عذراً، أجلت الإجابة لكي أستطيع أن أقول:

الان. http://app.qaym.com

Great! Hey it's my pleasure! =)

Nah, it's alright.

what the..

well, they're all models based on personal understanding and are not scientific theories. Not everyone has to agree on the same thing and frankly there are more interesting and important things out there.

As you said, that would be interference with natural laws. So it goes against the "build and forget" model and more towards active sustenance.

How would he account for things told by the Quran that are out of the ordinary in one way or another? How would he account for the miracles of prophets or for the answering of dua'a?

اعتقد الأخت عندها بس مشكلة مع لوحة التحكم العربية، أو ما عندها او شي. ما ني متأكد.

I'll check em out inshallah!

Great!

oh, okay. I understand what you mean.

These models do exist. And they should not be rejected during to religious ideas. They should continue to be researched and we should continue everything we can about this universe.

It's like what Feynman says about asking "why" questions.


We can ask "why does the earth orbit around the sun?"
then we'd answer "because of the gravitation that pulls them together and the centripetal force that propels the earth away from the sun"

then we can ask, "why is there centripetal force pushing the earth away from the sun?"
then we can answer, "because the earth going in a circular orbit around the sun, and centripetal force acts orthogonal to the velocity of the body"

then we can ask, "but why is gravity pulling the earth closer to the sun"
then we can answer, "because gravity is a force that pulls material objects together according to their masses and the distance between them"

This can go on and on forever. Although our human knowledge would stop probably in the next step or two.

By "ultimately", I mean to say that God comes at least at the end of that chain of causation. That we can't answer "why does the earth go around the sun" by saying "because God makes it do that". That sort of answer (while if technically true if one is a believer), stops a lot of people from trying to find answers and learn more. I'm sure you're not one of these people. But that's the reason why I say "ultimately", that we can't take the existence of God as a reason to stop the pursuit of knowledge at a certain point.

I hope that makes sense

Hey don't worry about it. We're all try to figure things out here. And it's always good to be aware of opposing views and challenge what we think we know.

1 ) Not if we include the maintenance of the laws of nature. Also not if we accept the miracles of the prophets -- these are supernatural events and some of them can be empirically tested.
2 ) Not uncaused outside of space and time. There's no way to measure that. These "uncaused events" happen in this universe so they are properties of this universe and follow from it, hence follow from the first cause. THey are not really completely uncaused.
3 ) Our universe started with the bing bang. That's the consensus right now.
4 ) We ARE talking outside the universe. And it gets tricky for everyone when we start to dive in the outskirts of the universe, not just theists. Therefore many of the ideas around that could be more intuition than actual and true knowledge, if we were to judge on this basis alone.

Ultimately, yes. There may be many intermediate layers and chains of causation, but ultimately, yes.

As I understand it, it's not the appearance of space and time. But rather the sudden appearance and disappearance of energy particles in a point in space.

Quantum fluctuations happen in this universe. Even when they occur in a vacuum that contains no matter, they still occur in the time and space created by the original cause. So they are not independent from the original cause.

Could you please elaborate? what about quantum fluctuations?

I see what you mean. but this point follows from the first point (that an original creator is essential). So if the person you're arguing with doesn't agree with or see the first point then there's no point in raising this one.

The idea is that if one believes in a creator for the universe, and if one accepts the Quran and what it says on the characteristics that creator, then it follows that God has a direct hand in running the world. This direct hand doesn't have to be miraculous intervention as some people might imagine, but it can be through the rules that rule the natural world.

If you're interested in some classical discussion for this point, then you can check out Imam Ghazali's book "tahafut al falasifah". He addressed this very point.