Farid with Haik, a discussion about Allah and mercifullness

[Farid]

Salaam,

This post is directed towards Haik Monsieur. I read your debate with Madguru and I believe there are a few things that needs to be discussed that were not so in that debate.

First of all, I would like to make clear my stand on this. Simply put, I do not have much of a stand, I am just here to criticize your stand. I would hope no offense on your part about this.

So let us begin.

You have based your stand on Allah being incomparable. To quote you, He should not be compared to anything or anyone. Now I would like to discuss a little with you. We are not sure wether this is talking about God's overall comparabality or in every single aspect. You have taken a stand of every single aspect, such as His attributes. This needs to be addressed.

Secondly, based off Allah incomparability, you have made the stand that when speaking of mercy, the only way to be uniquely merciful, Allah must be unconditionally merciful. Haik, there are different suggestions of the uniquness of Allah in regards to His mercy. I will go with the usual, unique being the only one, that Allah can be uniquely merciful in the sense that no one can reach up to His level of mercy, that is very unique to me. But do we get a problem from even this suggestion? Let us see, “Perish the hands of Abu Lahab, Perish he. His wealth and whatever he earned did not avail of him anything. He will definitely be cast into fire, and his wife too – the bearer of slander; round her neck will be a rope of palm-fiber. [Quran. Chapter: 111]

To continue from the above, what happened to Allah being uniquely and most Merciful when it came to Abu Lahab? Could you Haik, have forgiven Abu Lahab? I would guess a quick answer of yes. Here is another one to illustrate my point, could you forgive a man 'A' about to be killed by man 'B' with a black face mask? I might expect a yes, but what if you find out after you forgave man 'A' and he ran away, that he was actually Hitler's partner, killing thousands of civilians, beating them, starving them and humiliating them in front of their families. What will go through your mind then? Regret, will I do hope so. So then if a man forgives man 'A' not knowing who he was and another man forgives man 'A' knowing who he was and what he did, is it then justified to say that both of those men's "mercy" are equal? For a surety not. So then my point here being that if we are to compare two peoples mercy, we should do so when they are both seeing someone requiring mercy in the same perspective. So then I believe, that saying someone is more merciful than Allah just because he will forgive Abu Lahab is not justified because we do not know wether the person is seeing the situation in the perspective of Allah. (a warning ahead for you Haik, you should know my views as I have debated you before, therefore talking about other attributes of Allah does nothing)


So then I will conclude that not knowing how to get Allah's perspective on Abu Lahab or anybody else, I believe that we should not go around saying Allah is not uniquely merciful.

Thank you.

[Haik Monsieur]

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Hello Farid,

It is glad to have one-on-one debate with you again after a short break. Our previous engagement was fruitful, and if it owes to anything, it is very much to your civility and cordiality. Muslims often fail to keep the civil tone during engagements. Madguru007 for instance; I had to call off the debate because at the end stages he tried to drag me into fruitless shouting game, here I am sure it would not be the same because you are way superior to Madguru007 in your logic and overall very much respected for your composure.

Now to enter the debate, you seem to have stuck on one of the many attributes of god that is merciful. But being most merciful does not make a god dear Farid, because anyone of us can be most merciful, or you can find the most merciful person in your locality if you try. The quality of being most merciful does not make him or anyone god.

We are discussing of god; the god within Quran. Personally, I don’t have any concept of gods for being a firm atheist who does not believe in the existence of god or gods. I cannot consent to any readily available god for this very reason. It is a matter of belief. I don’t think it is essential for my life to have the conception of god or gods or to find out him or them.

So, when I talk of god, I will only talk of the god you believe in. (because it is you at the other end, a theist believes in a certain kind of god that a book called Quran represents) I alerted of this fact many times during my debate to Madguru007, but he could not get it right or he didn’t pay attention to it. That is why he asked me at last to present a god better than that is depicted in Quran. Well, I have no obligation to do so, because I never made such a promise. All the debate about was of Quran being faulty for presenting an inconsistent, flawed concept of god. A tu quoque will not solve the problem of Quran, and when Madguru007 attempted to drag me into the ad hominem tu quoque game, I declined it and the debate had to be suspended.

So, I make my stance clear dear Farid, I am not going to promise you any conception of god at all. I am questioning the concept of god your book outlines. You have to keep this in mind because it is very essential and vital in this debate.

Right now I said; being most merciful (a bald statement) will not make someone god, being unique one will not make anyone god, because we human beings are all unique personalities. There can not be a Farid like you in this world just like I will fail to find a Haik like me if I try. We are all unique in this respect. You are one and unique. But you are not god according to Quran. You must consider this as the core of this debate. God of Quran!!

At the same time you have to understand this is not against my stance, I have no independent conception of god, but all of these are based on your holy book. If we want to discuss on the mercifulness of god, first of all, we have to sort out the god that is presented in your book. If you are trying to discuss of the concept of a god in general, or to derive a god from an independent framework, I would not be partaking in this discussion because it is a sheer waste of time. It is not essential for me to produce the concept of a god and to have it engraved it in my psyche. I can live my life without this and if I want to spend my time, I will spend it for more productive causes; not on ruminating and losing my precious time over it to eventually come out with no concept of god. I am certain of the outcome because I have journeyed too far from god to reach to this position of NO GOD.

So, are you willing to debate on god of Quran? I am okay with it. I presented my case already, so no opening statement is necessary.

Now to counter your arguments, I am sorry to tell you all of them are weak. You are trying to defend your god and on the way of it you are evaluating him using human nature as a gauge. But you should not forget the fact, god is incomparably unique, otherwise being unique does not make him a god. He said it in Surah Ikhlas (Quran: Chapter 112) of Quran he is the unique one, self efficiently unique one, does not beget and is not begotten but is incomparable to anyone.

Now, of being unique, how can your god be unique? Can he be unique just because he states he is most merciful? That means he is using human beings as a criterions to present his being of most merciful. I don’t think I have to alert you of the danger it poses. It is very much detrimental to his state of being incomparable; his exceptional attribute we are discussing cannot be and should not be proved using human standards. He can and he should prove his uniqueness in his “being of merciful” that is entirely contrasting to the mercifulness of human beings. How can it be possible for god to be incomparably unique?

Do you find any other way than “Allah being unconditionally merciful”? As a human being, I am merciful to some extent, but my mercy is very much conditional. So do all those around me, none of them can be unconditionally merciful. So, Allah can be merciful in a way, that is entirely contrasting us, I explained it in my posts. While human beings are conditionally merciful, Allah can be unconditionally merciful and differ to human beings. Thus his incomparable uniqueness is preserved.

Is there any other way for Allah to be incomparably unique in his mercifulness? There is another way of arguing using “Samad” and Madguru007 tried it too. You should have noticed it. That is; Allah is self efficiently merciful; thus incomparably unique. It was a good argument but unfortunately, it puts god’s another attribute in check. “Moral being” God can be self efficiently merciful and incomparably unique for the same reason, but just differing to humans by being self sufficiently unique is not enough because Allah has to be a moral agent too. To be a moral agent, he should show the mechanism of his mercifulness. How does it will be implemented? Mercifulness is not something that Allah can possess without exhibiting it. And while exhibiting, Allah should be preserving his incomparable uniqueness too. The only way to do this is to differ to human beings by means of being unconditionally merciful.

The above argument may lead to confusion on my stance. But if you go deep into it, it would be easy to understand why being self efficiently unique is not enough for Allah to differ from all others. His quality of being merciful is not to be preserved like his essentiality of being the sustainer of the universe. He should be merciful differing to all by being a moral agent. And being “Samad” does not corroborate to the moral self of god. He should be more than it. Being unconditionally merciful will solve this puzzle.

Now, you question about Abu Lahab, Hitler…. Dear Farid, you are appealing to me a human being while discussing of Allah’s mercifulness. Your argument is fundamentally flawed. You can not use me a human being as touchstone to prove the mechanism of Allah’s mercifulness. That would be very much destructive to Allah’s being of incomparably unique. I can either punish or pardon a criminal, but as I said earlier, my mercifulness is very much conditional. It can not match up to Allah’s mercifulness. Allah, the one and only self efficient unique god who is incomparable, is not someone you can assess using my standards. If you do not understand this flawed way of assessment, I am afraid your concept of god-Allah differs to that of illustrated in Quran.

So, that’s Farid, if you think Quran presents a fail-safe perfect concept of god, you may bring it up here. Otherwise, please do not employ the fallacy of false analogy. It is hard for me-an infidel to point out your flawed way of assessing your god and it will only help to lengthen this debate tediously.

New Year greetings

KhaliL
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