/Eliade/058.html).
See also Dr. E. Zeller, A History of Greek Philosophy: From the earliest Period to the Time of Socrates, Vol. I, London: Longmans Green and Co, 1881: 115; the Greek myth in which Chronos-Heraclis produces a giant egg which is divided, from which the heaven and earth originate.
6. Alan H. Guth & Paul J. Steinhardt, ‘The Inflationary Universe’ in (ed.) David H. Levy, The Scientific ‘American: Book of Cosmos’, London, Oxford and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000:361-62; the theory implies that the universe in a brief period of suddenly by some ‘extraordinary’ cause expanded, while the entire universe in its pre-inflationary state had been compressed into to a tiny volume.
7. Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the netherworld: 1-26 (Version A, From Nibru, Urim and elsewhere) in Babylonia and Ancient Near Eastern Texts, by Kenneth Sublett, Piney.com, Hohenwald, Tennessee; the text describes a multiple number of heavens and excludes the usual mythology (http://www.piney.com/BabGilgEnkid.html)
8. Mircea Eliade, AHistory of Religious Ideas: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries, vol.1, St James’s Place, London: Collins, 1979:71-2
9. Aristotle: Physics, A New Translation by Robin Waterfield, Oxford: University Press, 1999:17
10. see Sura 21: 30; the theory of Bucailleism implies that the passage predicts fusing and separation
11. Arthur Fairbanks, ed. and trans. The First Philosophers of Greece, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1898: 235 (Hanover Historical Text Projects) http://history.hanover.edu/project.html
12. See Aristotle, he applies the same terminology to a mysterious cloudy material, such as vapour and ether, similar to the Qur’ans reference of dukhan, which Muslim authors claim predicts primordial gasseous clouds (Aristotle, Aristotle Meteorologica, I. iii, translated by H.D.P. Lee, London: William Heinemann, Ltd & Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1962: 19-23, 31.
13. Fred Adams & Greg Laughlin, The Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity, USA, New York: The Free Press, 1999: 34-40; the entire galactic host of the Universe was originally composed and formed in clouds of hot gas.
14. This resembles the claim that the Qur’anic reference to dukhan is a prediction of the primordial gaseous clouds; the main problem however remains that the gaseous clouds did not derive from a central earth, but the other way round.
15. Zellar, 1881: 267; this was the view of Anaxagoras, but other philosophers, such as Plutarch and Hippolytus held the same view. Anaximander, however, applied this concept upon the earth and the heaven; he envisaged the sun, moon, stars and their circles to have originated from a fiery sphere that split from the earth; see Arthur Fairbanks, Plut. Strom. 2 ; Dox. 579, 1898: 14, 16
16. Arthur Fairbanks, 1898:241
17. Adams and Laughlin, 1999:35; the theory proposes matter that was pulled together into galactic structured by gravity, and then endowed with rotation.
18. Lucretius, The Nature of the Universe, (translated by R.E. Latham), Penguin Books 1957, ‘The Nature of the
Universe’ was written 50 BC, slightly nearer the ear of Islam, and reveals a cosmogony that has been significantly developed since Anaxagoras and Aristotle, as ancient postulates and the atomic theory are combined. See also 184-5; while earlier cosmogonies typically described the world being created from the elements; Lucretius rejects this view and combines the atomism concept with the concept of separation.
19. Lucretius, 1957: 184; Here Lucretius alludes slightly to Anaxagoras who proposed the inauguration of a small rotating motion, while Lucretius describes an atomic mass effected by a raging hurricane; considering modern science, this ancient postulate is remarkable. Furthermore Lucretius predicts an original fused entity. Comparing the picture to modern theories the picture does not resemble cosmological singularity but apart from earths existence, rather the later proposed cloud of radiation, from which the atoms and particles suddenly exonerated. See also Heather Couper & Nigel Henbest, To the ends of the Universe, UK, London: Dorling Kindersley, 1998: 24-7). The Qur’an makes no reference to the nature of this entity, such as Lucretius; yet the principle remains the same, this entity is combined by heaven and earth.
20. Lucretius, 1957: 184; According to modern scientific postulates this closely resembles the interval period between the Big Bang and the Cosmological Inflation; Couper & Henbest, 1998; 20-3: see also Carl Sagan, Cosmos, UK, London: Book Club Associates, 1981: 218-235, despite from the fact that the earth was not present at that stage of the universe.
21. Lucretius, 1957: 184-5; this is where the Qur’an comes in having excluded all the details; hence the reference of Sura 21: 30 refers to a already detailed description of cosmogony. Here it have to be noted however, that Lucretius’ postulate is only an option among many
22. Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Abridged Volume 6, Abridged by a group of Scholars under the supervision of Shaykh Safiur-Rahman Al-Mubarakpuri, Riyadh, Houston, New York, Lahore, Darussalam, 2000: 440-1
23. Mujahid commented on Allah’s statement 41: 9-12 which reveals the earth to be created and made inhabitable prior to the forming and rising of the heavens (compare to 21: 30-2). Based on Sura 41 Mujahid states that the earth was created first: ‘...and when He created the earth, smoke burst out of it.’ According to Mujahid this is why Allah turned to the heaven ‘when it was smoke’ Sura 41: 11’ Tafsir Ibn Kathir, vol.1, 2000: 180
24. Most Greeks held on to the a universe consisting of the basic elements, Democritus (470-380 BC) Epicurus (341-270 BC) and later Lucretius (95-55 BC) held on to the atomic universe; they rejected the significance of the elements; yet this theory remained a minority view and almost vanished until early fourteen century, when it became superior; see Isaac Asimov, Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos, UK, Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd: 1982: 265-8 93. See also Lucretius who stated that the elements are depended upon the atoms, and mocked those who believed the raw material to be air, water or fire (Lucretius, 1957: 47, 93)
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
The 'Ant' in the Bible and the Qur'an: A Dialogue Between Hogan Elijah Hagbard and Ayaz
This thread includes an email dialogue between Ayaz and myself. Ayaz and myself engaged in public debate some years ago about the Bible and the Qur’an. We are currently contemplating an imminent debate God willing in the month of October this year
While we have discussed the arrangements I began to ask him about Sura 27: 18-19, challenging Ayaz to explain the capability of an ordinary ant to perceive the person, name and position of king Solomon. This thread contains our dialogue up to this point.
I have asked Ayaz for his permission to post our dialogue here, and hopefully our dialogue can proceed on this thread and blog.
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2010 16:37
Hogan wrote:
One question, how do you explain the speaking ant in the Qur'an? How did it recognise Solomon? If an ant possess insight into human affairs does this mean that the fly on the wall votes Labour or Conservative?
I wrote two small articles about this on the http://www.answeringmuslims.com/ and my own blog on the Qur'an and science: http://debunkingquranicscience.blogspot.com/
http://debunkingquranicscience.blogspot.com/2010/05/quran-and-miracle-of-female-talking-ant.html
http://debunkingquranicscience.blogspot.com/2010/05/quran-fairytale-insects-and-their.html
Unfortunately, Muslims have not been to keen to respond, I fully understand that!
Keep in mind, I am not saying that God cannot make an ant talk or provide the ability to a prophet to understand the communication of an ant, yet what puzzles me here is the idea that a simply ant perceives human affairs and human politic, such as a specific royalty.
Date: Tue, 6 July, 2010 17:28
Ayaz wrote:
Do you belive in MIRACLES?or do ure MIRACLES have to be based on scientific proof?
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2010 18:06
Hogan wrote:
I think you misunderstand my point here! I don't see how an ant perceiving the King Solomon is based upon a miracle. If Solomon with miraculous ears indeed understood the ant, yeah that would constitute a miracle, but nothing suggests that the ant perceiving Solomon and his royalty was a miracle. Either the ant was divinely inspired (a prophet ant) or the story is a fairytale.
Date: Tue, 6 July, 2010 18:11
Ayaz wrote:
Do you think ants communicate with eachother as Sura Namel istigates?
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2010 18:53
Hogan replies:
We know today that ants do communicate with smell and even with sounds. However, if you think of the Qur'anic view in which an ant talks, this was an idea that existed prior to Islam.
For example it is recorded in the writings of the third century Church Father Origen (among others), in his quotation of Celsus that ants communicated effectively and in great details by language.
Scientists realise that some ants may communicate by sound, but not a language. However, if the Qur'anic assumption is accurate it only presents data that existed prior to Islam.
However, my question related to a very different matter. I asked how an ordinary ant possessed the ability to perceive a specific human person, both his name and status? What do you have to say about that?
Date: Wed, 7 July, 2010 13:18
Ayaz wrote:
Hi Hogan, it seems you have mis understood the Quranic verse of Sura Namel. I will try to explain the words that the ant uttered in the Holy Quran and try connect that with the new scientific discoveries made.
At length, when they came to a (lowly) valley of ants,one of the ants said: ''O ye ants,get into your habitations,lest Solomon and his hosts break you(under foot without knowing it)''.
Quran 27:18
The ANT reported the imminent danger facing them through four succesive stages as follows :
(1) O ye ants - This is the first alarm given by the ant to draw the attention of the other ants quickly. On recieving this alarm signal the other ants stand alert to recieve the other signals that the same speaker ant will give.
(2) Get into your habitations - Here the speaker ant follows HER words up with another signal, ordering the ants to do what they ought to do.
(3)Lest Solomon and his hosts break you - In these words the speaker ant shows reasons for this danger to her fellow ants.
(4)Without knowing it - The ants, as a reaction to the previous signals, will make a certain kind of defence, the ant shows her fellow ants that they do not need to attack the source of danger, because the source of danger is not from a real enemy.
Lets see what science has just discovered.
Four stages of Danger
Origen never mentioned the FOUR STAGES, he only said ANTS COMMUNICATE. WOW what a comparrison you gave lol.
Now lets see what the BIBLE says about ANTS:
The Ants in the Bible
Ants are mentioned twice in the Bible.
Proverb 6:6-8
6 Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!
7 It has no commander, no overseer or ruler,
8 yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.
Proverbs 30:24-25 (King James Version)
24There be four things which are little (smallest) upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise:
25The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat (food) in the summer;
Ants are creatures of little strength
Ants are a people not strong
In the Bible the only characters that match the science are the wisdom of the Ants and their ability to word hard.
However, the Bible says that Ants have no commander, no overseer or ruler which is not scientifically true because the Ants have commander, overseer and ruler.
Also, the Bible says that the Ants are not strong which is not scientifically correct because the Ants can carry up to 50 times their weight.
How come that a weight lifter who is capable to carry up to 50 times his weight is considered NOT STRONG?
Wed, 7 Jul 2010 16:08
Hogan replies:
This information on ‘four stages’ I have read fully on the website of Osama Abdallah.
Before you lol at my reference to Origen make sure to read what Origen actually writes; Celsus did not state that ants just communicate, he described what you find in the Qur’an in a much deeper and wider scientific language:
'Nor does he regard the ants as devoid of reason, who professed to speak of "universal nature," and who boasted of his truthfulness in the inscription of his book. For, speaking of the ants conversing with one another, he uses the following language: "And when they meet one another they enter into conversation, for which reason they never mistake their way; consequently they possess a full endowment of reason, and some common ideas on certain general subjects, and a voice by which they express themselves regarding accidental things."337’
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/origen164.html
Celsus states here that: 1) ants are not devoid of reason; 2) that they converse with one another; 3) that ants meet together to converse which each other; 4) and because of this they never mistake their way 5) and finally that they express themselves about accidental things.
Thus is not a weak comparison it stresses the point much further than the Qur’an and it includes your so called ‘for stages’ and even more.
Hence even if the Qur’an is accurate about ant communication the Qur’an is not presenting anything miraculous of origin, since these ideas seemed to flourish prior to Islam, even among the pagan worshippers.
Let’s look at your claim that the Bible wrongly describes individual ants as physically weak. The Biblical passage you are quoting says:
24There be four things which are little (smallest) upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise:
25The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat (food) in the summer;
Ants are creatures of little strength Ants are a people not strong (Proverbs 30:24-25)
I find it funny that you even misunderstand and hence misinterpret an English translation.
Firstly, the statement that ‘ants are a people not strong’ does not refer to individual ants but the ants as a community.
The Hebrew word for ‘people’ is ‘am’ which means nation or tribe. Hence because of their size compared other species, ants constitute a weak society.
This has nothing to do with their individual physical strength but the strength of the ant community as compared to stronger physical community, which also lies in the word ‘strong’ in Hebrew ‘az’ which refers much more to the strength and power of a nation than that of an individual’s physical strength.
Furthermore, the passage you quoted states that ants are exceedingly wise, that is by observation scientifically true and something that has fascinated researchers for the last 2500 years.
As to your second passage from the book of Proverbs you commit similar errors. The passage you are quoting says:
6 Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! 7 It has no commander, no overseer or ruler (Proverb 6:6-8).
You somehow assume that Solomon is rejecting the fact that ants have a queen or that younger ants may learn from each other, but this is not what the passage is advocating.
Firstly, the word ‘commander’, which in Hebrew is ‘Mashiach’ refers particularly to a general or a commander who guides the army in battle. While it is true that younger ants learn from the older, there is virtually no scientific evidence that ants have a military commander, or an official that literally controls their work to make sure that each and every ant actually works.
Furthermore, the word ‘overseer’ (in Hebrew Shoter) refers to a magistrate, basically an administrator. Again, as I stated: younger ants may learn from older, but there is no evidence that ants utilize ant offices, possess records of their store rooms, keep complain offices or communication offices, or anything like it. There is basically no ant administration similar to a human administration in a human work culture and environment.
Finally, the word ‘ruler’ (in Hebrew: Mashal) is not a direct reference to a king or a queen, as many Muslims assume when they read this passage. On the contrary ‘Mashal’ is simply a reference to authority. This is quite a contrast to the typical Muslim assumption, even though ants have a queen over them, the ant queen does not rule over its community like a typical human king utilizing a oppressive authority. The relationship between the queen and the ants are not the same as that of a typical human relationship to a ruling body or king.
Hence far from your claim about Biblical inaccuracy, the Bible at this point is everything but inaccurate.
Yet I would like to challenge you, once again, to educate me on the ability of the ant to perceive the person Solomon and his political status.
UPDATE: ...................................................................................................................................
Ayaz wrote this reply to me on the 7th July, unfortunately, I only received part of his rebuttal, but I will post it as it comes. I have conferred with Ayaz to respond to me on the comment section of this thread; that would be the easiest.
Date: July 7, 2010:
Ayaz wrote:
...ok let me reply to your rebutal on (1) Origen's writings Celsus that they contain greater scientific miracle on the Ants than Quran and (2) Educating you and christians alike Sam shamoun and David Wood etc on this miracle.
...in my previous reply to you I stated Origen only STATES ANT COMMUNICATE on a basic converse level.
You then quite cleverly stated 5 points (1) Ants are not devoid by any reason(2)that they converse with one another(3) the ants meet together and coverse *points 2 and 3 are identical (4)Because of this they never mistake there way(5)they express themselves about accidental things..
All you have done is prove my point that Origen stated Ants communicate and then you build a straw man and say SEE ORIGEN NEW THIS BEFORE THE QURAN.Firstly whether Origen knew ants communciate before the revelation of the Qur
Date 10 July, 2010
Hogan replies:
Let me first say there is no point educating Sam Shamoun and David Wood on Islam, both brothers of mine, possess more knowledge about Islam than most Islamic apologists and even present Islam more accurately according to the Islamic sources.
In sharp contrast to your conclusion that I somehow have confirmed your point, notice the depth of my point. Your statement based upon Osama Abdalla's website states that the passage is a miracle because ants simply communicate and are able to perceive each other's communication, that is exactly what I already pointed out and what the text of Origen concluded. What you are doing here is attacking a strawman, claiming that you have effectively refuted the argument, while in fact you have merely attempted to present a case that is already absorbed by the source that I already utilized.
Let me clarify this.
Your argument includes for stages in an act of communication: 1) the ant is able to rise alarm, 2) which prepares the ants for further information, 3) then the ants prepare themselves for the information and 4) finally obey the information.
Unfortunately I am not very impressed by this argument at all! Furthermore, lets adduce from Origen if these four stages are not effectively absorbed by Celsus' description of ant communication.
Celsus stated that ants possess reason, this would already be sufficient evidence that Celsus believed ants possessed basic understanding. Point 2 and 3 are also vital and they are not entirely identical as you assume. Celsus points out that ants actually meet together to communicate. This suggests that ants possess the ability to communicate with each other about matters of concern. The claim that ants can meet together in a organised framework presents much more ability to reason than ants who simply pay attention to a signal, many animals and insects do that. Furthermore Celsus pointed out that ants hardly failed due to their ability to communicate (by language) and finally they adapt these stages in their communication about accidental matters. Hence Celsus describes ants as much more effective in their communication skills and stages than the Qur'an.
While we have discussed the arrangements I began to ask him about Sura 27: 18-19, challenging Ayaz to explain the capability of an ordinary ant to perceive the person, name and position of king Solomon. This thread contains our dialogue up to this point.
I have asked Ayaz for his permission to post our dialogue here, and hopefully our dialogue can proceed on this thread and blog.
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2010 16:37
Hogan wrote:
One question, how do you explain the speaking ant in the Qur'an? How did it recognise Solomon? If an ant possess insight into human affairs does this mean that the fly on the wall votes Labour or Conservative?
I wrote two small articles about this on the http://www.answeringmuslims.com/ and my own blog on the Qur'an and science: http://debunkingquranicscience.blogspot.com/
http://debunkingquranicscience.blogspot.com/2010/05/quran-and-miracle-of-female-talking-ant.html
http://debunkingquranicscience.blogspot.com/2010/05/quran-fairytale-insects-and-their.html
Unfortunately, Muslims have not been to keen to respond, I fully understand that!
Keep in mind, I am not saying that God cannot make an ant talk or provide the ability to a prophet to understand the communication of an ant, yet what puzzles me here is the idea that a simply ant perceives human affairs and human politic, such as a specific royalty.
Date: Tue, 6 July, 2010 17:28
Ayaz wrote:
Do you belive in MIRACLES?or do ure MIRACLES have to be based on scientific proof?
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2010 18:06
Hogan wrote:
I think you misunderstand my point here! I don't see how an ant perceiving the King Solomon is based upon a miracle. If Solomon with miraculous ears indeed understood the ant, yeah that would constitute a miracle, but nothing suggests that the ant perceiving Solomon and his royalty was a miracle. Either the ant was divinely inspired (a prophet ant) or the story is a fairytale.
Date: Tue, 6 July, 2010 18:11
Ayaz wrote:
Do you think ants communicate with eachother as Sura Namel istigates?
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2010 18:53
Hogan replies:
We know today that ants do communicate with smell and even with sounds. However, if you think of the Qur'anic view in which an ant talks, this was an idea that existed prior to Islam.
For example it is recorded in the writings of the third century Church Father Origen (among others), in his quotation of Celsus that ants communicated effectively and in great details by language.
Scientists realise that some ants may communicate by sound, but not a language. However, if the Qur'anic assumption is accurate it only presents data that existed prior to Islam.
However, my question related to a very different matter. I asked how an ordinary ant possessed the ability to perceive a specific human person, both his name and status? What do you have to say about that?
Date: Wed, 7 July, 2010 13:18
Ayaz wrote:
Hi Hogan, it seems you have mis understood the Quranic verse of Sura Namel. I will try to explain the words that the ant uttered in the Holy Quran and try connect that with the new scientific discoveries made.
At length, when they came to a (lowly) valley of ants,one of the ants said: ''O ye ants,get into your habitations,lest Solomon and his hosts break you(under foot without knowing it)''.
Quran 27:18
The ANT reported the imminent danger facing them through four succesive stages as follows :
(1) O ye ants - This is the first alarm given by the ant to draw the attention of the other ants quickly. On recieving this alarm signal the other ants stand alert to recieve the other signals that the same speaker ant will give.
(2) Get into your habitations - Here the speaker ant follows HER words up with another signal, ordering the ants to do what they ought to do.
(3)Lest Solomon and his hosts break you - In these words the speaker ant shows reasons for this danger to her fellow ants.
(4)Without knowing it - The ants, as a reaction to the previous signals, will make a certain kind of defence, the ant shows her fellow ants that they do not need to attack the source of danger, because the source of danger is not from a real enemy.
Lets see what science has just discovered.
Four stages of Danger
Origen never mentioned the FOUR STAGES, he only said ANTS COMMUNICATE. WOW what a comparrison you gave lol.
Now lets see what the BIBLE says about ANTS:
The Ants in the Bible
Ants are mentioned twice in the Bible.
Proverb 6:6-8
6 Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!
7 It has no commander, no overseer or ruler,
8 yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.
Proverbs 30:24-25 (King James Version)
24There be four things which are little (smallest) upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise:
25The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat (food) in the summer;
Ants are creatures of little strength
Ants are a people not strong
In the Bible the only characters that match the science are the wisdom of the Ants and their ability to word hard.
However, the Bible says that Ants have no commander, no overseer or ruler which is not scientifically true because the Ants have commander, overseer and ruler.
Also, the Bible says that the Ants are not strong which is not scientifically correct because the Ants can carry up to 50 times their weight.
How come that a weight lifter who is capable to carry up to 50 times his weight is considered NOT STRONG?
Wed, 7 Jul 2010 16:08
Hogan replies:
This information on ‘four stages’ I have read fully on the website of Osama Abdallah.
Before you lol at my reference to Origen make sure to read what Origen actually writes; Celsus did not state that ants just communicate, he described what you find in the Qur’an in a much deeper and wider scientific language:
'Nor does he regard the ants as devoid of reason, who professed to speak of "universal nature," and who boasted of his truthfulness in the inscription of his book. For, speaking of the ants conversing with one another, he uses the following language: "And when they meet one another they enter into conversation, for which reason they never mistake their way; consequently they possess a full endowment of reason, and some common ideas on certain general subjects, and a voice by which they express themselves regarding accidental things."337’
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/origen164.html
Celsus states here that: 1) ants are not devoid of reason; 2) that they converse with one another; 3) that ants meet together to converse which each other; 4) and because of this they never mistake their way 5) and finally that they express themselves about accidental things.
Thus is not a weak comparison it stresses the point much further than the Qur’an and it includes your so called ‘for stages’ and even more.
Hence even if the Qur’an is accurate about ant communication the Qur’an is not presenting anything miraculous of origin, since these ideas seemed to flourish prior to Islam, even among the pagan worshippers.
Let’s look at your claim that the Bible wrongly describes individual ants as physically weak. The Biblical passage you are quoting says:
24There be four things which are little (smallest) upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise:
25The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat (food) in the summer;
Ants are creatures of little strength Ants are a people not strong (Proverbs 30:24-25)
I find it funny that you even misunderstand and hence misinterpret an English translation.
Firstly, the statement that ‘ants are a people not strong’ does not refer to individual ants but the ants as a community.
The Hebrew word for ‘people’ is ‘am’ which means nation or tribe. Hence because of their size compared other species, ants constitute a weak society.
This has nothing to do with their individual physical strength but the strength of the ant community as compared to stronger physical community, which also lies in the word ‘strong’ in Hebrew ‘az’ which refers much more to the strength and power of a nation than that of an individual’s physical strength.
Furthermore, the passage you quoted states that ants are exceedingly wise, that is by observation scientifically true and something that has fascinated researchers for the last 2500 years.
As to your second passage from the book of Proverbs you commit similar errors. The passage you are quoting says:
6 Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! 7 It has no commander, no overseer or ruler (Proverb 6:6-8).
You somehow assume that Solomon is rejecting the fact that ants have a queen or that younger ants may learn from each other, but this is not what the passage is advocating.
Firstly, the word ‘commander’, which in Hebrew is ‘Mashiach’ refers particularly to a general or a commander who guides the army in battle. While it is true that younger ants learn from the older, there is virtually no scientific evidence that ants have a military commander, or an official that literally controls their work to make sure that each and every ant actually works.
Furthermore, the word ‘overseer’ (in Hebrew Shoter) refers to a magistrate, basically an administrator. Again, as I stated: younger ants may learn from older, but there is no evidence that ants utilize ant offices, possess records of their store rooms, keep complain offices or communication offices, or anything like it. There is basically no ant administration similar to a human administration in a human work culture and environment.
Finally, the word ‘ruler’ (in Hebrew: Mashal) is not a direct reference to a king or a queen, as many Muslims assume when they read this passage. On the contrary ‘Mashal’ is simply a reference to authority. This is quite a contrast to the typical Muslim assumption, even though ants have a queen over them, the ant queen does not rule over its community like a typical human king utilizing a oppressive authority. The relationship between the queen and the ants are not the same as that of a typical human relationship to a ruling body or king.
Hence far from your claim about Biblical inaccuracy, the Bible at this point is everything but inaccurate.
Yet I would like to challenge you, once again, to educate me on the ability of the ant to perceive the person Solomon and his political status.
UPDATE: ...................................................................................................................................
Ayaz wrote this reply to me on the 7th July, unfortunately, I only received part of his rebuttal, but I will post it as it comes. I have conferred with Ayaz to respond to me on the comment section of this thread; that would be the easiest.
Date: July 7, 2010:
Ayaz wrote:
...ok let me reply to your rebutal on (1) Origen's writings Celsus that they contain greater scientific miracle on the Ants than Quran and (2) Educating you and christians alike Sam shamoun and David Wood etc on this miracle.
...in my previous reply to you I stated Origen only STATES ANT COMMUNICATE on a basic converse level.
You then quite cleverly stated 5 points (1) Ants are not devoid by any reason(2)that they converse with one another(3) the ants meet together and coverse *points 2 and 3 are identical (4)Because of this they never mistake there way(5)they express themselves about accidental things..
All you have done is prove my point that Origen stated Ants communicate and then you build a straw man and say SEE ORIGEN NEW THIS BEFORE THE QURAN.Firstly whether Origen knew ants communciate before the revelation of the Qur
Date 10 July, 2010
Hogan replies:
Let me first say there is no point educating Sam Shamoun and David Wood on Islam, both brothers of mine, possess more knowledge about Islam than most Islamic apologists and even present Islam more accurately according to the Islamic sources.
In sharp contrast to your conclusion that I somehow have confirmed your point, notice the depth of my point. Your statement based upon Osama Abdalla's website states that the passage is a miracle because ants simply communicate and are able to perceive each other's communication, that is exactly what I already pointed out and what the text of Origen concluded. What you are doing here is attacking a strawman, claiming that you have effectively refuted the argument, while in fact you have merely attempted to present a case that is already absorbed by the source that I already utilized.
Let me clarify this.
Your argument includes for stages in an act of communication: 1) the ant is able to rise alarm, 2) which prepares the ants for further information, 3) then the ants prepare themselves for the information and 4) finally obey the information.
Unfortunately I am not very impressed by this argument at all! Furthermore, lets adduce from Origen if these four stages are not effectively absorbed by Celsus' description of ant communication.
Celsus stated that ants possess reason, this would already be sufficient evidence that Celsus believed ants possessed basic understanding. Point 2 and 3 are also vital and they are not entirely identical as you assume. Celsus points out that ants actually meet together to communicate. This suggests that ants possess the ability to communicate with each other about matters of concern. The claim that ants can meet together in a organised framework presents much more ability to reason than ants who simply pay attention to a signal, many animals and insects do that. Furthermore Celsus pointed out that ants hardly failed due to their ability to communicate (by language) and finally they adapt these stages in their communication about accidental matters. Hence Celsus describes ants as much more effective in their communication skills and stages than the Qur'an.
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