Sunday, January 29, 2012

Perspectives on history-

Will Durant-Goood is what survives
''Does history support a belief in God? If by God we mean not the creative vitality of nature but a supreme being intelligent and benevolent,the answer must be a reluctant negative.Like other departments of biology, history remains at bottom a natural selection of the fittest individuals and groups in a struggle wherein goodness receives no favors, misfortunes abound, and the final test is the ability to survive.Add to the crimes, wars, and cruelties of man the earthquakes,
storms, tornadoes, pestilences, tidal waves, and other "acts of God" that periodically desolate human and animal life, and the total evidence suggests either a blind or an impartial fatality, with incidental
and apparently haphazard scenes to which we subjectively ascribe order, splendor, beauty, or sublimity. If history supports any theology this would be a dualism like the Zoroastrian or Manichaean: a good spirit and an evil spirit battling for control of the universe  and men's souls.These faiths and Christianity (which is essentially Manichaean) assured their followers that the good spirit would win in the end; but of this consummation history offers no guarantee. Nature and history do not agree with our conceptions of good and bad; they define good as that which survives, and bad as that which goes under; and the universe has no prejudice in favor of Christ as against GenghisKhan.''(Durant.W; The lessons of history)


 
Quran-Good is what benefits makind, so it survives:
"He sends down water from the sky, so that valleys flow according to their measure, and the flood bears on its surface swelling foam. And from that which they heat in the fire, seeking to make ornaments or utensils, comes out a foam similar to it. Thus does Allah illustrate truth and falsehood. Now, as to the foam, it goes away as rubbish, but as to that which benefits people, it stays on the earth. Thus does Allah set forth parables."(13:18 Quran)





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