:-)

Hello guys, how are you all doing? And Charlie welcome to this forum.
I have spent the past couple of hours trying to catch up and read the interesting debate you guys wrote so far before I could jump in.
I know supervisor3 asked that we limit the conversation to 3 people (which Charlie wondered about but his question was left unanswered >>>>though the reason Charlie is that we can better organize thoughts and not have you get confused with who said what like when you confused Ibn Alsunnah and Alishbeli. This is known in this forum so no bad intentions here and please don't make intention assumptions (more on this later below). 
I kindly request that supervisor3 allows me participation in this conversation.
I understand that English is not your mother tongue, although I think you have a good grasp of it. Some of the brothers here are also ok. I don’t want the language barrier to interrupt the conversation. My point is we need to build on mutual agreements so please no assumptions from either side about intentions. They simply can not be proven or disproved
Now Charlie (assuming I get approval to join this conversation). I think we have to build a common base before we should proceed further, because I see a lot of contradictions in your way of thinking. We have to agree on what we accept as “evidence”. I would say logic is acceptable. I would also say scientific laws are acceptable. Science theories are also generally acceptable, but are not necessarily ABSOLUTE TRUE facts especially if there are opposite theories that contradict them. I’m sure you’re aware of the scientific method which you learned in elementary school or middle school.
We:
1- Observe a phenomena
2- Postulate a hypothesis
3- Perform experiments and gather data
4- Analyze the data and interpret it
5- Draw conclusions

If one theory comes up and another theory contradicts it, then we have to admit that the theory is not COMPLETE. It’s not necessarily wrong in all of its assumptions (and chances are it’s not since it passed many tests successfully before it became a theory), but it’s simply not COMPLETE.

So now when you tell me that GOD is not likely, we are already in a disagreement because we say: God is very likely to us. God is not likely to you only. God is very likely to us. God is very likely to many great scientists. And NO! Not scientist that learned only in religious schools. I’m talking also about scientists that were raised in the US and Europe, and elsewhere. To assume that we say that because our parents taught us so is WRONG. You can not prove that. Islam is actually the only religion that tells it’s followers not to blindly accept their parent’s faith. We assume that you refuse God simply because you don’t want any religion restrictions to be imposed in your life. I can really make my case in this argument, but I can certainly not prove it. See this will not take us anywhere! You’re going back to intentions and assumptions that you have to challenge my friend just like we are.
If you read or heard somewhere in the past that people follow religion based on faith and because it makes them feel better and hope for an afterlife, and that explanation sounded plausible to YOU, it does not mean that this explanation is correct. It needs to be proven! We also assume that no matter what we try to say and get you to think about, you want to reject since your self-ego refuses to simply “loose” this debate. Of course I don’t mean to make this sound like some kind of a battle, but I hope you get my point. We will not accept assumption! We accept logic and facts my friend. If you agree to this we can surely proceed further, but if you have a totally closed mind (no offense) then you wouldn’t be challenging your own “beliefs” and “assumptions”.

Another point: if any side makes a statement and asks for comments on its truth, the other side is ABSOLUTELY LIMITED to one of three options:
1- You agree with the statement.
2- You disagree with the statement.
3- You don’t know for sure.

Take your time in making your decision, but in debates like this, we must make a decision to build upon it.
This means you can’t simply say: Well, I will assume I go with option1 to see where you’re trying to go>>>then if the result leads me to something I don’t like, I might change my mind and go with option 2 or 3!

Sorry for the long post, but you know how it is. You start with a short post in mind, but it ends up being this long 
Best regards,
Stranger

Hi Charlie,
How is it going today, hope all is fine.
Sure, I’d love to have an open-minded debate and thanks for the warm welcome.
And let me start off saying, please do excuse me if sometimes I take a long time to reply since I’m very busy these days preparing to defend my PhD thesis.

So Charlie I’ll be very honest and straightforward. You obviously have many assumptions like we all do and everyone is biased towards what he is convinced of. We try to be as objective as we can, but to do that, we have to challenge our very basic assumptions!

I’m obviously not asking you to agree with everything I claim. I’m trying to build a common base so we can carry on a debate. So I wrote a couple of rules and I want to see if we can mutually agree on them, or possibly modify them first before we can proceed.

Let me try to simplify things. Think of the debate as a game. We’re right now at the phase of setting the rules of the game before we play it . We can NOT change the rules of the game, but we CAN add to them as we play.

So to summarize the rules:
1- No assumptions can be made unless you can prove them to be ABSOLUTE FACTS (of course to a certain extent). I’m not talking about 1+1=2; I’m talking about statements like: “we believe because our parents taught us so” or a statement like: “you refuse to believe because you don’t want to accept religious restrictions on your life”…etc. These are assumptions/explanations and we can’t build on them before we prove them. Another assumption would be: God is not likely to me. We say: well God is likely to us. We are already convinced of that just like you’re convinced of the contrary. I can’t build my conversation on the assumption that God exists (although I personally totally believe in him), nor can you build your conversation on the assumption that he does not (although you are convinced so). Remember what might be a FACT for you, might not be for me and vice versa.

2- Only once we establish something in common (add a rule), can we then build upon it and can not break it. We have to make clear decisions on what we agree upon. You can’t initially start saying: I agree on rule1 above for example and then break it during the debate. You can’t either say: ok I will temporarily accept rule1 above for now to see where this takes me. It might lead you to something you don’t like and in turn you can come back later and say: well I assumed I believe in these rules, but not really! In other words, any two parties in the debate can lie or not conform to intellectual integrity (for example be convinced by an argument but not admitting it!). We really usually assume such an intellectual integrity by default; however such rules can help a little in sustaining this integrity during the debate as well as organizing thoughts.

3- Once agreed upon, these rules can NOT be changed, but we can add to them.

4- The process of adding a rule is as follows:
I make a statement (or vice versa of course):
You either
A) Completely agree with the entire statement, and then the statement would be added to the rules.
Disagree with the statement. Can’t be added as a rule and we try to see why we disagree or completely drop it.
C) Don’t know for sure. Will deal with it later.
Note: if you partially agree with a statement that falls under either disagreeing or not knowing for Sure.

5- Pure logic is fair game (ex: two ABSOLUTELY contradicting statements can’t be both true). And math falls under this category (i.e. 1+1=2, or probability of flipping a coin and getting a head is 50%...etc)
6- Scientific laws are fair game.
7- Scientific theories are not a 100% proof, but we can build upon them since they’re very likely to be true. If something contradicts the theory (maybe another theory), then we can NOT build upon it any more.



I will show you the contradictions I saw in your way of thinking, but let’s keep this point aside for a second.

Are you serious man? I hope you’re kidding. You’re probably too confined to your experiences that are limited in Sweden. The last survey I’ve seen from the CIA’s world Fact book conducted in 2004 shows only 2.4% of the world’s population to be atheists. So yes God is only unlikely to you and the rest of the 2.4% in the world. God is likely to 97.6% of the world’s population! So NO! Most people in the world would NOT agree with you. And YES; there are still people in the 21st century that believe in God; they’re 97.6% of the world’s population.
You live in one of the most atheist countries in the world according to many studies my friend. According to one study in 1999 80% in Sweden don’t believe in God. A later study in 2005 shows 23% only with 53% believing in some kind of force, but not necessarily God. Hmm I guess we’re not the ones affected by our environment that teaches us about God and Islam. It seems to me like you’re the one affected by your environment that teaches you atheism.
See where such arguments take us? No where! That’s why I want to establish a common background (the game debate) because your assumptions that might be facts/true to you can be false to me, and vice versa!
Obviously we can start getting into arguments like: majority doesn’t matter because majority is not always correct as you stated…etc. I agree with that but at least it might have some kind of indication. Can I prove majority is correct: No. But when we start getting into: what I think is likely and what you think is likely, then majority and statistics do make a difference. Hope you now start seeing the importance of building mutual rules before we can proceed further with our own assumptions. I want to eliminate such assumptions.

Again, no I’m not talking other sciences (which you need to define anyways); I’m talking about biologists, physicists, chemists, cosmologists, astronomers, natural scientists… etc that believe in God and there are a lot of them.

See, you’re making an assumption here: you’re assuming that believing in God requires denying evolution, or that if you believe in evolution then you should deny God! (Obviously I disagree with this assumption) and you need to prove it, but that’s for a later point.

Once again you got it wrong my friend. You obviously don’t know much about the US or the US law, so I don’t know where you get you opinions from. It’s called freedom of speech and is in the first amendment of the US constitution. You CAN talk open against God in the US. There are other limitations, but talking open against God is not one of them.
But once again this is all irrelevant. It will not help us discuss and debate to reach to mutual agreements on points.

Well, legally they can be atheist; however population won’t probably elect them. Did you guess why? Because it’s LIKELY for most of the population to believe in God and would consider it very UNLIKELY for someone like the president no to believe in God!

Do you have a problem with people learning to obey since birth? And no I do not deny it. Actually I’m proud of it. I’m adding years of someone else’s experiences to mine.
Or do you want to say people don’t get affected by their environment? We all know they do. You live in Europe, and know the history of the Church and state. Church vs. Science…etc. my explanation is that your environment must have had a bad experience against religious ideas and churches since they opposed science and did terrible things for many great scientists. But whatever your environment or mine taught us will not help in the debate because once again, it does not prove anything. I keep emphasizing so hope you understand this point clearly.

Simply disagree. Hope you understand by now why.

Facts? Facts to you only. To me, your facts are simply not facts. I wouldn’t call them facts unless they’re proven and we both agree on them. So I would call them explanations or something like that but not facts.

Of course feel free to comment on any of my comments, however I’m waiting to see if you agree to the rules I mentioned above so we can proceed further. If not, please let me know which one and why. They sound logical and clear to me, but I have to make sure they’re logical and clear to you as well. Looking forward to “playing this game” with you with a sincere intention that we present to you our point of view and hopefully convince you of what you’ve been missing in your life. Will keep you personally in my prayers
Stranger,