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is this legitimately "good"?

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is this legitimately "good"?
mwishka
06/01/02 at 20:21:44
ok, i have another one....

i've asked two people on this board this question (they can answer more if they want to.....heee heee), but i still need to understand this more....

this is what i wrote:
other people i know, some muslims, mostly christians, say that my
values and belief system are just simply not possible for an atheist!
hee heee   people get very confused by this.  it seems to boggle the
mind of people who feel they have the values they have and hold whatever
perspective they do on the world BECAUSE they believe in god.  in fact,
i hope you don't hate me saying this, but i don't understand why someone
would link the two ideas.  our values come from inside us, and if we'd be
bad people if we didn't believe in god and have god telling us to be good,
well, then what kind of good people are we?  how can we say we're good
if we think we'd be bad without being told to be good.




do people really think they are only able to be good because either 1)god
told them to be good or 2) because they fear punishment?

look, it's like this:  i never had seen known tasted or smelled (hee hee) a
presence of god until recently.  and i'm not sure i got there because of islam -
it might have just been good influences who happened to be muslim.  i never
needed a god to be a good person - and, honestly, i don't even like saying that!
i never tried to be a good not-good bad pink aqua or cobalt person, i just tried to
live the way that felt right.  those are two different things to me:  deciding
beforehand what all the right things are, and then feeling guilt if you're not that
way, or, not deciding anything, and acting on automatic, on instinct - if you do
that you'll never hurt anyone or anything except when you make mistakes ( :( ).

so, what is islam?  is it deciding some things are right so you train yourself to do them,
or is it doing things right because you're human and that's what humans do when they
act instinctually?


::) mwishka
06/01/02 at 20:29:36
mwishka
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
se7en
06/02/02 at 02:17:25
Mwishka,

Hmm.  Here's how I understand things.. Muslims believe in a natural inclination in mankind to be and do good.. but because of the influences mankind is challenged with - that of the nafs [the lower self that calls to carnal desires] and the shayateen [that encourage mankind to wrong] it is very easy for a human being to be deluded and misled.  The actual word for mankind in Arabic, "insaan", comes from an Arabic word that also means 'to forget'.  Many places in the Qur'an describe man as a creature given to forgetting it's purpose in life.  

This is where the anbiyaa, or the prophets, starting with Adam and including Noah, Jonah, Jesus, Moses, Abraham, etc etc and ending with the Prophet Muhammad [peace be upon them all] come in, as well as the divine scriptures that were revealed through them.  They taught and reminded people of their purpose, and how they should live their lives in goodness and justice.

The issue of whether man can come to Islam and goodness 'naturally', with no wahiy [revelation] but simply with their intellect alone, is one that is debated by scholars.  It is an intricate issue because the question of accountability comes into play (If a person is incapable of acknowledging that God alone is worthy of worship and that he should be 'good' without revelation, is a person who has not been exposed to revelation held accountable for their misdeeds and incorrect belief?? etc)

But this is irrelevant when it comes to you and me, as we have had the opportunity to read and study the divine texts, that God in His mercy has sent to guide us, and we have been granted the choice between acknowledging it as truth and living by it, or rejecting it in favor of other things.

In answer to your last question (if I understood it correctly), Islam is a divinely inspired way of life that harmonizes with our own instinctual desire to do good.


I know this is sort of disjointed but I hope it's of some help :)
06/02/02 at 02:25:32
se7en
Re: neither Noori nor Naari
jaihoon
06/02/02 at 03:13:11
Amal se zindagi banti hai
yeh khaaki apni fitrat mein
Na noori hai, na naari hai

- Allama Iqbal

- Life is born of actions
This creature of clay
Is neither (made) of light
Nor hell fire.
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
mwishka
06/02/02 at 12:35:05
bro jaihoon and sis seven (ackkk....i keep typing that, because i can't "pronounce" se7en:( ...  my fingers ALWAYS type what they "hear"....funny stories some other time),

thanks for trying to help me understand this.  

bro jaihoon, i understand that humans aren't made of light (unlike angels.  and jinn also - or are they smoke..ok, i forget.  don't really know...), so i think you mean they're not completely good (light) or completely bad (hellfire) and/because they have free will to be however they choose.  ok.

and sis 7 (hee hee....THAT i CAN pronounce) what you wrote didn't seem disjointed to me - i could understand it all.

but, i'm left with just another giant sigh....  this isn't helping me... :'(  ok, ok, it's not even an exaggeration that i'm brick-head mwishka.  there's just something missing in these explanations that just IS not getting through to me.  another  :'(

i think maybe what i should do is follow bro muqaddar's advice:  trade in this mental suffering (fake pain) for some of the real stuff, beat my head on a real brick wall to shake me out of being trapped inside my brain.  

i don't mean to sound at all ungrateful for anyone's willingness to explain to me how things have worked out or reasoned out for them.  i just keeping getting left where the student with the impatient teacher is, or in the befuddled state of the student with the impatient tutor:  it's absolutely crystal clear to me, what's the matter with you?!

ok, well, thanks for your help, again.  (maybe....in palestine my head will split open and i'll be able to see what you all seem to find so easy??)


:(mwishka
06/03/02 at 18:40:46
mwishka
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
jaihoon
06/02/02 at 15:20:31
al hamdu lillah, that you have understood PART of the problem  :)

nyways, just to remind you something that I have learnt from myself and others' experience: logical explainations may suffice ur thirsty mind for some time, but questions keep popping up.

As I mentioned elsewhere, rational arguments do take man closer to god. But it is ultimately FAITH that builds the lasting solution for ur doubts.

8)
Jaihoon
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
mwishka
06/02/02 at 17:11:37
brother jaihoon,

that's been the main problem all along!  THAT'S what i came here to ask, and i'm still asking.... :'(

here're a couple of things from when i first registered.  you might remember some of this:


is your answer - that tawheed is what convinced you - to imply that through the
practice of worship while you disbelieved you broke through that barrier of "faith"
in something you couldn't conceive?


i'm not looking for evidence of god as much as a pathway to FEEL that presence, as
so many other people seem to have no difficulty doing.  i don't question anyone else's
faith - quite the opposite, i marvel at their good fortune.  that's why i asked brother
haaris if he was led to belief by following the devotional practices of islam while he
held no belief in his heart.


so it seems i've gotten no further than where i was then... (but i've had fun here!...)  i started out saying please don't give me your reasoned answers to how you know the god you believe in is any particular god, etc.  i started right then asking for help with the emotional experience of
getting past any sort of factual information on which some people might support their belief - and that is a noteworthy distinction to me, that most people merely seem to have to confirm a belief that comes easily to them, so every time someone here says oh it seems so logical to me, THAT'S where i have trouble (will this déja vu never end?    :D ), you cannot reach a comprehension of god using logic, since HUMAN logic defies the existence of anything outside human conception.  you must crack through something somehow.  and if you never had to do any of that cracking (up), you got somewhere by a shortcut i don't have access to.  if you grew up with any kind of a conception of god, you found that shortcut at a very young age, while i as a child was floundering with no understanding of that, and lying awake at night in fear of my aloneness in the infinity of the universe.  with no god, infinity is a terrifyingly beautiful idea.  with god, it loses its quality of terror, and takes on god's beauty.  i can say "god's beauty" with meaning, because it is certainly a beautiful idea, a beautiful view of our small mortal existence.

fortunately, i live in a brick house....  think i'll take a little walk outside.....   :D

mwishka
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
Dawn
06/03/02 at 05:25:45
If I may, I would like a bit of clarification here, because I am not sure I agree.
[quote author=mwishka link=board=lighthouse;num=1022977304;start=0#0 date=06/01/02 at 20:21:44] our values come from inside us, and if we'd be
bad people if we didn't believe in god and have god telling us to be good,
well, then what kind of good people are we?
[/quote]  I am not at all sure that our values come from inside us, though the rest of the statement is question remains valid, in my view.  I think our values are much more a reflection of the society/culture in which we are existing.  Sure, they are then also filtered through our own biologically unique, but experience-formed brain.  But, nonetheless, if the same person (DNA wise) were to have been born and raised and live in, say, one of the indigenous tribes which call the amazon rain forest home, their values would be quite different than if that same person were born/raised and live in, say, San Francisco.  The genetic makeup would remain the same but the environment, and hence the resulting outlook on life, would be quite different.  

Or perhaps a contrived extreme example would be better.  Let's consider something which I think all of us would consider wrong -- infanticide.  What if, instead of the culture we were raised in, we were instead born into a different "tribe" of people -- one where the "life force" of being human is breathed into a baby when the child is named, say seven days after it is born or something like that.  That would mean that the child needs to survive a week in order to "count".  If anything should happen before that, it would be similar to a miscarriage or something.  In such a culture, I could easily see how the infanticide of a newborn would not be considered something immoral, especially if the people felt that it was necessary for the survival of another child or they felt the infant stood little chance of surviving or something similar.  It might be sad, but not wrong.  Now, this is not to say that such a culture would [i]necessarily[/i] think infanticide is OK, but I could see how they could have a very different view on it.  And so would we, if we had been born into such a culture.

I guess what I am trying to say is, what we value as "good" or "right" or "bad" or "wrong" is quite influenced by the environment in which we exist, and so I think it is a bit risky to think that the values we have are instinctual or totally intrinsically derived.  (My apologies if I am reading more into this than was meant.)  

Peace,
Dawn
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
Taalibatul_ilm
06/03/02 at 08:01:24
I agree with Dawn to a very large degree.  If you have no religion, or do not follow a religion that you belong to, then what is "right" and "wrong", "good" and "evil" for you personally have to do with many factors, the main one being environment. This then subdivides into the cultural environment and the family environment.  When I was young, and not a Muslim, my non-Muslim father (and my mother, but my father was a more dominating factor) taught me many things about right and wrong.  These right and wrong values that I was taught were my guiding light, so to speak, in my life and in my measure of what I should and shouldn't do (or, as it was many times, [u]shouldn't[/u] have done).  I was taught to be polite within the social customs we lived in, taught not to steal, not to lie, etc.
This system of good and bad, right and wrong was my own internal system, and not necessarily the same system of my college roomate, or friends. Each friend had a different measure, within some social limits, of what was good and not.  All my friends, for example, agreed that it was wrong to cheat on a test.  Not all my friends would agree that to copy a cassette that was copyrighted was wrong. Some friends found nothing wrong in buying stocks in a tabacco company, others refused on "moral" grounds, etc.  
The problem with this system is you are setting your own values and your definitions.  In Islam, we get our values and definitions of right and wrong from the Supreme Creator, the Infinite in Goodness and Mercy.  
Once I became a Muslim, many of the previous values stayed with me, but the reason for goodness changed.  Before, I wanted to be a good person to please my father (as much as I would like to deny it, and probably my siblings who are all non-Muslim would deny it), and be a good person in the society.  Now what I care about is pleasing Allah.  There are things that I previously thought were "good", I now see as evil, since Allah has proclaimed them evil, and the opposite can be said also. My whole way of measuring things turned upside down, even though many of the actions remained the same.
I think I have gone on long enough, but maybe can see where you are coming from mwishka, since I was there many years ago.
Take care, and keep up the quetsions.  They are excellent questions.
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
eleanor
06/03/02 at 09:00:26
[slm]

There is an inscription in the wall of a school in Belfast which reads

"If you were born where they were born
Grew up, as they grew up,
Were taught, what they were taught,
Then you would believe what they believe.."

wasalaam
eleanor
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
mwishka
06/03/02 at 13:06:30
ok, i'll give you the continuation of what i had written in response to getting a reponse very similar to dawn's perspective above.  i started to put this in originally, but wanted to keep it as simple as possible to avoid complications:

hmmm...values inside us or taught?  maybe i'd agree that our parents,
etc. COULD contribute alot, but i actually think it's inside each person.  
otherwise, small children in one family would all hold the same values,
and would interact with each other from the same moral position - i think
you know this isn't true.  people will say such things as "oh she just has
such a sweet temperament, while her sister - she seems to have a hard
time getting along with other children"...  you've heard that kind of thing
haven't you?  if it were what we learn from outside ourselves, as
opposed to who we are inside and how we make use of our experiences to
add to or take away from what we've already formed, then all muslims
could potentially be the same level of "good and kind".  but, they're not.


mwishka
06/03/02 at 13:58:58
mwishka
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
Dawn
06/04/02 at 06:45:50
[quote author=mwishka link=board=lighthouse;num=1022977304;start=0#9 date=06/03/02 at 13:06:30]ok, i'll give you the continuation of what i had written in response to getting a reponse very similar to dawn's perspective above.  i started to put this in originally, but wanted to keep it as simple as possible to avoid complications:

hmmm...values inside us or taught?  maybe i'd agree that our parents,
etc. COULD contribute alot, but i actually think it's inside each person.  
otherwise, small children in one family would all hold the same values,
and would interact with each other from the same moral position - i think
you know this isn't true.  people will say such things as "oh she just has
such a sweet temperament, while her sister - she seems to have a hard
time getting along with other children"...  you've heard that kind of thing
haven't you?  if it were what we learn from outside ourselves, as
opposed to who we are inside and how we make use of our experiences to
add to or take away from what we've already formed, then all muslims
could potentially be the same level of "good and kind".  but, they're not.


mwishka[/quote]

Opps, looks like I need to clarify what I wrote earlier.  By no means did I mean to imply that each individual does not contribute to their own world outlook and value system.  Each person is different, sees the world differently, and filters and processes that information in their own, unique way, even identical twins.  Environment is certainly NOT everything.  My point was simply, that if you took two genetically identical people, who even spent the first nine months together in utero (though this wouldn't be a necessary precondition), and placed them from infancy in very different environments, they will not exhibit the same values in adulthood. Their values will, in most cases, reflect the environment and culture in which they were raised.   Even identical twins that are raised together do not always develop the same value system.  Hence, my point was simply that values are not instinctual, in the way that a bird's nest building is instinctual.  Rather, they arise from a unique combination of our own genetic material and the environment in which that material was allowed to develop us to adulthood.  And, to make things even more complicated, the whole notion of variability comes into play.  That is, we probably know people at both ends of the spectrum -- people for whom society seems to dictate ALL of their values, and people who seem to bring next to nothing from society and culture into their value systems.   But most of us (hence the definition of average ;)) fall somewhere inbetween.

Hope that seems clearer.
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
humble_muslim
06/05/02 at 12:10:13
[slm]

Ok mwishka, first I pary that Allah SWT gives you guidance to see the right path.  I will try to answer your actual question without straying on to other topics.

If I understand, you are asking why muslims go good deeds ? Is it a natural inclination or is it because we belive that we should do them ?

A bit of both, and some overlap.  First, they are many natural qualities in human beings.  One of these qualities is a consience.  If a human deos something "bad", he will feel bad about it.  So the question is how do you define "bad"?  There are some things common thruout all socities and all ages which have been regarded as "bad", such as murder, theft, harming innocents, illicit sex, etc.  

On the other hand, the Islamic belief is that God sent down his prophets to explain in detail about right and wrong.  Now there is no contradiction between this and natural inclinations, because all of the details are in agreement with man's nature.  There is no concept of right or wrong which is in disagreement with the nature of man.  However, we belive that certain things can tempt us to do wrong things and go against our nature.  One of these things is the "lower desires" of the soul.  Another of these things is the Satan, who "whispers in the heart of men".

In Islam, the test for a beliver is wheter he or she is able to follow the "will of God".  Now look at your own self and you will see that a large part of your body - the involuntary nervous system - is itself following the "will of God".  You have no control over your breathing, your digestion, etc.  So the test for a belivere is whether, by their own choice, they are able to control the volunatary part of their bodies and make that follow the "will of God&qukt;.

And the most important thing to know is that, according to the Quran, God has put inside EVERY human being the natural inclination to believe that there is ONE God.  If you want to see this for yourself, go onto a ship in the middle of ocean during a hurricane.  Whether or not you think that you have this inclination, I can gauarntee that you will automatically start praying in a situation like that.

Hope this makes sense, feel free to IM me if you wanna talk some more.

Peace on all who would be guided,

Hamayoun.
NS
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
mwishka
06/05/02 at 14:25:17
brother hamayoun,

i'm unable to get into bebzi stand or back into my madina mail, so i'm going to take the odd route of a general reply to you here in the hope that you will see it.

thank you for your kind advice.  i will write to you sometime...  

i appreciate the recommendation of that surah for me to read.  i was not having much ease reading the quran, so my, um "spiritual adviser" muslim friends were suggesting other things for me to read that i might have an easier time with, that would reach me easier.  i have mostly just listened to the quran in arabic without reading the english - trying for a direct path to the unconscious, i think...;)   so, though i'm now reading more of the quran, but i don't know anything about the contents of any of the chapters, and i just pick them at random to read from - except when someone suggests one in particular, which a few people here have now kindly done for particular topics or questions i've had.

i will read this one -- maybe its description in the table of contents didn't get across to me that it was about recognizing these "signs".  in fact, i had put up a post asking what these signs were and where to read about them, but after getting no responses i took it down the next day - thought maybe it must be a really really really dumb question if no one responded at all.... :(

mwishka  
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
Abu_Hamza
06/05/02 at 17:56:13
[quote author=mwishka link=board=lighthouse;num=1022977304;start=0#12 date=06/05/02 at 14:25:17]i had put up a post asking what these signs were and where to read about them, but after getting no responses i took it down the next day - thought maybe it must be a really really really dumb question if no one responded at all.... :( [/quote]

Don't do that mwishka!  Give us some more time on your questions.  I'm sure someone would have responded if you had left it up there.  Remember, not everyone on the board is in the same time zone, so you may put up something for a few hours and nobody responds to it because some people are simply asleep or at work at that time.  Also, a lot of people here don't visit the board *every day*, let alone 10 times a day like you  :P

So, just give people some time to actually read the posts!

And then, give them time to formulate a good response also.  I actually read what you had written, and was thinking about responding to it, but realizing I didn't have enough time at that moment to write something that would do justice to the question, I decided to postpone what I was going to write.  And next thing I know, it was gone!  I even asked about that thread from the moderators if it had been deleted by any of them for a purpose.  

So, don't worry.  There's no such thing as a dumb question if the person who is asking is sincere in their questioning.  And if someone doesn't reply to your question, say, after a week, then it's not that your question is dumb.  It's just that we are incapable of answering it.  None of us is a scholar here.  In fact, none of us on the board who posts regularly, as far as I know, is even a student of knowledge (taalibul ilm) in the sense the term has been defined traditionally.  So when you post something here and it's not answered by *anyone*, then that's something you should definitely take up with your imam (and you have a good one masha Allah :))

Take care.
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
mwishka
06/06/02 at 00:27:45
eh oh.

ok, i'll put it back.  i saved it to keep until i could find a more, um, responsive place to ask......  sorry..... :(

i really thought a whole day was long enough - i mean like more than 24 hours  (i think it was anyway..... :) )

ten times a day, huh?  well, what about all the times i stayed away for, um, a day.  hee heee......no, i used to stay away for weeks at a time, because i thought maybe i just didn't belong here.  now you're telling me that if i actually have the time or inclination some days to come here TEN! ( ;) ) times that i shouldn't??............ :'(

mwishka
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
sabirah
07/08/02 at 00:01:07
Hey sis....I would like to share with you some things that convinced me of Allah and then of islam. Every pot has a potter, every painting has a painter, and if you just marvel at the intricate and perfect detail of the human body, and how it is created and grows. and how many people there are and how different every single person is. and all the wonders of nature, and our immense enormous planet, and beyond that, the solar system, and beyond that the galaxy, and beyond that other galaxies...and interconnectedness of everything with everything else. everything follows a set order, a Divine Command. If you consider that with how short our lives our in regards to time, and time in regards to infinity, ( me personally and hopefully others as well) can't help but feel a deep connection to the force behind it all. Beyond that in regards to Islam specifically, I don't know alot about other religions but in certain ways what i Do know about them I can relate to Islam somewhat. So, just the fact that it is pretty universal in one way or another, makes it seem all the more like "the Truth". and YES I do beleive we are born with an innate sense of questioning ourselves and our place in life, which is the first step towards Islam. maybe this will make things clearer to you, if not just open your eyes and mind and make you appreciate Creation a tad more  :-*
Emily
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
BrKhalid
07/08/02 at 06:01:39
Asalaamu Alaikum ;-)

[quote]our values come from inside us, and if we'd be bad people if we didn't believe in god and have god telling us to be good, well, then what kind of good people are we? how can we say we're good if we think we'd be bad without being told to be good[/quote]

You know when I read this, a whole load of things came to mind but I'll just make this one point.

[color=Red]"I created the jinn and humankind only that they might worship Me" [51:56][/color]

Allah tells us in the Qu'ran that the purpose of this life is to worship Him. There is no other reason for us being on this Earth.

In order to worship Him, He has given us guidance as to how to worship Him. Included in this are:

5 Daily Prayers
Fasting
Zakat [Alms giving]
Pilgrimage to Makkah

Added to the above are other forms of worship such as:

Showing respect to parents
Being kind to neighbours/animals
Being honest and truthful
Observing trusts and promises

And the list goes on.


To those outside Islam it seems that we are being "good" and indeed we are. BUT we do these acts to please Allah and Allah alone and our actions will only be rewardable if our intention is to worship our Lord.

Hence it's not a question of being "good" for the sake of being "good" but for the sake of Allah.


As a secondary point, there is an incentive to be good [Paradise] and a warning against being bad [Hell].


How would you categorise someone who was good because of the fear of being punished? Good or bad?
07/08/02 at 06:02:13
BrKhalid
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
mwishka
07/08/02 at 07:43:11
brother khalid,

that is exactly where i have puzzlement about this whole question.

this is the most reasonable thing i've ever read about god:

O God!
If I adore You out of fear of Hell, burn me in Hell!
If I adore You out of desire for Paradise,
Lock me out of Paradise.
But if I adore You for Yourself alone,
Do not deny to me Your eternal beauty.

it is the only way that i personally could ever understand how to approach a life view including an idea of god or a hereafter, and i take "adore" here to mean how we live, as well as how we worship, since i consider it impossible to "falsely" adore.

so, for me, if someone is doing good out of fear of punishment, no, they are not themselves "good" inside, only their actions are "good".

but i also believe that our motivations are learned, on top of our natural motivations that is, and can be changed.  so if this is what motivates a person to do "good", perhaps if they at the very least keep doing that type of "false good" constantly, in a short time their motivations will change, and they will no longer be acting out of unnatural motivation.  

but then, i don't even understand a lot of this, anyway..   why would anyone do "bad"?  and why wouldn't they just automatically be "good"?  if the answer to this is that we're supposed to have trials and questions, i don't think that means we're supposed to be "bad" and just do "good" so we don't end up in hell.  i think all it means is that at times we will make mistakes, sort of honest mistakes, because we're actually trying to do "good" but either our understanding of what is the best "good" in that situation is limited or incomplete, or because we make a mistake in our reasoning of how to reach a "good" goal and end up hurting someone along the way, or because we just make stupid mistakes.

if there are people who actually consciously do "bad", it is obvious to the people around them, it kind of um leaks off of them like a kind of dark light or feeling - you know what i mean?  that you can feel it when you are near such a person?  ok, i'm edging into a different discussion, and i don't have time to do that right now, but these are the people who most need our constant help and kindness, and gentleness.  the less kind a person is, the more aggressive and "driven" they seem, the more they need people around them to treat them gently.  well, at least that's my approach, and i know it might not be the same way everyone here would look at things.  i still have so much question about this near-buddhist idea in islam that one should eschew the material world including its inhabitants and dedicate oneself solely to attaining heaven.  um....find that well, peculiar if it means living without full emotional life, like in a separate world though on this planet.

mwishka
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
BrKhalid
07/08/02 at 09:12:28
Asalaamu Alaikum ;-)

[quote] so, for me, if someone is doing good out of fear of punishment, no, they are not themselves "good" inside, only their actions are "good".[/quote]

Apply the above to the scenario of a parent and a child.

The parent instructs the child not to cross the road without first looking even though the natural inclination if the child is to run across so that he can play with his friends.

The child knows if he runs across he will get punished and will not be allowed out if he does not do what he is told.

[quote]but i also believe that our motivations are learned, on top of our natural motivations that is, and can be changed.  so if this is what motivates a person to do "good", perhaps if they at the very least keep doing that type of "false good" constantly, in a short time their motivations will change, and they will no longer be acting out of unnatural motivation[/quote]


Over time the child crosses the road carefully of his own volition. He now realises the danger of crossing the road whilst running and knows within himself that this is a dangerous thing to do.



The child in the first instance is doing something out of fear, but not because he is not inherently "good" but because he is *ignorant*. Once knowledge comes his way his will comes into accord with that of his parents.


[quote]but then, i don't even understand a lot of this, anyway..   why would anyone do "bad"?  and why wouldn't they just automatically be "good"?[/quote]

Because Satan doesn't want us to cross the road safely. He wants us to get knocked over.

Hence he does every thing in his power to achieve that aim.


The parent in the above scenario has the wisdom to know that running across a road without looking can be very dangerous. The parent knows this because of the knowledege he has gained.


In Islam the one who has most knowledge is Allah. Hence this is the reason we listen to Him.
Re: is this legitimately "good"?
UmmWafi
07/08/02 at 12:26:41
[slm]

I thot I replied to Sis Mwishka's post on signs.  I was sure I did.  *shrugs* Maybe I was mistaken.

Wassalam.


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