Best online conversation about religion

That's how the conversation started: 

Cuca: I just found out that gambling is forbidden in Islam... 

Email from Sheik Yusuf Estes:

Bismillah salam alaykum Marta,

I hope you were joking with the comments about the "lottery".

As you know, this is a form of gambling and any type of gambling is absolutely forbidden in Islam.

The act of buying or selling tickets for the lottery, any winnings from it and even receiving anything out of it at all, is forbidden.

Please tell the believers and good people to stay away from this horrible thing. It is not a good thing even for charities (churches, bingos, drawings and lotteries).

Thanks again for the updates. Keep them coming.

Salam alaykum,

Yusuf Estes

I posted on Facebook and chat below by two people who doesn't know each other and have a completely different life experience therefor also different beliefs:

D: All these so-called "rules" are rather stupid I say. Simply walking down the street and avoid getting hit by a car is taking a "gamble" every day lol

M: That was the most stupid metaphor i have heard in 30 years of living

D: Finally someone with some brains acquired after 30 yrs of living that can explain these stupid rules 😊

M: Ask and i shall answer you .. is it only the gambling part which is "stupid " to u or u have any other rules u dislike and i shall answer u

1. The Islamic teachings urge the Muslim to follow Allah's directives for earning a living, to use natural laws and direct means for the attainment of his objectives, and to employ such causes to produce the desired effects. Gambling, which includes raffling or the lottery, on the other hand, makes a person dependent on chance, 'luck' and empty wishes, taking him away from honest labor, serious work and productive effort. The person who depends on gambling loses respect for the laws of causation which Allah has established and commanded people to use. 

2. In Islam, an individual's property is sacred; it may not be taken from him except through lawful exchange or unless he gives it freely as a gift or in charity. Accordingly, taking it from him by gambling is unlawful. 

3. It is therefore not surprising that gamblers develop hatred and enmity towards one another, although they may claim that losing does not trouble them. There is always a winner and a loser. The loser may seem composed but behind his composure is frustration, anger, and regret: frustration due to disappointment, anger at the loss of money, and regret for not having played a winning game. 

4. Gambling has its own compulsion. The loser plays again in hope of winning the next game in order to regain his earlier losses, while the winner plays again to enjoy the pleasure of winning, impelled by greed for more. Naturally, luck changes hands, the loser becomes the winner and the winner the loser, and the joy of winning changes into the bitterness of loss. Thus the gamblers may persist at playing the game, unable to bring themselves to leave it; this is the secret of the addiction to gambling. 

5. Because of this addiction, gambling is a danger to the society as well as to the individual. This habit consumes gamblers' time and energy, making them non-productive idlers and parasites on society, who take but do not give, who consume but do not produce. Moreover, due to his absorption with gambling, the gambler neglects his obligations towards his Creator and his duties towards his community. It often happens that a gambling addict sells his honor, religion, and country for the sake of the gaming table, since his devotion to this table dulls his sense of values and kills all other devotions.

D: Well as you ask I do dislike that Islam forbids the drinking of alcohol and eating pork. As the expert scholar can you enlighten us?

M: Before i tell u why islam forbids them . Im not the best muslim . As i drink.  But i know its forbidden and here is why . Would u like to tell me how many people kill . Die .dui and cause harm under the influence of alcohol ?

Whats thw only good coming from alcohol ? Profit right ? Can u be a good father or husband drunk?  Can you work drunk ? And by the way Christianity forbids alcohol before islam . Read your bible well brother . And i can prove it to u

D: Humankind don't need alcohol to commit those atrocities. Besides, who made up these rules? Mohammed? And explain why Christians forbids alcohol yet as their sacraments serve wine at mass and claim it's the "blood of Christ?"

M: And when it comes to pork . Science already proved that pork is the most unhealthy.  Full of parasites meat ever . Because pork lives on his feces

What God commands Christians regarding alcohol is to avoid drunkenness (Ephesians 5:18). The Bible condemns drunkenness and its effects (Proverbs 23:29-35). Christians are also commanded to not allow their bodies to be “mastered” by anything (1 Corinthians 6:12; 2 Peter 2:19). Drinking alcohol in excess is undeniably addictive. Scripture also forbids a Christian from doing anything that might offend other Christians or encourage them to sin against their conscience (1 Corinthians 8:9-13). In light of these principles, it would be extremely difficult for any Christian to say he is drinking alcohol in excess to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Alcohol, consumed in small quantities, is neither harmful nor addictive. In fact, some doctors advocate drinking small amounts of red wine for its health benefits, especially for the heart. Consumption of small quantities of alcohol is a matter of Christian freedom. Drunkenness and addiction are sin. However, due to the biblical concerns regarding alcohol and its effects, due to the easy temptation to consume alcohol in excess, and due to the possibility of causing offense and/or stumbling of others, it is often best for a Christian to abstain from drinking alcohol.

There u go

D: You do realize it's all a bunch of religious propaganda and rhetoric right? Lol

Let's divide and conquer the mass. These people are all idiots - no different than sheep that needs to be led.

M: U asked and i shall answer . Im not here to force beliefs as i said im not the best example

Thats why the human follows logic . If the good is more than bad u do it . If its the opposite u dont . Simple rule

D: Mohammed was one of the greatest conqueror in the world, even though he was illiterate he was smart enough to figure out that religion can be use as a tool and a means to an end. 😊 Hundreds of years later we're still squabbling about religious superiorities. Isn't it astounding that in the 21st century we still behave like barbarians? Why can't we park these doctrines and attempt to all get along?

Thanks for the chat. Good banter. Have a good day/night. We can continue some other time 😊

M: Yes any time . Was a good chat

Cuca: WOW!!!!! Best conversation I have read in years... 

Congratulations to both of you! 

Dereck  & Moe 

D: Moe was a good sport and I was egging on the situation. Of course by now, those who know me, knows I lean towards atheist but gravitate to spirituality. On that note, I will share an excerpt from a book I'm writing based on experience and knowledge gained over MY 30 years of living :) See below:

Think for a moment about the astronomer of the past’s universe. Gone is that picture, held for the greater part of man’s history, of a universe with our earth as its centre, around which the heaven with its fixed stars rotated. Gone too, is that of a universe of fixed stars, with our solar system as its centre. Gone too, is the regard that the sun is the centre of a stellar system of millions of stars, distributed to the extent of space which would take twenty thousand years to traverse. 

We are now bidden by modern astronomers to envisage a universe so vast that the human mind faints in its attempt to grasp its immensity. The light-waves which now reach us from the Andromeda nebula, we are told have travelled through space for two million light years; those from the cluster of galaxies in Hydra two thousand million light years. Not only this earth of ours, but also the solar system of which it is a part, have, in the light of modern astronomical knowledge, faded into complete insignificance. The whole of our solar system is only a tiny minute part of the Milky Way, a galaxy of some two hundred billion stars, across which it would take a hundred million light years to travel. The Milky Way is only one of countless number of billions of galaxies, separated from each other by immeasurable vast stretches of inter-galactic space, each one made up of thousands of millions and billions of stars. 

This is the astronomical picture of the universe. Against this awe-inspiring background what significance has this earth, this unimportant speck in the immensities of space? What significance can be given to human history, this so brief story of civilizations that have risen and flourished, quickly to become dim memories and to be forgotten? Is it more than…. a tale, told by an idiot, full of fury, signifying nothing?

If that is true of the whole of human history, what of each individual person with their hopes and fears, their dreams and noble strivings? Place each little life, place all the lives of all organisms that ever were, are or will ever be, against the astronomer’s immensities of space and time. They are as nothing, individually and in totality, as fleeting and meaningless as a mayfly on a summer stream.

If we are honest, must we now acknowledge, perhaps regretfully, that mankind’s dreams about his noble stature and destiny have been, after all, only the result of insufficient knowledge? That his immortal longings and belief that behind everything there is a “Supreme Being” with whom it was possible to have communion, have been an illusion? If there is indeed a Creator and Sustainer of this huge universe – and some astronomers doubt whether the concept of creation can any longer be upheld - can He have any interest in, or communion with, an insignificant dweller on a minute speck in the immensities of time and space? How can such a Creator-God, if indeed such exists, be “Our Father”? If these doubts are justified, there may be some psychological interest as a study of a particular aberration of the human mind. That the high claims of the priests and theologians are demonstrably false. Their so-called “knowledge” is founded on delusion. They can tell us nothing which will enable us to find the truth of the universe.