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General discussion

"allah akbah, allah akbah, allah akbah...."

Jan 28, 2015 7:45AM PST
A recent funeral as Palestinians are honoring a fallen Palestinian bomber who was shot dead by Israeli police.

Psalm chapter 7


11God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.

12If he turn not, he will whet his sword; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready.

13He hath also prepared for him the instruments of death; he ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors.

14Behold, he travaileth with iniquity, and hath conceived mischief, and brought forth falsehood.

15He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made.

16His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate.

17I will praise the LORD according to his righteousness: and will sing praise to the name of the LORD most high.

Discussion is locked

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(NT) Same reason the other planets were created.
Feb 5, 2015 3:18AM PST
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(NT) What reason is that, Diana?
Feb 7, 2015 2:40AM PST
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Dust.
Feb 7, 2015 4:01AM PST

There is gas and dust floating around in space.

The gas coalesced into stars, and then the dust, (and some left over gas), coalesced into planets and things.

There seems to be nothing special about it. Astronomers have seen other stars where planetary formation is taking place right now, and have deduced yet other stars that already have planets orbiting them.

Our solar system appears to be just one of a number of such systems.

Mark

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You said how IYO and
Feb 7, 2015 11:23AM PST

(vaguely) when.
But why?

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First of all,
Feb 7, 2015 3:27PM PST

an apology from me. In fact, 2.

I deleted 2 uncalled for posts from an unwanted poster in this thread. No need for those.

Burt both had light-hearted responses from you, and they went as well. I apologise for that. I particularly liked the "ad hominem" response! Happy

You said, IYO. I had to Google that!! LOL

Not really in my opinion, but through repeatable observation.

As to why? Good question. I prefer the "cause and effect" answer for myself. It just happened.

Mark

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why was heaven created?
Feb 5, 2015 6:23AM PST

think there's an answer for that one?

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(NT) You're the one with all the answers, not me.
Feb 5, 2015 6:48AM PST
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Hmmm. Let's see...
Feb 7, 2015 2:37AM PST

Nope, not in Revelation or Ecclesiastes... guess I'm stumped.

If you mean the home of Jehovah, "heaven" wasn't "created", it's just where he is. The references to it as a place are for our mental convenience.
What about the place we know of and live on; our home?

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creation of heaven
Feb 7, 2015 3:11AM PST

If with 'heaven' you mean the void you see above the earth (well, nearly void, there are some stars and planets and dust and a lot of neutrino's and photons and dark matter and possibly dark energy) there is a rather unanimous idea on HOW it was created (by a 'big bang', 13.8 billion years ago). But one can wonder if there was a WHY. That supposes there was a being that had a reason to start such a bang. There's much less unamity if there was such a being before there was anything. Maybe all we can see as that heaven just is there.

But even if you mean the heaven in the sense of the Christian religion, a place where souls of people go to after their death, it can be said that that heaven is a creation of the human mind when religion came into existence. It's not known, alas, if an Australopithecus or the Homo Halbilis, or even the Home Neanderthalensis had a religion and went to heaven.

Kees

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Re: why was the earth created
Feb 7, 2015 3:17AM PST

Before one asks such a question, one should ask if there IS a why, or only a cause.

Billions of stars in the universe probably have billions of planets together, and those are accumulations of gases and dust that somehow circulated about them. That just seems to happen quite often. It's doubtful if there is some almighty being that has a reason to create all those billions of planets. And so it's doubtful if earth was created intentionally.

Kees

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Kees, that's why I mentioned the scientists.
Feb 7, 2015 3:49AM PST

They can tell us [what they think is] how the earth was created, and about how long ago*, but not why. Evolution doesn't say, so they don't. They're not foolish, or afraid of the question, it's just irrelevant to them. But we do ask, and not just when we're children. WHY is it here? WHY are we here? WHY do we die?
These are very human questions, the Bible claims to be from the creator to humans, so scripture should make an attempt at answering. In fact, it does. Start with the easy one. Why- for what purpose- was the earth created? Answer: Isa 45:18. "For this is what Jehovah says, The Creator of the heavens, the true God,
The One who formed the earth, its Maker who firmly established it, Who did not create it simply for nothing, but formed it to be inhabited:" Ask the contractor on the house next door, "Why are you building this?" and you'll get the same answer. Logical, sensible, clear. But wait. The colon means the sentence is simply part of a larger message. If we want to we can look into that- that's called bible study. He goes on, "I am Jehovah, and there is no one else. I did not speak in a concealed place, in a land of darkness; I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, 'Seek me simply for nothing.' I am Jehovah, who speaks what is righteous and declares what is upright." If he spoke openly and put it in writing, then how is it that you- an educated person from the land of van Leeuwenhoek- weren't aware of it? And whoever this "Jehovah" is, he's not shy about his claims, is he? And he says that his statements are "righteous". Isn't that going too far?

*One of their own, Lord Kelvin, used to take them to task for increasing the length of time they posited since earth's formation in order to allow for the ages of new fossil findings. 'Not scientific', he said, and he was right.

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What's the difference between
Feb 1, 2015 5:13AM PST

"allah akbah" AND "I will praise the LORD "?

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(NT) Kaboom?
Feb 1, 2015 5:14AM PST
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No...According to this
Feb 1, 2015 5:31AM PST

The takbir is the act of saying the phrase Allahu Akbar, usually translated "God is great" or "God is [the] greatest," it is a ubiquitous Arabic expression, used as both an informal expression of faith and as a formal declaration. It is also used in exclamation.
Godspeed.

God is great...praise the LORD

Can you see where some would get confused?

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You are correct. I have no idea what James' version
Feb 1, 2015 5:47AM PST

would mean to an Arabic speaker.
When I encounter a Muslim in my preaching and am asked 'What religion are you?' I say, "I worship the God of Abraham."
BTW one Hebrew form of God-singular is El'oah. In Arabic, that's Allah. So they're in the same position as most other 'people of the Book': no name, just a title.
Now, if you're really interested in an answer to Mr Fry, try here:

http://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/
In particular, here:
http://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/our-suffering/

For Mr Fry himself BTW there's this:
http://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/why-did-the-holocaust-happen/
since some of the victims were homosexuals. (They got a pink triangle. Ours were purple.) I'm a great admirer of his talent, but not of course his lifestyle.

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Technically, a lot of difference
Feb 1, 2015 6:28AM PST

When translated into English, the Arabic expression sounds like an affirmation that is complete in its own right. Statements such as "praise be to God" (or abbreviated versions of the same), mean action is still required.

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Yep. That's Arabic for "God is great."
Feb 1, 2015 5:32AM PST

The Dutch version of Wikipedia explains it as meaming that "the God of Abraham, Noach, Mozes, Jezus and Mohammed is greater and more important than the god of other (non-abrahamitic) religions."

I thought you would agree with that statement (after leaving out 'and Mohammed' maybe). You might even say the same or something amounting to the same at a funeral?
But now I get the impression you disagree. Strange.

Kees

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Mark, don't worry about that poster.
Feb 9, 2015 6:56AM PST

We've faced worse.
I said IYO because there are still controversies about the exact formation process and when. Not important here, except to illustrate the difference between [good] science and scripture- or any other faith-based belief system; intelligent guesses vs. direct answers.
And we're not Fundamentalists; the building of the earth and its residents took much longer than they believe. (Or shorter: "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens," Gen 2:4, KJV)
"I prefer the "cause and effect" answer for myself." That's a true statement, but many of those we meet are not satisfied with it.
We have a couple of tracts about DNA and such, which are the best I've seen on the topic, as it relates to Creation vs. Accident. One is "The Origin of Life—Five Questions Worth Asking" and the other is "Was Life Created?" They're both downloadable from http://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/?start=36
Check the accuracy and fairness for yourself.

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I might just do that.
Feb 9, 2015 8:07PM PST

It's always interesting to see others' points of views.

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Good. Now my PayPal account # is...
Feb 10, 2015 9:36AM PST
Happy