The Quran: An Atheists Perspective - Night 01

i'm surprised how many of you came i hope i won't disappoint you too much it's nice to be at purdue again i graduated here almost wow 1981 that's almost 20 years ago are you sure you can hear me okay even in the very back because i'm not you know speaking very loudly i usually have to shout during these things well besides we have to tie this up in about an hour and a half the university of kansas is playing st john's tonight so i have to oh is this a football game weekend yeah oh okay wow something to watch tomorrow okay that's why i chose this weekend really to come here all right well um today i'm or tonight i am hoping to present an atheist's interpretation of the quran i know it sounds strange but it is true because the first time i read the quran i was an atheist and so i'm going to try to recollect and to recreate as best i can that experience of reading the quran as an atheist it's um you know sometimes i regret that i am not like most of you i am not have been born into the muslim tradition born into a muslim family i think that makes life so much easier for muslim young people and even muslim old people such as myself and you know you have a great history and tradition and you know so much about the religion when you before you even realize it before you even pick up the quran for the first time so much of how you read the quran and understand the quran has been influenced by your upbringing the first time i picked up the quran i wasn't even quite sure what it was it was a gift from a friend and i just picked it up i i knew it was their holy scripture but i really wasn't even quite sure who it was revealed through who the author was really almost nothing so my perspective is sort of an innocent perspective and so when i talk about it tonight and i think it's a valuable perspective or at least it should be a perspective that's of interest because i think when somebody new comes to the faith and reads the quran and gains a different perspective that may help us enrich all of our perspectives just as much as i've benefited from listening to muslims born muslims talk about their perspective on this religion i hope i could contribute something to that dialogue i'm going to be talking a little bit about the purpose of life because i was an atheist before i became a muslim actually that's all i'm going to talk about tonight what because that was my main problem when i picked up the quran i wanted to know what it had to say about the purpose of life i wasn't expecting much but it was an interesting journey nonetheless and so that's what i'll be talking about tonight my mom never got to come to purdue university my mom saw me lecture at several universities around this nation she saw me lecture several times about islam and she was one of my best audiences one of the best people i've ever had in an audience used to sit up front and i could see in her eyes not just interests but also a certain amount of pride she was a very devout christian and she was that till her dying day the day she died but i really really was loved having my mom in the audience and i always miss her even now i don't give really give that many lectures even though i hear that you guys have some tapes of mine from old i don't really give that many lectures but whenever i am and study standing in front of an audience and i look at that front row i still miss the absence of my mother there and i wish you could have meant met her because she was really a wonderful wonderful wonderful mother and person and i'm not just saying that because she's my mother but so many people that knew her said the same i remember when my mom died a few years ago and i was at her funeral pers it was one of the biggest funerals i've ever seen and person after person who came up to me to express their condolences expressed it in almost exactly the same way every time they said jeff your mom it was a true saint and they would walk up to me and it seemed like they had prepared this every person that would come up would say yes jeff your mom was such a great lady she was a true saint even my ex-wife who was an atheist my first wife we were married a few years we got divorced while we were phd students at purdue but she came up to me and she told me this very same thing she said jeff you know i don't believe in god but you know i still think your mother was a true saint for a long time in my life my mom was the only person i was really able to love she was my closest friend she was my protector she was my only real hero she was a deeply religious catholic she was a dedicated nurse she was loved by all our neighbors and she was the most giving and charitable person i ever known i've ever known she was truly a very religious devout woman she didn't wear it on her sleeve she expressed it through her treatment of others her behavior towards others i remember still seeing my mom visiting the old italian lady next door mrs caltabiano she was in the late 70s remember this lady every all the kids in the neighborhood hated her she was had extremely bad temper but my mother would visit her once a month and go over there with a basin of water and a towel over her shoulder and she would trim that lady old lady's feet the toenails on her feet and wash her feet once a month and i remember saying to her mom why do you do that i mean that lady is so mean she's so old she has such stinky feet why would you go over and wash your feet and i remember once she said to me son if jesus could wash the feet of others so can i and that's what kind of religiosity she had she translated her religiosity into helping others and to her that was what life was all about life was about giving i remember how much compassion she had for patients at the hospital and how warmly they spoke about her when i would come to pick her up from work late at night because she worked sort of the graveyard trip the shift so i'd pick her up very late at night and her patients used to stop me while i was walking at the hall to pull me aside and brag about my mother for usually too long i remember what great mother and teacher she was i remember how honest she was now she never swore or treated anyone rudely my mom wasn't perfect she used to gossip a little but she was the nearest thing to perfection i ever do most of all i remember how she loved her how much she loved her five sons and how hard you work to provide them with as normal and a happy life as possible despite the handicap we acquire and the handicap that we acquired i'm sad to say i even hate to bring it up but it's central to this lecture was my father i don't know what was the matter with my father or how he became the way he was but my father had this deep inner rage and anger that he just really couldn't control and every night he would try to numb that rage and that anger with hard hard drinking and he usually wasn't very successful his drinking made my father all the more volatile because he could be laughing and joking one minute and he could fly into an angry rampage the next and once he erupted there was just no stopping him it was like a thunderstorm the severe thunderstorm that comes in over the horizon and starts exploding above you and that just wouldn't go away and he would be like that all night long for several hours and it would take a ton of time and a ton of hard liquor before it would finally put him to rest and it was really terrible living with my father was like carrying a box of nitroglycerin you just weren't sure what was going to set it off the slightest agitation the slightest shift he could unexpectedly explode into his violence and it was it was not easy it was not easy at all my four brothers and i had a frightful and uncertain childhood but the worst of it the worst of it which is watching my father regularly taunt threaten and abuse my mother when i was a little boy i used to daydream about life without my father it was my almost constant wish and daydream i just wanted the violence to go away i wanted not to be afraid anymore i felt like i was trapped in a bad dream and there just was no way out so i prayed and again and again to god to remove my father from our lives and to stop the pain when my father was always there and very early on i began to wonder if god really was i could not fathom why god would sentence my mom to lifelong punishment i could not imagine what great sin she must have committed or that we her children must have committed to deserve my father i lacked the maturity to sort out those questions but i certainly had enough anger and fear inside me to provoke them i was too young to see the wisdom in allowing my mother and her children to suffer the violence and abuse of my father i was too young to understand what god would let innocent children lie in bed every night crying wondering hoping praying that their mom will still be in one piece the next morning i just couldn't see why god would let that let that be i could not understand how god and his mercy and forgiveness could extend that mercy and forgiveness to someone like my father with all his terrible failings all i can see in my world was chaos and violence and so when i became old enough to think for myself it became easy for me to question the existence of god we also lived in a very violent city the violence outside was nothing compared to the violence inside but the violence that was happening in the world around me only confirmed what my father already had taught me only too well there were the assassinations of the kennedys when i was a kid and martin luther king there were race riots in cities like mine and burnings and lootings there were even people burned alive in the streets firemen used to come to to places where liars fires were purposely lit and snipers used to be picking them off gang fights were rampant in my neighborhood seemed like we had one every couple of months sometimes kids would get shot most of the time there was always several that were extremely badly injured taken to the hospital the police would show up after it was over so they wouldn't get hurt take the bodies away take the kids to the hospital and of course we also had the vietnam war going on that time that senseless war and we see the night after night on a television stream screen young american boys being put in body bags taken back to our country and even worse we'd see the vietnamese civilians and especially the children being slaughtered at our own hands and kids running down the street vietnamese children running down the street after a bombing some of them naked some of them on fire from napalm burning all over them all that all the violence in the world confirmed for me the lesson that i was already ingrained in me that this world is dominated by random consuming undiscriminating violence and very early on i began to ask why and then from a very early age but that question became more intense for me as i got older and older i reached my late teenage years i wondered why it had to be this way why did it have to be this way i have three daughters not too long ago i was walking with my wife walking along and two of my daughters were walking with me and the youngest one fatten was whose name means alluring you know fat and my youngest daughter my 10 year old was riding ahead of us on her bike then she circled around and rode by us again going full speed and that she was riding by she said i am fat and lang and i love being me i looked at my wife and i said we must be doing something right you know and i was walking with my daughter sarah not just long long ago because she's trying to lose a little weight so she walks with me i'm a i walk several miles every day but now i come home after work and i walk an hour with her at night and she's you know she's trimming down she wants to lose a little weight but i'm walking along and she says daddy i know i have to lose weight a little weight but i know i am beautiful and that's because she feels it inside you know i mean she when she says such a statement like that or my other daughter says i love being me and they tell me daddy i think i'm beautiful they feel that deeply inside something inside it's not something it glows from within my wife is about 35 pounds overweight and please don't record this you can erase that from the table she'll kill me please but she's about 35 pounds overweight and she's 40 years old now i got her age right she'll kill me for that as well but she's 40 about 35 pounds overweight but not but not too long ago she said to me you know and said to all of us hey look my daughters are giving her a hard time about her weight she said i don't care i know i'm beautiful because she's always felt that way that's not so much an appraisal of how a person sees themselves physically it's how they see themselves in their totality well when i look at myself to this day when i think about myself the last word i would ever use to characterize myself is beautiful or handsome or attractive because after i growing up in that environment becoming an adult somewhere early in my life etched upon my being i came to see myself in a very different way and to this day when i'm walking along and i'm thinking about how i look to others or i just think about myself i just see someone scarred odd disfigured and i'll think about that that's the way i'll probably perceive myself to the day i die and i don't think we realize how much we affect our children and the way they see themselves but it was amazing to me that there could be a god and god could let that type of thing happen to children my four brothers ended up following the same road of self-destruction that my father fought it went down the same way all four of them became drug addicts one just recently died of alcoholism two just recently kicked their habits after they had him for 25 years another one was a heroin addict he had to be jailed before he could finally kick his habit i mean why would god put people at such a disadvantage this bothered me why did god create such an imperfect and violent world i wondered why didn't he just put us into heaven and first in the from very first and keep us there and keep us there why did he make us so criminally inclined so corruptable so rebellious and destructive and self-destructive i mean why would he do that i thought couldn't he make a more perfect creature couldn't he just make us angels i mean if there exists angels and i was taught and i grew up in the catholic faith that there is why couldn't he make us like that why did he make us worse than they if he could create better what did he just slip up it got out of his control i was told that he was omnipotent how could that happen if he wants us to submit to his will why didn't he just make us submit to his will from the beginning it's that simple why didn't he make his angels if he has it within his power why does he let the strong torture and oppress the weak why does he let blameless children be scarred so deeply and indelibly by the violence of their childhood and many and trust me i'm not feeling sorry for myself there's tons of kids tons of kids that suffer much worse than i did when i was a child i wanted to know why and i demanded an answer and i didn't care where that answer came from i tell you the truth i didn't care if that answer came from heaven or if it came from hell i didn't care if it came from an angel or the devil himself i didn't care if it came from the pope or charles manson i just wanted an answer and i just wanted to know the truth i used to argue with my mother when i became an atheist at 16. i'd argue my mom didn't argue somehow she had the strained confidence that someday i would believe in god again i used to ask her what makes you think that mom and as usual she would pull out on her old sayings you learn from her grandmother as my grandmother always said jeff the way the twig is bent the tree will grow i used to shake my head and think wow my mom she's don quixote you know this is living an illusion i told her i had three main problems with religion number one why would god give us reason if our reason conflicts with faith see when we think about god and start asking questions about god it naturally leads to impossible questions irreconcilable issues the dogmas that were taught to believe in just don't make sense i told her why would god create us to believe in these things if they go against reason or in the first place why give us reason anyway if reason leads to these contradictions makes it hard for us to believe in god why does he give us choice the ability to choose just make us perfect why does he allow us to choose to become evil just didn't make sense i said to him if he wants us to submit to his will and most of all why does he allow us to suffer couldn't he we have bypassed the suffering popped us into heaven from the first in any case i became an avowed atheist when i was in my middle teenage years i can't remember now exactly when 17 18 something like that no i guess it was 16 16 years old i remember religion class where i declared it to the class but that's it i could not see what is the possible purpose of life and i never found that out so i guess i'll see you next time it's good talking to you good luck good night gotta go catch a basketball game no no uh i was an atheist for about 12 years i that's not doesn't mean i wasn't ever i became uninterested in religion i was always fascinated by religion you know how ex-alcoholics are fascinated about studies about alcoholism and they become you know obsessed with studying alcoholism or you know you notice how psychiatrists are usually sort of crazy themselves you know well it's true most psychiatrists wow but you know most people that have been injured or harmed by something because it becomes their obsession so i was always fascinated by a religion you know and when i at purdue university especially when i was here there were so many different cultures so many different religious perspectives i was in heaven or my own kind of heaven you know i would talk to kids on campus about their different religious beliefs there was a muslim lady in our i remember on i was right in this building over here the tall one with the that you can walk underneath what's the name of the math science center or something yeah i was right over here and there was a lady on my floor i think it was the seventh floor she was a muslim lady i don't know where from dressed in black and everything and i saw her walking down the hall one day sure enough she came in and started asking me for some help in some mathematics problems professor perlis i don't know if he's still here sent her to me because i was pretty good in a community of algebra so she came and i was helping her and things like that and in the process i began asking her questions about her religion and you know we started to develop his friendship and everything and then she refused to see me but but but i was you know that almost killed me i went what what's going on here but i was fascinated by uh different people's religious perspective perspectives not that i was searching you know usually when i talk to people i became ever more confirmed of my disbelief in god but it fascinated me when i graduated here and went to san francisco i met some more muslims and other faith peoples of other faiths as well but i really became very close with one muslim family in particular and one time they gave me the quran as a gift after i badgered them with my questions long enough they they just sort of got fed up with me i think and they and they gave me a copy of the quran and at first i thought what do they want to convert me i mean what's going on here but then i realized that it was an innocent enough gesture i had been asking them a lot of questions and they apparently thought that they were not up to my questions and maybe as a matter of fact eventually they explicitly told me that i could find better answers here as to as far as what their faith represents concerning the questions i was asking them the usual questions why does god let us suffer why doesn't he just pop us into heaven etc etc etc well about four or five days after they gave it to me i had run out of reading material just by coincidence and i had nothing to read that night and i had no television in my apartment in san francisco and so i uh looked to my left i remember sitting on my couch and on the table next to me the end table was the copy of the quran and so i thought oh well i'll pick it up and read it and so i did and i began to read it and i found it in a very intriguing book and i picked it up and i read the first seven verses which are essentially a prayer for guidance you know it sort of teaches you a prayer for guidance uh in the name of god the most merciful compassionate uh creator of a ruler of all worlds master of the day of judgment to you alone we uh see too long we pray and you alone we seek show us a straight path etc etc you know i thought oh prayer fitting way to begin a book and then i turn to the next surah or i'll use chapter i'll call it a chapter for now i turn to the next chapter of the quran then it begins and it says that is the book it begins alif lam meme let me skip that right now there are three arabic symbols letters aleph lamb mean that is the book we're in no doubt is guidance now of course i just realized i had just prayed for guidance or unknowingly you know not intentionally when i read this next line and it says that is the book we're in no doubt is guidance it's the guidance and i'm looking at the book and i'm thinking to myself you know you mean this is the answer to this prayer i just said and i look at what it says in front of me and it says that is the book and look up to my thinking to myself this is the book that is the book and it startled me you know because from that point on the entire quran addresses the reader as if it's god addressing the person reading the book speaking to him directly i thought what an ingenious author this is he writes a revelation and instead of talking about a history or even a biography it's a personal address from god to the reader i thought it's like the ten commandments even more personal that expanded to textual form you know to a long text i thought what a clever genius this author was it's supposed to be a revelation from god you read it it's god talking to the reader as i right on i became more impressed with the author and at that point i really didn't even know who was who even people who didn't believe in islam claimed to be the author although i certainly began asking right as soon as possible and starting to read about this religion and its scripture as and as i was reading through the quran i really became obsessed by it and really just threw myself into studying this and this it amazed me because it would constantly sort of talk to you personally and it would include intriguing things that really caught my interest like i remember reading the verse i think it's the 25th verse of that second chapter i'm hardly into the quran and i come up to the 25th verse and it says it gives this very sort of concrete description of paradise of heaven in the hereafter and it talks about rivers running underneath and you know beautiful shade and things like that and i'm thinking oh come on this is too too concrete i could see how this would appeal to seventh century arabian mentality but you know if a guy was from alaska and he was reading this you know he would like warm sandy beaches then cool shade you know and he would like you know bikini clad supermodels then you know whatever you know to what the quran described but then i go to the right i just you know i started to think to myself oh this author wasn't so clever and i go to the next verse and it says and god does not disdain from using any kind of parable even if it is of an act to get his point across see i just read this verse that i took very concretely and the next one says oh don't take every statement in this you know in the quran so concretely no it says god does not disdain to use a parable a symbolic statement to get his point across i thought man this guy who wrote this quran is brilliant you know he sort of addresses people on one level and then he knows that there's going to be more you know sneakier trickier people reading it and so he catches them in the next verse and says hey you you kind of skeptical person i mean don't think you know god does not disdain to cite parables in order to get it you know in order to catch your imagination even if it is of a gnat you know i thought brilliant the first 29 verses of that second chapter beginning of the quran sort of describe its audience you know there are the believers the people who have a natural so not natural but who believe in god and are sincere and it says that this quran will be of great benefit to them and then it talks about the people who will not benefit at all the dis the people just rejected out of hand are completely closed-minded and the quran dismisses them in one one verse talks about them in one verse dismisses them in one verse they're gonna gain from this at all and then it talks about the people on the fence sort of in the middle who waver between belief and disbelief and it says how you know they could benefit but but they have to be sincere and they have to be open-minded and cetera and i'm thinking you know what a modern way to begin a text you know because it describes its audience talks about the prerequisites to gain from this who will gain from it who will not sort of the way we write textbooks nowadays like if i write a math text i say well this book is appropriate for freshmen and sophomores but it's also even appropriate for seniors in high school if they have this in this background and so forth but for you know high school you know younger than that students with a lesser background won't be able to benefit from this and i thought oh what a brilliant way to begin this scripture it's very modern in so many ways okay so i was impressed by the author that's the most important point i'm trying to make he impressed me right from the start and i was more i quickly became very intrigued by the author i wanted to understand him better i was in awe of what i thought was his mind his brilliance then i come naturally enough after the introduction to the 30th verse of the second surah and it begins the story of man now some people take that as history i personally took it as an allegory as a symbolic story uh you know from my background that was a natural way to read it especially because of internal things inside that story and from other verses in the quran that i would later read that sort of confirmed me confirm my belief in that so i took it as primarily symbolic and i was looking to read it to gain to understand meaning to gain some meaning about what the author had to say about the purpose of life but regardless how you take it i think you're going to come to more or less similar conclusions okay so here i am i turn to the story of man and i read the 30th verse of the second surah that begins that story i looked down at it and i read through that i read that one and then the story continues up till the i think the 39th verse very short introduction i read through it once and just didn't sound right because i was familiar with this story you could read it in the bible so i read it again and again two or three times and i realized something is really strange here the author seems to have missed the entire point and purpose of the story i mean he's permuted details he seems to have missed the main point of the story and i began to wonder if he just never quite heard it right but on the other hand there seemed to be something underneath the surface here that he was trying to say that seemed very intriguing so i decided finally to go back and read it very carefully line by line verse by verse and give him the benefit of the doubt give it a true honest reading and see what it had to say because it intrigued me and i read the 30th verse of the second surah and here's the way it goes it says behold your lord said to the angels i am going to place a representative of mine on earth a vicerent a representative on earth representative of god and they said the angels will you place there in one who will spread corruption and shed blood well we celebrate your praises and glorify your holiness and he said truly i know what you do not know i looked at that verse and i just felt kind of like a thing not more than a tingle you know like a coldness come over me you know i felt like somebody was in the room and i read it again and it says behold your lord said to the angels i'm going to place a vicerent a representative of mine on earth i thought no no you got it all wrong because here the author is saying behold your lord said to the angels i'm going to place man apparently on earth as my representative i thought no that's not why you're putting man on earth you're putting them there as a punishment he sins and you punish him you didn't create him from the start to put him on earth as your representative you put him there to punish him but that's not what it says long before man adam and eve even appear on the scene says i'm going to place him there on earth as my representative i thought no no that's entirely wrong and then i read the next verse and that one was the one that hooked me because then the angels say because up to that point i thought does he really mean what he's saying i mean is he really saying that he's not putting them there as a punishment but you know to represent him is he giving him this a positive appraisal of mankind right from the start and then like i said the rest of that verse goes they said will you place there in one who will spread corruption and shed blood the angels are saying this while we the angels celebrate your praises and glorify you i looked at that and said that's my question right because the angels are raising a natural objection will you placed her in one who will spread corruption and shed blood god just said i'm going to put man there to represent me and the angels naturally say why this creature this rebellious being this creature who spreads corruption and sheds much blood you're going to create him and put him on earth and his progeny well what while we celebrate your praises and glorify your holiness why put this creature on earth why even make them in the first place when you could create us the angels who are perfectly submissive to your will who do exactly what you want of us who only glorify you and praise you why create this being why create them in the first place why create this being who sheds spreads corruption and sheds much blood it's a natural question that's my question the atheist question i thought the author was trying to play with me play with my emotions manipulate the story just to agitate me i said it right there with the angels yes why create this creature when you create angels and notice where the question is coming from it's coming from heaven it's being asked in heaven which gives the question all the more force because why create this creature with his criminal inclinations then put him in an environment where he falsely feels he's distant from god and cannot even perceive him with his five senses so he feels free distant from god and unleash him in that environment where he could pursue his worst criminal inclinations just got to get you and when i read that i was almost furious yes why why do that and then the rest of that verse goes and here's god's answer to the angel's question truly i know what you do not know in modern parlance that would be yes truly i know what i'm doing i know exactly what i'm doing you know exactly what you're doing i said you know exactly what you're doing no no you don't get off that easily i thought to myself you don't take my whole question you don't take my pain you don't take my life summarize it in two verses and then just walk away and say you know what you're doing that's my life there that's my rage that's my anger you cannot walk away that easy no you don't ask that question without answering it i want to know what is the answer to that question you made me i thought to myself and then it dawned on me i was arguing with a god i didn't even believe in and that would happen often when i read this quran every now and then i would slip into an argument with the scripture arguing with a divinity i didn't even believe it complaining to a god that i rejected but that was the brilliance i thought of the author the way he could phrase things in such a way to lure you in to feeling like you're conversing with god himself i thought this author was extremely brilliant and so i kept on reading even though right now i was extremely agitated but the strange thing is the author didn't end the answer to the angel's question with that verse he just didn't say truly i know what you do not and then dismiss the question are you guys getting tired and bored no seriously sorry about this but you know these things are kind of fun for me but you know whenever i talk about these my daughters go oh here he goes again you know but you know for me it's like doing mathematics you know it's beautiful even though i know you know all students would agree with that but in any case so i turn to the next verse and it says and he god taught adam the names of all things and then he placed them before the angels and said tell me their names if you are right i looked at that verse and it's clearly addressing the angel's question it's responding to the angel's question and it's interesting what it says and he taught adam the names of all things and then placed them before the angels and said tell me their names if you're right right about what but your question your objection in a sense to the existence of man i remembered that in the account of this story that i had known from as i was a child that man learns man is taught to not taught but he requires the ability to name things but it was not presented as an answer to any kind of question but in this version the author now took this naming incident and used it to answer to begin an answer to the angel's question and he taught adams the names of all things i realized very quickly that you have to be very close like very close attention to the wording because this author was extremely skillful in his choice of words and he said and he taught adam the name of all things he's emphasizing that adam here is can learn he can be taught he's an intellectual being and he taught adam what how to name all things all things all things that come into his conscious mind everything he sees everything he experiences he's able to assign verbal symbols throughout i was later discovered that throughout the quran the gift of human language the human ability to to communicate not just in word but also in writing would be emphasized throughout the quran that this skill is what makes man way above the creator creatures around him this gift especially is one of the greatest gifts that god gives to mankind in the koran in one place it says it explicitly states that that reed commands the reader read in the name of your lord who created created man from a tiny creature that clings read and your lord is most bountiful why because he taught man the use of the pen taught him with it what he could never know what he knew not the quran will emphasize reading talking communicating and man's intellectual abilities especially as it is symbolized in this verse what makes man special what makes him unique what begins as an answer to the angel's question the author points to this first man's intellectual abilities he begins by answering the angel's question by pointing to that man's intellect as symbolized especially in his ability to assign verbal symbols to all the concepts that come into his mind and then he placed them before the angels and said you tell me their names if you are right and they said glory to you we have no knowledge except what you taught us we only have the knowledge the level of knowledge the intellect that you have provided for us we cannot do this they do not have the intellect they do not have the intelligence to be able to create on their own verbal symbols for what they experience glory be to you we have no knowledge except what you taught us we cannot name these things and they say in truth it is you who are knowing the whys this takes knowledge this takes wisdom this takes at least a certain level of genius to be able to name things like this they admit their inferiority this is beyond them and then you turn to the next verse and it says and he said oh adam tell them their names and adam succeeds where the angels failed the angels cannot did not have the ability to be able to do to meet this task adam he succeeds instantly and when he had told them their names god said to the angels did i not tell you that i know what is unseen in the heavens and the earth and i know what you reveal and what you conceal a direct reference to the question did i not tell you that i know what is in the heavens and the earth and i know what you reveal and you concealed didn't see didn't i just tell you i know exactly what i'm doing but the thing that got me was this last part did i not tell you that i know what is unseen in the heavens and the earth and i know what you reveal and you conceal what did the angels reveal what did they conceal i was amazed at the economy of expression of the author in just a few words he could pack so much meaning it's so easy to just read through this i read through this three times i told you two or three times before i went back and read through it slowly and didn't realize anything couldn't see the get the picture but i went back and read it line by line word by word suddenly a whole world was opening up to me did i not tell you that i know what is unseen in the heavens and the earth and i know what you reveal and what you conceal what did the angels reveal what did they conceal oh i look back it's obvious what they revealed the evil propensities of man man's ability to destroy to wreak havoc to spread corruption to shed blood that revealed the dark side of human nature plainly but what did they conceal i thought about it and it was obvious they ignored neglected to say that man has the reciprocal ability to do good to show compassion to be kind to be merciful to be just to be do what is righteous to do righteous deeds man has the ability to rise to great heights of virtue that's an eye-opener for me because i had always seen the dark side of the man that i was blind to it i had a blind spot i was blind to the the reciprocal ability of man but here the angels are being told exactly what i needed to be told that yes human beings could be extremely destructive they could be violent they could be vicious they could be mean but they also could be kind good merciful virtuous and we all know it throughout history we have the greatest exemplars of goodness and the greatest exemplars of evil sometimes living side by side on the human stage of great examples adolf hitler and schindler right usually when someone evil arises it forces the good out of others they seem to produce to bring out the best in each other in a certain sense right but here that's what i was saying sometimes these great examples of both tendencies they could live in the same era in the same country in the same city even on the same block even in the same house and we said next verse and be oh no and it says in the next verse and behold we said to the angels bow down to adam and they bowed down but not so iblis turns out to be satan he refused and was arrogant he was of those who reject faith and we said to the angels bow down to adam if i had any doubt up until this point that the author men that human intelligence made mankind potentially superior to the angels this verse removed all doubt because it says to the angels after god demonstrates that man is his intellectual superior tells the angels bow down to adam and they bow down bowing down could be a symbol of what well it could be a symbol of inferiority but it also could be a symbol of subservience and perhaps the author and i would later see that this is true that what he's saying here is that our only angels are of lesser intelligence than man do not have his intellectual capacity but also it's saying that these angels will serve the development will serve god but they will serve the development of man and later in the quran we'll see that everything else about us in this learning experience in this life on earth is for us to serve our growth and development even satan it turns out serves a function according to the quran all of it serves an essential role in the development and evolution of the human personality and iblis refused satan refused to bow down why because he was arrogant because of those who reject faith if you give me a minute i'll just summarize where we are right now angels asked the right question why create this human being in the first place because he is so destructive and violent sinful etc god begins to answer the question by saying look he has superior intelligence he has a tremendous capacity intellectual capacity in comparison to the other creatures around him when he demonstrates this he tells the angels to bow down you will serve his development and then he introduces satan iblees and so what the satan i thought represent in almost every culture what do angels represent in almost every culture in almost every culture and especially in the religion i grew up with satan represents the source of temptation that that being who whispers temptations into our soul angels represent the source of those magnanimous urgings so that when we're faced with a moral dilemma we hear both voices in our soul telling us go ahead you know enjoy yourself don't worry about it it's okay relax no that would be good for you have a good time the angel's saying no that's not the right thing jeff don't do that you do that you're doing the wrong thing remember your mom remember how honest he was that's what she taught you you know here the author is introducing the source of temptation that we are exposed to and the source of inspiration that all human beings are subject to that's what they pretty much represent in all cultures but why does he introduce it at this stage well first an answer to the angel's question i thought he's talking about man's intellectual ability now he's talking about what man has the ability to choose to choose between because he is subject to magnanimous urgings and evil promptings and he has the ability as we'll soon see to choose between them man is a creature of choice a moral being and these promptings that he's subjected to magnanimous urgings and evil promptings temptations heighten the morality of a decision it forces us to focus on it so that not only can we discern between the two but when we have to make a moral decision it becomes we focus on it in an intense we're forced to focus on it in an intense way so up to this point we see that man has gone through a period of instruction of learning in his development he's now become a moral being and so he was presented with a choice and he said and we said oh adam dwell you and your spouse in the garden and eat freely thereof what you wish but come not near this tree for you will be among the wrong doers i'm thinking the author either has his own original version that he's talking about here that he's presenting here or he just can't make up his mind what point he is trying to get get across he's getting lost let me read it again dwell you and your spouse in the garden and eat freely thereof what you wish but come not near this tree for you will be among the wrong doers the reason why i said the author seems to be confused is because he is almost totally dispassionate in that statement i said to myself no that's not how it works god is supposed to be fearful at the prospect that adam may eat from the tree because that's the tree of eternal life and infinite knowledge and if he eats from it as it said in my upbringing they will become as gods and so god after he banishes man from the garden puts an angel around that tree so that he never goes near it again for if god knows if he goes near that tree it's a disaster man could become his equal and he's nervous and frightened at the prospect that man will go to the tree and eat from it but here there's no sense of urgency there's no sense of panic there's no sense of even mild worry god says to adam and eve o adam dwell you and your spouse in the garden and eat freely thereof what you wish but come not near this tree for why for you will be among the wrong doers it's almost as if the tree is picked at random uh let's see adam eve go now eat whatever you like in the garden but don't go near that tree there's nothing special about the tree i read the whole rest of the quran there was nothing special about the tree satan tempted adam and told him it's you know this tree if you eat this from this fruit you'll have any great kingdom a kingdom that never decays and so forth and eternal life it turns out to be a falsification on his part no truth in it at all but god seems totally in control here not at all worried at this prospect what does the next verse say but satan caused them to slip and expelled them from the state in which they were i read that verse and said what this author has a penchant for understating things what happened but satan caused them to slip and expelled them from the state in which they were what the greatest sin in the history of the human race the sin for which you and i and all of us here are sweating it out down here on earth and we have to live and and work and suffer and go through pain and agony and death that sin that brought this down upon us is a slip a slip i went to my arabian friends and i asked him you see this verse in the quran here this word here could you tell me what it means and they said it means to slip and i said to them no i mean you know a slip in english is when i go like this you know a slip is a minor distraction you get distracted for a second and you sort of lose your focus but you immediately regain it it's something minor i told them you know like i say to another american you know i slipped up it's no big deal jeff what happened there oh don't worry about it i tell my department head it's just a slip up what happened again you know it's a slip up don't worry about it oh i slept no big deal no they told me it means the same thing to slip no big deal the slip that satan caused him to slip and they were expelled from the state in which they were what state were they total compliance to god's will what's they were there now they discovered the ability to go against that will to make an independent choice up to this point we saw that they were given the ability to choose presented with temptation and magnanimous urgings now now we actually see them make that independent choice they might have been given many commands before may have had many choices before what's significant about this choice thesaurus seems to be saying is that it's the first time they made an independent one but satan caused them to slip and expelled them from the state in which they were and we said go you all down some of you being the enemies of others and on earth will be your dwelling place and provision for a time go you all down some of you will be adversaries of others and on earth will be your dwelling place and provision for a time the author i thought he just doesn't get it i mean there should be rage here there should be anger god should be furious he should be losing it he should be threatening this creature he should be screaming at him telling him yes and a woman you're gonna have to really have a period and you're gonna scream on your labor pants and you you you did it then you're in that she he this this guy who you were too smart and you tricked him he's going to rule over you that's going to teach you a lesson and you know and so forth but here simply says go you all down some of you being adversaries of others and earth will be your dwelling place and provision for a time and that's not a god losing it and on earth will be your dwelling place and provision for a time when i walked into the hotel today and the person behind the desk said here's your room and we have a continental breakfast in the morning i didn't assume they were angry at me huh here's your room we have a continental breakfast in the morning you know i didn't assume they were angry at me they weren't but that's essentially go you all down some of you will be adversaries of others the angels already said that in their question there will be violence this creature creates violence this seems to be more warning than anything else and on earth will be your dwelling place and provision for a time i thought wait a minute maybe i'm misreading this the next verse will i'm sure will show god exploding out of control and then adam received words from his lord and he turned to him mercifully for truly god is oft returning ever merciful what merciful adam receives words from his lord turns out in the next verse the words of consolitary words the words of consolation then adam receives words from his lord and he turned to him mercy god forgives him truly is off returning the merciful definitely not a god going out of control i thought what point is the author trying to make here he has missed the whole point and purpose of this story next verse and it repeats what it said before so we said go down from this state all of you together and truly there will come guidance come from me guidance to you and whoever follows my guidance no fear shall come upon them nor shall they grieve if i had any doubt before that god was not punishing adam by putting him on earth adam and his spouse it was removed when i read this verse and the and the previous one because god says go down from the state all of you together and then and then he embraces adam and truly they'll come to you guidance for me adam and eve and whoever follows my guidance no fear shall come upon them nor they shall shall they grieve it's a tender scene adam and his spouse repented in the previous verse god forgive them but he tells them but you have to go down from the state in which you were they're obviously fearful they're obviously somewhat panicked this is all new to them and what does god say to them he says but don't worry guidance will come from me and whoever follows my guidance no fear shall come upon them nor shall they grieve it's like a parent addressing a hurt child or a penitent child don't worry about it you'll be all right don't panic i'm not here to hurt you don't be afraid you'll be all right there will come guidance from me and as long as you follow my guidance you'll have nothing to fear nor shall you grieve i know you're afraid i know this is new for you i know this is hard for you but you have to go through it but don't worry i'll be with you just follow my guidance you have nothing to agree the last verse switches to the past tense up to this point we're talking about the beginnings of mankind this first transports us to the very end of the human drama looking back on the history of mankind and it says and those who rejected and gave the lie to our signs past ends these are friends of the fire they dwell therein notice how it switches to a whole other scene it would be unfair to say this to the couple they've just been through a lot so it doesn't address them personally it dresses the reader takes them to the future to the day of judgment and looks back at human history and says and those who rejected and gave the lie to our signs these are the friends of the fire they dwelled therein they're friends of the fire curious choice of words the author is constantly making increasing intriguing choices of words do people befriend the suffering that awaits them in the next life i thought they're friends of the fire do people court do they pursue do they embrace the misery that's going to meet them in the hereafter how i thought it says they dwelled therein when in the past what do they already create or live in some kind of hell in this life that's organically connected to the hell the experience of the next what is he saying here later in the quran i would read a verse like that says this in your mutual rivalry for the things of the world right i got to remember it you're diverted in your mutual rivalry for piling up the things of the world you are diverted then it says but then you will know when you die then it says and then again you will know when you reach your next existence but then it says but if you could see right now with the eye of reality you would certainly see the hell what the hell when you're already in is that what the author is trying to say is there an organic link between what we do in this life and to what we experience in the next do we create our do we start do we in a sense make ourselves into that type of creature that experiences either pain or happiness in the next life too many questions were coming into my mind and i kept seeing a picture going in and out of focus and i was only 38 39 verses through the quran and the seven in the opening chapter so 46 verses it's only a few pages through the quran i had a whole quran to go but i was determined to pursue it and find how the answer author deals with those questions so i thought he was a genius up to this point i thought he was a genius beyond any genius i had ever read or at least i thought he could be but i thought as i read the verb through the rest of the quran he'd start to fall apart make mistakes contradict himself so i continued reading i just intrigued i was wondering when he was going to trip over his own feet okay three things the office seemed to be emphasizing in this story three things that intrigued me most it seemed that he was emphasizing in response to the angel's question why create this most corrupt and worse creature are you getting really exhausted seriously so i could finish this tomorrow really no lie i'm not a politician i'm telling the truth okay i'll go a little further until you get too exhausted just raise your hands okay because you've been at it a long time already you know okay now we're in 10 minutes of listening to me talk but any case three things in response to the angel's question he seemed to be emphasizing one reason right human beings have reason that figures into a response to the angel's question why create this most destructive be the second thing he seemed to be emphasizing his choice in human and the human being is a creature of choice and he can make moral choices god has empowered him to make moral choices and to see them through to their normally expected conclusions at least that's what it seemed to be hinting at i'd have to read the rest of the quran to see if that was really true third thing that seemed to be emphasized in the story is that human beings will suffer and god just says yeah they're going to suffer fourth thing he seems to emphasize we're not put here as a punishment we're not put here as a punishment because notice when he forgives adam he doesn't pop him and he and his wife back in heaven as a matter of fact there is nothing in the story to indicate that this life was a punishment but when i read that verse that said he had forgiven adam and eve i thought okay put him back into heaven you forgave him you know when i penalize my daughters for doing something wrong i subtract five dollars from their allowance if they come and cry my wife says i'm a marshmallow if they come and cry to me i say okay okay you're it and then i give them back the five dollars if i kept the five dollars they'd say to me daddy i thought i was forgiven make up your mind am i punished or am i forgiven oh you're forgiven but i'll keep the five dollars that's not fair you forgave me so why doesn't god put adam and eve back into heaven because life is not a punishment this is from the beginning of the story to the end we had known from the very beginning and it was consistent throughout that he's going to put them there as his representative potentially on earth human beings have the potential to represent them somehow that figures into response to the angel's question so three things are emphasized well one life is not a punishment two human beings are creatures of intellect three they have the ability to make choices they have the ability to exercise will and third that they're going to suffer and somehow it seems the author was emphasizing these in a story of man now i thought i could just be wrong deluding myself really projecting my own neurosis onto this story my own childhood trauma onto the story so as i read through the quran i tried to keep my mind and eye open for anything that would contradict what i had thought and as i read through it sure enough i found confirmation of just of what i just said reason man's ability to reason gets such strong emphasis in the quran that sometimes you would think that the author is some kind of in you know tremendous has a tremendous faith in philosophy and reason like no other religious mind in history because i was always taught that reason and faith conflict that somewhere along the line you know they they contradict the age-old conflict between faith and reason if you take reason too far you'll naturally get arrived at conflicts with faith this offer author says exactly the opposite saying that people do not believe or people to come come upon false beliefs because they do not use their reason he makes the point again and again and again he put so much emphasis on reason that one famous western orientalist who studied the quran said the quran put so much emphasis on reason that you would think that disbelief is nothing more than an infirmity of the human mind an inability to use it like an illness in your mind mental sickness that's how much emphasis he puts on reason that was andre lemens who said that another orientalist and every orientation that has ever written about the koran has more or less emphasized this point maxine rodenson one of the leading orientalists in france wrote the quran continually expounds the rational proofs of god's omnipotence the wonders of creation such as the gestation of animals the movement of heavenly bodies atmospheric phenomena the variety of animal and vegetable life so marvelously well adapted to men's needs he's not a muslim but he was impressed by this he said all those things are signs for those of inside and he quotes the quran here repeated about 50 times in the quran is the arabic verb which means to connect ideas together to reason to understand an intellectual argument thirteen times he says we come upon the refrain after a piece of reasoning have they then no sense will you not use your reason the infidels those who remain insensible to muhammad's preaching or preaching are stigmatized as a people of no intelligence persons incapable of the intellectual effort needed to cast off routine thinking and he gives several references in this respect they are like cattle the koran complains that people disbelieve or corrupt religion because they do not use the reason they refuse to reason says the quran and i have 10 references here and there are people who do not reason says the quran and i have 12 references here it says will you not reason the quran asks repeatedly again and again and again god reveals signs lessons and admonitions so that perhaps you will use your reason the quran says again and again from the author's viewpoint reason and faith are allies as our illogic and false belief and he clearly sets the conflict along these lines the right way is clearly distinct from error he says those who benefit most from the koran the author says are persons of insight firmly rooted in knowledge used to reason and stand on clear evidence and proof while those who oppose revelations the revelation are deluded and manifest error ignorant foolish have no understanding only follow surmise and conjecture and blindly adhere to excuse me to tradition in an almost socratic style the author asked the reader again and again and again what do you think have you considered this do you suppose do you ponder do you not think the message is clear that in order to be guided to truer faith we need to free ourselves from inherited notions and examine our beliefs rationally that was clearly the position of the author i thought he was walking a dangerous slippery slope because once you start pushing too much for reason you'll eventually start trapping yourself and presenting a system that cannot stand up to its demands but i was intrigued does the author also emphasize excuse me choice like i thought he did does he emphasize that human beings are choosing creature and this plays a major role in their development on earth and the answer is yes let there be no compulsion in religion the right way is henceforth clearly distinct from error he says in another verse had we willed had god willed he could indeed have guided all of you he could have indeed have guided all of you i thought i read when i would come across those verses i'd say why not guide us all why did you not do that do not the believers know that had god willed he could have guided all mankind why didn't he why did he made us capable of choosing the wrong way and if god had willed we could have given every soul its guidance okay make us all clones of one another rightly guided angels instead he doesn't he lets us make choices lets us make errors lets us make mistakes lets gives us an intellect quran emphasizes hopefully you will learn from your mistakes the quran puts so much emphasis on trial and error because it says it explicitly many many times you will face trial you will face trial we tried you this way we tried you that way we tried you this way we test you this way we test you that way so it's like it's a professor talking to his class it has an almost academic tone and you will err and hopefully you will correct your errors it says you will repent you will realize your error and turn yourself around enlightenment has come from your god he who sees does so to his own good he who is blind is so to his own hurt it is your choice and whoever is guided is only to his own gain and if any stray say i am only a warner tells the prophet it's up to you i don't make your choices for you and god wants us to choose on our own we have revealed to you the book with the truth for mankind he who lets himself be guided does so to his own good he who lets himself astray does so to his own hurt it's your choice and the quran says that in an almost dispassionate tone it's your choice you have the right to choose god's not going to force the choices down your throne it's not going to make you do anything when it comes to primary critical moral choices you have to make them yourself he's essentially telling the audience what does he have to say about suffering okay i was intrigued the author is consistent emphasizes reason emphasizes choice what does he have to say about suffering well here's what he has to say is it really necessary i thought what possible purpose can it serve most assuredly we will try with something of danger and hunger and the loss of worldly goods of your loss of your lives and the fruits of your labor but give glad tidings to those who are patient in adversity who in calamity befalls them say truly unto god we do we belong and truly under him we shall return most assuredly we will try you the quran says with danger suffering loss of worldly goods thank you lives and the fruits of your labor okay most assuredly can somebody get that for me but most assuredly you will suffer why i thought why do you think that you could enter paradise without having suffered like those who passed away before you why not just pop us up beam me up scotty i thought to myself do you think that you could enter paradise without having suffered like those who passed away before you why not misfortune and hardship befell them and so shaken were they that the apostle we're talking about good people here suffering that the apostle and the believers with him would exclaim when will god's help come oh truly god's help is always near the verse says you are going to suffer why you will certainly be tried in your possessions in yourselves it says another verse every soul must taste of death and we will try you with calamity and prosperity both as a means of trial we'll test you with both what's the point of it and to us you are returned in another verse it says o mankind truly have been toiling towards your lord and painful toil but you shall meet him how do you toil towards god how does suffering bring us any closer to god it's just do you know i know it's a lot of you do but you know the rhetorical you know it's sort of a well never mind this verse i was ready to just throw the quran down i got so angry when i read the beginning of this one we certainly have created man to face distress we first certainly have created man to face distress what we certainly have created man to face distress you created us to face distress you created us to suffer are we made to face distress i started to think about it in another way are we eminently well suited for to face distress are we a creature that thrives on distress do we thrive on suffering does that play a major role in our development in our progress and our growth when i thought about it that way i said yes of course i could see that in this life we are eminently well suited to face distress more than any other creature about us and that sort of charts our intellectual evolution and our progress but how could that bring us any closer to god what does that have to do with our relationship with god what does it have anything to do with the hereafter does he think that no one has power over him he will say i have wasted much wealth does he think that no one sees him he's trying to say are you think you're down here alone just going through this for no point or purpose have we not given him two eyes to see with a tongue to speak and communicate with and two lips to communicate with and point it out to him the two conspicuous ways what are the two conspicuous ways haven't i given you all these things to see and to learn with and to communicate with can't you just open your eyes and see it and understand from talking to others and looking at other people around you and seeing everything around you can't you see the two conspicuous ways when i read this verse i was at the 90th chapter of the quran i had like 30 pages to go and i still was in the dark what two conspicuous ways what can i see and what will make you comprehend but he attempts not the uphill climb and what will make you comprehend the uphill climb is life and uphill climb why does life have to be an uphill climb what can it be a downward slope or a level surface why does it have to be an upward climb how does it have to be hard and what will make you comprehend the uphill climb it is to free a slave or to feed in a day of hunger an orphan nearly related or the poor one lying in the dust then he or she is of those who believe then he or she is one of those who exhorts one another to patients then he or she is one of those who exhorts others to mercy what the two conspicuous ways these are the two conspicuous a's the uphill climb is one and what is it about helping others self-sacrifice freeing a slave helping a poor one lying in the dust giving of yourself when i read this verse the first thing i thought about believe it or not was my mother because my mom had always told me that jeff life is not about taking life is not about succeeding life is not about obtaining your material goals life jeff is about giving life is about giving to others she said as long as you have something to give no matter how small you're never poor you're always rich i said to her mom you just don't get it do you life is not about giving mom knife is not about self sacrifice life is about getting ahead life is about protecting oneself life is about not letting people step on you life is about insulating yourself from harm for as long as you can this world mom that status taught me and he's right is a dog eat dog world and it's not about any of the things you say it's about survival but here at 28 years old when i thought back on my mom i realized that she was always a peaceful happy contented restful serene person at the same time i was angry hostile i wouldn't show it to people around me but inside i felt it i felt that life was empty chaotic uncertain fragile scary when i read this verse i realized that at least in that sense my the quran was right and so was my mom there are two conspicuous ways if you just look around you look at the people that are happy look at the people that really seem to have joy in life the real joyful people in life that the people give of themselves who self-sac who engage in self-sacrifice and they can't seem to get enough and you look at the people who squander and hoard they're miserable they never could get enough i realize that there are two conspicuous ways in life but i didn't see how that had to do with anything that any ultimate purpose behind it is that what the author is saying i thought that life is just to be good and nice to people so you feel good inside as michael jackson used to say to make the world a better place for you and me is that it i couldn't find a connection and i never did so goodbye no no but we're almost out of time so i'll try to tie this up it's hard you know this takes a hundred pages of my next book okay i thought the author claims that these things suffering choice intellect play a role in art in something in our purpose of life what possible purpose can they play well god must have had a reason for producing us on earth so first i thought i would concentrate on what this kind of person does god want to produce and sharina is not hard to find the quran says that god intends to produce through this earthly experience a people who will relate to him develop a relationship to him the relationship that the quran describes as a relationship of love and it says it again and again for example yet there are men who take others besides god as equal loving them as they should love god but those who believe love god more ardently say another verse if you love god follow me and god will love you and forgive you your faults for god is the forgiving the merciful oh you who believe if any from among you should turn back from his faith then god will assuredly bring a people he loves and who love him in many places it also says god loves this type of person god loves that type of person god loves this and people god loves that and doesn't love this type of people doesn't love people who do that are not people but mostly the acts god does not love the transgressor god does not love the hateful god does not and so forth and the quran assures us that through this earthly experience especially watch the conversations in the quran between satan and god god is always in total control satan in the quran is really rather a weak creature in other traditions he might have tremendous power but in the quran he says i have no power over you i but whisper and you follow remember it says on the day of judgment he's going to say to those who followed him i had no power over you whatsoever i only whisper and you follow but in the conversations between god and satan in the quran we re it reveals something very important that yes there will be people who go astray yes there will be people that destroy themselves in this life but god guarantees in the quran that there will be a subset of humanity there will definitely this human experience will produce those who choose to enter a relationship with god who choose to be bound by god in love and whom god will love and mutually they'll enter in a mutual relationship of love they will definitely this earthly experience will definitely produce those type of people okay but i mean this is just too much to handle i have all these questions in my mind all these things to deal with choice reason suffering god hopes god intends to produce through this earthly experience and says it certainly will produce a subset of this humanity that will enter into a relationship of love with him what does that have to do with all these other things suffering choice etc couldn't he just make us love him program us to love him love us in return pop us into heaven avoid the suffering what okay so quran says that god wants to enter into a relationship with humanity and that this human experience will definitely produce a certain segment that will relate to him so here i am i'm done with the quran and i'm trying to think what could the possible connection be so what's the natural place to look well if it has to do with a relationship between god we should look in the quran what the quran expects from man and what the quran tells us of god and then we try to see if there's any relationship between the two i mean that seems like a natural thing to do because if the issue comes down to relating to god we should discover in the quran what it says about the believers and the disbelievers those who are brought near to god and those who are not and god and see if there's any possible connection between the two okay so what does the quran expect from mankind well it's so simple in the quran it's almost the type of thing you just like to just read over and for you know neglect because god expects excuse me of people that they believe that they will believe and do good what believe and do good okay i get the belief part if you're gonna have a relationship with god you certainly must believe in him you can't just reject him to turn your back and walk again reject his very existence definitely but what does do good have to do with forging a relationship with god he wants to do make us good you know whatever but even so what difference does it make so i looked up what kind of acts the quran said are good i just wrote a partial this i didn't look them up i just try to remember from my reading of it and not unexpectedly and consists of those acts and attributes that are sort of universally recognized as virtuous good deeds are such for example we should show compassion to others we should be merciful we should forgive others we should be just we should protect the weak defend the oppressed feed the poor seek knowledge and wisdom be generous truthful kind peaceful and love others and we should teach other these same thing and learn them and grow in them as well but why and one verse it says truly those who believe and do good will the most merciful endow with love and to this end we have made this easy to understand in your own tongue so that you may convey this glad news to the god-conscious and warn those given to contention you're supposed to grow in love of your fellow man but why i had not a clue but i did list them i hope i could get here without sabotaging this somebody left your glasses their glasses here okay so we're supposed to grow in love of our fellow man you probably can't read this anyway if you're way in the back combat compassion this is very small love right compassion forgiveness i just you know i listed them i had nothing else to do that day i was watching a football game love compassion forgiveness caring justice truth truth what are some of the other ones i said protect the weak protective of the weak kindness forgiveness what i leave out mercy mercy mercy compassion etc compassion i got compassion okay it wasn't very helpful but i wrote them down okay but i didn't complete my project okay what does the quran tell us about god now this is where it gets tricky because the quran tells us and naturally it's so that nothing compares with god that he is beyond rational definition or even understanding i would assume nothing compares to him reason cannot encompass him if all the trees were pens and all the sea and the sea was inc and seven seas like it inc as well you could never exhaust the words of god the quran tells us you could never in your reason encompass it what good does that do me here i'm trying to see the connection between us doing good in our relationship with god and there better be an intrinsic connection or i'm walking from this quran i didn't believe in god at this point anyway but there better be an intrinsic connection or the author has failed to guide as he said he would but god is incomparable we cannot come to know god we hardly understand a human mind how can we understand god how can we come to know god i could come to you know you because i have some sort of connection to you we are alike i can approach you physically because you're a physical creature i can walk over to you don't get scared all right i just move my body closer to yours i could approach you rationally through the intellect right by discussion argumentation and so forth right by the exercise of reason i could approach you guys any of you in terms of feelings right by appealing to your emotions right because we share them both but in order to approach somebody you got to approach them by what they are we could come to understand another because we share something we approach a creature or a being we approach a being by what they and we are but how do you approach god we're finite he's infinite we're corporeal creatures he's incorporeal right we're limited to his time and space environment he transcends it just about anything you can think of that we possess he possesses it to an infinite degree transcends that we don't compare how can we come to know god how can we have this relationship you talked about sorry there's just no answer to that no there is of course but that's the way i felt sorry there's no answer to it and so i left the quran i finished reading it i put it down and about two weeks passed i don't know what i was doing one day i was sitting thinking about something totally removed from religion then i thought wait a minute the koran does provide us some information about god but i had neglected it ignored it time and time again there are thousands of descriptions in the quran about god that i just had never seen if i just opened to the beginning of any surah or looked on almost any page and came to the completion of a verse i would found many many such references you know you all all the muslims i'm sure know what i'm talking about because throughout the quran time and time again punctuating passages crowning passages beginning soras you find what the quran refers to as the beautiful names of god you can't miss them and they tell us something about god for our benefit and as i thought about them in my head i began to list them in my head the beautiful names of god and i thought about them in my head what are they god is the loving god is the compassionate god is the forgiving god is the caring there's dozens and dozens of them god is the just he is the truth or the truthful he is the protector he is the kind god is the forgiving just read through the quran you can't miss these he is the merciful [Music] and on and on and on i didn't complete this list and i didn't complete this one either but i looked in my mind at the two lists i visualized for the qualities god wants us to develop and the qualities that the quran use uses to describe god and then i just immediately saw the whole saw the picture so what the author was telling us because the author is telling us that yes your reason may not be able to fully encompass god but you are to grow and learn love grow in your ability to learn and show love why because god is the loving you're the more you grow in compassion the more you come to receive and experience and understand god's infinite compassion because the quran lets us know that all compassion ultimately comes from god originates from god the more you grow in forgiveness the more you come to receive and experience and to know the forgiving who is god the more you grow in your ability to care for others the more you grow in your experience of and understanding of and ability to know the caring you don't reach it through reason you reach it through experience same way i understand you in this audience i don't know you rationally i know you because we share common experiences god is the caring infinite source of caring according to koran but we could grow in our ability to care for others the more we grow in justice the more we come to understand experience and to know the just the more we grow in truth the more we come to know experience and represent the truthful and the quran says we're here to represent god the more we know of protectiveness of the weak and the downtrodden the more we come to know the protector the more we know of kindness the more we come to know experience and receive the beauty that only the kind could give us forgiveness forgiving merciful merciful compassionate compassionate and on and on when i explained that to my daughters they said daddy what are you trying to say and i told him this i said pretend that we have a dog some goldfish and three daughters pretend that i do have three daughters so the least i could relate to that i told them no matter how much of my love no matter how much of my compassion know how much how much of my comparing how much of my real self i shower on that goldfish that goldfish could only experience my love my compassion my caring my justice to a very limited degree because it's a very primitive creature it only knows and could learn and could experience love compassion forgiveness etc to a very minuscule level but my dog rex i don't have a dog but i had one rex once but my dog he could know and experience and feel my love my compassion my caring myself my being to a much higher level because he's a more developed creature he knows through his own life experiences he experiences through his own life experiences a certain amount of love compassion forgiveness not just as a receiver but as a giver as well which is more important because when you give love you're experiencing loving on a whole nother level than just receiving you're learning it but i told her look at you three guys look at you three guys i said to my daughters as you grow you will come to learn know and experience love compassion forgiveness on a much higher level and a higher level and it's up to you how high you want to go but the more you grow in love compassion mercy forgiveness etc the more you could experience whatever love mercy compassion forgiveness etc that i have to give to you the more you can experience me the more you can experience my be that's essentially what the author seems to be telling us that the more we grow in all these the more we could experience the infinite love compassion forgiveness caring justice that is god and so all the pieces were coming together for me all i had to do was just read any page of the quran there were times and times again there were signs there were it was staring me right in the face except that i read it and never opened my eyes to see it it took me reading the entire scripture before it was open to me but wait a minute i said okay granted you know the more we grow in love the more we could experience god's loving the more and and people do the believers they experience it in prayer they experience it in ritual they talk about those powerful moments when they experience god's presence they do experience it and the quran promises that you will definitely experience it to some degree in this life but in the next life when all distractions are swept away and all you take to the next life is your growth in these your real person if you have grown in these if you haven't become bankrupt in these you could be able to experience god his beauty his presence his being to higher and higher degrees but i thought wait a minute there's something wrong here i almost got lured seduced into accepting this picture i almost got seduced into accepting this picture but then i remembered my questions and i remembered the angels question i mean wait a minute guys why didn't god just program these in us why didn't it just program us to be loving compassionate forgiveness etc instead of making us go through this turmoil this torture on earth are you following me why didn't he just program us to be that way was the suffering all necessary was the pain of it all necessary did i gain anything from my childhood i mean what did i learn why did i have to suffer no why do you have to suffer why did it give me choice why did it give me intellect just make me love just make me have compassion just like that well if you read the quran don't even read the quran just think about it yourself you know in order to grow in love and as creatures the quran says every creature grows creatures are growing entities and the quran says that god provides every creature with the environment the soil if you will the environment the growing environment that is necessary for its growth but if we are to grow in love compassion forgiveness caring etc how does that contribute to that environment are these necessary ingredients for us to grow in these and us to develop these than us to learn these and acquire these and i think if you think about it for a minute the answer is obviously yes i mean think about compassion for example how can you have compassion if there is no suffering if there is not some vulnerable creature to turn to if some creature is not dependent on you how could you exercise learn and grow in compassion unless you are the infinite source of it already which none of us are since none of us are god we are creatures we become how can we become compassionate without knowing vulnerability weakness suffering and others that we could turn to how what is compassion without choice a compassionate act is an act where you choose to help someone when you have the option not to if i take a banana eat it take the peel throw it over my shoulder it lands in the street a criminal comes by on his way to rob a pocketbook from an old lady standing over there and trips on a banana peel and falls on the ground my throwing the banana peel over my shoulder was not a compassionate act because i really didn't choose to do that passionate act requires choice it also requires intellect because when you reach out to someone in compassion you weigh in your minds how much of yourself you're going to invest in reaching out to that person you say to yourself do i really want to do this how much time is going to require i got to go to work i might you know not make any money today besides you know i'll have to be helping this person for the next couple hours have to take them to the hospital see you know your mind is weighing how much of yourself is going to be invested in that you could program a computer to never make an incorrect statement but it doesn't become a truthful computer i never heard anybody say to me jeff you know that computer of yours it's the most truthful computer i've ever seen because truth is not just making incorrect statement of correct statements truth is being truthful is a choice it's understanding the decision you're making it requires intellect and if that truth involves you in the possibility of suffering the more that is at stake in telling the truth the greater you rise to that truth the greater that is an act of truth oh sorry because i was going like this what else do i have written here forgiveness is a choice what is forgiveness without choice what is forgiveness if somebody can't wrong you which produces suffering what is forgiveness without intellect if you don't understand what the person has done to you what the person is saying when they ask you for forgiveness all these things suffering choice and intellect are integral to our growth in these are you following me uh one last example the famous wedding bob you promise to stick with somebody in sickness and in health what's the other one i said it so long ago i can't remember in sickness and health through richer or for poorer until death do we part ask us to make that commitment it acknowledges the essential na the essential element of suffering and growing in love and love and it's a choice we make that vow that vow is a choice do you jeff lang promise to take raga so sort for richer for poor sickness and hell i start thinking about wait a minute no i didn't you know i was very pleased to do that but it was a choice and it's giving you the choice understand this when you make that vow it's in sickness and health richer or poorer till death you know do your part saying think about it understand what kind of choice you're making now these three things are integral in our growth in these suffering choice intellect are absolutely necessary to grow in these you pull anyone out of this equation called life and we don't have it as we know it we cannot grow in these as we know it to very high levels finally in the last two minutes i'll just simply say this so when the quran talks about sin it talks about people who grow bankrupt in these more or less the quran famous symbol in the quran is the balance on the day of judgment that weighs your goodness and people are heavy in goodness people are full of goodness they can experience paradise in the next life and perhaps to a greater and greater degrees god's presence because the more we know of goodness more we grow in goodness the more we are able to experience receive and know the infinite goodness of god but what if we go the opposite direction what if instead of developing the qualities of love compassion forgiveness caring we do just the opposite we head in the opposite direction when we become instead of being heavy in these qualities on the day of judgment we become extremely light in these qualities when we enter in the next life so instead of becoming love loving we become hateful compassionate miserly forgiving vengeful caring whatever mean justice this justice cruel i don't know truth liar protective destructive and so forth what if we go in the opposite direction and become primarily those well then we are just as the quran says destroying yourself because if you're bankrupt of those then this growth in this will be the only thing that matters as you go into the next life you bring nothing else with you but what you really are and if you are not have not developed this then you're going to suffer severely because you cannot experience any of the beauty that awaits you in the next life you'll experience just the opposite as the quran compares growth in this life our physical growth in the womb to our spiritual growth in this life and if you think about it when a creature grows in its in the mother's womb it's a primarily physical growth when it comes into this life when it is born you see the effects of that growth concretely right before you when a child enters this world the growth it went through in a womb its physical growth is manifested before you in that creature's being what the quran seems to be suggests is that when we are the type of spiritual growth we obtain in this life when we go into the next life it too will be manifested in exactly what we are and so to go in this next life bankrupt of these it's like coming into this life bankrupt bereft of every physical quality you need to experience some peace some joy some comfort in this life so if you are bereft of these it would be like coming into this life without any skin to protect you from the cold or the heat with your nerves exposed and all you know is pain the inability to breathe and you're gasping for air i'm not trying to scare any of you i'm just presenting an analogy you know choking for your breath blind you cannot see and the ground says the spiritually blind in this life will come out blind in the next life to reality so to not grow in these to grow in the opposite to become basically evil is according to the quran self-destruction and so when the quran speaks of sin it frequently says you don't sin primarily against god you don't even primarily sin against your victims the quran says the sinner primarily commits sin against themselves they destroy themselves the quran says and it says god gives you every at least when you he exposes you to the quran gives you every possible warning about that and then it says instill they turn their backs let's see what else do i want to say i guess i said enough it's quarter to ten you're almost exhausted and plus i'm sure you want to see ku hopefully win their basketball game university of kansas so i'll sort of end it there and like i said trying to summarize 100 pages in just two hours but i appreciate you coming and listening for all of two hours and i wish you all the best and i thank you so much you kind purdue people like 15 minutes of questions tonight or just essentially i'll play 15 15. um so it's only a 20-minute speech tomorrow some questions please raise your hand yes yes question in reading some of the quran which i have read objectively myself i see some very objective things you can put down below etc uh when i read about let's say a muslim making a bahaj to mecca uh it seems very ritualized seems uh a lot of other uh theological things which is kind of attuned to mexicans that the catholicism would have a lot of types of rituals and things like that now could you please comment on the point [Music] after you had encountered a very rational basis upon which yes uh islam is basically how did you comprehend that type of uh can i could i answer that just in general about ritual the more i prayed the more powerful those prayers became spiritually you know the more i the idea is is that the more you develop these qualities in yourself the more you will experience god's being in this life and the next and the primary way the believer and one of the primary ways the believers experiences god's presence or god's being is through ritual um so that when a person grows in these they suddenly find that they're in their prayers they have they become more and more powerful spiritually are you following me so that they feel god's presence they feel a warmth a power of mercy coming over them so it's seen and same with the other rituals the more they grow in this following this program the more they grow in this the more powerful and more beautiful the rituals become the idea in the quran is is that god's gifts i'm just thinking out loud here that god's gifts to humanity are tremendous are tremendous beyond count it says but if you think about it in every relationship both people engaged in this relationship have to have something to give to that relationship or it's not a relationship not a a healthy relationship in a healthy relationship both people involved in the relationship must have something to give ritual gives the believers a way to give back to god to share with god with what in reality is already his for example i'll give you an analogy two days ago my daughters came to me sarah and fatim they said daddy we have 10 bucks a piece i said why because we want to buy you a present i gave them each of course i gave them the ten dollars yeah and they went to the store and bought me a present now i didn't need their gift i didn't need it it's mine already the ten dollars it did nothing for me materially it did nothing for me concretely but i loved the love behind it and i know that it brings me and them closer together in the same way there's nothing that we could give back to god that is not or give to god that is not in reality his but what the rituals allow the believer to do is to give to god what really is in reality his and as the koran shows god does not need what we give but it also shows he loves the intention behind it and he knows it brings us closer together and so when the muslim or the believer grows in these and devotes himself in ritual to god gives to god but in reality seems point worthless to god i mean he's god nonetheless you know he is being brought closer to god through that giving and he feels god's love in that ritual and he experiences it and he feels himself giving that love back to god so it becomes a very powerful experience that grows in intensity as a person grows in these you know and so you'll find people who are very devout very good who engage in ritual engage in ritual they report having really intense beautiful experiences in them not all the time and usually unanticipated they don't plan them but they experience them nonetheless and then and also it helps discipline and refine your spirituality but that's a whole other issue but i i chose to answer it from that perspective is that okay thanks for the question great question yes i have read your book i have read other videos being and at least in the earlier stage of life and being a very devout muslim or a believer and being a conservative member to the submission particularly yeah yeah yeah somebody asked me to reiterate your question for the camera i'm trying to remember let's see so you said i was an atheist yes sort of a rationalist and then i became a muslim and is there a connection you think between the interval of atheism that i went through for 12 years and has that played a integral part in in making me a believer actually it seems like you're saying and in what i've whatever i've contributed and i think it's minor to this to uh the religious dialogue in this community am i right yeah i think you're right uh i think that on you know i think there's all types of believers but i think that i think the experience of atheism you know and atta and questioning you know the religion you're taught and the ideas that you're surrounded with etc that experience of doubt doubt even if it turns to atheism could turn out to be a very positive thing if through that doubt you discover belief and discover god are you following me so you know one famous muslim religious thinker al ghazali is to say that you don't you can't achieve a very high level of belief unless you allow yourself to doubt first unless you've doubted first i don't know if that's not necessarily true or not i don't think my mom never doubted but it but it uh definitely she attained a very high level of belief in god but um i think that you know um the atheist perspective you know can take can provide a very important perspective in the uh in the religious dialogue you know what i mean because most people really do have doubts about faith but you know they have doubts but they sort of suppress them or or whatnot but after a while sometimes it eats at them so so i think when an atheist becomes a religion who has faced a lot of doubts has gone to the extreme to the point where he let it he's taken his doubts to the point where he rejects the existence of god if that person could make their way back that journey has to be a valuable experience to share with others it got to be helpful for other people to hear it i think it must be or i wouldn't be up here today you know wasting all your time you know i think most people come to listen to these because they have doubts themselves and they and they want to know how could somebody who has rationally been led to the denial of god come back to the rational acceptance of the existence of god i know i didn't do a good job of handling your question but okay any other questions yes sir yes are you talking about predestination are you talking about predestination or destiny see there's a difference because the koran doesn't say that god predestines anything you know the quran says that god's knowledge is all-encompassing but since god according to the quran transcends his creation it'd be foolish to talk about him predestining are you following me see when i say use the word predestined i'm talking about destining the future i'm talking about i'm in the future looking i'm in the present looking forward to the future and i am determining the future are you following me so when you use the word predestined you know your the minute you apply the word predestined to god you are you are putting god in this space-time environment or at least time environment one of our dimensions are you following me but the quran says that god transcends time and transcends space you would never even most rabid atheists wouldn't say uh jeff if god was on a bus from indianapolis to chicago and he would never start a question that way because he knows i would not accept the idea that god could be confined to a particular place in the same way no one should say if god is now in the present looking forward to the future and determining things in advance you immediately started with a with a premise that the quran does not accept are you with me so the wrong word is predestined the quran says that nothing happens unless god allows it to happen unless god permits it to happen but the same quran shows that he permits us to make choices he permits us empowers us to make choices and to carry them out to their expected conclusions god has complete control over the whole human experience he could stop it in an instant but he doesn't it even says in one verse in the quran if i wanted you to go out to that field and die in that field i could have made you do that and you would have gone right to the place i wanted you to die and you would have fallen dead right there but he doesn't the people he addresses in that verse he gave him a choice and they chose to do otherwise so the point i'm trying to make is when a muslim says that god measures that's the word in the quran measures all things that means it has total control over this creation that nothing occurs without him allowing it but it doesn't say that he predestines it because the very word predestined contradicts the quran's concept of god's transcendence of time and space and it clearly indicates it because it says in the quran that even though various events in history that we see as taking place over a long period of time for god it is a single instant he just says be and it is but to us it seems like it's taking place you know throughout this thousand sometimes thousands of years but for god it's all one a single blink of an instant a single infinite eternal moment outside of time i think i talked enough about it i don't want to bore you yes yeah but that's unimportant because you're talking about knowing outside of time see the quran presents life as more like it uses a symbol like a book we're living this book right now right so we are living this book right now and we are turning the pages as we live it god reads the whole book all at once he's outside of time okay he reads the whole book at once he sees all the pages at one single moment you know but we live them throughout time because we're stuck in time tomorrow i cannot jump to tomorrow nor can i go back suddenly 50 years i am lodged in time i am fixed in time tomorrow an hour from now i will be at an hour from now two hours from now i will be at an hour from now because i am limited by space and by time but just as god could see all space at once here's space i'm sure this diagram helps there's space god transcends space he sees it all at once i am on my way to chicago i don't know that there is a cow in the road i am driving this way if i keep on driving i will eventually run into that cop god sees it all at once all space is encompassed by his envision as the quran says all is encompassed by his vision but we are you know a little bit mobile with respect to space so we could sort of understand that concept here is time god transcends time he sees it all at once i mean i know it's hard for us to conceive because we're stuck in time much more limited in time as we are with respect to space and we make decisions in time and etc and god's wis god's knowledge encompasses all of it as hard as that is for us to believe but that doesn't contradict that the fact that he lets us make choices answers our prayers guides us etc etc so there you are yes sure he sees the day of judgment he knows it all he knows exactly the beginning in the end but he doesn't make he doesn't make us make choices he doesn't predestin our our destiny doesn't even it doesn't even say that in the quran anybody else yes sir i had a quick question about that when you were talking about how in the beginning that the angel god you know you're going to put this creature on earth that shifts blood it spreads corruption okay my question was how did they have anything i mean that was the first man how did they have any oh his question was when the angels when god said i'm about to put a by strength on earth a representative on earth the angel said will you spread put there in one who will spread corruption and shed much blood will we celebrate your praises and glorify your holiness he said how did god how did the angels know that matt what kind of creature man was going to be different muslim scholars tried to approach that question and stumbled through it and they took it as part of the problem i think is because they took an allegory as history are you following me if it's an allegory the question is you know it's an allegory to teach us to teach us not to tell us the origins of homo sapiens but to teach us about human nature and the meaning of our life so i in my approach you know i know how other people have stumbled through that but i'm not gonna i'm not gonna advocate their view because i'm quite i feel quite strongly that that's an allegory for many reasons for example in one verse in the quran says we created you in your mother's womb we shaped you in your mother's womb so we gave we made you in your mother's we created you it goes through the stage of creation of a creature in its mother's womb we we we conceived you we gave you safe lodging we shaped you in your mother's room and then we said to the angels bow down to adam are you following me here it's addressing humanity in the plural we created you shaped you in your mother's womb humanity in the plural and then we said bow down to adam you know and then we told the angels bow down to adam if we take that literally that means the whole human race or not all of us but a huge amount of the human race existed right you and i and then the angels are commanded to bow down to adam i think that's an indication that these verses are not are not telling you uh to be taken literally as history especially in reference to adam adam uh it's an allegory to teach us about uh god and his relationship to man that's the way i approach it if people want to approach it as history i have no problem with that just allow me the right to allow god the right to what to allow god to write to reveal truths that as he will without having to force historical interpretations and verses that may be allegorical because the quran does say that god uses allegory it says there are verses that are plain clear and they are the fundamental part of that book the quran and there are verses that are allegorical you know what is the arabic word or something like that allegorical symbolic likenesses you know the quran says there are both and it says people who have diseases in their hearts like sickness in their mind they go after the part that's allegorical seeking to find seeking to impose a final meaning on it you know a concrete meaning while the believers say it's the truth it is all it is all from god you know so when i come across a verse like that i am open to the possibility that it's an allegory because the quran says it uses it and i'm not going to try to impose some final concrete interpretation are you following me i'm open to the meanings that it raises but i'm not going to be overly sort of literalistic in approaching verses that talk about something you know that's very deep the nature of the human relationship with god that is outside the normal course of human interaction you know what i mean so you know some people don't like it but i'm a mathematician a scientist i i gotta approach it that way tonight i'm sorry i couldn't answer more your questions but you know i took too long tonight i'm sorry about that tomorrow one is there is another lecture tomorrow night saturday night daytime things like 7 30 p.m there will be more time for question and answer um we have a couple sheets up here anybody's interested in eventually maybe obtaining a video cassette of this lecture there's also some copies of the quran if you want to copy and read and i think that's about it you

Channel: Speakers On Islam

Views: 580,412

Keywords: Islam, Jeffrey Lang, Jeff Lang, Purdue University, Muslim Discussion Group, MDG, Faith and Reason

Id: 2AvepssBwzY

Length: 136min 6sec (8166 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 08 2018