Jeffrey Lang – The Quran An Atheists Perspective Night 01
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of finding a God to make them perfect and finding a God to make them perfect. They stress the importance of researching one's beliefs and avoiding assumptions in life, and emphasize the importance of suffering, loss of life, forgiveness, caring, and the natural place for oneself. They stress the importance of experiencing love, compassion, forgiveness, caring, and the natural place for oneself, and emphasize the need for regular growth in these areas. They also emphasize the importance of avoiding becoming evil and not giving back to others.
AI: Summary ©
I'm surprised so many of you came.
I hope I won't disappoint you too much.
It's nice to be at Purdue again. I
graduated here almost Wow. 1981. That's almost 20
years ago. Are you sure you can hear
me okay? Even in the very
back? Because I'm not, you know, speaking very
loudly. I usually have to shout during these
things.
Well, besides, we have to tie this up
in about an hour and a half. The
University of Kansas is playing Saint John's tonight,
so I have to
Oh, is this a football game weekend?
Yeah. Oh, okay. Wow. Somebody to watch tomorrow.
Okay. That's why I chose this weekend, really,
to come
here. Alright. Well,
today, I'm or tonight, I am hoping to
present,
an atheist
interpretation
of the Quran.
I know it sounds strange, but
it is true. Because the first time I
read the Quran, I was an atheist.
And so I'm going to try to
recollect and to recreate,
as best I can,
that
experience of reading the Quran as an atheist.
It's,
you know, sometimes I regret that I am
not like most of you, that I am
not have been born to the Muslim tradition,
born into a Muslim family. I think that
makes life so much easier for Muslim young
people and even Muslim old people, such as
myself.
And, you know, you have a great history
and tradition, and you know so much about
the religion when you before you even realize
it. Before you even pick up the Quran
for the first time, so much of how
you read the Quran and understand understand the
Quran
has been influenced by your upbringing.
The first time I picked up the Koran,
I wasn't even quite sure
what it was.
It was a gift from and I just
picked it up. I I knew it was
their holy scripture,
but I really wasn't even quite sure
who
it was revealed through, who the author was,
really almost nothing.
So my perspective is sort of an innocent
perspective.
And so when I talk about it tonight,
and I think it's a valuable perspective, or
at least
it should be a perspective that's of interest.
Because I think when somebody new comes to
the faith and reads the Quran and gains
a different perspective,
that may help us enrich all of our
perspectives.
Just as much as I've benefited
from listening to
Muslims, born Muslims, talk about their perspective on
this religion, I hope I could contribute something
to that dialogue.
I'm going to be talking a little bit
about the purpose of life because I was
an atheist before I became a Muslim.
Actually, that's all I'm gonna talk about tonight.
What because that was my main
problem when I picked up the Quran.
I wanted to know what it had to
say about the purpose of life. I wasn't
expecting much,
but it was an interesting journey nonetheless.
And so that's what I'll be talking about
tonight.
My mom never got to come to Purdue
University. My mom saw me lecture at
several universities around this, nation.
She saw me lecture several times about Islam.
And she was one of my, best audiences,
one of the best people I've ever had
in an audience. She used to sit up
front.
And I could see in her eyes not
just,
interest, but also, a certain amount of pride.
She was a very devout Christian, and she,
was that till her, dying day, the day
she died.
But I really,
really was loved having my mom in the
audience, and I always miss her even now.
I don't give really give that many lectures,
even though I hear that you guys have
some tapes of mine from old. I don't
really give that many lectures, but whenever I
am standing in front of an audience and
I look at that front row, I still
miss the absence of my mother there. And
I wish you could have
absence of my mother there.
And I wish you could have met met
her because she was really a wonderful,
wonderful,
wonderful mother and person. And I'm not just
saying that because she's my mother, but so
many people that knew her said the same.
I remember when my mom died a few
years ago, and I was at her funeral.
1st it was one of the biggest funerals
I've ever seen.
And person after person who came up to
me to express their condolences,
expressed it in almost exactly the same way
every time. They said, Jeff, your mom
was a true saint.
And they would walk up to me, and
it would seem like they had prepared this.
Every person that would come up would say,
Yes, Jeff. Your mom was such a great
lady. She was a true saint. Even my
ex wife, who was an atheist,
my first wife, we were married a few
years. We got divorced while we were PhD
students at Purdue.
But she came up to me, and she
told me this very same thing. She said,
Jeff, you know, I don't believe in God,
but, you know, I still think your mother
was a true saint.
For a long time in my life, my
mom was the only person I was really
able to love.
She was
my closest friend.
She was my protector.
She was my only real hero,
she was a deeply religious Catholic, she was
a dedicated nurse, she was loved by by
all our neighbors.
And she was the most giving and charitable
person I ever known, I've ever known. She
was truly a very religious, devout woman.
She didn't wear it on her sleeve. She
expressed it through her
treatment of others, her behavior towards others.
I remember I can still see my mom
visiting the old Italian lady next door, missus
Caltabiano.
She was in her
seventies. I remember this lady, all the kids
in the neighborhood hated
her. She was, had an extremely bad temper.
But my mother would visit her once a
month and go over there with a basin
of water and a towel over her shoulder,
and she would trim that lady old lady's
feet, the the toenails on her feet, and
wash her feet,
once a month. And I remember saying to
her, Mom, why do you do that? I
mean, that lady is so mean. She's so
old. She has such stinky feet. Why would
you go over and wash her feet? And
I remember once she said to me, son,
if Jesus could wash the feet of others,
so can I?
And that's what kind of religiosity
she had. She translated her religiosity
into helping others.
And to her, that was what life was
all about. Life was about giving.
I remember how much compassion she had for
her patients at the hospital and how warmly
they spoke about her when I would come
to pick her up from work late at
night because she worked sort of the graveyard
trip shift. So I'd pick her up very
late at night. And her patients used to
stop me while I was walking out the
hall to pull me aside and brag about
my mother for
usually too long.
I remember what great mother and teacher she
was. I remember how honest she was, and
how she never swore or treated anyone rudely.
My mom wasn't perfect. She used to gossip
a little, but she was the nearest thing
to perfection I ever knew.
Most of all, I remember how she loved
how much she loved her 5 sons,
and how hard she worked to provide them
with as normal and a happy life as
possible,
despite the handicap we acquire.
And the handicap that we acquired, I'm sad
to say, and I even hate to bring
it up, but it's central to this lecture,
was my father.
I don't know what was the matter with
my father or how he became the way
he was,
But my father had this deep
inner
rage
and anger
that he just really couldn't control.
And every night,
he would try to numb that rage and
that anger with hard, hard drinking.
And he usually wasn't very successful.
His drinking made my father all the more
volatile
because he could be laughing and joking one
minute, and he could fly into an angry
rampage the next.
And once he erupted,
there was just no stopping him. It was
like a thunderstorm,
the severe thunderstorm
that comes in over the horizon and go
away.
And it would take a ton of time
and a ton of hard liquor before it
would finally put him to rest.
And it was really terrible.
Living with my father was like carrying a
box of nitroglycerin.
You just weren't sure what was gonna set
it off. The slightest agitation,
the slightest shift,
he could unexpectedly
explode into his violence.
And it was
it was not easy. It was not easy
at all.
My 4 brothers and
I had a frightful and uncertain childhood, but
the worst of it, the worst of it,
which is watching my father regularly taunt,
threaten, and abuse
my mother.
When I was a little boy, I used
to daydream about life without my father. It
was my
almost constant wish and daydream.
I just wanted the violence to go away.
I wanted not to be afraid anymore.
I felt like I was trapped in a
bad dream, and there just was no way
out.
So I prayed, and again and again to
God to remove my father from our lives
and to stop the pain,
but my father was always there. And very
early on, I began to wonder
if God really was.
I could not fathom
why God would sentence
my mom
to lifelong punishment.
I could not imagine what great sin she
must have committed, or that we, her children,
must have committed
to deserve my father?
I lacked the maturity to sort out those
questions, but I certainly had enough anger and
fear inside me to provoke them.
I was too young to see the wisdom
in allowing my mother
and her children to suffer the violence and
abuse of my father. I was too young
to understand what God would let innocent children
lie in bed every night,
crying, wondering, hoping, praying that their mom will
still be in one piece the next morning.
I just couldn't see why God would let
that let that be.
I could not understand how God and his
mercy and forgiveness
could extend that mercy and forgiveness
to someone like my father, with all his
terrible failings. All I can see in my
world was chaos and violence.
And so when I became old enough to
think for myself,
it became easy for me to question the
existence of god.
We also lived in a very violent city.
The violence outside was nothing compared to the
violence inside. But the violence that was happening
in the world around me only confirmed what
my father already had taught me, only too
well.
There were the assassinations
of the Kennedy's when I was a kid
and Martin Luther King.
There were race riots in cities like mine
and burnings and lootings, to even people burned
alive in the streets.
Firemen used to come to to places where
liars fires were purposely lit, and snipers used
to be picking them off.
Gang fights were rampant in my neighborhood. It
seemed like we had one every couple of
months. Sometimes kids would get shot.
Most of the time, there was always several
that were extremely badly injured, taken to the
hospital. The police would show up after it
was over so they wouldn't get hurt,
take the bodies away, take the kids to
the hospital.
And of course, we also had the Vietnam
War going on that time, that senseless war.
And we'd see the night after night on
a television street screen,
young American boys being put in body bags,
taken back to our country. And even worse,
we'd see the Vietnamese
civilians, and especially the children, being slaughtered
at our own hands.
And kids running down the street, Vietnamese children
running down the street after a bombing, some
of them naked, some of them on fire
from napalm burning all over them.
All that, all the violence in the world
confirmed for me the lesson that I was
already ingrained in me,
that this world is dominated by random,
consuming,
undiscriminating
violence.
And very early on,
I began to
ask why, and that from a very early
age.
But that question became more intense for me
as I got older and older. As I
reached my late teenage years,
I wondered why it had to be this
way.
Why did it have to be this way?
I have 3 daughters.
Not too long ago, I was walking with
my wife,
walking along, and 2 of my daughters were
walking with me. And the youngest one, Fatin,
was whose name means alluring.
You know, Fatin, and my youngest daughter, my
10 year old, was riding ahead of us
on her bike. Then she circled around and
rode by us again, going full speed.
And as she was riding by, she said,
I am Fatt and Lang, and I love
being mean.
I looked at my wife, and I said,
we must be doing something right. You know?
And I was walking with my daughter, Sarah,
not just long long ago, because she's trying
to lose a little weight. So she walks
with me. I'm a I walk several miles
every day. But now I come home after
work, and I walk an hour with her
at night. And she's, you know, she's trimming
down. She wants to lose a little weight.
But I'm walking along and she says, daddy,
I know I have to lose a little
weight, but I know I am beautiful.
And that's because she feels it
inside.
When she says such a statement like that,
or my other daughter says, I love being
me,
and they tell me, Tati, I think I'm
beautiful. They feel that deeply inside.
Something inside.
It's not something it glows from within.
My wife is about £35 overweight.
And please don't record this. You could erase
that from the table.
She'll kill me, please.
But she's about £35
overweight,
and she's 40
years old now. I got her age right.
She'll kill me for
that as well. But she's 40, about £35
overweight. But not but not too long ago,
she said to me, you know, and said
to all of us, hey. Look. My daughters
are giving her a hard time about her
weight. She said, I don't care. I know
I'm
beautiful. Because she's always felt that way.
That's not so much
an appraisal of how a person sees themselves
physically.
It's how they see themselves in their totality.
Well,
when I look at myself to this day,
when I think about myself,
the last word I would ever use to
characterize
myself
is
beautiful or handsome or attractive.
Because after I growing up
in that environment,
becoming an adult, somewhere early in my life,
etched upon my being, I came to see
myself in a very different way.
And to this day, when I'm walking along
and I'm thinking about how I look to
others or I just think about myself,
I just see someone
scarred,
odd,
disfigured.
And I'll think about that. That's the way
I'll probably perceive myself
to the day I die.
And I don't think we realize how much
we affect our children and the way they
see themselves.
But it was amazing to me that there
could be a God, and God could let
that type of thing happen to children.
My 4 brothers ended up following the same
road of self destruction that my father followed.
It went down the same way. All 4
of them became drug addicts. 1 just recently
died of alcoholism.
2 just recently kicked their habits after they
had had them for 25 years.
Another one was a heroin addict. He had
to be jailed
before he could finally kick his
hat. I mean, why would God put people
at such a disadvantage?
This bothered me.
Why did God create such a perfect and
violent world? I wondered.
Why didn't he just put us into heaven
in first in the from the very first
and keep us there
and keep us there?
Why did he make us so criminally inclined,
so corruptible, so rebellious,
and destructive, and self destructive.
I mean, why would he do that, I
thought.
Couldn't he make a more perfect creature? Couldn't
he just make us angels?
I mean, if there exist angels, and I
was taught, and I grew up in the
Catholic faith that there is, why couldn't he
make us like that?
Why did he make us worse than they
if he could create better?
What? Did he just slip up? It got
out of his control?
I was told that he was omnipotent.
How could that
happen?
If he wants us to submit to his
will, why didn't he just make us submit
to his will from the beginning?
It's that simple. Why didn't he make us
angels
if he has it within his power?
Why does he let the strong torture and
oppress the weak?
Why does he let blameless children be scarred
so deeply and indelibly by the violence of
their
childhood? And many and trust me, I'm not
feeling sorry for myself. There's tons of kids,
tons of kids that suffer much worse than
I did when I was a child.
I wanted to know why,
and I demanded an answer. And I didn't
care where that answer came from. I tell
you the truth, I didn't care if that
answer came from heaven or if it came
from *. I didn't care if it came
from an angel or the devil himself. I
didn't care if it came from the pope
or Charles Manson.
I just wanted an answer. And I just
wanted to know the truth.
I used to argue with my mother when
I became an atheist at 16.
I'd argue. My mom didn't argue. Somehow, she
had this strained confidence that someday I would
believe in God again. I used to ask
her, What makes you think that, mom?
And as usual, she would pull out one
of her old sayings she learned from her
grandmother. As my grandmother always said, Jeff, the
way the twig is bent, the tree will
grow.
I used to shake my head and think,
Wow, my mom, she's Don Quixote.
She's living an illusion.
I told her I had 3 main problems
with religion. Number one, why would God give
us reason if our reason conflicts with faith?
See, when we think about God, and start
asking questions about god, that naturally leads to
impossible questions, irreconcilable
issues.
The dogmas that we're taught to believe in
just don't make sense, I told her. Why
would god create us to believe in these
things if they go against reason?
Or in the first place, why give us
reason anyway if reason leads to these contradictions?
Makes it hard for us to believe in
god.
Why does he give us choice, the ability
to choose?
Just make us perfect.
Why does he allow us to choose to
become evil?
Just didn't make sense, I said to her,
if he wants us to submit to his
will.
And most of all, why does he allow
us to suffer?
Couldn't he could we have bypassed the suffering?
Popped us into heaven from the first?
In any case,
I became an avowed atheist
when I was in my middle teenage years.
I can't remember now exactly when, 17, 18,
something like that.
No. I guess I was 16,
16 years old. I remember religion class where
I declared it to the class.
But that's it. I could not see what
is the purpose of
life.
And I never found that out, so I
guess I'll see you next time.
It's good talking to you. Good luck. Good
night. Gotta go catch a basketball game.
No.
I was an atheist for about 12 years.
I it's not doesn't mean I wasn't ever
I became
in religion.
I was always fascinated by religion.
You know how
ex alcoholics are fascinated about studies about alcoholism,
and they become, you know, obsessed with studying
alcoholism. Or, you know, you notice how psychiatrists
are usually sort of crazy themselves. You
know?
Well, it's true.
Most psychiatrists. Wow. But,
you know, most people that have been injured
or harmed by something become it becomes their
obsession.
So I was always fascinated by
religion. You know, when I at Purdue University,
especially when I was here, there were so
many different cultures, so many different religious perspectives.
I was in heaven, or my own heaven,
you know. I would talk to kids on
campus about their different religious beliefs. There was
a Muslim lady in our I remember on
I was right in this building over here,
the, tall one with the that you could
walk underneath.
What's the name of it? The Math Science
Center or something? Yeah. It was right over
here, and there was a lady on my
floor. I think it was the 7th floor.
She was a Muslim lady. I don't know
where from. Dressed in black and everything. And
I saw her walking out in the hall
one day. Sure enough, she came in and
started asking me for some help in some
mathematics problems. Professor Perlis, I don't know if
he's still here, sent her to me because
I was pretty good in,
commutative
So she came, and I was helping her
and things like that. In the process, I
began asking her questions about her religion. And,
you know, we started to develop this friendship
and everything, and then she
refused to see me.
But
but
but I was, you know that almost killed
me. I went, what? What's going on here?
But I was fascinated
by
different people's religious perspective perspectives.
Not that I was searching.
You know, usually when I talk to people,
I became ever more confirmed of my disbelief
in god.
But it's it fascinated me.
When I graduated here and went to San
Francisco,
I met some more, Muslims and other faith
peoples of other faiths as well. But I
really became very close with one Muslim family
in particular.
And one time they gave me,
the Quran as a gift. After I badgered
them with my questions long enough, they
they just sort of got fed up with
me, I think.
And they
and they gave me a copy of the
Quran.
And at first, I thought, what? Do they
wanna convert me? I mean, what's going on
here?
But then I realized that it was an
innocent enough gesture. I had been asking them
a lot of questions, and they apparently thought
that
they were not up to my questions. And
maybe, as a matter of fact,
eventually, they explicitly told me that maybe
I could find
better answers here as to as far as
what their faith represents
concerning the questions I was asking them. The
usual question, why does God let us suffer?
Why doesn't he just pop us into heaven?
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Well, about 4 or 5 days after they
gave it to me, I had run out
of reading material just by coincidence.
And I had nothing to read that night,
and I had no television in my
apartment in San Francisco.
And so
I,
looked to my left. I remember sitting on
my couch, and on the table next to
me, the end table, was the copy of
the Quran.
And so I thought, oh, well,
I'll pick it up and read it.
And so I did, and I began to
read it.
And I found it in a very intriguing
book.
And I picked it up, and I read
the first seven verses,
which are essentially a prayer for guidance.
You know, it sort of teaches you a
prayer for guidance.
In the name of god, the most merciful,
compassionate,
creator of ruler of all worlds, master of
the day of judgment, to you alone we,
seek to you alone we pray, and you
alone we seek. Show us a straight path,
etcetera, etcetera. You know, I thought,
prayer, fitting way to begin a book. And
then I turned to the next
surah, or I'll use chapter.
I'll call it chapter for now. I turned
to the next chapter of the Quran. Then
it begins, and it says,
that is the book.
It begins alef, lam, meem. Let me skip
that right now. There are 3 Arabic symbols
letters.
Aleph, Lam, Meem. That is the book
wherein no doubt is guidance.
And of course, I just realized I had
just prayed for guidance, or unknowingly, you know,
not intentionally.
Then I read this next line, and it
says, that is the book. We're in no
doubt is guidance is the guidance.
And I'm looking at the book, and I'm
thinking to myself,
you know, you mean this is the answer
to this prayer I just said? And I
look at what it says in front of
me, and it says, that is the book.
I look up to my thinking to myself,
this is the book, that is the book.
And
it startled me, you know, because from that
point on, on, the entire Quran
addresses the reader as if it's God addressing
the person reading the book,
speaking to him directly.
I thought, what an ingenious
author this is.
He writes a revelation.
And instead of talking about a history
or even a biography,
it's a personal address
from
God
to the reader. I
thought, it's like the Ten Commandments, even more
personal than that, expanded to textual form, you
know, to a long text.
I thought, what a clever genius this author
was.
It's supposed to be a revelation from god.
You read it. It's God talking to the
reader.
As I read on, I became more impressed
with the author.
And at that point, I really didn't even
know who was who even people who didn't
believe in Islam claimed to be the author.
Although I certainly began asking, right, as soon
as possible and
starting to read about this religion and its
scripture as and as I was reading through
the Quran,
I really became obsessed by it and really
just threw myself into studying this.
And this it amazed me because it would
constantly sort of talk to you personally.
And it would include intriguing things that really
caught my interest. Like, I remember reading the
verse I think it's the 25th verse of
that second chapter. I'm hardly into the Quran.
And I come up to the 25th verse,
and it said it gives this very sort
of concrete description of paradise,
of heaven and the hereafter.
And it talks about rivers running underneath and,
you know, beautiful shade and things like that.
And I'm thinking, oh, come on. This is
too too concrete. I could see how this
would appeal to 7th century Arabian mentality.
But, you know, if a guy was from
Alaska and he was reading this, you know,
he would like warm, sandy beaches,
then cool shade, you know? And he would
like, you know,
bikini clad
supermodels
than, you know, whatever. Like, you know, to
what the Quran described.
But then I go to the right I
just you know, I started to think to
myself, oh, this author wasn't so clever. And
I go to the next verse, and it
says, and God does not disdain
from using
any kind of parable,
even if it is of a gnat to
get his point across.
See, I just read this verse that I
took very concretely, and the next one says,
oh, don't take every statement in this, you
know, in the Quran so concretely.
You know what? It says, God does not
disdain to use a parable,
a symbolic statement to get his point across.
I thought, man, this guy who wrote this
Quran
is brilliant.
You know, he sort of addresses people on
one level, and then he knows that there's
gonna be more, you know, sneakier, trickier people
reading it. And so he catches them in
the next verse and says, hey, you, you
kinda skeptical person. I mean, don't think, you
know god does not disdain
to cite parables in order to get it,
you know, in order to catch your imagination,
even if it is of a
gnat. You know? I thought, brilliant.
The first 29 verses of that second chapter,
beginning of the Quran, sort of describe its
audience.
You know, there are the
believers, the people who have a natural so
not natural, but who believe in God and
are sincere and it says that this Quran
will be of great benefit to them and
then it talks about the people who will
not benefit at all. The disc, the people
who just rejected out of hand are completely
closed minded, and the Quran dismisses them in
one one verse. Talks about them in 1
verse, dismisses them in 1 verse. They're gonna
not gain from this at all. And then
it talks about the people on the fence,
sort of in the middle,
who waver between belief and disbelief.
And it says how, you know, they could
benefit, but at the but they have to
be sincere, and they have to be open
minded, etcetera.
And I'm thinking,
you know, what a modern way to begin
a text,
you know, because it describes its audience, talks
about the prerequisites that gain from this, who
will gain from it, who will not, sort
of the way we write textbooks nowadays. Like,
if I write a math text, I say,
well, this book is appropriate for freshmen and
sophomores, but it's also even appropriate for seniors
in high school if they have this and
this background, and so forth. But for, you
know, high school, you know, younger than that,
students with a lesser background won't won't be
able to benefit from this. And I thought,
oh, what a brilliant way to begin this
scripture. It's very modern in in so many
ways.
Okay.
So I was impressed by the author. That's
the most important point I'm trying to make.
He impressed me right from the start.
And I was more I quickly became very
intrigued by the author. I wanted to understand
him better. I was in awe of what
I thought was his mind, his brilliance.
Then I come, naturally enough after the introduction,
to the 30th verse of the 2nd Sura.
And it begins the story of man.
Now,
some people take that as history. I personally
took it as an allegory,
as a symbolic story.
You know, from my background, that was a
natural way to read it, especially because of
internal things inside that story and from other
verses in the Quran that I would later
read that sort of confirm me confirm my
belief in that.
So I took it as primarily symbolic. And
I was looking to read it to gain
to understand meaning,
to gain some meaning about what the author
had to say about the purpose of life.
But regardless how you take it, I think
you're gonna come to more or
less similar conclusions.
Okay. So here I am, I turn to
the story of man,
and I
read the 30th,
verse of the 2nd Sura that begins that
story. And I look down at it,
and I read through that. I read that
one. And then the story continues up till
the, I think, the 39th,
verse, very short introduction.
I read through it once, and it just
didn't sound right because I was familiar with
this story. You could read it in the
Bible.
So I read it again and again, 2
or 3 times, and I realized something is
really strange here. The author seems to have
missed the entire point and purpose of the
story.
I mean, his permuted details, he seems to
have missed the the main point of the
story.
And I began to wonder if he he
just never heard it right.
But on the other hand, there seemed to
be something underneath the surface here that he
was trying to say that seemed very intriguing.
So I decided finally to go back and
read it very carefully,
line by line, verse by verse, and give
him doubt, give it a true, honest reading,
and see what it had to say, because
it intrigued me. And I read the 30th
verse of the 2nd Sura, and here's the
way it goes. And it says,
Behold,
and here's the way it goes. And it
says, behold, your Lord said to the angels,
I am going to place
a representative of mine on earth, a vicerend,
a representative on
earth, representative of God.
And they said, the angels,
will you place therein 1 who will spread
corruption and shed blood
while we celebrate your praises and glorify your
holiness?
And he
said, truly, I know what you do not
know.
I looked at that verse
and I just felt kinda like
a ting not more than a tingle,
you know, like a coldness come over me.
You know, I felt like somebody was in
the room.
And I read it again, and it says,
behold, your lord said to the angels, I'm
going to place a vice friend, a representative
of mine on earth.
I thought, no, no, you got it all
wrong.
Because here the author is saying,
behold, your lord said to the angels, I'm
going to place man apparently on earth as
my representative.
I thought, no, that's not why you're putting
man on earth.
You're putting him there as a punishment.
He sins, and you punish him. You didn't
create him from the start to put him
on earth as your representative.
You put him there to punish him.
But that's not what it says.
Long before man, Adam, and Eve even appear
on a scene, it says, I'm going to
place him there
on earth as my representative.
I thought, no, no, that's
entirely wrong.
And then I read the next verse, and
that one was the one that hooked me.
Because then the angels say because up to
that point, I thought, does he really mean
what he's saying? I mean, is he really
saying that he's not putting them there as
a punishment, but,
you know, to represent
him? Is he giving him this positive appraisal
of mankind right from the start? And then
like I said, the rest of that verse
goes, they said,
will you place therein 1 who will spread
corruption and shed blood?
The angels are saying this.
While we, the angels, celebrate your praises and
glorify you?
I looked at that and said, that's my
question.
Right? Because the angels are raising a natural
objection.
Will you place her in one who will
spread corruption and shed blood?
God just said, I'm gonna put man there
to represent
me. And the angels naturally say,
why?
This creature,
this rebellious
being,
this creature who spreads corruption and sheds much
blood,
you're gonna create him and put him on
earth
and his progeny?
While what? While
we celebrate your praises and glorify your holiness?
Why put this creature on Earth? Why even
make them in the 1st place
when you could create us,
the angels,
who are perfectly submissive to your will,
who do exactly what you want of us,
who only glorify you and praise you?
Why create this being?
Why create them in the 1st place? Why
create this being who sheds spreads corruption and
sheds much blood?
It's a natural question.
It's my question,
the atheist question.
I thought the author was trying to play
with
me, play with my emotions, manipulate the story
just
to agitate me.
I said it right there with the angels.
Yes. Why create this creature when you create
angels?
And notice where the question is coming from.
It's coming from heaven. It's being asked in
heaven,
which gives the question all the more force.
Because why create this creature with his criminal
inclinations,
then put him in
unleash him in and unleash him in that
environment where he could pursue his worst criminal
inclinations.
He just
got to get you.
And when I read that,
I was almost furious.
Yes. Why?
Why do that?
And then the rest of that verse goes,
and here's God's answer to the angel's question.
Truly I know
what you do not know.
In modern parlance,
that would be
yes. Truly, I know what I'm doing. I
know exactly what I'm doing.
You know exactly what you're doing? I said.
You know exactly what you're doing?
No. No. You don't get off that easily,
I thought to myself.
You don't take my whole question. You don't
take my pain. You don't take my life.
Summarize it in 2 verses,
and then just walk away and say you
know what you're doing.
That's my life there.
That's my rage. That's my anger. You cannot
walk away that easy. No. You don't ask
that question without answering it.
I wanna know what is the answer to
that question. You made me,
I thought to myself.
And then it dawned on me,
I was arguing with a god I didn't
even believe in.
And that would happen often when I read
this Quran. Every now and then, I would
slip into an argument with the scripture,
arguing with the divinity I didn't even believe
in, complaining to a God that I rejected.
But that was the brilliance I thought of
the author, the way he could phrase
things in such a way to lure you
in to feeling like you're conversing
with God himself. I thought this author was
extremely brilliant.
And so I kept on reading, even though
right now I was extremely agitated.
But the strange thing is
the author didn't end the answer to the
angel's question with that verse.
He just didn't say, truly, I know, but
you do not, and then dismissed the question.
Are you guys getting tired and bored?
No. Seriously.
Sorry about this, but, you know, these things
are kinda fun for me. But,
you know,
whenever I talk about these, my daughters go,
oh, here he goes again.
You know, but, you know, for me, it's
like doing mathematics.
You know?
It's beautiful,
even though I know, you know, all students
would agree with that.
But in any case
so I turned to the next verse and
it says,
and he, god,
taught Adam the names of all things.
And then he placed them before the angels
and said,
tell me their names if you are right.
I looked at that verse, and it's clearly
addressing the angels' question. It's responding to the
angels' question.
And it's interesting what it says. And he
taught Adam the names of all things and
then placed them before the angels and said,
tell me their names if you are right.
Right about what?
About your question, your objection, in a sense,
to the the existence of man.
I remembered that in the account of this
story that I had known from as I
was a child,
that man learns
man is taught to not taught, but he
is requires the ability to name things.
But it was not presented as an answer
to any kind of question.
But in this version, the author
now took this naming incident
and used it to answer to begin an
answer to the wording, because this author was
extremely skillful in his choice of words. And
he taught Adams the names of all things.
I realized very quickly that you have to
be very close pay very close attention to
the wording
because this author was extremely
skillful in his choice of words.
And he said and he taught Adam the
names
of all things.
It's emphasizing that Adam here is can learn.
He can be taught. He's an intellectual being.
And he taught Adam what? How to name
all things.
All things.
All things that come into his conscious mind.
Everything he sees, everything he experiences,
he's able to assign verbal symbols.
Throughout I would later discover that throughout the
Quran, the gift of human language, the human
ability to to communicate,
not just in word but also in writing
would be
emphasized
throughout the Quran. That this skill is what
makes man
way above the creature creatures around him. This
gift,
especially, is one of the greatest gifts
that God gives to mankind.
In the Quran, in one place, it says
it explicitly states that, that, read
commands the reader. Read in the name of
your Lord who created, created man from a
tiny creature that clings.
Read and your Lord is most bountiful. Why?
Because he taught man the use of the
pen,
taught him with it what he could never
know, what he knew not.
The Quran will emphasize reading, talking, communicating,
and man's intellectual abilities,
especially as it is symbolized in this verse.
What makes man special, what makes him unique,
what begins as an answer to the angel's
question, the author points to this verse,
man's intellectual abilities.
He begins by answering the angel's question by
pointing to that, man's intellect,
And symbolized especially
his ability
to assign verbal symbols
to all the concepts that come into his
mind.
And then he placed them before the angels
and said, you, tell me their names if
you are right.
And they said, glory to you.
We have no knowledge
except what you taught us.
We only have the knowledge, the level of
knowledge,
have the intelligence
to be able to create on their own
verbal symbols
for what they experience.
You. We have no knowledge except what you
taught us. We cannot name these things. And
they say, in truth, it is you who
are knowing
the wise.
This takes knowledge. This takes wisdom.
This takes at least a certain level of
genius
to be able to name things like this.
They admit their inferiority. This is beyond them.
And then you turn to the next verse,
and it says, and he said, oh, Adam,
tell them their names.
And Adam succeeds
where the angels fail.
The angels cannot did not have the ability
to be able to do to meet this
task.
Adam,
he succeeds instantly.
And when he had told them their names,
God said to the angels, did I not
tell you that I know what is unseen
in the heavens and the earth, and I
know what you reveal and what you conceal?
A direct reference to the question.
Did I not tell you that I know
what is in the heavens and the earth,
and I know what you reveal and you
conceal? Didn't see? Didn't I just tell you
I know exactly what I'm doing?
But the thing that got me was this
last part. Did I not tell you that
I know what is unseen in the heavens
and the earth, and I know what you
reveal and
you conceal?
What did the angels reveal?
What did they conceal?
I was amazed at the
economy of expression of the author.
In just a few words, he could pack
so much meaning.
It's so easy to just read through this.
I've read through this 3 times, I told
you, 2 or 3 times before I went
back and read through it slowly. I didn't
realize anything. Couldn't see the get the picture.
But I went back and read it line
by line, word by word. Suddenly, a whole
world was opening up to me.
Did I not tell you that I know
what is unseen in the heavens and the
earth, and I know what you reveal
and what you conceal?
What did the angels reveal?
What did they conceal?
Oh, I look back. It's obvious what they
revealed,
the evil propensities
of man.
Man's ability to destroy,
to wreak havoc,
to spread corruption,
to shed blood,
they revealed the dark side of human nature
plainly.
But what did they conceal?
I thought about it and it was obvious.
They ignored, neglected to say
that man has the reciprocal ability
to do good,
to show compassion,
to be kind,
to be merciful,
to be just,
to be to do what is righteous,
to do righteous deeds.
Man has the ability to rise to great
heights of virtue.
That was an eye opener for me
because I had always seen the dark side
of the man.
That I was blind to it. I had
a blind spot. I was blind to the
reciprocal ability of man.
But here,
the angels
are being told exactly what I needed to
be told,
that yes, human beings could be extremely destructive.
They could be violent. They could be vicious.
They could be mean.
But they also could be kind, good,
merciful,
virtuous.
And we all know it. Throughout history, we
have the greatest exemplars
of goodness and the greatest exemplars of evil,
sometimes living side by side on the human
stage. I
have great examples, Adolf Hitler
and Schindler.
Right?
Usually, when someone evil arises, it forces the
good out of others.
It seems to produce to bring out the
best in each other in a certain sense.
Right?
But here, that's what I was saying. Sometimes
these great exemplars of both tendencies, they can
live in the same era, in the same
country,
in the same city, even on the same
block,
even in the same house.
And we said,
next verse,
and be on a and it says in
the next verse, and behold, we said to
the angels,
bow down to Adam,
and they bowed down.
But not so Iblis, turns out to be
Satan. He refused and was arrogant. He was
of those who reject faith.
And we said to the angels, bow down
to Adam. If I had any doubt up
to this point
that the author meant that human intelligence
made mankind
potentially superior to the angels, this verse removed
all doubt.
Because it says to the angels, after god
demonstrates
that man is his intellectual superior, tells the
angels bow down to Adam, and they bow
down.
Bow down bowing down could be a symbol
of what? Well, it could be a symbol
of inferiority,
but it also could be a symbol of
subservience.
And perhaps the author, and I would later
see that this is true, that what he's
saying here is that not only angels are
of lesser intelligence than man,
do not have his intellectual
capacity, but also it's saying that these angels
will
serve
the development will serve god, but they will
serve the development of man.
And later in the Quran, we'll see that
everything else about us in this learning experience,
in this life on earth, is for to
serve our growth and development.
Even Satan, it turns out,
serves a function according to the Quran.
All of it serves an essential role in
the development and
evolution of the human personality.
And Iblis refused. Satan refused to bow down.
Why? Because he was arrogant. It was of
those who reject faith.
If you give me a minute, I'll just
summarize where we are right now.
Angels asked the right question, why create this
human being in the first place? Because he
is so destructive and violent, sinful, etcetera.
God begins to answer the question by saying,
look, he has superior intelligence. He has a
tremendous capacity intellectual capacity in comparison to the
creatures around him. When he demonstrates this, he
tells the angels to bow down. You will
serve his development.
And then he introduces Satan, Iblis.
And so what does Satan, I thought, represent
in almost every culture? What do angels represent
in almost every culture? In almost every and
especially in the religion I grew up with,
Satan represents the source of temptation,
that that being who whispers
temptations into our soul.
Angels represent
the source of those magnanimous urgings. So that
when we're faced with a moral
dilemma, we hear both voices in our soul
telling us, go ahead.
You know, enjoy yourself. Don't worry about it.
It's okay.
Relax.
That's gonna be good for you. Have a
good time. The angel's saying, No. That's not
the right thing, Jeff. Don't do that. You
do that, you're doing the wrong thing. Remember
your mom. Remember how honest she was. That's
what she taught you.
Here, the author is introducing
the source of temptation
that we are exposed to and the source
of inspiration
that all human beings are subject to. That's
what they pretty much represent in all cultures.
But why does he introduce it at this
stage?
Well, first, in answer to the angel's question,
I thought he's talking about man's intellectual ability.
Now he's talking about what?
Man has the ability to choose. To choose
between because he is subject
to magnanimous urgings and evil promptings.
And he has the ability, as we'll soon
see, to choose between them.
Man is a creature of choice, a moral
being.
And these promptings that he's subjected to, magnanimous
urgings and evil promptings, temptations,
heighten the morality of a decision. It forces
us to focus on it.
So that not only can we discern between
the 2, but when we have to make
a moral decision,
it becomes
we focus on it in an intense we're
forced to focus on it in an intense
way.
So up to this point, we see that
man has gone through a period of instruction,
of learning.
In his development,
he's now become a moral
being, and so he was presented with a
choice.
And he said,
and we said, oh, Adam,
dwell you and your spouse in the garden,
and eat freely thereof what you wish.
But come not near this tree, for you
will be among the wrongdoers.
I'm thinking
the author either has his own
original
version that he's talking about here, that he's
presenting here,
or he just can't make up his mind
what point he is trying to get get
across. He's getting lost. Let me read it
again. Dwell you and your spouse in the
garden, and eat freely thereof what you wish,
but come not near this tree, for you
will be among the wrongdoers.
The reason why I said the author seems
to be confused
is because
he he's almost totally
dispassionate
in that statement.
I said to myself, no. That's not how
it works.
God is supposed to be fearful
at the prospect
that Adam may eat from the tree,
because that's the tree of eternal life and
infinite knowledge. And if he eats from it,
as it said in my upbringing, they will
become as gods.
And so God, after he banishes man from
the garden, puts an angel around that tree
so that he never goes near it again.
For God knows, if he goes near that
tree,
it's a disaster.
Man could become his equal.
And he's nervous and frightened at the prospect
that man will go to the tree and
eat from it.
But here,
there's no sense of urgency.
There's no sense of panic. There's no sense
of even
what you wish, but come not near this
tree, for why? For you will be among
the wrongdoers.
It's almost as if the tree is picked
at random.
Let's see. Adam, Eve,
go now eat whatever you like in the
garden, but don't go near
that
tree. There's nothing special about the tree.
I read the whole rest of the Quran.
There was nothing special about the tree.
Satan
tempted Adam and told him it's, you know,
this tree, if you eat this from this
fruit, you'll have an eternal great kingdom,
a kingdom that never decays and so forth,
and eternal life.
It turns out to be a falsification on
his part.
No truth in it at all.
But God seems totally in control here,
not at all worried at this prospect.
What does the next verse say?
But Satan
caused them to slip
and expelled them from the state in which
they were.
I read that verse and said, what?
This author has a penchant for understating things.
What happened? But Satan caused them
to
slip
and
expelled
them from the state in which they were.
What?
The greatest
sin in the history of the human race,
the sin for which you and I and
all of us here are sweating it out
down here on earth, and we have to
live and and work and suffer and go
through pain and agony and death,
that sin that brought this down upon us
is a slip?
A slip?
I went to my Arabian friends, and I
asked them, you see this verse in the
Quran here?
This word here, could you tell me what
it means?
And he said, it means to slip.
And I said to them, no. I mean,
you know, a slip in English is when
I go like this.
You know? A slip
is, a minor
distraction.
You get distracted for a second and you
sort of lose your focus, but you immediately
regain it. It's something minor, I told them.
You know, like I say to another American,
you know, I slipped up. It's no big
deal.
Jeff, what happened there? Oh, don't worry about
it. Uh-huh. I tell my department head, it's
just a slip up. What happened again?
You know, it's a slip up. Don't worry
about it. Oh, I slipped.
No big deal.
They told me it means the same thing
to slip.
No big deal.
The slip?
That Satan caused them to slip,
and they were expelled from the state in
which they were. What state were they?
Total compliance
to god's will.
What state were they in now? They had
discovered the ability
to go against that will, to make an
independent choice.
Up to this point, we saw that they
were given the ability to choose, presented with
temptation and magnanimous urgings.
Now,
now,
we actually see them make that independent choice.
They have might have been given many commands
before, may have had many choices before.
What's significant about this choice, the story seems
to be saying, is that it's the first
time they made an independent one.
But Satan caused them to slip and expelled
them from the state in which they were,
and we said,
go you all down,
some of you being the enemies of others,
and on earth will be your dwelling place
and provision for a time.
Go you all down,
some of you will be adversaries of others,
and on earth will be your dwelling place
and provision for a time.
And the author, I thought,
he just doesn't get it.
I mean, there should be rage here. There
should be anger.
God should be furious.
He should be losing
it. He should be threatening this creature. He
should be screaming at him, telling him, yes.
And the woman, you're gonna have to have
a period and you're gonna scream on your
labor pants. And you, you you're gonna
then you're and that is she he this
this this guy, you were too smart and
you tricked him, he's gonna rule over you.
That's gonna teach you a lesson, and, you
know, and so forth.
But here,
simply says,
go, you all down, some of you being
adversaries of others, and earth will be your
dwelling place and provision for a time.
And that's not a god losing it.
And on earth will be your dwelling place
and provision for a time.
When I walked into the hotel today,
and the person behind the desk said, here's
your room, and we have a continental breakfast
in the morning.
I didn't assume they were angry at me.
Here's your room. We have a continental breakfast
in the morning.
You know,
I didn't assume they were angry at me.
They weren't. But that's essentially
go you all down. Some of you will
be adversaries of others. The angels already said
that in their in their question.
There will be violence. This creature creates violence.
This seems to be more a warning than
anything else. And on earth will be your
dwelling letter
of
exploding out of control.
And then Adam received words from his Lord,
and he turned to him mercifully.
For truly, God is oft returning ever merciful.
What?
Merciful?
Adam
receives words from his lord? Turns out in
the next verse, the words of consolatory words,
the words of consolation.
Then Adam receives words from his lord, and
he turned to him merciful. God forgives him.
Truly is off returning the merciful.
It's definitely not God going out of control.
I thought, what point is the author trying
to make here?
He has missed the whole point and purpose
of this story.
Next verse.
And it repeats what it said before us.
So we said,
go down from this state,
all of you together.
And truly there will come guidance come for
me guidance to you. And whoever follows did
was not punishing Adam by
putting
was not punishing Adam
by putting him on earth, Adam and his
spouse,
it was removed when I read this verse
and the and the previous one, because God
says, go down from the state, all of
you together,
and then and then he embraces Adam.
And truly, there will come to guidance from
me, Adam and Eve. And whoever follows my
guidance, no fear shall come upon them,
nor they shall shall they grieve. It's a
tender scene.
Adam and his spouse repented in the previous
verse.
God forgave them. But he tells them that
you have to go down
from the state in which you were.
They're obviously fearful.
They're obviously somewhat panicked.
This is all new to them.
And what does god say to them? He
says, but don't worry.
Guidance will come from me. And whoever follows
my guidance, no fear shall come upon them
nor shall they grieve.
It's like a parent
addressing a hurt child
or a penitent child.
Don't worry about it. You'll be alright.
Don't panic. I'm not here to hurt you.
Don't be afraid.
You'll be alright.
There'll come guidance for me. And as long
as you follow my guidance, you have nothing
to fear nor shall you grieve. I know
you're afraid. I know this is new for
you. I know this is hard for you,
but you have to go through it. But
don't worry. I'll be with you. Just follow
my guidance. You have nothing to grieve. My
guidance. You have nothing to grieve.
The last verse
switches to the past tense.
Up to this point, we're talking about the
beginnings of mankind.
This verse transports us to the very end
of the human drama, looking back on the
history of mankind.
And it says, and those who rejected
and gave the lie to our signs,
past tense,
these are friends of the fire.
They dwell therein.
Notice how it switches to a whole another
scene.
It would be unfair to say this to
the couple. They've just been through a lot.
So it doesn't address them personally. It addresses
the reader. It takes
them to the future,
to the day of judgment,
and looks back at human history and says,
and those who reject it and gave a
lie to our signs,
these are the friends of the fire they
dwell therein.
They're friends of the fire?
Curious choice of words. The author is constantly
making intriguing
choices of words. Do people befriend the suffering
that awaits them in the next life, I
thought? They're friends of the fire?
Do people court? Do they pursue?
Do they embrace
the misery that's gonna meet them in the
hereafter?
How? I thought.
It says they dwell therein. When? In the
past?
What?
Did they already create or live in some
kind of * in this life that's organically
connected to the * they experience in the
next?
What is he saying here?
Later in the Quran, I would read a
verse like that says this, in your mutual
rivalry for the things of the
for piling up the things of the world,
you are diverted.
Then it says, but then you will know
when you die.
Then it says, and then again you will
know
when you reach your next existence.
But then it says, but if you could
see right now with the eye of reality,
you would certainly see the *.
What *?
When you're already in.
Is that what the author is trying to
say? Is there an organic link between
what we do in this life to what
we experience in the next? Do we create
our Do we start? Do we, in a
sense,
make
ourselves
into that type of creature that experiences either
pain
or happiness in the next life?
Too many questions were coming into my mind.
And
I kept seeing a picture going in and
out of focus.
And I was only
38, 39 verses through the Quran and the
7 in the opening chapter. So 46 verses.
It's only a few pages through the Quran.
I had a whole Quran to go.
But I was determined to pursue it and
find how the answer author deals with those
questions.
So I thought he was a genius up
to this point. I thought he was a
genius beyond
any genius I had ever read, or at
least I thought he could be. But I
thought as I read through the rest of
the Quran, he'd start to fall apart, make
mistakes,
contradict himself.
So I continued reading.
I was just intrigued. I was wondering when
he was gonna trip over his own feet.
Okay.
Three things the office seemed to be emphasizing
in this story, 3 things that intrigued me
most. It seemed that he was emphasizing
in response to the angel's question, why create
this
most corrupt and worst creature?
Are you getting really exhausted?
Seriously.
Because I could finish this tomorrow.
Really.
No lie.
I'm not a politician.
I'm telling the truth.
Okay.
I'll go a little further. Until you get
too exhausted, just raise your hands.
Okay. Because you've been at it a long
time already. I know. Okay. Now we're
in ten minutes of
of listening to me talk.
But in any case, three things in response
to the angel's question he seemed to be
emphasizing. 1,
reason.
Right? Human beings have reason. That figures into
a response to the Angel's question, why create
this most destructive bee? Second thing he seemed
to be emphasizing is choice and human and
the human being is a creature of choice,
and and he can make moral choices. God
has empowered him to make moral choices and
to see them through to their normally expected
conclusions.
At least that's what it seemed to be
hinting at. And I have to read the
rest of the Quran to see if that
was really true. 3rd thing that seemed to
be emphasized in the story was that human
beings will suffer. And God just says, yeah,
they're gonna suffer.
4th thing he seems to emphasize, we're not
put here as a punishment.
We're not put here as a punishment. Because
notice when he forgives Adam, he doesn't pop
him and his he and his wife back
in heaven.
As a matter of fact, there was nothing
in the story to indicate that this life
was a punishment.
But when I read that verse that said
he had forgiven Adam and and Eve, I
thought, okay, put him back in heaven. You
forgave him.
You know, when I penalize my daughters for
doing something wrong, I subtract $5 from their
allowance.
If they come and cry, I ought to
my wife says I'm a marshmallow.
If they come and cry, I mean, I
say, okay, okay, you'll forgive
was forgiven.
Make up your mind.
Am I punished or am I forgiven?
Oh, you're forgiven, but I'll keep the $5.
That's not fair. You forgave me.
So why doesn't god put Adam and Eve
back into heaven?
Because life is not a punishment. This is
from the beginning of the story to the
end.
Very beginning, and it was consistent throughout, that
he's gonna put them there as his representative,
potentially, on our own. We had known from
the very beginning, and it was consistent throughout,
that he's gonna put them there
as his representative,
potentially, on earth.
Human beings have the potential to represent them.
Somehow that figures in to response to the
Angel's question. So 3 things are emphasized. Well,
1, life is not a punishment.
2,
human beings are creatures of intellect. 3, they
have the ability to make choices. They have
the ability
to exercise
will. And 3rd, that they're going to suffer.
And somehow, it seems, the author was emphasizing
these in the story of man. Now I
thought I could just be wrong, deluding myself,
really, projecting my own neurosis onto this story,
my own childhood
trauma onto the story. So
as I read through the Koran, I tried
to keep my mind and eye open for
anything that would contradict what I had thought.
And as I read through it, sure enough,
I found confirmation
of just of what I just said.
Reason,
man's ability to reason, gets such strong emphasis
in the Quran
that sometimes you would think
that the author
is some kind of, you know, tremendous
has a tremendous faith in philosophy and reason,
like no other religious mind in history, because
I was always taught that reason and faith
conflict,
that somewhere along the line, you know, they
contradict the age old conflict between faith and
reason. If you take reason too far, you'll
naturally
get arrive at conflicts with faith. This author
author says exactly the opposite, saying that people
do not believe, or people that come come
upon false beliefs because they do not use
their
reason. He makes the point again and again
and again. He puts so much emphasis on
reason that one famous Western
Orientalist who studied the Quran said, the Quran
puts so much emphasis on reason
that you would think that disbelief is nothing
more than an infirmity of the human mind,
an inability to use it like an illness
in your mind,
Mental sickness,
that's how much emphasis he puts on reason.
That was Henri Lamens who said that.
Another orientalist,
Robinson, one
of the leading
orientalists in France wrote, the Quran
continually expounds the rational proofs
of God's omnipotence.
The wonders of creation, such as the gestation
of animals,
the movement of heavenly bodies,
atmospheric phenomena, the variety of animal and vegetable
life, so marvelously well adapted to men's needs.
He's not a Muslim,
but he he was impressed by this. He
said, all those things are signs for those
of insight, and he quotes the Quran here.
Repeated about 50 times in the Quran is
the Arabic verb which means to connect ideas
together, to reason, to no
sense?
Will you not use your reason? No sense?
Will you not use your reason?
The infidels, those who remain insensible
to Mohammed's preaching are stigmatized as a people
of no
intelligence.
Persons incapable of the intellectual effort needed to
cast off routine thinking, and he gives several
references. In this respect, they're like cattle.
The Quran complains that people
disbelieve or corrupt religion because they do not
use
the the reason. They refuse to reason, says
the Quran. And I have 10 references here.
And there are people who do not reason,
says the Quran. And I have 12 references
here.
Reveals signs, lessons and admonitions so that perhaps
you will use your reason, the Quran says
again and again. From the author's viewpoint,
reason and faith are allies as are
illogic and false belief. And he clearly sets
a conflict along these lines. The right way
is clearly distinct from error, he says.
Those who benefit most from the Quran, the
author says are persons of insight,
firmly rooted in knowledge, used to reason, and
stand on clear evidence and proof.
While those who oppose revelations,
the revelation are deluded
and manifest error, ignorant, foolish, have no understanding,
only follow surmise and conjecture, and blindly adhere
adhere to to to, excuse me, to tradition.
In an almost Socratic style, the author asked
the reader again and again and again, what
do you think?
Have you considered this? Do you suppose?
Do you ponder?
Do not think?
Message is clear.
And in order to be guided
to truer faith, we need to free ourselves
from inherited notions and examine our beliefs
rationally.
That was clearly the position of the author.
I thought he was walking a dangerous
slippery slope.
Because once you start pushing too much for
reason, you'll eventually start
trapping yourself
and presenting a system that cannot stand up
to its demands.
But I was intrigued.
Does the author also
emphasize
excuse me.
Choice, like I thought he does did.
Does he emphasize that human beings are a
choosing creature and this plays a major role
in their development on earth? And the answer
is yes.
Let there be no compulsion in religion. The
right way is henceforth clearly distinct from error,
he says. In another verse,
had we willed,
had God willed, he could indeed have guided
all of you.
He could have indeed have guided all of
you.
I thought I read those when I would
come across those verses, I'd say, why not?
Guide us all.
Why did you not do that?
Do not the believers know that had God
willed, he could have guided all mankind?
Why didn't he?
Why didn't he make us capable
of choosing the wrong way?
And if God had willed, we could have
given every soul its guidance.
Okay. Make us all clones of one another,
rightly guided angels.
Steady doesn't.
He lets us make choices, lets us make
errors, lets us make mistakes,
gives us an intellect.
Quran emphasized, hopefully you will learn from your
mistakes.
The Quran puts so much emphasis on trial
and error.
It says it explicitly
many, many times. You will face trial.
You will face trial.
We tried you this way. We tried you
that way. We tried you this way. We
test you this way. We test you that
way. So it's like it's a professor talking
to his class. It has an almost academic
tone.
And you will
And hopefully, you will correct your errors, it
says. You will repent.
You will realize your error and turn yourself
around.
Enlightenment has come from your god. He who
sees does so to his own good. He
who is blind is so to his own
hurt. It is your choice.
And whoever is guided is only to his
own gain. And if any stray, say, I
am only a warner,
tells the prophet.
It's up to you. I don't make your
choices for you.
And God wants us to choose on our
own. We have revealed to you the book
with the truth for mankind.
He who lets himself be guided does so
to his own good. He who lets himself
astray does so to his own hurt.
It's your choice.
And the Quran says that in an almost
dispassionate tone.
It's your choice.
You have the right to choose. God's not
going to force the choices down your throat.
He's not going to make you do anything
when it comes to primary critical moral choices.
You have to make them yourself, he's essentially
telling
the audience.
What does he have to say about
Okay. I was intrigued. The author was consistent.
Emphasizes reason, emphasizes choice. What does he have
to say about suffering?
Well, here's what he has to say.
Is it really necessary? I thought, what possible
purpose can it serve?
Most assuredly, we we will try you with
something of danger and hunger and the loss
of worldly goods, of your loss of your
lives and the fruits of your labor. But
give glad tidings to those who are patient
in adversity,
who in calamity befalls them, say, truly under
god, we do we belong, and truly under
him, we shall
return. Most assuredly, we will try you, the
Quran says, with danger, suffering, loss of worldly
goods, thank you, lives and the fruits of
your labor.
K? Most assuredly
oh, can somebody get that for me?
But most assuredly,
you will suffer. Why? I thought. Why?
Do you think that you can enter paradise
without having suffered like those who passed away
before you?
Why not?
Just pop us up.
Beam me up, Scotty, I thought to myself.
Do you think that you could enter paradise
without having suffered like those who passed away
before you? Why not?
Misfortune and hardship befell them, and so shaken
were they that the apostle we're talking about
good people here suffering.
That the apostle and the believers with him
would exclaim,
when will God's help come?
Oh, truly, God's help is always near, the
verse says.
You are gonna suffer.
Why?
You will certainly be tried in your possessions
and yourselves, it says. Another verse, every soul
must taste of death,
and we will try you with calamity
and prosperity,
both as a means of trial. We'll test
you with both.
What's the point of it? And to us,
you are returned.
In another verse it
says, oh, mankind,
truly have been toiling towards your Lord in
painful toil, but you shall meet him.
How do you toil towards God?
How does suffering
bring us any closer to God?
Just
do you know?
I know a lot of you do, but,
you know, it's a rhetorical question. You know,
it's sort of a well, never mind.
This verse,
I was ready to
just throw the Koran down. I got so
angry when I read the beginning of this
one. We certainly have created man to face
distress.
We first certainly have created man to face
distress. What?
We certainly have created man to face distress.
You created us to face distress? You created
us to suffer?
Are we made to face distress?
I'd start to think about it in another
way.
Are we eminently well suited for it to
face distress?
Are we a creature that thrives on distress?
Do we thrive on suffering?
Does that play a major role in our
development, in our progress, in our progress, in
our growth? When I thought about it that
way, I said, yes, of course.
I could see that in this life,
we are eminently well suited to face distress
more than any other creature about us.
And that sort of charts
our intellectual evolution and our progress.
But how could that bring us any closer
to God?
What does that have to do with our
relationship with God? What does that have anything
to do with the here
after? Does he think that no one has
power over him? He will say, I have
wasted much wealth.
Does he think that no one sees him?
He's trying to say, Are you you think
you're down here alone just going through this
for no point or purpose?
Have we not given him 2 eyes to
see with, a tongue to speak and communicate
with, and 2 lips to communicate with, and
pointed out to him the 2 conspicuous ways?
What are the 2 conspicuous ways?
Haven't I given you all these things to
to see and to learn with and to
communicate with? Can't you
2
Can't you see the 2 conspicuous ways?
When I read this verse, I was at
the 90th chapter of the Quran.
I had, like, 30 pages to go, and
I still was in the dark.
What two conspicuous ways? What can I see?
And what will make you comprehend Oh, but
he attempts not the uphill climb. And what
will make you comprehend the uphill climb? Is
life an uphill climb? Why does life have
to be an uphill climb? Why can't it
be a downward slope
or a level surface?
Why does it have to be an upward
climb?
Why does it have to be hard?
And what will make you comprehend the uphill
climb?
It is to free a slave or to
feed in a day of hunger, an orphan
nearly related, or the poor one lying in
the dust.
Then he or she is of those who
believe. Then he or she is one of
those who exhorts one another to patience.
Then he or she is one of those
who exhorts others to mercy.
What?
The 2 conspicuous ways?
These are the 2 conspicuous ways? The uphill
climb is 1?
And what is it about? Helping others? Self
sacrifice?
Freeing a slave? Helping a poor one lying
in the dust?
Giving of yourself?
When I read this first,
the first thing I thought about, believe it
or not, was my mother.
Because my mom had always told me that,
Jeff, life is not about taking.
Life is not about succeeding.
Life is not about obtaining your material goals.
Life, Jeff, is about giving.
Life is about giving to others. He said,
as long as you have something to give,
no matter how small, you're never poor, you're
always rich.
I said to her, Mom,
you just don't get it,
do you? Life is not about giving, mom.
Knife is not about self sacrifice.
Life is about getting ahead. Life is about
protecting oneself. Life is about not letting people
step on you. Life is about
insulating yourself from harm for as long as
you can. This world mom, that status taught
me, and he's right, is a dog eat
dog world.
And it's not about any of the things
you say, it's about survival.
But here at 28 years old, when I
thought back
on my mom,
I realized that she was always a peaceful,
happy, contented,
restful, serene
person.
And at the same time,
I was
angry,
hostile.
I wouldn't show it to people around me,
but inside I felt
it. I felt that life was empty, chaotic,
uncertain,
fragile,
scary.
When I read this first, I realized that
at least in that sense, my the Quran
was right, and so was my mom. There
are 2 conspicuous ways. If you just look
around you, look at the people that are
happy, look at the people that really seem
to have joy in life,
the real joyful people in life,
the people who give of themselves,
who self sac who who engage in self
sacrifice, and they can't seem to get enough.
And you look at the people who squander
and hoard,
and they're miserable.
They never could get enough.
I realize that there are 2 conspicuous ways
in life,
but I didn't see how that had to
do with anything
that any ultimate purpose behind it. Is that
what the author is saying, I thought? That
life is just to be good and nice
to people so you feel good inside? As
Michael Jackson used to say, to make the
world a better place for you and me.
No. Is that it?
I couldn't find a connection,
and I never did. So goodbye.
No.
But we're almost out of time, so I'll
try to tie this up. It's hard, you
know. This takes a 100 pages of my
next book.
Okay, I thought.
The author claims that these things, suffering, choice,
intellect, play a role in our
in something, in our purpose
does would concentrate on what this kind of
person does god wanna produce.
And Sharinah,
it's not hard to find. The Quran says
that god intends to produce
as a relationship of love.
And it says it again and again.
For example, yet there are men who take
others besides God as equal, loving them as
they should love God,
but those who believe love God more ardently.
Say another verse, if you love God, follow
me and God will love you, and forgive
you your faults, for God is the forgiving,
the merciful.
Oh, you who believe, if any fellow among
you should turn back from his faith, then
God will surely bring a people he loves
and who love him.
In many places, it also says, God loves
this type of person. God loves that type
of person. God loves this and people. God
loves that and doesn't love this type of
people, doesn't love people who do that.
Or not people, but mostly the acts. God
does not love the transgressor. God does not
love the hateful. God does not and so
forth.
And the Quran assures us that through this
earthly experience, especially watch the conversations in the
Quran between Satan and God.
God is always in total control.
Satan in the Quran is really rather a
weak creature.
In other traditions, he might have tremendous power.
But in the Koran, he says, I have
no power over you.
I but whisper and you follow.
Remember? And it says on the day of
judgment, he's gonna say to those who followed
him, I had no power over you whatsoever.
I only whisper
and you follow.
But in the conversations between God and Satan
in the Quran,
we re it reveals something very important. That,
yes, there will be people who go astray.
Yes, there will be people that destroy themselves
in this life. But God guarantees in the
Quran that there will be a subset of
humanity.
Though there will definitely this human experience will
produce those who choose to enter a relationship
with God, who choose to be bound by
God in love, and if God will love
in mutually. They they'll enter in a mutual
relationship of love.
They will
definitely this earthly experience will definitely produce those
type
of people. Okay. But, I mean, this is
just too much to handle. I have all
these questions in my mind, all these things
to deal with, choice, reason,
suffering.
God hopes God tends to produce through this
earthly experience and says it certainly will produce
a subset of this humanity that will enter
into a relationship of love with him. What
does that have to do with all these
other things, suffering, choice, etcetera? Couldn't he just
make us love him, program us to love
him, love us in return, pop us into
heaven, avoid the suffering?
Okay.
So,
Kron says that god wants to enter into
a relationship
with humanity,
and that this human experience will definitely
produce a certain segment that will relate to
him. So here I am. I'm done with
the Quran,
and I'm trying to think, what could the
possible connection be? So what's the natural place
to look?
Well, if it has to do with the
relationship between God, we should look in the
Quran
what the Quran expects from man
and what the Quran tells us of God,
and then we try to see if there's
any relationship between the 2.
And that seems like a natural thing to
do.
As if the issue comes down to relating
to God, we should discover in the Quran
what it says about the believers
and the disbelievers,
those who are brought near to god and
those who are not, and god, and see
if there's any possible connection between the 2.
Okay.
So,
what does the Quran expect for mankind?
Well, it's so simple in the Quran. It's
almost the type of thing you just like
to just read over and, you know, neglect.
Because God expects excuse me,
of people
that
they believe that they will believe and do
good.
What?
Believe and do good?
Okay. I get the belief part. If you're
gonna have definitely.
But
what
does doing good have to do definitely.
But what does doing good have to do
with forging a relationship with God?
You want us to do make us good,
you know, whatever. But even so, what difference
does it make?
So I looked up what kind of acts
the Quran said are good.
And I just wrote a partial of this.
I didn't look them up. I just tried
to remember from my reading
of it. And not unexpectedly,
it consists of those acts and attributes that
are sort of universally recognized as virtuous.
Good deeds are such, for example, we should
show compassion to others. We should be merciful.
We should forgive others. We should be just.
We should protect the weak, defend the oppressed,
feed the poor, seek knowledge and wisdom, be
generous, truthful,
kind, peaceful,
and love others.
And we should teach other these same thing,
and learn them, and grow in them as
well.
But why?
In one verse it says, truly those who
believe and do good will the most merciful
endow with
love.
And to this end, we have made this
easy to understand in your own tongue so
that you may convey this glad news to
the God conscious and warn those given to
contention. You're supposed to grow in love of
your fellow
man. Why?
I had not a clue,
but I did list them. Hope I could
get here without
sabotaging
this.
Somebody left their glasses here.
Okay. So we're supposed to grow
in love of our fellow man. You probably
can't read this anyway,
if you're way in the back.
Compassion.
This is very small.
Love.
Right? Compassion.
Forgiveness.
I just you know, I listed them. I
had nothing else to do that day. I
was watching a football game.
Love, compassion,
forgiveness,
caring,
justice,
truth.
Truth.
What are some of the other ones I
said? Protect the
weak, protective of the weak,
kindness,
forgiveness.
What do I leave out?
Mercy.
Mercy.
Mercy,
compassion, etcetera.
Compassion.
I got compassion.
Okay.
It wasn't very helpful,
but I wrote them down.
Okay. But I didn't complete my project. Okay.
What does the Quran tell us about God?
Now, this is where it gets tricky.
Because the Quran tells us, and naturally it's
so, that nothing compares with God.
That he is beyond
rational definition
or even understanding, I would assume.
Nothing compares to him. Reason cannot encompass him.
If all the trees
were pens,
and all the sea and the sea was
ink, and 7 seas like
it, ink as well,
you could never exhaust the words of God,
the Quran tells us. You could never, in
your reason,
encompass him.
And what good does that do me?
Here I'm trying to see the connection
between us
doing good
and our relationship with God, and there better
be an intrinsic connection, or I'm walking from
this Quran.
Well, I didn't believe in God at this
point anyway.
But there better be an intrinsic connection, or
the author has failed to guide as he
said he would.
But God is incomparable.
He cannot come to know God.
He hardly understand the human mind.
How can we understand God?
How can we come to know God?
I could come to you know you because
I have some sort of
connection to you.
We are alike.
I can approach you physically because you're a
physical creature. I could walk over to you.
Don't get scared.
Alright?
I just move my body closer to yours.
I could approach you
rationally
through the intellect,
right, by discussion,
argumentation, and so forth,
right, by the exercise of reason.
I could approach you guys, any of you,
in terms of feelings,
right, by appealing to your
emotions,
right, because we share them both.
But in order to approach somebody,
you've got to approach them by what they
are.
We could come to understand another because we
share something.
We approach
a creature or a being.
We approach a by what they and we
are.
But how do you approach God? We're finite.
He's infinite.
We're corporeal creatures. He's incorporeal.
We're
limited
to this time and space environment, he transcends
it.
Just about anything you can think of that
we possess,
he possesses it to an infinite degree, transcends
that. We don't compare.
How can we come to know God? How
can we have this relationship you talked about?
Sorry. There's just no answer to that. No,
there is, of course. But that's the way
I felt. Sorry. There's no answer to it.
And so I left the Quran. I finished
reading it. I put it down.
And about 2 weeks passed, and I don't
know what I was doing one day. I
was sitting,
thinking about something totally removed from religion.
Then I thought, wait a minute,
the Quran does provide us some information about
God.
But I had neglected it, ignored it time
and time again.
There are thousands
of descriptions in the Quran
about God
that I just had never seen.
If I just opened to the beginning of
any Surah
or looked on almost any page and came
to the completion of a verse,
I would have found many, many such references.
You know, you all all the Muslims, I'm
sure, know what I'm talking
about. Because throughout the Quran,
time and time again, punctuating passages,
crowning passages, beginning Suras, you find
what the Quran refers to as the beautiful
names of God.
You can't miss them.
And they tell us something about God,
for our benefit.
And as I thought about them in my
head, I began to list them in my
head.
The beautiful
names
of God.
And I thought about them in my head.
What are they? God is
the loving.
God is the compassionate.
God is the forgiving.
God is the caring.
There's
dozens and dozens of them. God is the
just.
He is
the truth
or the truthful.
He is the protector.
He is the kind.
God is the forgiving.
Just read through the Quran, you can't miss
these. He is the merciful.
And on and on and on. I didn't
complete this list and I didn't complete this
one either.
But I looked in my mind
at the two lists I visualized
for the qualities God wants us to develop
and the qualities that the Quran use uses
to describe God.
And then I just immediately saw the whole
saw the picture.
So what the author was telling
us.
Because the author is telling us that, yes,
your reason may not be able to fully
encompass god,
but you are to grow
and learn love.
Grow in your ability
to learn and show love.
Why? Because God is the loving.
The more you grow in compassion,
the more you come to receive and experience
and understand
god's infinite compassion. Because the Quran lets us
know that all compassion ultimately comes from god,
originates from god. The
forgiving
who is god. The more you grow in
your ability to care for others,
the more you grow in your experience of,
and understanding of, and ability to know the
caring.
You don't reach it through reason,
you reach it through experience.
Same way I understand you in this audience.
I don't know you rationally.
I know you because we share common
experiences. God is the caring, infinite source of
caring according to Quran, but we could grow
in our ability to care for others. The
more we grow in justice,
the more we come to understand, experience, and
to know the just. The more we grow
in truth, the more we come to know,
experience, and represent
the truthful. And the Quran says we're here
to represent God. The more we know
of protectiveness of the weak and the downtrodden,
the more we come to know the protector,
the more we know of kindness, the more
we come to know, experience and receive
the beauty that only the kind could give
us. Forgiveness, forgiving, merciful, merciful, compassionate, compassionate, and
on and on.
And I explained that to my daughters. They
said,
daddy, what are you trying to say?
And I told them this. I said, pretend
that we have a dog,
some goldfish,
and
3 daughters.
Pretend that. I do have 3 daughters.
So at least they could relate to that.
I told them, no matter how much of
my love,
no much how much of my compassion,
no how much how much of my comparing,
how much of my real self
I shower on that goldfish,
that goldfish could only experience my love, my
compassion, my caring,
my justice
to a very limited degree
because it's a very primitive creature.
It only knows
and could learn
and could experience
love, compassion, forgiveness, etcetera, to a very
minuscule level.
But my dog,
Rex
I don't have a dog, but I had
one, Rex, once. But my dog, he could
know and experience and feel
my love, my compassion, my caring, myself, my
being
to a much higher level
because he's a more developed creature.
He knows through his own life experiences, he
experiences through his own life experiences,
a certain amount of love, compassion, forgiveness, not
just as a receiver, but as a giver
as well, which is more
important. Because when you give love, you're experiencing
loving on a whole another level than just
receiving. You're learning it.
But I told her, Look at you 3
guys. Look at you 3 guys, I said
to my daughters. As you grow, you will
come to learn, know, and experience love, compassion,
forgiveness on a much higher level.
And a higher level, and it's up to
you how high you want to go.
But the more you grow in love, compassion,
mercy, forgiveness, etcetera, the more you could experience
whatever love, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, etcetera, that I
have to give to you,
the more you could experience me, the more
you could experience my being.
And that's essentially what the author seems to
be telling us, that the more we grow
in all these, the more we could experience
the infinite love,
compassion, forgiveness,
caring,
justice
that is God.
And so all the pieces were coming together
for me.
All I had to do was just read
any page of the Quran.
There were times and times to get there
were signs.
There were it was staring me right in
the face,
except that I read it and never opened
my eyes to see it.
And it took me reading the entire scripture
before it was open to me.
But wait a minute, I said.
Okay.
Granted. You know, the more we grow in
love, the more we could experience
god's loving. The more and and people do.
The believers, they experience it in prayer.
They experience it in ritual.
They talk about those powerful moments
when they experience god's presence.
They do experience it. And the Quran promises
that you will definitely experience it to some
degree in this life, but in the next
life when all distractions
are swept away, and all you take to
the next life is your growth in these,
your real person,
If you have grown in these, if you
haven't become bankrupt in these, you'll be able
to experience God, his beauty,
his presence,
His being to higher and higher degrees.
But I thought, wait a minute, there's something
wrong here.
I almost got lured,
seduced into accepting this picture.
I almost got seduced into accepting this picture.
But then I remembered my questions, and I
remembered the angel's question.
I mean, wait a minute, guys.
Why didn't God just program these in us?
Why didn't He just program us to be
loving, compassionate, forgiveness, etcetera,
instead of making us go through this
turmoil, this torture on earth?
Are you following me?
Why didn't he just program us to be
that way? Was the suffering all necessary? Was
the pain of it all necessary?
Did I gain anything from my childhood?
I mean, what did I learn?
Why did I have to suffer?
Why do you have to suffer?
Why did it give me choice?
Why did it give me intellect?
Just make me
love. Just make me have compassion.
Just
like that.
Well, if you read the Quran,
don't even read the Quran. Just think about
it yourself.
In order to grow in love
and as creatures, the Quran says, every creature
grows.
Creatures are growing entities.
And the Quran says that God provides every
creature with the environment, the soil if you
will, the environment, the growing environment
that is necessary for its growth.
But if we are to grow in love,
compassion, forgiveness, caring, etcetera,
how does that
contribute to that environment?
Are these necessary ingredients
for us to grow in these, and us
to develop these, and us to learn these
and acquire these?
And I think if you think about it
for a minute, the answer is obviously
yes. I
mean think about compassion, for example.
How can you have compassion
if there is no suffering,
if there is not some vulnerable creature to
turn to,
if some creature is not dependent
on you,
how could you exercise,
learn and grow in compassion? Unless you are
the infinite source of it already, which none
of us are since none of us are
God. We are creatures. We become.
How can we become compassionate
that we could turn to.
How what is compassion without choice?
A compassionate
act is an act where you choose to
help someone,
when you have the option not to.
If I take a banana peel, eat it,
take the peel, throw it over my shoulder,
it lands in the street. A criminal comes
by on his way to rob a pocketbook
from an old lady standing over there and
trips on a banana peel and falls on
the ground. My throwing the banana peel over
my shoulder was not a compassionate act.
So I really didn't choose to do that.
Passionate act requires
choice.
It also requires intellect
because when you reach out to someone in
compassion, you weigh in your minds how much
of yourself you're gonna invest in reaching out
to that person.
And you say to yourself, do I really
wanna do this?
How much time is it gonna require? I
gotta go to work.
I might, you know, might not make any
money today.
Besides,
you know, I'll have to be helping this
person for the next couple hours. Have to
take him to the hospital, seem that, you
know, your mind is weighing how much of
yourself is gonna be invested in that.
You could program a computer to never make
an incorrect statement, but it doesn't become a
truthful computer.
I never heard anybody say to me, Jeff,
you know that computer of yours? It's the
most truthful computer I've ever seen.
Because truth is not just making incorrect state
correct statements. Truth
is being truthful
is a choice.
It's understanding
the decision you're making. It requires intellect.
And if that truth
involves you in the possibility of suffering,
the more that is in stake
in telling the truth, the greater you rise
to that truth, the greater that is an
active truth.
Oh, sorry.
Because I was going like this. Alright.
What else do I have written here? Forgiveness
is a choice. What is forgiveness without choice?
What is forgiveness
is
forgiveness
without
what the person is saying when they ask
you for forgiveness.
All these things, suffering, choice and intellect, are
integral to our growth in these.
Are you following me?
One last example, the famous wedding
bomb. You promised to stick with somebody in
sickness and in health.
What's the other one?
I said it so long ago, I can't
remember.
In sickness and health, for richer or for
poorer, until death do we part.
It acknowledges
the essential nay the essential element of suffering
and growing in love, in love.
And it's a choice.
We make that vow. That vow is a
choice. Do you, Jeff Lang, promise
to take raga
so sort
for richer or for poorer, in sickness and
*, I start thinking about, wait a minute
now. No, I didn't.
You
know, I was
very pleased to do that. But it was
a choice.
And it's giving you the choice. Understand this,
when you make that vow,
it's in sickness and health, richer or poorer,
till death
who do you part?
It's saying, think about it. Understand what kind
of choice you're making.
Now these three things are
integral
in our growth
in these.
Suffering, choice,
intellect
are absolutely necessary
to grow in these. You pull anyone out
of this equation called life,
and we don't have it as we know
it. We cannot grow in these as we
know it, at very high levels.
Finally, in the last 2 minutes, I'll just
simply say this.
So when the Quran talks about sin,
it talks about people who grow bankrupt
in these more or less.
Quran, a famous symbol in the Quran is
the balance on the day of judgment that
weighs your goodness.
And people are heavy in goodness.
People are full of goodness. They can experience
paradise in the next life, and perhaps
to greater and greater degrees God's presence. Because
the more we know of goodness, the more
we grow in goodness,
the more we are able to experience, receive
and know
the infinite goodness of God.
But what if we go the opposite direction?
What if instead of developing the qualities of
love, compassion, forgiveness, caring, we do just the
opposite. We head in the opposite direction.
And we become instead of being heavy in
these qualities on the day of judgment, we
become extremely light in these qualities when we
enter in the next
life. So instead of becoming love loving, we
become hateful, compassionate,
miserly,
forgiving,
Vengeful.
Caring?
Whatever.
Mean.
Justice? This justice?
Cruel. I don't know. Truth,
liar.
Protective,
destructive, and so forth. What if we go
in the opposite direction and become primarily
Because if you're bankrupt of those,
then this
growth in this will be the only thing
that
matters as you go into the next life.
You bring nothing else with you but what
you really are.
And if you are not
have not developed this,
then you're gonna suffer severely because you cannot
experience any
of the beauty that awaits you in the
next life. You'll experience just the opposite.
So Quran compares growth in this life, our
physical growth in the womb, to our
spiritual growth in this life.
And if you think about it, when a
creature grows in its in the mother's womb,
a primarily physical growth. When it comes into
this life, when it is born, you see
the effects of that growth concretely
right before you.
When a child enters this world, the growth
it went through in a womb, its physical
growth is manifested before you in that creature's
being.
What the Quran seems to be suggests
is that when we are the type of
spiritual growth we obtain in this life, when
we go into the next life, it too
will be manifested in exactly what we are.
And so to go in this next life
bankrupt of these
is like coming into this life
bankrupt,
bereft
of every physical quality you need to experience
some peace,
some joy, some comfort
in this life.
So if you are bereft
of these, it would be like coming into
this life without any skin to protect you
from the cold or the heat,
with your nerves exposed and all you know
is pain,
the inability to breathe, and you're gasping for
air.
I'm not trying to scare any of you.
I'm just
presenting an analogy.
Choking for your breath,
blind. You cannot see. Legrand says the spiritually
blind in this life will come out blind
in the next life to reality.
So to not grow in these, to grow
in the opposite, to become basically
evil
is according to the Quran,
self destruction.
And so when the Quran speaks of sin,
it frequently says, you don't
sin primarily against God.
You don't even primarily sin against your victims.
The Quran says,
the sinner primarily commits sin
against themselves.
They destroy themselves,
the Quran says.
And it says God gives you every at
least when he exposes you to the Quran,
gives you every
possible
warning about that.
And then it says, and still, they turn
their backs.
Let's see. What else do I wanna say?
I guess I said enough. It's quarter to
10, you're almost exhausted.
And plus, I'm sure you wanna see
KU
hopefully win their basketball game,
University of Kansas.
So I'll sort of end it there. And,
like I said, I'm trying to summarize a
100 pages in just 2 hours. But I
appreciate you coming and listening for all of
2 hours.
And, I wish you all the best. And,
I
thank you so much, you kind Purdue people.
Anyone would like to just,
raise a hand. And then tomorrow, I'll
give a
It's only a 20 minute speech tomorrow. If
I have some questions, please raise your hand.
Theological things which is kind of a too
Can I can I answer that just in
general about
ritual?
The more
I prayed,
the more
powerful
those prayers became
spiritually.
You know, the more
I the idea is that the more you
develop these qualities in yourself,
the more
you will experience
God's being
in this life and the next.
And the primary way the believer
and one of the primary ways the believer
experiences
god's presence or god's being is through ritual.
So that when a person grows in these,
they suddenly find that they're in their prayers,
they have they
become more and more powerful spiritually.
Are you following me?
So that they feel God's presence.
They feel a warmth,
a power, a mercy
coming over them.
So it's seen and same with the other
rituals.
The more
they grow in this, following this
program,
the more they grow in this, the more
powerful and more beautiful
the rituals become. The idea in the Quran
is is that God's
gifts I'm just thinking out loud here.
That God's gifts to humanity are tremendous,
are tremendous
beyond count, it says.
But if you think about it, in every
relationship, both people engaged in this relationship
have to have something to give to that
relationship,
or it's not a relationship, not a a
healthy relationship.
In a healthy relationship,
both people involved in relationship must have something
to give.
Ritual gives the believers
a way to give back to God,
to share with God with what in reality
is already his.
For example,
I'll give you an analogy.
2 days ago, my daughters came to me,
Sarah and Fatima.
They said, daddy, can we have $10 a
piece. I said, why?
Because we want to buy you a present.
I gave them each of course, I gave
them the $10.
Yeah. And they went to the store and
bought me a present.
Now I didn't need their gift.
I didn't need it.
It's mine already, the $10.
It did nothing for me materially. It did
nothing for me concretely.
But I loved
the love behind it,
and I know that it brings
me and them closer together.
In the same way, there's nothing that we
could give back to God that is not,
or give to God, that is not in
reality His.
But what the rituals allow
the believer to do is to give to
God
what really is in reality his.
And as the Quran shows, God does not
need
what we give.
But it also shows he loves
the intention behind it, and he knows it
brings us closer together.
And so when the Muslim
or the believer
grows in these
and devotes himself in ritual to God, gives
to God,
in reality seems
point worthless to God. I mean, he's God.
Nonetheless,
you know, he is being brought closer to
God through that giving,
and he feels God's love
in that ritual,
and he experiences it, and he feels himself
giving that love back to God.
So it becomes a very powerful experience that
grows in intensity
as a person grows in these.
You know? And so you'll find people who
are very devout, very good,
who engage in ritual,
engage in ritual, they report having really intense
beautiful experiences,
not all the time,
and usually unanticipated.
They don't plan them, but they experience them
nonetheless.
And then and also it helps
discipline and refine your spirituality,
But that's a whole another issue. But I
I chose to answer it from that perspective.
Is that okay?
Thanks for the question. Great question. Yes.
Yes. Is there a connection or a correlation
between being an atheist in the earlier stage
of life
Yeah. Yeah. Somebody asked me to reiterate your
question for the camera. I'm trying to remember.
Let's see. So you said I was an
atheist, yes. Sort of
connection, you think,
between
the
interval of atheism that I went through for
12 years,
and has that played a integral part
in,
in making me a believer,
actually?
It seems like you're saying. And in what
I've whatever I've contributed, and I think it's
minor
to this
to,
the
the religious dialogue in this community. Am I
right?
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah. I think you're right.
I think that,
you know, I think there's all types of
believers.
But I think that,
I think the experience of atheism
and,
and
questioning,
you know, the religion you're taught, and the
ideas that you're surrounded with, etcetera,
that experience of doubt,
doubt even if it turns to atheism,
could turn out to be a very positive
thing if through that doubt you discover
belief and discover
God.
Are you following me?
So you know,
one famous Muslim religious thinker, Al Ghazali, used
to say that you don't you can't achieve
a very high level of belief unless you
allow yourself to doubt first.
Unless you've doubted 1st.
I don't know if that's not necessarily true
or not. I don't think my mom ever
doubted, but it but it,
definitely
she attained a very high level of belief
in God.
But,
I think that, you know,
the atheist perspective,
you know, can
take can provide a very important perspective
in the, in the religious dialogue.
You know what I mean? Because most people
really do have doubts about
faith. But, you know, the have doubts, but
they sort of suppress them or or whatnot.
But after a while, sometimes it eats at
them. So I think when an atheist becomes
a religion who has faced a lot of
doubts, has gone to the extreme,
to the point where he let he's taken
his doubts to the point where he rejects
the existence of God. If that person can
make their way back,
that journey has to be a valuable
experience to share with others. It got to
be helpful for other people to hear it.
I think it must be, or I wouldn't
be up here today,
you know, wasting all of your time.
You know, I think most people come to
listen to these because they have doubts themselves,
and they and they want to know how
could somebody who has rationally been led to
the denial of God
come back
to the rational acceptance
of the existence of god. I know I
didn't do a good job at handling your
question, but
Okay.
Any other questions?
Yes, sir.
Yes.
Are you talking about predestination?
Are you talking about predestination? Are you talking
about predestination or destiny?
See, there's a difference because the Quran doesn't
say that god predestines
anything.
Now the Quran says that God's knowledge is
all encompassing.
But since God, according to the Quran, transcends
his creation,
it'd be foolish to talk about him predestining.
Are you following me?
See, when I say use the word predestined,
I'm talking about
destining
the future. I'm talking about I'm in the
future looking I'm in the present looking forward
to the future, and I am determining the
future. Are you following me? So when you
use the word predestined,
you know, you the minute you apply the
word predestined to God, you are
you are
putting God in this space time environment, or
at least time environment,
one of our dimensions.
Are you following me? But the Quran says
that God transcends time and transcends space.
He would never
even the most rabid atheists wouldn't say,
Jeff, if God was on a bus
from Indianapolis to Chicago,
and he would never start a question that
way because he knows I would not accept
the idea that God could be confined
to a particular place.
In the same way, peace and that no
one should say, if god is now in
the present looking forward to the future and
determining things in advance,
you immediately started with an with a premise
that the Quran does not accept.
Are you with me?
So the wrong word is predestined.
The Quran says that nothing happens unless God
allows it to
happen, unless God permits it to happen.
But the same Quran
shows that he permits us to make choices.
He us, empowers us to make choices, and
to carry them out to their expected conclusions.
God has complete control
over the whole human experience. He could stop
it in an instant, but he doesn't.
It even says in one verse in the
Quran, if I wanted you to go out
to that field and die in that field,
I could have made you do that,
and you would have gone right to the
do the place I wanted you to die,
and you would have fallen dead right there.
But he doesn't.
These people he addresses in that verse, he
gave them a choice, and they chose to
do otherwise.
So the point I'm trying to make is
when a Muslim says that God measures, that's
the word in the Quran,
Qadrach,
measures
all things.
You know, that means that he has total
control
over this creation,
that nothing occurs without him allowing it. But
it doesn't say that he predestines it
because the very word predestined
contradicts the Quran's concept of God's transcendence of
time and space. And it clearly indicates it,
because it says in the Quran that even
though various events
in history that we see
as taking place over a long period of
time, for God, it is a single instant.
He just says, be, and it is.
But to us, it seems like it's taking
place,
you know, throughout this 1000 sometimes 1000 of
years. But for God, it's all 1, A
single blink of an instant. A single infinite
eternal moment outside of time.
I think I've talked enough about it. I
don't wanna bore you. Yes. But what I
mean is god?
God knows what we're gonna do to tell
them. Yeah. Yeah. But that's unimportant because you're
talking about knowing outside of time.
See, the Quran presents life as more like
it uses a symbol, like a book. We're
living this book right now.
Right?
So we are living this book right now.
And we are turning the pages as we
live it.
God reads the whole book all at once.
He's outside of time.
Okay?
He reads the whole book at once. He
sees all the pages one single moment, you
know, but we live them throughout time because
we're stuck in time.
Tomorrow,
I cannot jump to tomorrow,
nor can I go back suddenly 50 years?
I am
lodged in time. I am fixed in time.
Tomorrow, an hour from now, I will be
at an hour from now. 2 hours from
now, I will be at an hour from
now. Because I am limited by space and
by time.
But just as god
could see all space at once,
Here's space.
I'm sure this diagram helps.
There's space.
God transcends space.
He sees it all at once.
I am on my way to Chicago. I
don't know that there is a cow in
the road.
I am driving this way. If I keep
on driving, I will eventually run into that
cow. God sees it all at once.
All space is encompassed by his vision. As
the Koran says, all is encompassed by his
vision.
But we are, you know, a little bit
mobile with respect to space. So we could
sort of understand that concept.
Here is time.
God transcends
time.
He sees it all at once.
I mean, I know it's hard for us
to conceive because we're stuck in time,
much more limited in time as we are
with respect to space.
And we make decisions in time and etcetera.
And god's wiz god's knowledge encompasses all of
it, as hard as that is for us
to believe.
But that doesn't contradict that the fact that
he lets us make choices,
answers our prayers,
guides us, etcetera, etcetera.
So there you are. Yes, sure. He sees
the day of judgement. He knows it all.
He knows exactly the beginning and the end.
But he doesn't make he doesn't make us
make choices. He doesn't predestine our our destiny.
It doesn't
even say that in the Quran.
Anybody else?
Yes, sir. I had a quick question about
that. When you were talking about how,
in the beginning, the angel asked God,
you know, you're going to put this
creature on earth that sheds blood and Spreads
corruption. Okay. My question was, how did they
have anything I mean, that was the first
man. How did they have any reference? Oh,
his question was,
when the angels when God said, I'm about
to put a vice strength on earth, a
representative on earth, the angels said, will you
spread put therein 1 who will spread corruption
and shed much blood? Will we celebrate your
praises and glorify your holiness? He said, how
did god, how did the angels know
that man what a kind of creature man
was going to be?
Different Muslim scholars tried to approach that question
and stumbled through it.
And they took it as part of the
problem, I think, is because they took an
allegory as history.
Are you following
me? If it's an allegory, the question is
there Yeah. It's an allegory to teach us
to teach us not to tell us the
origins of homo sapiens,
but to teach us about human nature and
the meaning of our life.
So I, in my approach,
you know, I know how other people have
stumbled through that, but I'm not gonna I'm
not gonna advocate their view because I'm quite
I feel quite strongly that that's an allegory
for many
reasons. For example, in one verse in the
Quran says, we created you in your mother's
womb.
We shaped you in your mother's womb. So
we gave we
made you in your mother's womb. We created
you. It goes through the stage of creation,
of a creature in its mother's womb.
We
we
we conceived you,
we gave you safe lodging,
we shaped you in your mother's womb, And
then we said to the angels, bow down
to Adam.
Are you following me?
Here it's addressing humanity in the plural.
We created you, shaped you in your mother's
womb, humanity in the plural. And then we
said, bow down to Adam.
You know, and then we told the angels
bow down to Adam.
If we take that literally, that means the
whole human race or not all of us,
but a huge amount of the human race
existed,
right, you and I, and then the angels
are commanded to bow down to Adam.
I think that's an indication that these verses
are not are not telling you
to be taken literally as history,
especially in reference to Adam. Adam,
it's an allegory to teach us about,
God and his relationship to man. That's the
way I approach it. If people wanna approach
it as history, I have no problem with
that. Just allow me the right to allow
God the right
to what?
To allow god the right to reveal truths
that as he will without having to force
historical interpretations
and verses that may be allegorical.
Because the Quran does say that God uses
allegory.
It says there are verses that are plain,
clear,
and they are the fundamental part of that
book, the Quran. And there are verses that
are allegorical.
You know, what is the Arabic word? Mutashabi
or something like that?
Yeah. Mutashabi.
Allegorical,
symbolic, likenesses.
You know, the Quran says there are both.
And it says people who have diseases in
their hearts,
like sickness in their mind, they go after
the part that's allegorical,
seeking to find seeking to impose a final
meaning on, you know, a concrete meaning. Well,
the believers say, it's
allegory.
I am open to the possibility
that it's an allegory. Because the Quran says
it uses it, and I'm not gonna try
to impose some final
concrete interpretation on it. Are you following me?
I'm open to the meanings that it raises,
but I'm not going to be overly,
sort of, literalistic
in approaching verses that talk about something, you
know, that's very deep, the nature of the
human relationship with God that is outside
the normal course
of human interaction. You know what I mean?
So, you know, some people don't like it,
but I'm a mathematician, a scientist. I I
gotta approach it that way. I think
we're gonna go to the top for tonight.
Oh.
I'm sorry I couldn't answer more of your
questions, but, you know, I took too long
tonight. I'm sorry about that.
Tomorrow? There's a
night, Saturday night, same time, same place, 7:30
PM.
There will be more time for question and
answer.
We have a couple
sheets up here.
Anybody
interested in eventually maybe in obtaining a video
cassette of this lecture or you wanted it
and you,