Shia islam

[Yakman]

Another personal opinion though, about the concept of Free Will: the notion of an omnipotent God creating humans in order to see how they behave and then punish or reward them accordingly at Judgement's Day makes God look a bit like a sadistic creator, almost as a cat playing with mouses. And it does not harmonize well with the Abrahamic notion of an infinitely merciful God.

it also doesn't harmonize with the actual bible.

first story: CREATION
second story: Garden of Eden, wherein: To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat from it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

So... man is supposed to be farmers. And its supposed to be awful.

third story: Cain and Abel, wherein, the guy who actually was a farmer suggests to the guy who isn't, that they should make an offering to God. And God favors the guy who isn't farming. Who didn't follow the rules.

So... right there. God's not infallible. Guy changes his mind. He rewards people who don't follow the rules that he explicitly says to follow. This is like two pages into the Book of Genesis. Anyone who thinks that the Hebrew God is omnipotent, that there is no free will, and that we are all puppets to the divine puppeteer... great, but that's not what's in the Bible.

 

[Pyoro]

Why would omnipotence mean God can't change his opinion on things? Change the rules? If anything, if he weren't able to, he wouldn't be omnipotent. His great plan being incomprehensible to feeble mortal minds is no argument either, and just because he knows _all_ the facts doesn't mean he can't have different opinions about them on different days. They are just all equally perfectly correct.

 

[Anatur]

So why bother with holy books and prophets?

Why not simply scream out from the clouds:"Listen you schmucks,do this for 50 years and then do this for the next 500".

Would skip a lot of miss-comunication.

 

[Yakman]

Why would omnipotence mean God can't change his opinion on things? Change the rules? If anything, if he weren't able to, he wouldn't be omnipotent. His great plan being incomprehensible to feeble mortal minds is no argument either, and just because he knows _all_ the facts doesn't mean he can't have different opinions about them on different days. They are just all equally perfectly correct.

Oh, he clearly changes his mind. But he also clearly rewards people who don't listen to him. There's free will on both sides.

 

[Pyoro]

The problem with a perfectly omnipotent/omniscient God is that there's no reason he couldn't create a universe where everything runs along pre-determined courses but actually is indistinguishable from one where everyone is acting on their own free will. I'm sure theology has come up with some explanations there, but ultimately when talking about an omnipotent being any answer has to be questioned. It's impossible to say _anything_ with any level of security. There's nothing you can trust to be true with certainty.

 

[Kovax]

There's nothing you can trust to be true with certainty.

Are you sure about that?

 

[Semper Victor]

it also doesn't harmonize with the actual bible.

first story: CREATION
second story: Garden of Eden, wherein: To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat from it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

So... man is supposed to be farmers. And its supposed to be awful.

third story: Cain and Abel, wherein, the guy who actually was a farmer suggests to the guy who isn't, that they should make an offering to God. And God favors the guy who isn't farming. Who didn't follow the rules.

So... right there. God's not infallible. Guy changes his mind. He rewards people who don't follow the rules that he explicitly says to follow. This is like two pages into the Book of Genesis. Anyone who thinks that the Hebrew God is omnipotent, that there is no free will, and that we are all puppets to the divine puppeteer... great, but that's not what's in the Bible.

The Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible, is quite a different matter. In it, it can be easily perceived the uneasy transformation of the old Semitic gof YHWH (a minor god in the Levantine Semitic tradition) into the God of Israel. And this god has flaws, very human flaws, just as the old gods had: jealousy, wrath, etc. In many parts of the Old Testament the existence of gods other than YHWH is not even denied, it's only stated that they are "abominations" and that the people of Israel must worship only YHWH, who is the God of Israel, bound to its people by a Covenant (notice again the transactional dimension of this relationship, a covenant in which the people of Israel worship YHWH in exchange for the Promised Land). The God of the Hebrew Bible has still not become the transcendent, totalizing figure of later, fully developed Judaism, of Christianity and Islam. It's still in transition from being Baal's minor pal and Asheroth's husband into the God of the rabbis, of the Gospels and the Quran.

 

[Anatur]

Why is it that it took so long to settle on just one super-god?

I mean surely its easier to pray to and apease 1 super-god than thousands of minor god's and dieties.

If you are going to be supersitious then why make it harder for yourself?

 

[Yakman]

The Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible, is quite a different matter. In it, it can be easily perceived the uneasy transformation of the old Semitic gof YHWH (a minor god in the Levantine Semitic tradition) into the God of Israel. And this god has flaws, very human flaws, just as the old gods had: jealousy, wrath, etc. In many parts of the Old Testament the existence of gods other than YHWH is not even denied, it's only stated that they are "abominations" and that the people of Israel must worship only YHWH, who is the God of Israel, bound to its people by a Covenant (notice again the transactional dimension of this relationship, a covenant in which the people of Israel worship YHWH in exchange for the Promised Land). The God of the Hebrew Bible has still not become the transcendent, totalizing figure of later, fully developed Judaism, of Christianity and Islam. It's still in transition from being Baal's minor pal and Asheroth's husband into the God of the rabbis, of the Gospels and the Quran.

of course.

if someone wants to go ahead and think that there 's an omnipotent God who created the world with no Free Will - go right ahead. That's their right.

BUT don't go thumping your Bible and say that this is the case. Anyone who claims that has never actually opened the dang thing.

 

[Avernite]

Why is it that it took so long to settle on just one super-god?

I mean surely its easier to pray to and apease 1 super-god than thousands of minor god's and dieties.

If you are going to be supersitious then why make it harder for yourself?

Because it is extremely abstract?

A mountain, a stream, a bolt of lightning: very easy to grasp.

Ephemereal super-being that runs everything? Well, we're still arguing what exactly that means.

 

[Semper Victor]

Why is it that it took so long to settle on just one super-god?

I mean surely its easier to pray to and apease 1 super-god than thousands of minor god's and dieties.

If you are going to be supersitious then why make it harder for yourself?

Because the idea of a single God is counter-intuitive and needs a certain capacity for abstract thinking. It's in human nature to project human feelings and attitudes into the natural world. For example: why doesn't it rain when the crops need it? Because "someone" does not want it to rain; if this "someone" can make it stop raining, he must be a powerful one, and he must be quite pissed off with me/us (in the sense of "our tribe/clan/village"). Same for illnesses, extreme cold, extreme heat, pregnancy, etc. And that without adressing the other great source of the religious phenomena amongst humans, the fear of death.

It's much more immediate to associate every one of these "mysterious" phenomena with one deity each, as this way we reduce it to a more understandable and comfortable personal binary relationship between a human and a god. We want it to rain? We pray/sacrifice to the god/goddess X. We wish a male baby? We pray/sacrifice to the god/goddess Y. A transactional relationship is thus established between the worshipper and the god(s), in which worship (prayers, sacrifices, etc.) are offered in exchange for very definite wishes (long life, health, rain, male children, good harvests, etc). Notice that traditional, polytheistic religions never believed their gods to be omnipotent; for example in the Graeco-Roman religion, not even the gods could alter the threads of destiny threaded by the Parcae, and something similar happened in the old Norse religion.

The idea of an unique, all-powerful God, is something much more abstract and that has its roots not as much in the humanization of natural forces or events (with the transactional element), but in the projection of human morality on the natural world in absolute terms, and hence the centrality of the notions of "sin" and "divine law" in Abrahamic religions, mixed with the Platonic notion of the Logos, as the abstract being which is the apex of perfection and of which material things and human beings are only pale shadows. As there is only one moral, and only one moral code (there is only one concept of Goodness, of Justice, of Mercy, etc), there must be only one God, which is the very source and origin of these virtues in their most superlative sense (God is infinitely Good, Just, Merciful, etc.).

 

[Yakman]

Why is it that it took so long to settle on just one super-god?

I mean surely its easier to pray to and apease 1 super-god than thousands of minor god's and dieties.

If you are going to be supersitious then why make it harder for yourself?

ah, but the Super-God... well... he's up there. Stuff's going on down here.

So right then, there's differentiation. Why is the crop going bad? A witch? But who gives her/him those powers? It can't be the Super-God. He's on our side. So... it's... something else?

And who are those jerks over there? They have their idol. And darnit, they beat our boys last year. They claim that their idol helped them out! Are they onto something?

And what's Tim down the hill doing? His wife is from some other place! And she's saying that there's some rain god that does a bang up job in wherever. Maybe that Rain God's pretty good?

by the time you get to Monotheism in the Levitical era, there's always this "other" god hanging around in the shadows. That's how you get gnosticism, and christianity, and satan, and whatever.

Even the avowedly arch-monotheists, have supernatural powers that are not Allah/whatever which they appeal to.

 

[Kovax]

Humans and other primates (and many other mammals) begin life with one or more "parental figure(s)" who are bigger and far more powerful than them, beyond comprehension (to a child), and yet can be manipulated to a limited degree through pleas, tears, tantrums, and other (usually emotional) expressions. Eventually, we grow up to realize that those parental figures are only human, but the underlying instinctual "need" for a "parental figure" never goes away.

It can be questioned whether that "need" is why man attempts to define "gods" to replace those lost parental figure(s), or whether God uses that as an analogy to forward our own simplistic understanding of him/her/it self/selves. The answer is outside of the scope of science, logic, or anything else but "belief".

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

The Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible, is quite a different matter. In it, it can be easily perceived the uneasy transformation of the old Semitic gof YHWH (a minor god in the Levantine Semitic tradition) into the God of Israel. And this god has flaws, very human flaws, just as the old gods had: jealousy, wrath, etc. In many parts of the Old Testament the existence of gods other than YHWH is not even denied, it's only stated that they are "abominations" and that the people of Israel must worship only YHWH, who is the God of Israel, bound to its people by a Covenant (notice again the transactional dimension of this relationship, a covenant in which the people of Israel worship YHWH in exchange for the Promised Land). The God of the Hebrew Bible has still not become the transcendent, totalizing figure of later, fully developed Judaism, of Christianity and Islam. It's still in transition from being Baal's minor pal and Asheroth's husband into the God of the rabbis, of the Gospels and the Quran.

Disagree partly. There is a transition. But you won't find it in the Tanakh/Hebrew Bible/Old Testament - at least not explicitly. The OT is very much a big propaganda advertisement for the "God of Israel", in the grand, transcendent, totalizing sense you mean. From the beginning. It's just that along the way we get hints that real Israelites (that is, those living in 13th C.-8th C. or thereabouts) didn't quite think so - at least not yet. They are still caught up in "mere" YHWH. But of course, they didn't have the compiled Hebrew Bible at hand to inform and clarify his true nature. This wasn't the job of rabbis. It was the job of the book itself.

So you should see the Hebrew Bible as a document of "fully developed" Monotheism. Yes, it does insinuate that old time Israelite religion was less committed to it. But the Bible itself is completely and utterly committed.

 

[Yakman]

Disagree partly. There is a transition. But you won't find it in the Tanakh/Hebrew Bible/Old Testament - at least not explicitly. The OT is very much a big propaganda advertisement for the "God of Israel", in the grand, transcendent, totalizing sense you mean. From the beginning. It's just that along the way we get hints that real Israelites (that is, those living in 13th C.-8th C. or thereabouts) didn't quite think so - at least not yet. They are still caught up in "mere" YHWH. But of course, they didn't have the compiled Hebrew Bible at hand to inform and clarify his true nature. This wasn't the job of rabbis. It was the job of the book itself.

So you should see the Hebrew Bible as a document of "fully developed" Monotheism. Yes, it does insinuate that old time Israelite religion was less committed to it. But the Bible itself is completely and utterly committed.

Seconded.

Go through that Book of Kings. People keep sticking up the poles in the high places. The Good Kings go and tear them down. The Wicked Ones let them stay up.

Hebrews who are putting up those idols all through the Kingdoms' history.

 

[Semper Victor]

Disagree partly. There is a transition. But you won't find it in the Tanakh/Hebrew Bible/Old Testament - at least not explicitly. The OT is very much a big propaganda advertisement for the "God of Israel", in the grand, transcendent, totalizing sense you mean. From the beginning. It's just that along the way we get hints that real Israelites (that is, those living in 13th C.-8th C. or thereabouts) didn't quite think so - at least not yet. They are still caught up in "mere" YHWH. But of course, they didn't have the compiled Hebrew Bible at hand to inform and clarify his true nature. This wasn't the job of rabbis. It was the job of the book itself.

So you should see the Hebrew Bible as a document of "fully developed" Monotheism. Yes, it does insinuate that old time Israelite religion was less committed to it. But the Bible itself is completely and utterly committed.

I agree that the Old Testament does not state that transition explicitly, but the God of Israel/YHWH that emerges from the pages of the Old Testament still has many or even most of the characteristics of the old Semitic gods. He experiences human emotions and feelings (jealousy, fury or tiredness), talks directly to the prophets (notice that does not happen either in the New Testament or in the Quran, where God either talks through messengers or manifests Himself in mysthical ways) and the Old Testament makes Him not "The" Universal God, but simply the God of Israel. This is a God to be feared ("the Lord is a Man of War"), and the Old Testament goes to great extremes to portray Him as such; there's a Covenant between the Israelites and Him, and every time the Israelites break that Covenant, they suffer retaliation, but if they adhere to it strictly, they are rewarded. This has more in common with a commercial or employment contract that with what today we would understand as religion.

This is the image of God that emerges from the pages of the Old Testament, without entering in the (very interesting subject, and worthy of a thread of its own) matter of the history of the evolution of the Jewish people and its belief in YHWH. It's reflected for example in one of the classical lines of attack of Islamic religious polemics against Judaism, in which Muslim ulamas accused the Jews of "antropomorphism" because of the way God is depicted in their scriptures.

It was precisely the Pharisees who began to evolve this "primitive" conception of God towards a more universal one; for example by stating that the rules of purity that the Torah established for the Levites had to be applied to all Jews, as they were a "priestly nation", and who introduced the concept that the ultimate meaning of following the Torah verbatim was because this would grant the believers the ultimate reward, deliverance from eternal punishment. This was the point where the adherence to a moral code (the one established in the Torah) became the key element of religion, and it's from this point that the several Jewish sects of the I century CE took over, amongst them Christians.

 

[Sadr City]

In regards to our Imams (pbut), the 12th Imam (pbut) is hidden by God, but he has sent his son and successor as messenger to all Muslims, he is also a messenger from Jesus to all Christians and messenger from Elijah to all Jews, and he is alive and physically present amongst us in this age and time, so we are not Shia Twelvers as we believe in the son and successor of the 12th Imam pbuh, which is Imam Ahmed al-Hasan.

Prophet Mohammed (pbuhap) at the night of his death in his Will mentioned that there will be 12 Imams and after them 12 Mahdis, which are also Imams, divinely appointed leaders. Here is the will recorded in 13 different Shia books:

(Will of the Prophet Muhammad pbuhap on the night of his death:
The Prophet Muhammad pbuhap said to Ali bin Abi Talib on the night of his death,

“O Father of Al-Hassan, bring me a pen and a paper”, and he dictated his will until he came to a position where he said, “O Ali, there will be twelve Imams after me and after them there will be twelve Mahdis. You, O Ali, are the first of the twelve Imams, Allah has named you in his heavens Ali Al- Mortatha, The Prince of the Believers, the Grand Truthful, the Bright Differentiator between truth and falsehood, the trusted, and the Mahdi (the rightly guided). These names may not to be truly attributed to other than you. O Ali, you are my successor over my family, their living and their deceased, and over my women. Whomever you affirm shall find me tomorrow, and whomever you reject I am innocent of her. I will not see her and she will not see me on the Day of Resurrection. And you are the successor (Khalifa) upon my nation after me. If death approaches you, hand it over to my son Al-Hassan the very beneficial. Then if death approaches him, let him hand it over to my son Al- Hussein, the martyr, the pure, the assassinated. Then if death approaches him, let him hand it over to his son, the master of the worshippers, Ali. Then if death approaches him, let him hand it over to his son, Muhammed Al-Baqir. Then if death approaches him, let him hand it over to his son, Jafar Al-Sadiq. Then if death approaches him, let him hand it over to his son, Musa Al-Kathum. Then if death approaches him, let him hand it over to his son, Ali Al-Retha. Then if death approaches him, let him hand it over to his son Muhammad, the trustworthy, the pious. Then if death approaches him, let him hand it over to his son Ali, the advisor. Then if death approaches him, let him hand it over to his son Al-Hassan, the virtuous. Then if death approaches him, let him hand it over to his son, Muhammad the Entrusted of the Holy Family of Muhammad peace be upon them. So these are the twelve Imams. Then after him, there will be twelve Mahdis. So if death approaches him, let him hand it over to his son, the first of the close ones, he has three names, one like mine and my father’s: Abdullah (servant of Allah), Ahmad and the third name is The Mahdi (rightly guided). He is the first of the believers.”


—Sheikh Al-Toosi, Al-Ghayba p.150
—Sheikh Hor Al-Amili, Ithbat Al-Hodat Vol. 1 p.549
—Sheikh Hor Al-Amili, Al-Iqath Min Al-Haj’a p.393-3
—Sheikh Hassan bin Soulayman Al Hilli, Mokhtasar Al Bassair p.159
—Al-Allama Al-Majlisii, Bihar Al-Anwar Vol. 53 p.147
—Al-Allama Al-Majlisii, Bihar Al-Anwar Vol. 36 p.260
—Sheikh Abd Allah Al-Bahrani, Al’awalim Vol. 3 p.236
—Al-Sayyed Hashim Al-Bahrani, Ghayat Al-Maram Vol. 1 p.370
—Al-Sayyed Hashim Al-Bahrani, Al-Insaf p.222
—Al-Fayth Al-Kachani, Nawadir Al-Akhbar p.294-9
—Sheikh Mirza Annouri, Annajm Al-Thaqib Vol. 2 p.71
—Al-Sayyed Muhammad Muhammad Sadiq Al-Sadir , Tarikh Ma Ba’d Al-Thohoor p.641-11
—Sheikh Al Mayanji, Makatib Arrassoul Vol. 2 p.96
—Sheikh Al-Korani, Mokhtasar Mo’jam Ahadith Al-Imam Al-Mahdi p.301-13

This is personal page of the Imam pbuh in which he communicates with the believers all over the world, and also the English version where his followers translate the messages.

https://www.facebook.com/Ahmed.Alhasan.10313/
https://www.facebook.com/AhmedAlhasanEnglish.10313/?fref=ts

This is "Biography of Biographies", some of the closest followers of Imam Ahmed al-Hasan pbuh talking about their journey to the Imam pbuh and various encounters proving that he is a real person which is alive now amongst us. https://ahmedalhasan313.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/the_biography_of_biographies-20130908.pdf

Ahmed al-Hasan a.s. has written various books proving his claim through his divine knowledge and that he is truly Ahmed the Mahdi mentioned in Prophet Mohammed's Will, the son and successor of the 12th Imam- Imam al-Mahdi pbuh. http://www.saviorofmankind.com/books/

 

[JodelDiplom]

[...] so we are not Shia Twelvers as we believe in the son and successor of the 12th Imam pbuh, which is Imam Ahmed al-Hasan. [...]

Out of curiosity, who is the "we" that you refer to? Are you referring to your specific denomination? (if so, which would that be? I thought twelvers were the big majority of Shia denominations and assumed you were one too, or spoke for them)

 

[Sadr City]

Out of curiosity, who is the "we" that you refer to? Are you referring to your specific denomination? (if so, which would that be? I thought twelvers were the big majority of Shia denominations and assumed you were one too, or spoke for them)

Yes. We are Ansar Imam Al-Mahdi pbuh. We believe in the Son and Successor of the 12th Imam, which is Ahmed al-Hasan a.s. the 13th Imam.

Will of the Prophet Muhammad pbuhap on the night of his death: "...Then if death approaches him, let him hand it over to his son Al-Hassan, the virtuous. Then if death approaches him, let him hand it over to his son, Muhammad the Entrusted of the Holy Family of Muhammad peace be upon them. So these are the twelve Imams. Then after him, there will be twelve Mahdis. So if death approaches him, let him hand it over to his son, the first of the close ones, he has three names, one like mine and my father’s: Abdullah (servant of Allah), Ahmad and the third name is The Mahdi (rightly guided). He is the first of the believers.” —Sheikh Al-Toosi, Al-Ghayba p.150

As we can see from Prophet's Will there will be 12 Imams and 12 Mahdis, together they make 24 divinely appointed Imams. Ahmed al-Hasan a.s. is the 13th Imam.

So Twelvers are the biggest Shia sect but this doesn't mean they are on the right path, as we see the 12th Imam pbuh has a son and successor which is already born and has claimed the Will of Prophet Muhamamd (pbuhap) and the Imamate, and only the rightful claimant can claim it as it is protection from misguidance.

Just like only the true Jesus could claim his rightful position and no false claimant could claim to be him before God sent him.

"If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me." - John 5:46

This is the english website of our Imam- Ahmed al-Hasan http://www.saviorofmankind.com