Dear Glenn,
Thanks for moving this upwards! And for explaining Buddhism’s view of eternity. I’ll post something about Islam too.
However, your argument of how did God come to creation is a classical self-contradiction. If you admit or assume that God is the creator of this universe, then you can’t make him a creation in the same question, i.e if he is the creator, he wouldn’t be governed by the laws of his creation. This is like assuming the maker of an electrical doll moves by electricity. The doll wouldn’t believe anything moves by itself without electricity because this is all it knows.
“it would be a mistake to view life as exclusively limited to the planet earth.” It sure is.
I studied chemistry. If you study proteins, you’ll see that a protein is very complex that it’s unlikely for it to come into being by chance even “wherever conditions are right”, which is the presence of Hidrogen, Carbon and Nitrogen.
In Islam you’re also responsible for your acts and their acts but that’s in this life not in another one. And every misfortune of life through which a believer goes with patience and faith, will be rewarded. This is a beautiful point in Islam, that every for hardship, God will either erase a sin or give you a higher place in heaven, which is very comforting in times of crisis.
“If man were made to live by some outside force or power, his body would indeed be no more than a machine,and he himself a mere puppet.”
Again you contradict yourself. If you assume God created man body and soul, then it won’t be that difficult to imagine He’s also capable of giving him conscience to judge his world and act by.
I definitely think living an eternal life in which you’d be rewarded for your acts in life is better than continually going through other ‘lives’. Life is like a test, and therefore 60 years are quite enough.
“How can a phenomenon so amazingly complex as consciousness develop from the simple meeting of two cells, the sperm and the egg?” I’ll give you an example. Give a cat a fish; it’ll eat it leisurely at your feet. But if it steels it from you, it runs and hides. We, higher organisms, should judge better.
I don’t understand your notion of heaven and hell. How did this heaven come to being? Isn’t it unfair that some people will be “attracted” to heaven and others to hell?
“Also, to say that this ultimate truth comes from a unique existence and says the entire universe including heaven and earth derives from one Ultimate truth which governs all other existence. However, in Buddhism all of us equally can access the truth of life within the depths of our lives because Buddhists perceive the ultimate reality(truth) of life equally within all human beings”
This is a bit confusing. In which way is Buddhism different from Islam and Christianity in thinking the ultimate truth is in their teachings? If you believe in Buddhism’s concepts of life or lives, then you must think followers of all other religions are astray from the truth.
You can also “equally access the truth of life” if you just say the shahada (I bear witness there’s no deity but God, and that Mohammed is his slave and messenger). We don’t have any ranks in Islam, no priests, monks or anything of the sort. We’re all just Muslims.
Yours truly,
Nahla
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