99 ways to smile

Just for a second, let's all step outside of our own moral and religious codes, political leanings and gender prejudices. For a moment, pretend you don't care about any of these things and answer this question:

Is it wrong to kill a baby?

Hear me out. I'm not trying to imply anything about whether a fetus is a baby. But we can all agree that nobody wants to see babies die or be murdered, yes?

So why is it that when it comes to the abortion question it has to be only about whether abortion should be legal or not? Why do we not ask ourselves: Why are women having abortions and what can we do to lower the likelihood that a woman will have an abortion? If we care about our society, then we should know that caring about babies and women means more than simply making a law about abortion.

Would you want to live in a world where abortion is always legal and always safe, but rarely ever the outcome of a pregnancy? Or would you rather live in a world where abortion is illegal but still happens frequently and women end up losing their lives over it?

I have prayed only a few times since we left my mother's casket at the cemetery and drove away.

How can I learn to trust God again? I feel abandoned.

PS: I'm a pluralist, just wondering what other pluralists have to say.

To clarify, I am Muslim. I am not trying to convert anyone, but rather I am in interested in knowing if my sisters and brothers in Islam have read the Torah and the Gospel.

We accept the Torah and the Gospel to be divinely inspired, and many references to the stories told in Torah and the Gospel appear in the Qur'an.

Also, I am a convert and never went to a Muslim school, so I'd like to know if they are taught they, in addition, of course, to the Qur'an.

Exodus

4:24 At a Lodging place on the way, the LORD met Moses* and was about to kill him.

25 But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it**. "Surely, you are a bridegroom of blood to me," she said.

26 So the LORD let him alone. (At that time she said "bridegroom of blood," referring to circumcision.)

* Or Moses' son; Hebrew him.

** Or "and drew near Moses' feet"

Will appreciate all perspectives on this: Jewish, Christian or Muslim.

Thank you! and Peace be with you.

Please cite any ayat or hadith (or tafsir) which support your answer, if you know them. Thank you.

Please excuse the abbreviations in the question, the 128 character limit was hard to get by!

The question is: Would you prefer to live in a country which has banned abortion completely but has very high abortion rates (for example: many South American countries) rather than live in a country in which abortion is completely legal but has very, very few women seeking abortions each year (for example, Belgium & Netherlands)?

Google news on Keith Ellison, in case you don't know much about the controversy: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&hs=Z57&client=fi...

Should we not interpret our Holy texts in the context of our own cultures and the times in which we live?

For example, do you use a highlighter, or write in pencil or ink, to mark your favorite passages or passages that are very important to your understanding of God?

Is there some other way you keep track of such passages? If so, how do you do it?

Curious.

What would you do?

I know that Heaven is actually nothing like we can imagine. God willing, our souls will reach heaven, but the experience of a soul is completely different from an experience of the body. We will not suffer from hunger for example. But what of the deliciousness of food? Will there be anything like the taste of a freshly grilled to perfection steak?

Give me your thoughts!

(Disclaimer: this is not a serious question. Please do not try to convince to give up my gluttonous way, or something similar).

I am trying to understand this example my book gives of partial derivatives of functions with more than two variables.

(please note, I'm using extra parantheses for clarity)

If f(x,y,z) = (x^3)(y^2)(z^4) + 2xy + z then

1. (df/dx) = 3(x^2)(y^2)(z^4)+ 2y

2. (df/dy)= 2(x^3)y(z^4) + 2x

3. (df/dz) = 4(x^3)(y^2)(z^3) + 1

My questions:

In #1, what happened to the last z term?

In #2, again, what happened to the last z-term?

In #3, what happened to the 2xy?

It appears that I don't know some particular rule about partial derivatives, so I don't understand why these derivatives are the way they are.

Thank you SO MUCH!

One day, Rabi'a was seen running through the streets of Basra carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When asked what she was doing, she said:

"I want to put out the fires of Hell, and burn down the rewards of Paradise. They block the way to God. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of God."

What do you think? Do rewards and punishments hinder us from loving God completely?

This is some UNGRADED homework that I cannot solve (the answers are available to us through the Math dept. website, but I don't understand at all how to get this answer).

The question is:

Write an equation for the plane which contains the x-axis and the point (0,1,2).

Apparently, the answer is -2y+z = 0 but I don't even know where to begin. Somebody asked the professor how to solve it, but he wasn't very helpful. He's one of the genius-types that isn't the best at teaching.

In advance, THANK YOU so much!

"A real pietist, like a true lover, cannot explain what force or what reason brings him into the fellowship of God. Love knows no reasons and when it reasons it is no longer true love. Both religion and love belong to the realm of mystery. Neither can be fully explained. Both are inward feelings which defy reason and explanation."

[Samuel Umen]

We're supposed to use part of the fundamental theorem of calculus here:

If f is continuous on an interval I, then f has an antiderivative on I. In particular if a is any point in I, then function F defined by

F(x) = S f(t)dt [a,x]

is an antiderivative of f on I; that is, F'(x) = f(x) for each x in I.

The book tells me it's zero... but I really have no idea why.