Weight of the Human Soul

A Physician by the name of Duncan McDougall attempted to measure the weight of a soul by measuring the weight of a human before and after death. It turns out, when a person dies, they lose about 3/4 of an ounce, or 21 grams. Now, killjoys have called this insensible loss; basically, some kind of unexplainable evaporation. Here's what I propose though. If a soul really does weigh 21 grams, shouldn't there also be an unexplainable GAIN of 21 grams at the instant a foetus gains it's soul? See, it's easy enough to say "oh, the loss was due to some kind of rapid perspiration" since the human body excretes stuff all the time without our conscious effort: sweat, oils, air... but we have a lot of control over what enters our body: nose, and mouth, and clearly nothing would be entering these area's of the mother. A sudden gain in the same weight, then, would be a very clear indicator that the soul does indeed have mass.

See this link for more information on the experiment:

http://www.lostmag.com/issue1/soulsweight.php

Thoughts: God and Physics

*WHAT FOLLOWS ARE MY OWN THOUGHTS AND EXPERIENCES AND HAVE NO REAL WEIGHT IN THE RELIGIOUS WORLD. THEY ARE MY OWN ATTEMPT TO UNDERSTAND MY RELIGION AND COULD BE ENTIRELY WRONG*


I was talking with a friend of mine a while ago. Since I'm muslim and he's a science-tist (essentially an atheist who believes only in the laws of science) we frequently get on the topic of God and religion. What all of our arguments boil down to is the "leap of faith": that I believe God is the cause of all physical phenomena, the Creator of all, and he believes that everything is a result of physics. 


And then he said something I, at the time, didn't have a full answer for. I said that we can't "prove" God exists in a physical way because we don't have the equipment to do it, and he said that science dictates that we should be able to prove all things, therefore, there must be something we could test that would indicate God exists. A result of this is that God must have physical properties and therefore follows laws of physics. If this is the case, God is not omnipotent since He must follow the laws of something that bind him. 


Which is a (somewhat) fair assumption. God can manipulate matter and energy, so he must follow some laws of physics. Everything follows laws, the difference, however, the key difference between our physics and God's physics, is that God defined and defines his own physics. That is what keeps Him, logically, omnipotent.  It's like when God says:


"He has prescribed mercy for Himself" (Quran 6:12)


Mercy wasn't prescribed for Him by someone else, HE prescribed it for Himself. 


So the way I see it, there's our physics, with our laws of motion, electricity, etc. which God created, and then there's God's physics which He created for Himself. Of course then we get into the whole issue of "well, if everything came from something, where did God come from?" and to that I refer you to this hadith:


It is narrated on the authority of Abu Huraira that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: Men will continue to question one another till this is propounded: Allah created all things but who created Allah? He who found himself confronted with such a situation should say: I affirm my faith in Allah.  (Sahih Muslim, Book#001, Hadith #0242)


and I add the idea that creationism is part of our physics, but is not part of God's physics. The way of OUR world is that stuff is made from other stuff, but the way of God isn't. I bet though, if we make it to heaven (inshaAllah), God'll explain this discrepancy. I'm sure there's a simple explanation that won't at all involve time moving in a circular pattern and other stuff that would make the mind of the most brilliant physicist melt into a puddle of confused goo. 


So, summary:


a) THE ABOVE WAS FROM MY OWN THOUGHTS AND OPINION
b) God defines His own physics and can change it whenever He likes. 
c) There's OUR physics and then there's God's physics. Just because we can detect ours doesn't mean we can detect God's.
d) God is the Creator who wasn't created. 

Fate and Predestiny

Probably the single most confusing concept in Islam is that of fate and predestiny. Muslims frequently hear and read that our lives, and everything, even where we end up after we die is predetermined. This just baffles the heck out of most of us though because if that's the case, then where is justice? Why bother doing good deeds at all? Why bother doing anything?

When I was in the middle east I was talking with a cousin of mine and he was telling me a story about how one of his professors used the concept of dimensions to explain the concept of God. Expanding upon this in my head, I think I finally managed to explain all this fate and predestiny stuff, so here goes. 

DISCLAIMER

THE FOLLOWING IS WHAT I USE TO CONTENT MYSELF. IT MAY BE COMPLETELY WRONG AND IS A RESULT OF MY OWN THINKING.

The religious texts say that everything we do, etc is fate. The way I see it is that, yes it is fate, but it does not control us, we are not forced to follow it but we do. If you imagine our lives as a film, God can scroll through the film. He knows every part, the beginning, middle and end. It's part of His "All-Knowing"-ness. So when it's said "What is written", it's like God went through our film and simply wrote out everything we are going to do. The key point is that the film came first (so to speak): we decide our actions and decisions but God already knows them. It's like a friend who's already watched a movie telling you what's going to happen. He knows how the movie ends, and what happens to the main character, but that doesn't actually affect the main characters actions. 

Now, to explain predestiny. As I imagine it, we are on game boards, or at the centre of a maze constantly moving towards the edge. The walls of the maze are, for lack of a better word, opportunities and events. These choices and opportunities are built into the game board or maze and are predetermined: they are "factory made". It is our free will that allows us to choose which opportunities we take and how we respond to events. Some people's mazes will be simple, with few difficult events and opportunities, while other's will be harder, but everyone has the ability to choose their own paths. At the end of the maze, the edges of the board is death and beyond that half the board is surrounded by Paradise, while the other by Hell. 

So, to summarize my understanding/explanation. We have free will, but a God-made maze. We have to make the right choices at the events and opportunities God built into our mazes. God, being Master of Time and All-Knowing, knows what path and decisions and actions we will take and make, and has written it down, but this does not control us, it's simply an outline of what we are going to do anyway. 

I hope that explanation helps and isn't totally blasphemous.