Unpopular Opinions You Hold

[the fox]

Just now, SouthStandUpperTier said:

5 minutes ago, the fox said:

seeing that many kids pissed themselves because of that and are now traumatised for life, i can understand why the mods didn't like it. holding it for too long will cause serious damage. it isn't really a laughing matter especially for people who have kids here.

Closing the debate doesn't really solve any of that though does it? Censorship of the worst kind.

but what's there to debate? let the kids got to the bathroom. let's say that 3 out of 10 kids were lying and didn't need to go to the bathroom, do the other 7 kids deserve the physical pain and emotional destress?

[SouthStandUpperTier]

but what's there to debate?

Whether letting letting children continually getting up to go to the toilet is distracting to the rest of the class. Seems like a legitimate debate to me even if it was clear she wasn't going to change her mind. By the way, I thought she was wrong and Buce and FoxesDeb eloquently argued why she was wrong, but now we can't see their posts because of ridiculously over-officious censorship by mods.

[Buce]

5 hours ago, leicsmac said:

Interesting, seems to reconcile the creation idea with the correct timeframe of the age of the Universe in the same way that some Bible scholars do, but just a little different. The expansion sentence - could it just be something for embellishment or is it possible that some of the scholars at the time actually considered the idea that the Universe was expanding?

 

I'm glad Young Earth Creationism isn't as prevalent in Islam as it is in some areas of fundie Christianity, in any case.

 

If you have the time and inclination, Mac, do you fancy taking a look at the link that foxy provided? It's way beyond my level of education but you'd probably be in a position to give an opinion on the veracity of some of the more advanced stuff.

 

It really is quite interesting. 

[The Doctor]

1 hour ago, the fox said:

quran wasn't touched, there aren't factories out there printing out different versions.
you would be surprised of how many "guesswork" and "coincidences" are in the quran.

 

here the quran talks about how the baby forms in the womb of his mother:

 

The embryo attaches itself to the mother to feed, just like a leech attaches itself to a host to feed. Also bones form before muscles. This was only known recently. However 1400 years ago it was all stated in the Quran in the correct order:

[Quran 23.14] Then We developed the semen into a leech. Then We developed the leech into a lump. Then We developed the lump into bones. Then We clothed the bones with flesh. Then We produced it into another creature. Most Blessed is Allah, the Best of Creators.

The vertebra is the first part of the skeleton to form however it is still made of cartilage. The first cartilage that turns into actual bone is the mandible (jaw bone). This Meckel's cartilage turns into bone 3 days before its respective muscles form:

"The sequential development of the Meckel's cartilage started as early as stage 13 (32 days) with the appearance of condensation of mesenchymal cells within the mandibular prominence. During stage 17 (41 days), the primary ossification center of the mandible appeared on the inferior margin of the Meckel's cartilage. The muscular attachments to the Meckel's cartilage in embryos were observed at stage 18 (44 days)."
Wyganowska-Świątkowska M, Przystańska A. The Meckel's cartilage in human embryonic and early fetal periods. Anat Sci Int. 2011 Jun;86(2):98-107. doi:10.1007/s12565-010-0093-3. Epub 2010 Aug 27. PubMed PMID: 20799009.

The first formation of actual bones happens at the jaw bone at day 41. Three days later the associated muscles form.

 

 

 

 

For what it's worth this is bollocks, like every other "science in the quran" claim. Much as pro-choice people might joke otherwise, a foetus is nothing like a leech. 

 

Edit: Nor actually does bone form before flesh - soft tissue exists before the skeleton.

Edited 6 January 2018 by The Doctor

[Buce]

22 minutes ago, The Doctor said:

For what it's worth this is bollocks, like every other "science in the quran" claim. Much as pro-choice people might joke otherwise, a foetus is nothing like a leech. 

 

Edit: Nor actually does bone form before flesh - soft tissue exists before the skeleton.

 

As I said to Mac, unfortunately I don't have the level of education required to evaluate those claims.

 

Do you fancy taking a look at the link @the fox provided to me and explaining why it's all bollox? (cards on the table, I write Science Fiction and it has given me the germ of an idea). No worries if you can't be arsed.

Edited 6 January 2018 by Buce

[The Doctor]

33 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

As I said to Mac, unfortunately I don't have the level of education required to evaluate those claims.

 

Do you fancy taking a look at the link @the fox provided to me and explaining why it's all bollox? (cards on the table, I write Science Fiction and it has given me the germ of an idea). No worries if you can't be arsed.

I'll go through properly later but some of them are easy to answer - ripping off Greek and Roman philosophers, since Mo would not have been illiterate (having been a merchant). Repeating the opinions of the time are not miracles

[stripeyfox]

Don't understand why the thread was deleted. Shit threads run their course and die anyway eventually, don't see why that was killed before it ran it's course...

 

[Carl the Llama]

Damn I never got to see the thread run its course.  Managed a quick post on my break but now I'm back *poof* it's gone.  It's like living in Pinochet's Chile.

[The Doctor]

Right:

 

 

Age of Universe - Genuinely in tears laughing at this. It is obviously referring to how painful things seem to last longer than they actually do, something that any human in history would have noticed. Massive stretch to claim it's about time dilation

Arithmetics -  Numerology on the same sort of scale as Dan Brown novels. Nuff said

Hydrogen - Sort of debunks itself this one. Gives a letter it claims is H, then shows every verse ending with a different letter...

Water - Such a hard observation that life tends to congregate around sources of water, definitely not something that they could have say, seen in their day to day life

Earth - Strange that they ignore countless verses suggesting at geocentricism (talking of the sun and moon orbiting the earth) and a flat earth. Cherry picking is not a miracle, it's just bad work.

Evolution - Ignoring that humans bear absolutely no relation to clay (that's just a regular origin myth with no basis), saying that it mentions your successors = confirming evolution is a massive stretch. Again, it would be more sensible to assume they're referring to descendants, as in children

Atoms - Massive stretch on both counts; for one it doesn't actually say there's something smaller than an atom, if anything it says the opposite (not less than the weight of an atom), and referring to pairs, given it says the land produced, would obviously be referring to animals and the male-female pairs. 

Embryo - Already covered. Doesn't go in the right order, gets the production of sperm wrong, ignores the existence of the ovum. Lifted wholesale from Galen

Honey Bees - The idea that they were all female is lifted from Aristotles work on bee reproduction. 

Planetary Orbits - Same as the claims about the earth... the quran goes fairly heavily in on geocentricism.

Colonies - Something that would have been easily observed at the time, animals flocking together isn't hard to see

Seas - "A barrier they can't trangress"... man, it's like the concept of brackish water doesn't exist to them. 

Senses - doesn't actually suggest a gap between development, if anything it bundles them together

Dark matter - I've seen people use the same verses to suggest the different layers of the atmosphere - if something is vague enough you can twist it any way you like. As for suggestions of a multiverse - again a massive stretch, but many realms was a common pagan superstition as well (the Nine worlds in Norse Mythology for instance). It doesn't prove this any more than it proves that Odin or Zeus exist

Sex of the baby - As always, stretching massively. The quran denies the existence of the ovum in all its "embryology" and implies it's all sperm. 

Iron - again some nonsense numerology, but if we're playing that game - the main stable isotope of Iron is 56Fe, so why not make it Sura 56 instead if we're trying to send messages. As for how they could have known the strength of it - we're a century past the iron age at this point.

Singularity - How strange that a monotheistic religion could have a name for it's god which implied it was a singular god. Almost like that's what monotheistic is.

Outer skin feeling burning - yep. Callouses didn't exist back then, no-one had ever burnt themselves before.

[Buce]

9 minutes ago, The Doctor said:

Right:

 

 

Age of Universe - Genuinely in tears laughing at this. It is obviously referring to how painful things seem to last longer than they actually do, something that any human in history would have noticed. Massive stretch to claim it's about time dilation

Arithmetics -  Numerology on the same sort of scale as Dan Brown novels. Nuff said

Hydrogen - Sort of debunks itself this one. Gives a letter it claims is H, then shows every verse ending with a different letter...

Water - Such a hard observation that life tends to congregate around sources of water, definitely not something that they could have say, seen in their day to day life

Earth - Strange that they ignore countless verses suggesting at geocentricism (talking of the sun and moon orbiting the earth) and a flat earth. Cherry picking is not a miracle, it's just bad work.

Evolution - Ignoring that humans bear absolutely no relation to clay (that's just a regular origin myth with no basis), saying that it mentions your successors = confirming evolution is a massive stretch. Again, it would be more sensible to assume they're referring to descendants, as in children

Atoms - Massive stretch on both counts; for one it doesn't actually say there's something smaller than an atom, if anything it says the opposite (not less than the weight of an atom), and referring to pairs, given it says the land produced, would obviously be referring to animals and the male-female pairs. 

Embryo - Already covered. Doesn't go in the right order, gets the production of sperm wrong, ignores the existence of the ovum. Lifted wholesale from Galen

Honey Bees - The idea that they were all female is lifted from Aristotles work on bee reproduction. 

Planetary Orbits - Same as the claims about the earth... the quran goes fairly heavily in on geocentricism.

Colonies - Something that would have been easily observed at the time, animals flocking together isn't hard to see

Seas - "A barrier they can't trangress"... man, it's like the concept of brackish water doesn't exist to them. 

Senses - doesn't actually suggest a gap between development, if anything it bundles them together

Dark matter - I've seen people use the same verses to suggest the different layers of the atmosphere - if something is vague enough you can twist it any way you like. As for suggestions of a multiverse - again a massive stretch, but many realms was a common pagan superstition as well (the Nine worlds in Norse Mythology for instance). It doesn't prove this any more than it proves that Odin or Zeus exist

Sex of the baby - As always, stretching massively. The quran denies the existence of the ovum in all its "embryology" and implies it's all sperm. 

Iron - again some nonsense numerology, but if we're playing that game - the main stable isotope of Iron is 56Fe, so why not make it Sura 56 instead if we're trying to send messages. As for how they could have known the strength of it - we're a century past the iron age at this point.

Singularity - How strange that a monotheistic religion could have a name for it's god which implied it was a singular god. Almost like that's what monotheistic is.

Outer skin feeling burning - yep. Callouses didn't exist back then, no-one had ever burnt themselves before.

 

Thanks, Doc, though I was more interested in some of the physics stuff (Age of universe; wormholes; time being relative etc.)

[The Doctor]

Just now, Buce said:

 

Thanks, Doc, though I was more interested in some of the physics stuff (Age of universe; wormholes; time being relative etc.)

Physics isn't really my area tbh, I prefer to just throw shade at them since they can't find 96% of the universe ( cough cough @leicsmac) - but it's much the same in terms of what's been quoted: vague verses that can be twisted to suit whatever you like. It's not a new strategy, and it's not an impressive one. 

[Carl the Llama]

Yeah I'm sorry but it's difficult to take the Islamic religion as a source of scientific authority.  Don't get me wrong we are indebted to the Arabic world for it's historical contributions to the sciences, mathematics (al-jabr, or algebra as we call it) and medicine being the fields that immediately spring to mind, but no old-world religious book has any place being used as a science textbook or genuine origin story.

[the fox]

think regarding religion, people will always take sides. you are more willing to except something if you already believe but if you are against it, you will come with a set mindset of "if there isn't a cure for stage 4 cancer, i'm not interested" and try to brush over things. and when something is true you can throw around the wards "stretch" and "[insert an ancient culture] already said that". 

 

there should have been some coordinates for a new habitable planet in order for people to believe, and even then, people will find a way to call it "coincidence".

 

 

 

 

[the fox]

think this thread is getting derailed and just going nowhere with this topic. no one seems to be ready to change their views. moving on.......

 

people who put milk before cereal need help

Edited 6 January 2018 by the fox

[The Doctor]

59 minutes ago, the fox said:

think regarding religion, people will always take sides. you are more willing to except something if you already believe but if you are against it, you will come with a set mindset of "if there isn't a cure for stage 4 cancer, i'm not interested" and try to brush over things. and when something is true you can throw around the wards "stretch" and "[insert an ancient culture] already said that". 

 

there should have been some coordinates for a new habitable planet in order for people to believe, and even then, people will find a way to call it "coincidence".

We say it's stretching vague verses to try and fit modern knowledge because ultimately it is, and likewise, repeating what's gone before does not show divine inspiration. If it did I'd grab my old school textbooks and become a messiah. Believe whatever you want, but don't pull out things like "Quran is divinely inspired because sura 57 is called iron and iron has an isotope of weight 57 daltons" and expect to convince anyone - you can do things like that with any book. Given a couple of days I could pull something similar out of the Harry Potter series, but despite her smugness, JK Rowling is not a deity.

[Carl the Llama]

1 hour ago, the fox said:

think regarding religion, people will always take sides. you are more willing to except something if you already believe but if you are against it, you will come with a set mindset of "if there isn't a cure for stage 4 cancer, i'm not interested" and try to brush over things. and when something is true you can throw around the wards "stretch" and "[insert an ancient culture] already said that". 

 

there should have been some coordinates for a new habitable planet in order for people to believe, and even then, people will find a way to call it "coincidence".

 

 

 

 

It's not about brushing over things, it's about religious books making claims which can't be true in a literal sense but are treated as such.  In fact I'd say the ones brushing over inconvenient evidence are those telling us that their centuries old book is more accurate than peer-reviewed science.

 

To take your belief in the Adam and Eve story as an example:  Genetics tells us that the human species can not have developed from an original couple, it's medically impossible.  If you want to exercise your right to disagree with the theory of evolution and promote an origin story about a deity creating fully formed, sexually mature humans who go on to populate the whole planet then by all means do so, but for that origin story to be medically sound enough to lead to the current human stock you need the deity to build not an original couple but an original community in order to maintain the necessary genetic diversity to prevent our species being eradicated within a few generations by hereditary ailments, mutation and infertility (not to mention the odd accidental death or straight up murder which would have a seismic effect on such a tiny gene pool).

 

Believing in an original couple is as illogical as believing that a man built a boat large enough to house 2 of every species of animal as well as storing enough food for them all to survive for over a year (around 378 days to be exact) - including the carnivores which raises further questions - while the entire planet drowned.  The stories in these old texts are useful for teaching us lessons about humanity and providing moral guidelines to people who would apparently have no self-control without an omniscient being's watchful gaze and promise of a post mortem paradise to keep them in check, however those of us with the capacity for logical consistency and basic human decency (and I think I can include you in that) shouldn't take them as literal records of past events to be believed at face value with no application of critical thought.

 

To put it another way let me ask you something:  Would you be able to have sex with a woman who looked like this (assuming she has large breasts, a full head of hair and eyebrows but no other hair)?:

Because that's basically what you'll be spending the afterlife with if you take the Quran at face value.

[The Bear]

Can we all just agree that religion is nonsense?

[Carl the Llama]

16 minutes ago, The Bear said:

Can we all just agree that religion is nonsense?

Have to say I really don't like organised religion.  As a kid my parents made me go to church and I always wondered why an omniscient, omnipotent being derived satisfaction from his creations dutifully reading out sycophantic praise from a printed piece of paper.  I've always believed that if there is a deity who judges our exploits after we die he'll be more concerned with scoring us on how we treat his other creations than on the amount impersonal praise we robotically read at him.

[Buce]

12 hours ago, Carl the Llama said:

Have to say I really don't like organised religion.  As a kid my parents made me go to church and I always wondered why an omniscient, omnipotent being derived satisfaction from his creations dutifully reading out sycophantic praise from a printed piece of paper.  I've always believed that if there is a deity who judges our exploits after we die he'll be more concerned with scoring us on how we treat his other creations than on the amount impersonal praise we robotically read at him.

 

I think it's important when considering religious texts that we don't allow our disdain for the supreme being flim-flamery to blind us to the possibility of them containing grains of historical truth. Take, for example the Old Testament flood story: it is almost identical to an ancient Sumerian story, which has now been discovered almost certainly tells of a genuine cataclysmic flood that occurred when the land barrier separating the Mediterranean from the Black Sea collapsed. There is also a theory (based on archaeological findings) that the Biblical tale of Sodom and Gomorra describes a genuine tale of destruction by an air-burst meteorite.

[Carl the Llama]

12 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

I think it's important when considering religious texts that we don't allow our disdain for the supreme being flim-flamery to blind us to the possibility of them containing grains of historical truth. Take, for example the Old Testament flood story: it is almost identical to an ancient Sumerian story, which has now been discovered almost certainly tells of a genuine cataclysmic flood that occurred when the land barrier separating the Mediterranean from the Black Sea collapsed. There is also a theory (based on archaeological findings) that the Biblical tale of Sodom and Gomorra describes a genuine tale of destruction by an air-burst meteorite.

A good point well taken, but to suggest that a man contained the largest zoo in the history of mankind within a boat on top of those floodwaters is a bit much.

[somebum]

The character in my book is slways bemoaning the amount of black players in the game

[Buce]

41 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said:

A good point well taken, but to suggest that a man contained the largest zoo in the history of mankind within a boat on top of those floodwaters is a bit much.

 

Of course.

 

However, it's not at all far-fetched to imagine a clever coastal dweller putting pairs of whatever domestic livestock they had then on to a raft.

[Buce]

9 minutes ago, somebum said:

The character in my book is slways bemoaning the amount of black players in the game

 

What book is that?

[somebum]

2 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

What book is that?

Mein kampf  no only joking.

[Great Boos Up]

I quite like Donald Trump.