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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| A question for Muslims |
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| Anonymous |
| 08/05/02 at 02:23:00 |
| This is meant as a challenge, from a believer in biological science, to Muslims. The Qur'an, in Suras 27:16-41 ("The Ant" or "The Ants") says that Solomon had an armyof birds, djinn, and men. According to the Qur'an, Solomon was amused when he heard the speech of an ant, warning its fellows to avoid being crushed by Solomon's armies. First, an ant has a brain consisting of a few hundred neurons and cannot form complex thoughts: hence, an ant cannot even comprehend who Solomon is. Second, ants lack mechanisms of verbal communication. Ants communicate largely via pheromones, which are used in establishing "ant trails" to food sources and such. So how could an ant have communicated such a message at all, much less in an audible form? The Qur'an says Solomon "heard" the ant "speak"? Next, Solomon was said to have learned the speech of birds and to have communicated with the "hopee" (I may have made a spelling error here). The bird is reported to have informed Solomon that a queen was involved in improper worship and was not engaged in the worship of Allah exclusively. Accordingly, Solomon was said to have sent to her and shown her his manner of worship. Although birds are vertebrates with far more advanced nervous systems than ants, they too lack the neural machinery for complex verbal communication, identification of forms of worship, and other such matters. For this reason, from a scientific perspective, Qur'an 27:16 and onward (as it relates to Solomon; his army of birds, djinn, and men; the ants; and communication with birds) must be invalid. If Islam is true, then the Qur'an is correct. But if the Qur'an is false, then Islam is necessarily false. I am a believer in the biological sciences, not in Islam. I now issue my challenge to all Muslims who read this to reply. At least answer the following questions: 1. Do ants communicate complex thoughts verbally? Describe how, given their lack of verbal communication mechanisms and neural circuitry for the task. 2. Do birds have the ability to engage in complex thoughts, as given in the narrative regarding Solomon? How can their relatively primitive brains do so? 3. If science is correct, then why do you believe the Qur'an? 4. Qur'an 18:85-90 discusses the rising and setting "places" of the sun. How can such a place exist, given that day and night are caused by Earth's rotation on its axis? 5. While Muslims sometimes claim there are scientific miracles in the Qur'an, aren't there as many scientific fallacies as there are miracles? If so, isn't this the result of random chance? If science proves certain passages correct, it also proves chapter 27 and portions of chapter 18 wrong, as shown above! |
| Re: A question for Muslims |
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| bismilla |
| 08/05/02 at 03:41:04 |
| [slm] bsm We accept that Allah swt is the Creator. All that we are and all that we have (mind, body and soul) are by the grace of Allah swt. So if Allah wills that an ant talks so that YOU can understand it, why does that seem such an impossible thing for the Creator to achieve? Perhaps this site [url=http://www.harunyahya.com/ant01.php][u][color=red]here[/url][/u][/color] may be of some assistance, Insha Allah. [slm] |
| Re: A question for Muslims |
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| Fatimah |
| 08/05/02 at 04:42:01 |
| Im not going to answer the questions asked, but I will give you my thoughts and why I believe all this about Prophet Solomon is true. These are just my thoughts.. When I became Muslim, I accepted Muhammad [saw] as a Prophet and Messenger sent from Allah. Meaning that I believe in everything that came from him, because I know it’s from God. Allah has favored mankind with knowledge. When Allah created Adam, he taught him the names of all things (meaning he bestowed knowledge on him) He honored mankind with this, and commanded the angels to prostrate to Adam as a sign of honor to him. But, our knowledge IS limited, just like our hearing is limited and our seeing is limited. Look around you right now..do you see the infa-red light? No, of coarse not! But is it there? Yes, it is. But you see, your eyes couldn’t see that because we humans are limited. We know there are sounds too high in pitch for us to hear, yet some animals are able to hear it perfectly clear…you see, our hearing is also limited. We learn things everyday, we come up with new and correct the old.. We don’t know everything, yet Allah does. Allah gave each Prophet different miracles. At the time of Moses, magic was very popular, so some of the miracles of Moses had to do with magic. (the story when Pharoah called the magicians and Moses to compete) This was a sign.. a miracle. Also, in the time of Prophet Jesus, curing people was really the in thing..so Allah gave Jesus these types of miracles..Jesus healed the blind and brought back the dead by the permission of Allah.. This was a miracle you see? Can you or your science bring back the dead?? But Allah can, Allah can do anything He wishes. Also at the time of Prophet Muhammad the popular thing was poetry. The Arabs were very very advanced in this type of thing..so one of the Miracles of the Prophet was the Quran. Anyone who knows Arabic will tell you the miracle of it, the style of its language. Allah challenges anyone to produce a chapter or verse like it, which NO ONE has been able to do for more than 1400 years! So my point is, we believe it the Quran and the Hadith, even if something cannot be understood. We also believe in miracles. We know our knowledge is limited, and Allah’s is not, so we trust in Him. Allah is the One who told us about Prophet Solomon and the story of the ants and birds..so We believe in this. This was one of Prophet Solomon’s miracles from Allah. And perhaps science someday will be able to verify it, maybe not. But it was a miracle that we believe no matter what. Wa Allahu Alim. Ps. Bismilla, I have been writing this for a while..I just finished and came to post it when I saw your post. You were so to the point in so little words, mashaAllah! |
| 08/05/02 at 04:47:23 |
| Fatimah |
| Re: A question for Muslims |
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| Taalibatul_ilm |
| 08/05/02 at 05:46:21 |
| [slm] There is no where in the Qur'an where it says that Sulaymaan , peace be upon him "heard" the ant, the Qur'an informs us that Sulaymaan "understood" the ant: the translation of the explanation of the meaning of An-Naml 19 is: [i]So [Solomon] smiled, amused at her speech[/i]. We know he understood the female ants "speech" but that doesn't mean it verbally made a sound, it means it (the female ant) communicated and he, peace be upon him, understood. Having said that, though, I just read the article I found, and it turns out ants can "squeak". ;) There are many studies on how birds and even ants communicate. Please see the portion of the article below taken from, and please read the whole article, it is quite fascinating: http://www.sciencenews.org/20000205/bob2.asp Please also note that it says that ants hear with their knees and can pick up vibrations through leaves, etc. If there was an army marching, that vibration then could be "heard" through their knees. Interesting. When Ants Squeak Eavesdropping on lesser-known bulletins from the hill By S. Milius Leaf cutting Atta cephalotes ants often make noises while they work, generating the sound by rasping a filelike widget on one body segment against a specialized rough spot on a neighboring segment. Here, two ants are cutting a leaf as smaller nestmates loiter. (James K. Wetterer/Florida Atlantic University) If you haven't stuck an ant in your ear recently, don't write the insect off as the strong, silent type. Many species make tiny squeaks that people can hear if they hold an ant close enough. The rich chemical communication of ants has claimed more attention from scientists in recent decades, but a small band of researchers has been sorting out ant sounds. Biologists have long realized that ants can hear with their knees, picking up vibrations humming through leaves or nests or even the ground. In the past 20 years, researchers interpreting the messages that thrum in substrates have revealed a sort of ant-ernet, zinging with communiqués about lost relatives, great food, free rides for hitchhikers, caterpillars in search of ant partners, and impending doom. Improvements in recording equipment are expanding the range of ant chirps and buzzes available to human eavesdroppers. Some scientists are even challenging decades of textbook truths and suggesting that ants might also be able to detect certain kinds of airborne sounds. For almost a century, naturalists have considered ants practically deaf to sounds traveling through the air but exquisitely responsive to vibrations. The noises that ants seem to make intentionally, drummings and fast stridulatory scrapings of roughened body parts, can buzz through substrates easily. Drumming, also called body rapping, turns up most often in species with wood or dried-pulp nests. For example, when a carpenter ant nest gets disturbed, workers rock furiously back and forth so their mandibles in front and their hindmost body part wham against the nest. An ant pounds the nest in a burst, up to seven thumps at 50-millisecond intervals. The other obvious ant sound, the squeak that people can sometimes detect, comes from stridulation. This high-pitched rasping of one surface against another occurs frequently in animals, most famously among cicadas, katydids, and crickets but also catfish and, some scientists argue, sea horses. Ants stridulate with the hindmost body section, the gaster, explains systematist Philip Ward at the University of California, Davis. The gaster is made up of segments, one of which bears a ridged patch. Its nearest neighbor sports a file-like rasping widget. The segments remind Ward of the nested tubes of a telescope. "Imagine the meeting edges scratching a bit as they move in and out," he says. Residents of the southwestern United States can hear stridulatory concerts by picking up red desert ants, suggests Ward. In the Northeast, the less common but hefty Myrmica species also squeak audibly when plucked up by a human hand. Ants in four subfamilies stridulate, but others seem silent and don't have recognizable scraping surfaces, Ward notes. Entomologists argue about whether this pattern means stridulation evolved several times in ants or whether the Adam and Eve of ant ancestors rasped to each other but some descendants lost the ability. In the 1970s, pioneering studies of these ant scratchings showed that they boosted the listening ants' response to the pheromone signals indicating that dinner or a nest site is available. |
| 08/05/02 at 05:47:58 |
| Taalibatul_ilm |
| Re: A question for Muslims |
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| Traveler |
| 08/05/02 at 06:20:36 |
| [slm] Anonymous, I'm sure others on this site either have or will be able to give you your answers but there is somthing I wish to know from you. I'm a little puzzled at your question. Of all the things mentioned in the Quran you had trouble comprehending the part about the Ants?! As a believer in biological science there must be a billion things far stranger than the ability of Ants and birds to talk. The fact that the same book also mentions the existence of a being which is infinite, absolute, creator of all things, Almighty, omnipresent, has no begining and no end is probably the strangest thing to comprehend for a believer in ANY science. Yet you seem to have no trouble in accepting the plausibility of existence of such a being. Additionally, the passage you quoted also mentions a being by the specie name "Jinn", which is said to have been made out of fire. Now for any biologist, creatures with a such a biology is just crazy talk. And yet again you seem to have had no objections on the existence of such a being. I don't get it. ??? |
| Re: A question for Muslims |
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| se7en |
| 08/07/02 at 05:56:36 |
| [quote]3. If science is correct, then why do you believe the Qur'an? [/quote] I think any 'firm believer in biological science' must acknowledge that our understanding of the world around us is constantly evolving and changing. I think it's pretty foolish to assume that we know now everything there is to know about the universe, or that our understanding of things is absolutely correct.. especially when everyday we are learning new things, making new discoveries and drawing new conclusions. So if you mean to say that science is without error, or is in anyway a complete and comprehensive understanding of the universe, I disagree. It is limited in it's scope and within it is quite a bit of room for error. I believe the Qur'an has a divine source, and has been preserved in it's original form since its revelation to the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. If there is a contradiction between science and the Qur'an, I discount the one that is subject to human fallibility, and not the one that has a divine source. (btw by the Qur'an I mean the text itself, not interpretation of it, which is also subject to human error) [quote]If Islam is true, then the Qur'an is correct. But if the Qur'an is false, then Islam is necessarily false. [/quote] Hmm.. but what are you using to determine whether the Qur'an is correct or false? Is that determining factor free from error in and of itself? Just something to think about :) peace |
| 08/07/02 at 06:04:50 |
| se7en |
| Re: A question for Muslims |
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| humble_muslim |
| 08/07/02 at 14:10:20 |
| [slm] Mwishka, I'd like to hear your input on this. |
| NS |
| Re: A question for Muslims |
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| amatullah |
| 08/10/02 at 23:12:07 |
| -Q1"Do ants communicate complex thoughts verbally? Describe how, given their lack of verbal communication mechanisms and neural circuitry for the task" others have made good points about that (ex. it is not nec. verbal) ants but here are more: (a) The ants bury their dead in a manner similar to the humans. (b) They have a sophisticated system of division of labour. (c) Once in a while they meet among themselves to have a ‘chat’. (d) They have an advanced method of communication among themselves. (e) They hold regular markets wherein they exchange goods. (f) They store grains for long periods in winter and if the grain begins to bud, they cut the roots, If the grains stored by them get wet due to rains, they take these grains out into the sunlight to dry, and once these are dry, they take them back inside. -As for Q2. Allah swt said He taught Sulayman the communication of birds. If it was meant to be that they spoke like the humans verbally, then i doubt the emphasis be on the understanding rather on the ability to hear. -you said ants and birds "too lack the neural machinery for........identification of forms of worship" In response here is an intersting part from an article: "Seest thou not that it is Allah whose praises all beings in the Heavens and on Earth do celebrate, and the birds (of the air) with wings outspread? Each one knows its (mode of prayer and praise)." All of the denizens of the Heavens and the Earth, whether they be intelligent beings or not, animate or inanimate, are engaged in the glorification of their Lord. Linguistic matters need not detain us unduly here, but the words of Allah invite serious reflection and comment: "...and the birds (of the air) with wings outspread. Each one knows its (mode of prayer and praise)." Knowledge is attributed to birds: each, in its own way, knows how to sing the praises of the Lord and how to pray to him. The order in which birds fly with outspread wings might be an expression of their glorification of the Creator. The verse thus represents a challenge to the human mind. Most of us imagine that these birds -which are graciously subjected to us by Allah that we may benefit from them for food or sport--cannot think or understand anything. The truth, however, is that Allah (Glory and Majesty be to Him) wants to make us aware of the fact that these fowls are endowed with such knowledge as enables them to fulfill a definite mission: that of proclaiming the Oneness and Uniqueness of Allah, bowing in adoration to Him, and singing His praises. In this connection, and by way of illustration, let us consider what Almighty Allah says about Solomon's ant: "At length, when they came to a valley of ants, one of the ants said: 'O ye ants get into your habitations, lest Solomon and his host crush you (under foot) without knowing it." When the Quran attributes speech to an ant, we must read it literally and accept the act as a true and genuine occurrence in which one ant actually instructed the other ants to retreat to their ant-hills, and the ants complied with the command. Upon witnessing the ant's warning being heeded by the remaining ants, Solomon, as the Quran reports, "smiled, amused at her speech." It is, indeed, one of the most wonderful miracles that Solomon should be endowed with the ability to understand animal 'communication'. If man could only behold the orderly flight of bird or the highly regulated behavior of ants or bees, he would notice a pattern of communication at work in each of these communities. This fact, indeed, is confirmed by the following verse: "There is not an animal (that lives) on earth, nor a being that flies on its wings, but (forms part of) communities like you. Nothing have We omitted from the Book, and they (all) shall be gathered to their Lord in the end." That the Quran should be so all-encompassing in its reference to the animal world, and also so categorical in its insistence on its organization is evidence enough that these creatures which we tend to exclude from our purview, or to consider lowly and mindless, or worse, to crush underfoot for amusement, actually stand on a much higher plane in the scheme of things. The ethical teachings of Islam, as have been propounded by the Quran, actually exhort us to view such creatures, not as mindless beings devoid of any capacity to perceive and understand things, but rather as beings endued with "understanding" which allows them to obey Allah's Archetypal Plan and to submit to His Will. All of these creatures adhere to and live according to a pre-ordained Divine Plan, so that if some of them were destined to be slaughtered, they would forthwith accept their destinies. They would surrender to their fate willingly and celebrate the praises of Allah (Gloried and Exalted be He). All other creatures are similarly answerable, in their different ways and degrees, to Allah to Whom they sing in praise until they have ceased to exist. We, humans, come to a better appreciation of the relationships binding us to the other creatures through our observation of their behavior -one that is imbued with adoration and glorification of the Lord. Consider, for instance, what Allah (Glory and Majesty be to Him) says in this respect: "Do they not look at Allah's creation. Among things --how their shadows turn around, from the right and the left, prostrating themselves to Allah, and that in the humblest manner? And to Allah doth prostrate all that is in the heavens and on earth, whether moving creatures or the angels: for none are arrogant (before their Lord). They all fear their Lord, high above them, and they do all that they are commanded." Note how all-encompassing and superb this description of Allah's creation really is: all things, animate or inanimate, whose shadows extend and recede, move from right and left (according to the light from above) by Allah's leave, worship their Lord and celebrate His praises. -Answring Q3:If science is correct, why do you believe the Quran? so perhpas [i]you[/i] say they are incapable of complex communicaton, but science, your proclaimed belief, seems to be discovering and proving otherwise. Anyway, It seems that the unbelievers are recalcitrant and ungrateful: they do not wish to celebrate the praises of their Lord unless they find themselves caught up in some difficult or calamitous situation. When they are in prosperity, these unbelievers tend to forget their Creator and go about this Earth causing mischeif. I think this is interesting according to the glorious Quran: 007.179 PICKTHAL: Already have Se urged unto hell many of the jinn and humankind, having hearts wherewith they understand not, and having eyes wherewith they see not, and having ears wherewith they hear not. These are as the cattle - nay, but they are worse! These are the neglectful. Most people who claim to be scientists think we can control and learn as we wish, and that science is right, while real scientists know better and know that there are truths in science and that they shift as we learn more. When you can control the world around you, others, in fact just control your own heart beat, then you will see who is really all powerful. The deeper in undersanging one goes into any secular field the more it becomes proof for him of the existence of a Creator. 035.028 PICKTHAL: And of men and beasts and cattle, in like manner, divers hues YUSUFALI:Those truly fear Allah, among His Servants, who have knowledge: for Allah is Exalted in Might, Oft-Forgiving. Science may help us understand some parts of the Quran, but whenever, that is IF, there is a discrepency, it is science that has been so far through the ages to be wrong and the all-mighty Allah is right. Sceince does get corrected, it is alot more open-minded than most of its staunch followers. -Q4. "Qur'an 18:85-90 discusses the rising and setting "places" of the sun. How can such a place exist, given that day and night are caused by Earth's rotation on its axis?" My own reply immediately knowing that verse is first of all it isn't a verse to discuss the setting places and rising places of the sun as you claim. My understanding is being told [u]from[/u] the perspective of thul qarnayn a human. "He found it (saw it) to look as such..." and the word translated as place can also mean location. also the word for west is the sunset (maghrib) , the word for east is the sunrise (mashriq) "How does the Qur’an deal with ‘natural’ phenomena? The Qur’an is not a book of sciences. But since sciences deal with nature and man and since sciences and technology constitute a very important aspect of man’s life and are themselves the product of man’s mind, the Qur’an, which contains ‘whatever is wet and dry’ either explicitly or implicitly or by allusion, certainly refers to sciences and scientific advancements. But, while sciences deal with nature and things for their own sake and concentrate on the question of ‘how?’, the Qur’an refers to them for the sake of God and for their most fundamental purpose as signs of Divine existence and Unity, as the manifestations of Divine Names, and therefore as the means of obtaining knowledge of God. Second, the Qur’an seeks to guide people and inculcate in them belief and high standards of morality. The great majority of people do not have specialized knowledge about scientific facts or theories. It would be inappropriate for a book of guidance directed to all people in all ages to refer to things and natural events in the manner of sciences. If the Qur’an referred to, say, the sun as a heavenly body of such and such size, made up of gases composed of two thousand billion times billion tonnes of matter, with the remains of other elements and in which for every million atoms of hydrogen there are about 85,000 helium atoms, most people would be simply bewildered or indifferent. As the comprehensive and conclusive Revelation, the Qur’an addresses all levels of understanding and intends to be understood, with belief and action to follow understanding. Since most people judge according to their sense-impressions, the Qur’an uses the appropriate language and style. For example, while narrating the story of Dhu’l-Qarnayn, the Qur’an says that he reached the setting-place of the sun and found the sun setting in a fiery muddy spring (18.86). It is obvious that the sun does not set in a spring. But this verse, besides giving many clues to certain facts to be discovered later, considers ordinary sense-impressions. First of all, we understand from the verse that Dhu’l-Qarnayn went as far as the western end of a land adjoining water around which there was not another visible land. That is why most commentators of the Qur’an have concluded that it was the Atlantic Ocean. Second, the verse implicitly states that Dhu’l-Qarnayn did not reach the coasts of the land he conquered in the west but advanced only so far as the point from which he could see the ocean like a spring. Thirdly, when he reached that point, it was a fiery summer day and, most probably because of the vapours rising from the ocean and the marshy land adjoining the sea, it appeared from afar like a muddy spring. Fourthly, the verse contains a subtle and important point. The word-‘ayn-translated here as spring also means eye and the sun. As the Qur’an, because of its elevated perspective, looks at the world from ‘on high’ and also there are innumerable eyes watching the world from on high, the ocean from that perspective, however large it may appear to the people in this world, appears no bigger than a spring. Further, there is a subtle allusion here to a time when those who believe in God will gain enough power and equipment to rule, at least, a considerable part of the world and, ascending the heavens, observe the world from on high." Moreover, Here the rising and the setting of the sun have nothing to do with the earth's or the sun's rotations, nor does it say that there is a hole in the earth that the sun sets in. In Noble Verses 18:86 and 90, it was talking about the morning and the evening times, and in Noble Verse 20:130, Muslims are commanded to praise and glorify Allah Almighty before dawn and after sun set. Even today we still use phrases like "sun rise" and "sun set", despite the fact that we know that the earth rotates around the sun. The Noble Verses above do not make any DIRECT claim about the sun rotating around the earth, nor do they suggest that the sun rises from a hole and sets in another hole on earth. Important Note: Given our advanced astronomical knowledge today, if a person wanted to describe two events where the first one occurred after he saw the sun rise while looking at the big sea at dawn, and the second one occurred after he saw the sun set on the big sea at evening, how different today would he say it from Noble Verses 18:86 and 90? The weakness that the critics of the Noble Quran and Islam have is that: No where in the Noble Quran do we see any direct scientifically wrong claim about anything in astronomy as we clearly see it in the Bible and the Hindu pagan books in Psalm 104:5 and Ecclesiastes 1:5, and Rik Veda and Rik Veda 10-173-4 respectively as clearly shown above in the article. No where in the Noble Quran nor any Saying of our Prophet does it say nonsense like "the earth is set on foundations and it can never move" or "the sun hurries back to where it rises", etc... AND please read this: (if anyone knows how to do the picture, maybe it is good to post it here incase it is gone later) http://bismikaallahuma.org/Quran/Commentary/q18-86.htm -There is something you must understand about our religion. There are two types of knoweldge which is called in Arabic 3ilm. There is 3ilm almalakoot and 3ilm almulk. The knowledge of the Mulk is the one that we are allowed to observe and understand,etc. This includes the geography, stronomy, math, etc The other one is only for Allah to know for now. For example, we have no doubts of Prophet Muhammad’s miracles, including the Quran, but we don’t know exactly how the wahee comes and how the information is passed on,etc. Knowledge is not bound only to the physical world. 003.007 YUSUFALI: He it is Who has sent down to thee the Book: In it are verses basic or fundamental (of established meaning); they are the foundation of the Book: others are allegorical. But those in whose hearts is perversity follow the part thereof that is allegorical, seeking discord, and searching for its hidden meanings, but no one knows its hidden meanings except Allah. And those who are firmly grounded in knowledge say: "We believe in the Book; the whole of it is from our Lord:" and none will grasp the Message except men of understanding. -Q5. "While Muslims sometimes claim there are scientific miracles in the Qur'an, aren't there as many scientific fallacies as there are miracles?" NO "If so, isn't this the result of random chance?" This doesn't make sense since my asnwer to the first part is NO. If it was the result of random chance it wouldn't be from Allah. it would be from a human. So who do you think "wrote" the Quran? Let's discuss that. "If science proves certain passages correct, it also proves chapter 27 and portions of chapter 18 wrong, as shown above!" I don't see that you have proved anything above! Well some things about you but not so much about your Creator. |
| 08/10/02 at 23:19:15 |
| amatullah |
| Re: A question for Muslims |
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| AbdulJalil |
| 08/11/02 at 18:06:45 |
| From : The Qur'ân and Modern Science Compatible or Incompatible? by Dr. Zakir Naik LIFESTYLE AND COMMUNICATION OF ANTS Consider the following Qur’aanic verse: "And before Solomon were marshaled His hosts – of Jinns and men And birds, and they were all Kept in order and ranks. "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 crush you (Under foot) without knowing it.’" [Al-Qur’aan 27:17-18] In the past, some people would have probably mocked at the Qur’aan, taking it to be a fairy tale book in which ants talk to each other and communicate sophisticated messages. In recent times, research has shown us several facts about the lifestyle of ants, which were not known earlier to humankind. Research has shown that the animals or insects whose lifestyle is closest in resemblance to the lifestyle of human beings are the ants. This can be seen from the following findings regarding ants: (a) The ants bury their dead in a manner similar to the humans. (b) They have a sophisticated system of division of labour, whereby they have managers, supervisors, foremen, workers, etc. (c) Once in a while they meet among themselves to have a ‘chat’. (d) They have an advanced method of communication among themselves. (e) They hold regular markets wherein they exchange goods. (f) They store grains for long periods in winter and if the grain begins to bud, they cut the roots, as if they understand that if they leave it to grow, it will rot. If the grains stored by them get wet due to rains, they take these grains out into the sunlight to dry, and once these are dry, they take them back inside as though they know that humidity will cause development of root systems and thereafter rotting of the grain. |
| Re: A question for Muslims |
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| Addison |
| 08/12/02 at 20:18:19 |
| Dear Anonymous, I read your post today and found it to be quite amusing. With regards to your conundrum, perhaps we have reached an impasse, nevertheless, if you will indulge me, I should like to comment on it. One of the most pleasing elements of the Qur'an ( or the Bible, for that matter,) is its use of poetic form to render its messages to us; Didactic intentions with imaginative vision...this method is, indeed, sheer genius...and we have copied its format for generations ( what family does not have its "storyteller," who charms us so with his or her magical words, that we scarcely notice that (gasp!) we have learned some lesson when all is said and done. My interpretation of the aforementioned story is of Solomon musing upon the existence of the ant, and applying what would later be referred to as the "pathetic fallacy," that is to say that he ascribes human emotions or qualities to those things which are generally thought not to have such characteristics (my apologies to those who may be familiar with the principle.) For instance, Shelly writes that "man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave." Does this mean that he has taken fire, wind, rain, etc. into literal bondage? When Ruskin speaks of "the angry sea," does his fear its chastisement? The Bible does the same sort of thing. Look in the first book, and you will read about a snake who "talks" to Eve. What is even MORE odd, is that she does not seem to be the LEAST bit surprised at its having done so. Does this mean that snakes used to be able to talk? Did God allow Eve to hear something that, to her, sounded like a human voice? I do not know. What I DO know, is that a Christian believes that it is possible, regardless of its figurative or literal sense. One either takes everything in good faith, or one takes none of it. My inability to explain miraculous events in a scientific manner does not deter my belief in their occurrence. I believe that the universe is infinite, however, I can't prove that either... I like to believe that this sort of expression reflects the imaginative element of the Creator. I was raised Calvinist, thinking that God was all fire and brimstone...the Great Punisher...it was only as an adult that I began to see the literary beauty of the Bible, ( and later, of the Qur'an ) and I realized that there was more to God than just the few qualities which I had assigned to Him...I realized that God was ALSO all things beautiful amd imaginative and humorous, and that He would use all the weapons in His arsenal to teach us: Some by example, some by parable, others by rebuke, and so on. Perhaps the reason you are unable to get a satisfactory answer from anyone here (with all due respect Anonymous,) is because, to a believer, your question irrelevant. !! Best regards, Addison |
| NS |
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