Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems prayer is almost identical (if not completely identical) to some combination of introspection, meditation and empathy. I'm not seeing where God comes in.

I'll give it a look, thanks.

How are you expecting God to come in?

I should note that I don't 100% agree with that chapter. But I think it serves as a starting point. Although I think it's implicitly obvious, don't expect the book to read like a "proof" of anything about prayer.

I don't see what in this story points in any way to a god. Experiencing a profound sense of compassion, contemplation over a moving conversation, all of these things are common experiences among many people.

You tell me?

I am still confused on your view. If I believe that Allah is perfect, that I am insufficient, and it is only through Allah that I can ascend, is that the type of situtation where you think the person will suffer an eternity in hell or not? Since you have been nitty with definitions, I mean specifically the standard interpretations of Allah as described by the Koran which includes things like "jesus is not the son of god". This person may well have a sense of goodness and badness which seem to be universalist concepts but you refered explicitly to the capital G god which is not universalist.

Quite the opposite. I have no rigid conception of God that I am married to. You said this about me before and it was no more true then, I am starting to think this might be a standard assumption you put on atheists. I care about whatever conception of God YOU maintain, and your reasons for it. I will sometimes guess at the properties of this God that I think a religious person is likely to hold, and argue from that assumption, but if they don't hold it I could hardly care less and will adopt whatever view they have as the subject of discussion. Some people have incredibly broad concepts of god, others very narrow ones, and I am just as happy to work with either. Different sets of arguments apply to the different dsefinitions, however.

If you spend time with a friend, does that person have to give you something for you to believe that you spent time with him/her?

Yes, evidence that she was there.

The Koran doesn't really teach these things, at least in the same terms that I'm using. So I don't really know. Do you believe in square circles?

Then perhaps the absence of your definition is causing effects like narrowness of definition. I would point out that you did precisely the following above:

How is it that you mean you believe in "Allah" as described in the Koran, but then ascribe meaning that not congruous with "Allah" as described in the Koran?

What would count as "evidence"?

Edit: Let's change this to a phone conversation just to avoid some silliness. I'm not interested in picking up skin cells off the couch and things like that.

Her voice on the phone would count as evidence

Perhaps my Islamic theology is severely lacking, but I thought that the Koran DOES find that Allah is perfect and man is not. I know there are obvious differences like the lack of original sin, emphasis on ascendency through works not faith and the like. But again, I am not trying to force any definitions or meanings from your statements on you, I am trying to ascertain from you whether you think most Muslims are suffering an eternity in hell or not.

Can you explain precisely how I am having a narrow definition here? I had not even realized I had offered any definitions, merely trying to figure out what YOU mean.

So when the call is over, there's no evidence that remains of the interaction?

Something detectable by our senses counts as evidence. If you hear someone on the phone, or see them in front of you, this is evidence. If you want to use this for an analogy for god, you have to say what the sense was that you used to detect this god.

Memories count as evidence to the individual who has them.

Let's stop here. Are you ONLY ascribing "Allah" with the property of perfection?

You may not have made any explicit definitions, but there are lots of implicit definitions in how you are using the names. You are simultaneously taking a narrow conception (Allah of the Koran is not the God of the Bible) while holding it to be an extremely broad conception (Allah fits the same general description of God).

It makes for a very confusing conversation.

So if I remember a time of prayer, what are you looking for me to recount to you that would somehow stand as "evidence"?

This is an anthropological description of how some Christian communities do it.

http://www.npr.org/2012/03/26/149394...ical-community

My personal experience is a little less oriented around manifesting actual voices/etc. Not all thoughts happen in words, which is part of why I'm struggling to determine what it is you want from me.

Exactly, am trying to figure out which of these you are talking about. As I understand the canonical understandings of Yahweh and Allah as given respectively by their books, there are some properties that are the same or similar and others which are different. You gave a list of things which meant people went to heaven. If you got rid of the explicit capital G God reference, the conditions of perfectness and the like were shared. This is why I asked you "what God?" what I am trying to get at is whether you are using a sufficiently broad conception that it includes most Muslims, or a sufficiently narrow conception that it excludes them.

Straight up for the third time: do you think most Muslims go to hell for eternity?

Apart from memories / phone logs, no. Also, don't confuse evidence with proof.

I want you to recount whatever part of it you think is relevant to indicate god. I don't even care about evidence per say here, I am always curious about peoples experiences.

So for example, if you had seen some images or heard some sounds in your head then you could recal that experience. In that case I could understand the sense that you observed something which you are attributing to God.

Then I have no idea what you're asking me to show you.

By exactly, you mean you recognize that you're using the words precisely the way I'm saying you're using them? Do you understand why I don't know what you're asking me?

But this shows that you don't understand Islam because you missed on one of the basic features that I put forth:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jannah

Now, I gave very brief statements to avoid too many technical issues. But essentially, Islam is a works-based faith (and as best as I can tell, not even in the Catholic wishy-washy-works-based way). The statement above does not encapsulate the idea that human effort is insufficient.

You're simply not using "Muslim" in a meaningful way.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=109

That's not how it works. There's no isolated piece (insofar as my experience goes) that I point to with any sort of regularity and say "*THIS* is God" and the rest is not. The prayer itself is a reflection of the encounter with God. And I've told you basically how the prayer time works.

The link I provided is a description of people who *DO* think in that sort of way. You can read the book if that's all you're looking for. But looking for me to provide you with something I don't have isn't going to be productive.

I was agreeing with your framing that one could define God in either a broad or a narrow sense. I was trying to figure out which you were using...I certainly don't care or prefer for one or the other.

Ah see wasn't that easy? I had already mentioned earlier that Islam was ascendency by works not faith to see whether that was the key difference or not. "You need to assent that human effort is insufficient" is very vague (insufficient at what? being perfect? apparently you mean insufficient as a condition of ascending to heaven). If what you meant was that as a condition for ascendency to heaven it could not be by works then sure that is one possible interpretation of the vague statement.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=109[/QUOTE]In that post, you reference people who do not believe in salvation through Jesus explicitly. You then went on to give a more universalist definition that sort of appeared like it might not require jesus. But it was vague. When we press you on it a bit, conditions like "believe human effort is insufficient" really means "cannot have a belief in works based ascendencies to heaven".

On a side note, how morally bankrupt is a system where the conditions to spend an eternity burning in hell or not depends on whether you believe certain premises? Thank goodness there appears to be little reason to believe it is true. But aesthetics is beside the point here...

I will note that post 144 didn't get a response. I don't know if that was deliberate. But it seemed to be a reasonable culmination of the previous tangent.

What I don't understand is where (in, say, your description of your interaction with your student) you found reason to talk of it in reference to god. Everything your wrote seemed like it could be written exactly the same except without any mention of god or reason to think god had anything to do with that experience...with the exception of the word "prayer" which to be honest I still don't quite understand what you mean by this.

Now you have rejected the idea that there is some isolated component of your experience that you associate with God. Normally I think of experiences as being reducible to consistuent parts but presumably you disagree. So if not a "part", then where does God come in? Is it a sort of holistic thing? I feel like I am running into a linguistic wall for I can't say "what part does god come in" if it isn't a "part" but I don't know how else to say it in English

At the risk of repeating myself too often, I will remind you that I am not looking for any specific thing from you whether it is a specific definition or specific type of evidence. Other people have different justifications for their different gods and when I talk to them I will talk about that. What I want from you will always be YOUR justifications. If they are different from other people's justifications or different than how I might expect them to be that is perfectly fine.