The Cow's Thunder

Just to begin with I am reading the Koran (Penguin's translation) from an objective point of view, I am not religious or spiritual in anyway whatsoever.  If you are offended by what I say here then your in the wrong religion or universe.

I have not read very much so far only eight percent not even got through the first chapter which is called The Cow.  The reasons behind this name I could not tell you but it is fairly big, the chapter that is.

Basically what I have got so far is that it reads like a summary of the old testament.

Satan did not want to bow down to the humans so he fell, but stayed in paradise long enough to tempt Adam to the 'tree' so god banishes Adam and Eve to the Earth, funny it said earlier that god knew all things maybe he is only good at present and past.  Or perhaps the order is wrong.  The preface and forward to this book tells us that the Koran's chapters are out of order chronically which seems to be a clever method of telling the story differently.  What is more curious is that right at the beginning there is this passage:

"..beneath a dark storm-cloud charged with thunder and lightning, thrust their fingers into their ears at the sound every thunder-clap for fear of death (God thus encompasses the unbelievers).  The lightning almost snatches away their sight: whenever it flashes upon them they walk on, but as soon as it darkens they stand still.  Indeed, if God pleased, He could take away their hearing and their sight..."

That reads like the end of my short story Thunder Road so perhaps if god knows the future he has stole my ideas.  There are many logical reasons against this though.

Moving on their god's convenant should you accept it, so that means we have a choice on whether to believe in god or not?!?  Apparently no choice if you deny or reject off you go to the 'fire' which is made of humans and stones, you will abide there for ever.  Stones are not known for their properties of burning well except in volcano like temperatures something of a curious choice by the author.

It repeats several times about the alms levy which upon researching this is to do with a charity tax which is given to the poor.  Also repeated is the phrase:

"He is the Relenting One, the Compassionate."

Apparently god is unhappy that his flock wanted: "green herbs, cucumber, corn, lentils and onions" which is hardly the fast food or bad for you.  What were they eating before?

Their is a cow sacrifice (reason for chapter maybe) which had to be a "rich yellow, pleasing to those that see it." I have seen brown, white and black cows never a yellow one, I can only assume it was suffering from liver disease.

Then there is this wonderful passage which effectively allows for any interpretation of the Koran:

"[2:106] Any verse We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We will replace by a better one or one similar."

The operative word here is 'similar', changing one word can change the entire meaning of a sentence.

According verse [2:115] god belongs only to the East and West, did they not have a concept of North and South back then?  The same verse states that god is omnipresent and all-knowing but not in the North or South or knows of it!

[2:122] God's convenant does not apply to wrongdoers so there is a choice?

[2:126] ..."I shall let them live awhile, and then shall drag them to the scourge of the Fire..." That sounds like torture from the Compassionate god.

[2:155] "We shall test your steadfastness with fear and famine..." More torture, more excuses for why bad things happen.  Its god's fault!

[2:178] Apparently god allows slaves.

[2:185] Time to go hungry but god desires your "well-being" not "discomfort", not eating for a whole month is going to be a slow yet fast killing.

[2:187] Multiple wives time during your fast, Compassionate god remember.

[2:190] My favourite verse so far, you allowed to fight but you cannot be the aggressors because god does not love them.  Basically you are allowed to defend yourself however you can attack the wrongdoers who is anybody that does not believe in god.  Murder is allowed by the Compassionate god.

[2:190] Update 3/6/17: Nowhere in the verse does it say kill, fight and attack only.  If they attacked with swords the likelihood of death during those days would have been high due to the lack drugs to fight off infection.  My above statement about Murder is not certain.

Thought Experiment in Summary (Creative Ideas)

It seems to me that so far there is a lot of giving by us humans to the Compassionate god and not a lot given in return.  This god is happy that we fight which would suggest that this god is perhaps maybe a devil or an entity that feeds off the energy created by violence.  Taken to its logical conclusion perhaps all religious texts are written by this dark entity.  Maybe there is another entity that feeds on love and peace maybe it does not need much to maintain itself and faces away from us.  Whereas the dark one's face is always towards us hence all the contradictory religious texts and the constant need for violence.  There is a symbiotic balance between the two, the dark one would starve if we all killed one other or there was only peace.

Th above paragraph is somewhat rambling, welcome to my mind.

Reality at a Distance

The curious thing about our universe/reality is that anything that is extremely far away from us does not make sense like for instance the fact that scientists think that the Universe is missing matter and light, to fix these discrepancies in the theory of everything they created bodge factors called Dark Matter & Dark Light. There was Dark Energy as well but they seem have spotted Gravity waves so the Dark Energy must exist.  If you leave our macro-verse and travel down to the very very small you eventually arrive at the Quantum level where surprise surprise nothing makes sense either.

Atomic particles appear and disappear seemingly randomly and if you observe a particle it changes its position I can only assume particles are particularly shy of any external observers.  Particles can also be entangled with one another which apparently allows for instantaneous communication between the two.  It has been referred to as spooky action at a distance.

Classical physics all works nicely at the human level of perception but once you observe the very distant or the very small reality falls apart, why is that?  Are there holes in the make-up of this reality?  Is Reality perhaps nothing more than a vastly complex computer model and what we are seeing are the edges of the model whereby the designers of Reality did not think they needed to code for the Quantum level or the larger workings of the Universe.  If we are part of a computer system how could we ever prove a negative or positive.

Another possibility although I suppose somewhat similar to a computer model would be what Creationists believe (no facts just belief) based upon on the literal truth of the Bible.  Where supposedly God created the Heaven and Earth in six days, I suppose it could be argued that since the Bible does not fully defined the length of a day those six days could have encompassed four billion years which is roughly the age of the Earth.  Humans have only been around for the last 200,000 years and in the last 6000 years civilisation started.

Creationists have fallen out of fashion in many religious circles over the last decade and have been replaced with a new philosophy called Intelligent Design whereby they do not believe in the literal truth of the Bible however they still maintain their belief despite all evidence to contrary:

“certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."

It is somewhat curious that Intelligent Design has evolved from Creationism by a process of natural selection.

What are the chances to discovering the real truth in my life time probably very unlikely unless someone invents a Interstellar drive or an Ant-Man suit which allows us to find the sign which says:

Abandon all hope all that enter here.
And an exit sign that says: Yeah! Right!

Blocked

If you are wondering why I have not posted anything for ages it is because someone has put a block on my ideas most people would blame a god of some description but since I am agnostic I do not have that luxury.  Instead I will blame the Multiverse in general, it should adhere to the correct entity responsible eventually.

What is that saying:

"If you wait long enough the head your enemy will float down the river in front of you...."

I assume that I would have to live by a river and sit on a bench beside it plus hopefully the river does not have a fast current otherwise I might missed if it passed by too quickly.  What happens if I am at work then I am bound to miss it, perhaps I could re-engineer the river so that stuff that is as big as a human head (assuming of course my enemy is human) travels on a loop which would increase the chances of me seeing it pass in front of me whilst I am sitting on the bench.

I know what you are thinking that this saying was probably not meant to be taken literally but if not literally does that mean that if I wait long enough then my enemy will be defeated if so how will I know?  If waited too long then I would be dead too!

As sayings goes it is not very helpful at all.

The thing is all rivers ultimately end up in one place, the sea okay I will admit some end up in lakes as well but effectively it will be a large body of water.  Which means the saying it inaccurate unless you know for a fact your enemy lives upstream to you and never travels downstream to you.

Perhaps if I wait long enough I will see the head of my enemy stitched onto another body entirely.

Why?

That age old question of Why? Why are we here?  Since the earliest days of humanity we have wondered why.  Even in this day and age there is no answer to the question and without that answer nothing really make sense other than what science has managed to discover so far.  Although science is more about the How and the What as opposed to the Why.

Even without the science of today early people solved this question by creating a workaround, we know it as Religion.  It solves so many problems, you don’t have to worry about the why anymore that is in the purview of the Gods or God depending upon your belief system.  They know all the answers or it’s their fault either way it is beyond our understanding therefore we do not need to know.

Early beliefs system centered around the Mother Earth, the Goddess (female) was more important than the God (male) primarily because females could create the miracle of life.  Later that changed and the Goddess’s were knocked off their thrones and it became a man’s world.  After that Religion went downhill somewhat to the point where it became more about the control of its subjects/believers than about providing answers to difficult questions.  Dogma has ruled ever since and the only new ideas are violent ones subverting what started out as peaceful systems of belief.  Throughout history Religion has been the prime excuse for violence/war/terror imagine what history would have been like if the question had never been asked or that Religion was never considered as an option.

Even if you do not have any religious beliefs you are still aware of the idea effectively Religion is the ultimate meme it has always been with us lurking in our memories.

Consider a thought experiment:

Perhaps our existence is not real but a simulation (see The Thirteenth Floor) then the answer to the question is simple and many of the gaps in science start to make sense as well (all that missing matter for instance).  No requirement for Religion at all.

Whether this life is real or not there is one simple truth to it which people never seem to get:

Life is hard!  Get over it!

Everything is hard the first time round, next time it is a little easier.

An easy life is boring which breeds stagnation and that is a killer to any civilization.

The upshot is that the answer to the question is that either it is very simple (seemed like a good idea at the time) or that it is incompatible with our current world view so it becomes unknowable.

The irony is we have created far harder lives for ourselves over a simple question.

Note: I do love the synchronicity of me coming across the following article on The Register.