My Qalam Journey

[The Q Source]

Peace to all,

This is my first post on this forum and I have to apologise that I have not read much of the content yet; such is the urgency of what I have been doing over recent months but I expect that I will over time.

I first came across Dr. Craig's book The Qalam Cosmological Argument in 2002 accidentally while visiting a University library. I read the entire book in around 3 hours. I was familiar with the mathematical concepts and the arguments separately but found Dr Craig's compilation of the facts together to be one of the best I'd ever read. There are few books I would class at this level - another would be 'Journey Through Genius' by William Dunham.

I was born into an islamic doctrinal religion but today do not acknowledge or recognise affiliation to any religion whatsoever. I believe however that whichever Divine law or book I am judged by that I can stand upright and be counted among the virtuous.

I have always believed in The God and His Presence.

Belief and faith are the operational words when it comes to acknowledgement of The God for most people and philosophical treatises like the Qalam Cosmological Argument are valiant and important attempts to break through that barrier of relying on faith, and moving into a state where one doesn't merely believe or have faith, but rather KNOWS that The God is.

While my faith in doctrines and religions is negated; my certainty of The God continuing to communicate with humanity is not.

It was only upon seeing that Dr Craig had published his book with 216 pages on an online source when I searched for it to include in my own bibliography that I discovered this forum.

In case people are wondering 216 is 'Plato's Number' and equal to 6 cubed, 6x6x6.

My current research is in gematria of The Scriptures and The Quran which has been known to have a 19 based mathematical code since the 1970s and I hope to share some of my findings here if people are interested in these sorts of topics.

I could write much more but hopefully this has been a reasonable introduction.

Q

[Hope]

Thank you for your comment. I'm an atheist, so I don't believe what you are saying, but, I thought I'd at least welcome you and acknowledge your post. Lord knows I get enough grief here, and I wouldn't want to perpetuate that,

I'm not sure why Christians won't engage with you (You posted in Aug, 2020). I imagine you are long gone.

It's just a shame that Christians, and maybe Religious people in general, usually stick to their immediate group and don't venture out. It appears to me they seem to be very afraid to criticize other religions when Atheists are present. I'd like to explore this further. There seems to be some psychological effect.

I imagine there is a lot of Anti-Muslim sentiment here, too, since they think Mohammad (PBUH) is a false prophet and should have been killed as such; or a podophile, etc. Or, they just don't like Muslims, or are afraid of being converted. You know the criticisms.

But, you say you don't follow a specific religion. Good for you! Make up your own mind!

Personally, I find the whole Numerology thing silly. There are Jewish and Christian traditions of Numerology as well, and others. I find it - if I am to be frank, which gets me in trouble - more of a sign of mental illness than an actual academic study. It's like astrology (which I also think is silly, lest anyone think I mean that Numerology and Astrology are serious. We are on a religious site, after all, and we do find a wide variety of beliefs here!)

I'm probably wrong about the mental illness thing, but that's how I feel at the moment.

So, I wish you well. I hope you find peace and comfort, as I do for many,