[chuhnk]

As someone who believes in Islam this is an extremely thought provoking piece and I love it. It makes you think and question existence. It makes you wonder about what we're doing here and how life would be different if we existing at a different point in time and space. Just such interesting topics for conversation. Life and the universe.

[discreteevent]

Maybe one can see religion as simply a rational response to the absurdity of life as described in the article. Life is patently absurd and yet we are rational. Why is that? We don't need to be. The answer for many is that there must be something more. For others the something more is itself absurd. But it doesn't mean that it is an irrational response. Its quite the opposite. It's an attempt to make sense of something that, from a broad perspective, is an assault to our rationality

[aikah]

> Maybe one can see religion as simply a rational response to the absurdity of life

The problem is that religion doesn't answer anything(or gives absurd answers,backed by nothing but faith and fishy philosophy),isn't rational because it is not fasifiable.

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

What is clearly absurd is religion.

[vlucas]

There are tons of things that are falsifiable about the Bible and Christianity in particular. The Bible - unlike most other religious texts - gives many historic accounts of events, cities, places, timelines, people, kingdoms, lineages, etc. that are all quite easily verifiable.

http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2013/07/christianity-t...

[aikah]

You misunderstand the concept of Falsifiability. It.It isn't about whether something is verifiable or not. But what it would take for a fact to be dismissed or not. It's not about whether a fact is true or not. For instance, the "fact" that Mohammed talked to angel Gabriel,which would imply angels therefore god exists according to Mohammed isn't falsifiable. You can't test that, or experience that.

It isn't about the holy books being full of inaccuracies, historians know they totally are full of shit already,from an historical point of view.

[vlucas]

This is not unique to religion. We can't test or falsify the multiverse theory, time paradoxes, any naturalistic explanation of the origin of life, or any number of other scientific theories either.

[aikah]

Sure,that's why they are not scientific facts. But merely philosophy IE pure reasoning which doesn't produce any useful result.

[aikah]

While the question of the existence of god as "creator of all things" is a interesting one, anything related to religion can be easily dismissed as a fairy tale or failed philosophy, as the three religions of the book tell virtually nothing about the nature of creation but are more concerned about which "prophet" did what and that mankind should basically blindly follow teachings that cannot be questioned under penalty of death.

"thought provoking piece" ? no Plato is though provoking, Kant is thought provoking. Descartes is thought provoking. Islam and the rest are barbaric and thrive on ignorance, not enlightenment. They are hate pieces that are contextual to the era they were written,not by "a creator" but by men.

But I must admit, Islam is a little more perfect than the other two, as the ethnocentrism of Judaism and the gross absurdity of trinity will not stand that longer. The fact that it tries,however to build up on the other two doesn't save it, from a meta-physical point of view.

Logic teaches us than building something on absurdity only leads to more absurdity.