Atheists & Agnostics
In reply to the discussion: Can we "know" God doesn't exist. [View all]whatthehey
(3,660 posts)Yes we are playing what if games with absurdity, although in talking about gods, what else is there? That said, let's say the Muslims got it almost right. Allah is the big transcendent cheese and he wants us to be charitable, go on a hajj, pray 5 times a day and whatnot. They got a few things wrong of course. Transmitted stories always do. The midnight trip was a hallucination, he couldn't give a toss about pictures of Muhammed, and there's no need to snip anything off the pork sword. But Allah is real, created the world, and wants us to worship him in a unified Islamic global community pretty much as the Qu'ran says. He is, as let's be honest such a being would likely be, not interested in getting involved in the world on a day to day basis though. The way he sees it, he guided evolution to give us brains and we have to stand on our own two feet.
How would it be even theoretically possible to disprove that? We haven't seen Allah? He doesn't get involved. No miracles? They were always made up. He just implanted the truth about himself in Mohammed who got overexcited, which is hardly implausible that he would have. Doesn't matter on earth if we follow the 5 pillars or not? Darn right, but wait till you're dead, buster. All this stuff sounds suspiciously syncretic with other ME religions? Yep surely. Allah kept trying to explain it all to Abraham and Jesus but the buggers got it all confused. Any rationalist objection falls down before absurd but theoretically plausible explanations, and what they say about absence of evidence keeps on smacking us upside the head.
The only reason this doesn't bother me is because I no more need to prove it false than I need to prove Star Wars is fiction. This is an exact analog. George Lucas could simply be an inspired astral projector who saw the truth on a OBE. It's utterly impossible to logically prove that wookies did not exist in a far far galaxy....but that doesn't mean I need to think anyone who believes they actually did isn't anything but a laughably deluded maroon. Religion's pretty much in the same bag really.