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Hi everyone I'm not too familiar with modern psychology theories, especially in regards to mating, I've listen to a bit of JP talks, and there is a question I've been wondering about for some time now... Is the modern dating/marriage/mating scene in the west, trending towards becoming more like the mating behaviors of domesticated animals / cattle? I'm not a farmer, and know very little about how breeding process actually works, but correct me if I'm wrong: the male to female ratio among domesticated bovine is something like 1 to 20 or even 1 to 50. For example, a dairy farmer would keep one bull (male) to breed with 30 of his cows (female). The rest of his male bovine are discarded and turned to beef or veal in a few weeks or in a year. Or their skin would be used for leather. In the past they had use for them, as they could be used as draft animals, pulling machinery, but today with large machinery and tractors they're not needed for work. Some of them would be castrated. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Here's a site recommending the 1 to 20 ratio https://u.osu.edu/beef/1999/03/10/mating-capacity-of-bulls-bull-to-cow-ratio/ Similar ratio for rooster (male) to hen (female) which is 1 to ~12, correct? Anyways, wondering if the modern mating scene is very similar: 1 man getting mating opportunities with 20-50 women and this man would be what JP would call - alpha and the other male humans are "discarded" - they are called beta Has there been any books on this phenomena- comparing it to domesticated farm animals? If this phenomena is really true today, I guess the old adage is correct: "you are what you eat" haha

guys I'm the OP here just wanted to clarify my first post... I want to know if the population growth we had in the last few decades has more to do with the fiat monetary system and not necessarly technology advancement/ industrial revolution. We know that the modern economy around the world, there is a lot of leverage "investing" going on.... it's quite prolific because of the unique feature the fiat IOU system posesses, where one can simply type numbers on keyboard and generate credit in exchange for one's "promise". We've seen that the ease to create such 'credit' and have it be invested/speculated in whatever with little restrictions has let to many distortions and bubbles in many industries and markets in recent years. The question is, is the same thing happening to the human population? Is there a 'bubble'? Was the birth and raising of (some?/many?) people made possible ONLY because of the unique feature the fiat system posesses where 'credit' is readily available? *** Those who say no, population growth of 1B to 7B in 20th century is only because of technology/industrial revolution... How do you know that growth of 7-fold increase in the human population is solely because of technology and medical advancements? What if, all things being equal, technology and medical advancement would naturally increase the human population by 1B over the last centruy and the other 5B was because of readily available credit (fiat-unit/IOU borrowed from the future)? *** Also, I know some of you here argue that human ingenuity can create wealth to pay off these kinds of debt. But what if the rate of "wealth" created by human ingenuity is not enough to cover the rate of "credit" being created for population growth? I mean, today there's a large segment of the population who do have jobs, complain that they can barely make ends meet. Is it because the extra wealth they would've normally earned a few generations ago... has already been used up to pay back for the credit that was created and borrowed on their behalf by their parents in order to have them be borned and raised up in the first place?

Over the last century we see many people (across the globe) taking advantage of readily available paper credit and subsequently used it to 'invest'(speculate) into stock markets, tech markets, housing markets, bond markets, oil markets, ...etc. and the graph for these markets would rise dramatically eventually to a point were everyone starts to realize that it's a bubble. Now do you think the same thing is also occuring with the human population? Do you think there is a bubble in this 'market' because of too much "levaraged investing"? People in the past taking on paper credit and borrowing their way to start family and having children? Their "investment"(speculation) was in children instead of stocks. Children were conceived and were raised thanks to the IOUs borrowed on behalf of their own future income. So today when we have all the young adults complaining about how there are not many jobs, and the ones that are available are not a high paying one, technically wasn't this expected? Money was borrowed from their future income in order to concieve them and raise them. Now the birthrate of many nations is slowing down. Is this a classic sign of a bubble 'market'? http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/02/analysis-mega-cities-mortality-and-migration-a-snapshot-of-post-u-n-world-population/ http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16472310

there are many hadiths out there (many of which were written 100s of years after the Prophet-sawas lived), but what they say does not trump the teachings of the Quran when Islam came (ie. as the Quran was being revealed) you not only had encouragments to free slaves in order to negate sins but also negotiating and setting up contracts with your slaves, so they can free themselves after a certain amount of time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukataba Now as for those corrupt arabs, africans, turks/ottomons who abused/mistreated their slaves.... whatever they did, their actions does not represent Islam. It is a logical fallacy if you think otherwise.

Hi Stefan if you are reading this I just saw your new video, and I commend you for taking your time to research and make a video on the topic. However as I stated in another thread, Islam does not endorse slavery! Just because a bunch of Arabs or Africans particpate in the slave trade, don't associate them with Islam. Do you know what Islam says about slavery? Read this one simple line from the quran: http://quran.com/90/13 *** Secondly I highly recommend to you to read about Cyrus the Great and the Persian Empire. You made no mention of him in the video, yet it is widly known Cyrus was one of the first rulers to abolish slavery-- and it was around 500 BC not 1800 AD. Please make sure you check your facts in regards to Slavery and the east. Also I suggest to take some time to study more the history of the east without the bias.

The Quran is different in the sense that it is poetic and short, which makes it easy for one to memorize it. Many muslims dedicate tremendous time and effort to memorize every chapter. So whether it is written down or not, the message stays in tact. It was frivolous for tyrants in the past to collect all the texts and burn them or alter them in any way, because many of the muslims had it memorized which kept the islamic religion alive during those early chaotic years. The tyrant rulers of that era went after the religion in another way, by hijaking it and claiming they too are devout followers-- however the Prophet's family pledge no alligence to them because of their corrupt rulership. His grand sons paid the painful price of martydom to keep the religion from being distorted by the tyrant rulers ( ). *** As for the other holy text, Islam does promote the idea to study the OT, NT and other ancient texts/scrolls. But we believe their messages have been distorted, or additional rules were added which were incorrect. As an example I mentioned before, in the NT, when it was translated into other languages, the roman term 'son of god' which meant a high level king, was translated as the literal phrase son of god. We do not belive Jesus is the son of god (and any part of trinity), we simply belive he's a prophet and the Messiah for the Jews. In the case of jews, they added stricter rules and punishments to their books which were unnecessary and not ordained by the Creator. The Quran came to correct what was added or corrupted. Also the choice of words used in the Quran is very similar to the texts of eastern religions like the dharma. For one, if you read the arabic Quran you would just know it was not written by a human. Many of the top arabic poets of that era, when it first was revealed to the general public, were bewildered by the style of the poetic verses as it was recited by an individual who had no formal training in poetry. If you time, I suggest you listen to a few chapters to experience it yourself. Here are the last 3 short chapters http://youtu.be/2AygBGy7FB4 Here are other longer ones, http://youtu.be/SW1UoZ_Jk68 and http://youtu.be/watch?v=y9j8R3Jf6nQ. Muslims do accept all Prophets of the Creator - we believe that there were something like 124000 prophets of them sent to every region on the planet, guiding the people to what is just, truthful, moral, ...etc. But unlike the others, Prophet Muhammed-saww has given us the message (Quran) which has not been altered/corrupted since it was first revealed. It depends on how he/she conducted themselves while they were on earth. Did he commit injustice, cheat others, was he a tyrant, cruel opressor? All deeds will be accounted,and it will be decided which path they go in the next life they'll go. I'm not sure what you mean by this question. if I was born a kafir, I'm pretty sure I would make an effort to find explanation and truths to matters that may not be explainable on the surface for example coincidental experiences, or incredible vivid/lucid dreams and deja vus, I'm sure in my pursuit of researching these topics, I would eventually find spirituality and religion. *** This leads me to another point, in that I suggest you try out the early morning prayer and experience for yourself the spiritual effects it causes in your life. Or attend a local chanting (zikr) session and see what effect the few days after.

Islam is not muslim muslim is the people Islam is the teaching

As to why it isn't working, it depends on what angle you're looking at it. If it has to do with none material issues (like intution, passion, relationships, spritituality, knowledge ...etc.), many argue that it does work. But if it is with material, worldly issues... Perhaps because they're not following the Creator's law as closely as possible when it comes to worldly issues? For example in countries where the majority are muslim, their currency of choice is a usury-bearing IOU debt, and usury is against the teachings of Islam. Or even in the case when they do get an abundance of wealth (like the saudis) instead of investing it into factories, R&D projects, ..etc. they decide to use it to compete with one another in constructing the tallest buildings, or building big luxurious mosques, ..etc. which in Islam is looked down upon and is known as "Israf". People have free will, and these are the choices that some muslims make. You also have countries like Iran who want to grow their economy, but they can't because of global imposed sanctions and threats against them, because the rest of the world trades in USDs (because the wahabies demand it), and so the rest of the world has to conform to what US demands if they want to get oil for their own polutation. So some of these issues have to be dealt with if they want to see material success. I also want to point out that there was a period of time where the muslim world was flourishing, expanding in fields like science, math, ...etc. and it came to an end when they were distracted with wars with the crusades, the mongouls and even internal conflicts where independent reasoning was discouraged. What we agree is that Jesus-pbuh was the long-awaited Messiah for the jews, but they rejected him and so a few years after he left them, the second temple was demolished, the land dried up and once again they were forced to go into exile from their land in accordance to the Creator's laws What we disagree is that, Jesus is not the Creator nor the son of the Creator, but he is a human being and a Prophet, the Messiah the term "son of Creator" in roman times meant a king, or someone very influential, it was a figuirative term but some how when the original works for the NT was translated into other languages, people took the word literally as opposed to figuiratively In regards to heaven/hell I don't know much about a savior in heaven, perhaps you want to talk about it with an Imam? We do however believe that at some point near Judgement Day, we'll have a righteous leader who'll help bring justice to a very corrupt world that is ruled by pharoh-like individuals who have no empathy whatsoever.

I'm sorry, I can't talk about it at this time, and it can be a distraction for this thread. Maybe some other time.

Hello everyone I know stefan emphasizes a lot on making practical approaches to freedom... and peaceful parenting is what he pays attention to, and I fully appreaciate his work My suggestion is that to approach the issue another way that includes other individuals who aren't parents and that is to encourage others not to participate in financial transactions that are invovled with usury... How many of you are actively using credit cards, or taking student loans, have a mortgage, car loan, business loan ...etc? By encouraging society in a direction where they agree that usury-based transactions are immoral then we wouldn't have the usury-bearing IOU debt known as the dollar as the currency of choice in trade. If people want to lend money with one another, it should be in done with a financial instrument that doesn't devalue, and further should be like an investment. That is, the money you are lending, is really acquiring a portion of ownership of whatever business endevour the borrower is pursueing. The risk is shared among both parties.

Here's an islamic lecture you can watch on parenting I fast forward the timer to the exact spot where the Imam explicitly states that violence is not the answer http://youtu.be/dm9tunwFFgs?t=32m41s

I'm sorry if my response was insulting to you, it was not my intetion, but you requested for empirical evidence to show that prayer works. I gave you a method on how to approach it, so you can test it using the scientific method. You said it never worked for you. Can you tell me when was the last time you tried it? Did you make a strong effort to abstain from sins like lust, anger, envy, ...etc. during that time when you were making the prayer? Were you praying to the Creator or Jesus? What makes you think I would do such a thing? Show me where in Quran does it promote child abuse? In fact before Islam, some of the Arabs were burying their daughters alive... until Islam came to them advocating to stop that practise immediately Prophet Mohammed(sawa) himself was an orphan, and he made significant efforts to help those children from being neglicted or taken advantage of (by not having people steal their inheretence). There are stories of how, a small child wet his pants while being next to the prophet, and the boy's father came rushing angry at the boy... and the prophet insisted the father to calm down, and described to him how he's hurting the child's self esteem with that kind of response. I suggest you read more about this topic.

It's okay, I know that the idea of doing a spirtiual ritual can sound crazy, medieval, bizarre ...etc. especially when you've never tried it or experienced its outcome. If you want to see emperical evidence, why not try it? Experiment it and see the result. Here's some advice: 1. Make the sacrifice to stop yourself from giving into your negative emotions. What I mean by this, is avoid having those emotions that are felt below your heart. Lust, anger, envy, ...etc. I'm sure you know what I mean. When you're at work, or go walk in the street, mall, surfing the internet, watching movies ...etc. avoid having these feelings. Avoid drinking alchohol, or taking drugs, ...etc. in order to prevent yourself from having negative feelings. Also try not to instigate others to have these emotions. If the temptations to give into certain desires becomes overwhelming for you,you may want to consider changing you diet, avoid certain foods or even fasting a few times to clam down yourself down. 2. As you work on making these sacrifices, try your best to wake up around dawn and make your prayer. Muslims tend to do it by facing Mecca, and place their head on the ground (it's like a yoga exercie). Try it this way to see for yourself. 3. When you make your prayer, you have to focus fully on the One Creator (ie. don't think about your friends, yourself, your mom/dad, not Jesus, not the ritual itself ...etc. just the One Creator). When you focus soley on Him, He will address your requests (provided it's not vauge, and it was made with no negative thoughts). Let us know how it went and be honest about what coincidences you've observed. What I meant by someone saying something... is that they will say a word, or the name of a book, or reccomend a certain website, ...etc which if you investigate further you will find the answer to what you were requesting in your prayer About how do you know the Devil didn't send them. As I said, you have to get involved in the spiritual practises, the fasting, the meditating, ...etc. and seek to attain spiritual discernment. It's a strong form of intution. I gave the example in my earlier post about how our vision changed as we went through puberty. Prior to puberty, we didn't 'notice' the opposite gender, but after we 'notice' them, and are strongly attracted to them. It is like that, you go through a change, where you instantly notice/feel things. Even as adults we have a special type of this intution when it comes to finding a good partner, but Men usually don't pay too much attention to it. For example I'm sure you've often heard complaints from women, how a certain man gave them the creeps. It is like this kind of intutive feeling.

I want to address one of Stef's recent statement about Prophet Noah-pbuh's flood and how children were drowned In Islamic works, it was said 40 years prior to the flood, the Creator changed their society in a way that no one can have children. The reason is said to be that there is a limit to bringing an innocensent child in an extremely corrupt society So when the flood happend, there were NO children drowing.

yes, sahih muslim is not the Quran I'm not sure what you mean by point 2. Can you elaborate specificially what aspect is contradictory to you?

This is what the Quran says on Isra and Miraj "Exalted is He who took His Servant by night from al-Masjid al-Haram to al-Masjid al-Aqsa, whose surroundings We have blessed, to show him of Our signs. Indeed, He is the Hearing, the Seeing." - Surah 17 Verse 1 No mention of a white donkey with a human head, let alone it's name as 'Al-Bura'.

Where do you get information like this? Show me where in the Quran it mentions such a thing.

??? What does this have to do with islam?

This is a great question, unfortunatly I'm not an expert, and I think it is best you talk to an Imam/scholar on this matter. Now I'll give you my thoughts on this... I think it depends on who exactly do you want to show what is true and what is not, and how much resources is required until they're satisfied. If it is for yourself, you can do a lot of things depending on what resources you need that will satisfy you. You can pray for logic or knowledge via books, videos, people to show up in your life to get you closer to the truth. On more complicated or urgent matters, you can pray for signs/visual cues/coincidences to answer your question relatively quickly. You can also involve yourself in a series of spiritual practises and strive for more certainty (yaqeen) and to ultimately attain a high-level of spiritual discernment(noor-basirat). <--- I'll talk about this later in this post. Now if on the other hand, you want to explain the truth/falsehood to another individual, it depends on the individual... If it is someone spiritual, you can talk about signs/observations you've both noticed and they would most likely understand your postion relatively quickly. If it is someone like stefan, it takes a lot more effort/time and you talk to him with logical/scientific arguments and give him enough rational rigor to a sufficent level until he's satisfied. Now if it is someone who is a psycopath and has no empathy whatsoever, with today's level of science/technology, there is a limitation to giving him/her rational rigor. For example, suppose you want to tell Pharoh that slavery is wrong, all you do is just give him a series of arguments that boils down to the non-aggression principle, and immorality involved in the use of violence. But Pharoh being a psycopath, would demand even more rational arguments on why the use of violence is wrong. That is, it is not enough to tell him that a certain immoral act is wrong. He wants rigorous justification for this position. And right now we simply don't have the science/technology to show him that he has a soul, or that we're all connected 'sprititually'.... and whenever he performs an immoral act, we can't show him graphs/video of the 'spiritual' damage he causes on his soul and the spiritual connection he has with the rest of humanity. As a result, all you can do is just pray for divine signs to come to him, and pray that he realizes that he's wrong. *** Now going back to the concept of spiritual discernment. It can sometime get too complicated to explain with words. Remember it depends on the level of yaqeen you've reached (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaqeen)... It's can be a special type of intuition where you can 'feel' something is true or false. Like a gut-feeling that we all have, but it's more poweful. Another form is visual, which is hard to explain in words and I myself am not an expert on it. Basically through the sprititual practises, fasting, worshiping, ...etc. you can alter the state of your brain, and so your eyes would change. As an analogy, consider that your brain is an antenna... so through the worshiping, you can tune the 'frequency' of your brain to a 'frequncy' where you can start to see everything differently than what others see. You can say it's 'hallucination' or whatever, but your vision changes to a point where you can visually see extra 'information'. As an example, consider when you were a kid... I'm sure you didn't notice the opposite gender as much as you did after you hit puberty. When you went through puberty, your brain was changing and that's when you started to notice and get strong feelings towards the opposite gender. Another example I like to give is this movie they live... Those sunglasses are a symbolic representation of high-level spiritual discernment. Notice how he can see major differences in people's face? This islamic movie has the same symbolisim http://youtu.be/YAJWkZlOq0Y?t=48m31s at around minute 48:30 - 49:00

Nothing it is their choice. But if they chose to not follow islamic teachings, they must also respect their parent's faith. Now the typical way they're raised is as follows: from age 0 to 7 they're your king/queen- ie. let them play, do what ever they want from 7 to 14 is when you start to teach them morals, the self-discipline practises (ie. religion) you follow and also you spend quality time with them from 14 to 21 is when you start delegating tasks, responsibility and decision making to them No I'm not famaliar with these terms, and I don't know what it has to do with me. Can you show me what verses in the Quran has these terms? Clothing - If you are refering to why they wear veil, and not show skin/curves well if they choose to accept Islam, it is important they reduce their sins and also not to instigate others to sin so with clothing, they dress up modestly the same exact way as Jesus's mother Mary dressed. The veil and covering up of skin/curves helps not to instigate the sin of lust (from men) and the sin of jelousy (from women). Now of course they can choose not to follow these practises, but this is what is recommended in the Quran if they want to get closer to the Creator. Travel - I couldn't find any verses in the Quran that gives a differnt ruling for women on this matter. Job - Again no verses in the quran gives differnt rulings on women and men in terms of work. Now in the past, in muslim-populated regions, women would stay at home to raise the kids, while the men were the breadwinners and had no problem supporting the family financially. Of course in times like now, where the foundations of money is based on usury, ( currency is ursury-bearing debt) which is against the religion of Islam, they're forced to go to work just to keep the family's finances afloat. But normally if these societies followed the islamic teachings correctly, these women would stay at home and raise the kids while the men would earn decent salary for their labour. Association - I'm not sure what you mean by association. When both men and women are young, they're all encouraged not to hang out with the opposite gender, in order to not instigate the sin of lust/jelousy among themselves and their peers. Can you elaborate what aspects of Islam is irrational and contradictory to you?

Can you elaborate more on this point, and give me references from the Quran that promotes such a sacrifice? Can you elaborate more on this point? What exactly makes you think they're treated as second class? I'm talking about how certain movements/ideologies are constantly demonized in the mainstream media, and how it's important to investigate.

IMO athiest are half-way there in finding the real truth... they belive that there are no deities all they have to do is say except for the One Creator and they're basically a beliver our Creator is not a human like Christians claim, and He does not favour one particular race like some religions claim. I like many of you, am a skeptic, always questioning everything the mainstream says and always reflecting on the state of society. Now if I was born into a Christian family, one thing I would certantly realize, is that Islam is the most hated religion on the planet right now. This observation would most definitly lead me to investigate the religion thorougly and seek the ultimate truth. It's the same thing with freemarket/libeterianisim/tea party philosophy. Today there is a lot of anger/properganda against such movements in the mainstream, and as such I would take the time to study closely why this is the case, and what motives are involved when the mainstream dismisses them.

Hi everyone I've been listening to Stefan for quite some time now, but after watching enough videos of him throwing a bunch of adjectives onto islam, calling it "irrational" or "crazy", I've decided to come here and make this thread so we can address his complaints. So please ask me any questions you have about islam. Keep in mind, Islam is not Christianity. Just because you had difficult experiences with that religion doesn't mean it also exists in other faiths. *** Btw Stefan if you're reading this, I want to say that after listening to you for quite some time, and I truly appreciate your rational arguments on just about everything, I do have to say that it appears to me that you do have a bit of bias against middle eastern philosophy, science and history. For example, I've never heard you talk about some of the Islamic Golden-Age philosophers like Avicenna, or poets like Rumi, or classical texts like 'Hayy ibn Yaqdhan', or even biologists like Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (http://azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/92_folder/92_articles/92_tusi.html). Another example, is when the other day you claim that Western European Race put an end to slavery, when in fact there are many historians who argue that 2000 years before that we had the ancient persians under the leadership of Cyrus the Great, achieving the same goal. Have you read about Cyrus the Great? Thanks for taking your time to read this post, and I'm looking forward to reading your arguments/questions on Islam.