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Author | Topic: Is Christ cruel? (For member Schrafinator) | |||||||||||||||||||
tsig Member (Idle past 2928 days) Posts: 738 From: USA Joined: |
Fact remains, there is no belief in anything that happened to Mohammed or concerning Mohammed that is an article of belief, such as his turning water into wine, or healing the sick or raising the dead or the like. The belief you are talking about is the kind of belief in an abstraction, which is what I was contrasting with the belief in Jesus that we are called to. Jesus PROVED by his life and his actions that He is God -- this is what we are asked to believe, what He said and did. Mohammed just TELLS you Allah is God and Mohammed is his prophet and didn't do a thing to prove any of it. How about conquering all the major states around them. Allah proved to be a better god than the OT one. Muhammed split the moon.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1464 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
How about conquering all the major states around them. Allah proved to be a better god than the OT one. Weird, one of the usual accusations of Christianity is that it conquered Europe by force, which is false, but if Allah does it, he's a hero. Wow. Mohammed made converts by murder, killed Christians and Jews who wouldn't convert, or reduced them to tenth class citizens. I guess that makes Allah a better god.
Muhammed split the moon. Looks to be all in one piece to me. This message has been edited by Faith, 06-04-2005 10:40 PM This message has been edited by Faith, 06-04-2005 10:42 PM
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lfen Member (Idle past 4697 days) Posts: 2189 From: Oregon Joined: |
Jesus PROVED by his life and his actions that He is God -- this is what we are asked to believe, what He said and did. Mohammed just TELLS you Allah is God and Mohammed is his prophet and didn't do a thing to prove any of it. Well, Paul just tell us that Jesus was sacrificed and so we are saved. I don't see how that is all that different from what Mohammed is doing. Paul's proofs are pretty much the same in that the believers can have experiences of the Holy Spirit or Jesus also. Where is there any proof other than the self fulfilling prophecy of expectations being manifested in some religious experience or other? lfen
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1464 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Well, Paul just tell us that Jesus was sacrificed and so we are saved. I don't see how that is all that different from what Mohammed is doing. Really? What exactly IS Mohammed doing, saying Allah is God and Mohammed is his prophet? What on earth does that say to anybody? It says nothing about the character of Allah or his prophet, says nothing about what Allah is like or what his intentions are or why anybody should listen to Mohammed at all. Jesus on the other hand demonstrated His credentials as God and His will to save. In other words *I* see how it is VERY different from what Mohammed *did* -- which is nothing.
Paul's proofs are pretty much the same in that the believers can have experiences of the Holy Spirit or Jesus also. Where is there any proof other than the self fulfilling prophecy of expectations being manifested in some religious experience or other? Where is Allah or Mohammed talking about "experiences?" Also Paul doesn't argue from personal experiences but from the history of God's work in the world. The proof is amply documented in the life of Jesus and his disciples including Paul, who had the power to perform miracles to demonstrate that God was the origin of the Way they taught. Mohammed did zip except threaten and torment people into following whoever or whatever "Allah" is, which interestingly is not explained in the Koran. This message has been edited by Faith, 06-05-2005 12:09 AM
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lfen Member (Idle past 4697 days) Posts: 2189 From: Oregon Joined: |
the history of God's work in the world. The proof is amply documented in the life of Jesus and his disciples including Paul, who had the power to perform miracles to demonstrate that God was the origin of the Way they taught. By "history of God's work in the world" you are referring to the Old Testament? "The proof is amply documented in the life of Jesus and his desciples including Paul". Aside from the the Gospels and the Epistles where is there any unforged or unequivocal documentation for the life of Jesus? lfen
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tsig Member (Idle past 2928 days) Posts: 738 From: USA Joined: |
topic drift, no repy
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nator Member (Idle past 2189 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Well, it really depends upon the stakes of what I'm being asked to believe. If my close friend says to me, "I went to an amusement park last weekend and rode a roller coaster.", I have no problem believing them. If a complete stranger comes up to me and says, "I can swim the English Channel." I am probably not going to believe him unless he can demonstrate to my satisfaction that he can do this. If I read a 2000 year old book that says "This man is the son of God and everything he and his followers wrote needs to be followed to the letter of you will go to hell." then I'm going toneed some incredibly strong trust that this book is accurate and "the real deal". I then find out that this book isn't the only one claiming to speak for God's or gods' wishes but that there are many! It wasn't written by any witnesses to these events, nor by the alleged son of God at all, but by people who were told the stories later, sometimes hundreds of years later. I also find out that there are no original copies of any of the writings; they ahve all been translated a whole bunch of times and copied by hand many times, too, leading me to believe that plenty of errors are likely. Then I also discover that there isn't just a single version of this book, but dozens, each a little different, with different groups saying theirs is the only "real" correct version. I find out that many of the seperate versions were edited by political reasons, and that all of the oldest writings aren't even included but were voted on for in- or exclusion by a bunch of men some hundreds of years ago.
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nator Member (Idle past 2189 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: More than just interesting, this ability is crucial for anyone to understand any concept. You would do well to emulate this skill.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1464 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
You prefer to believe the lies about "the book" and its authors, which have been answered many times. You like them anyway, so I'm going to leave you to them.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1464 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
More than just interesting, this ability is crucial for anyone to understand any concept. You would do well to emulate this skill. I haven't noticed anyone on your side with this skill except Modulous and Legend, and they are quite notable for it.
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nator Member (Idle past 2189 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: So, there IS an original copy of the Bible, and there really aren't dozens of slightly different versions of the Bible, and the King James bible WASN'T edited to suit, uh, King James, and the Canonical books WEREN'T decided upon by a bunch of men some hundreds of years ago, and the Bible WASN'T translated and hand-copied hundreds of times by fallible men? It remains, Faith, that the stakes of believing in the Bible are much higheer than those of believing a close friend who told me of his trip to an amusement park, so why shouldn't my standards of evidence be much greater?
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nator Member (Idle past 2189 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Like I said, you would do well to emulate this skill. Maybe you would be let back into the science fora if you did.
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Admin Director Posts: 13014 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 1.9 |
It isn't clear how the part of the discussion involving Allah and Islam is relevant to the thread's topic. Please make clear how this part of the discussion relates to the thread's topic or move it to another thread.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1464 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
So, there IS an original copy of the Bible, Of course not. There isn't an original copy of ANYTHING that old. That doesn't stop us from taking the copies of ancient works as authentic. And the Bible is represented by THOUSANDS of ancient copies in many languages, which when compared with each other give very reliable readings and support none of the claims of important differences that debunkers are always making up.
and there really aren't dozens of slightly different versions of the Bible, What are you talking about, modern translations? There are lots of those, thanks partly perhaps to commercial interests, but those are not different "versions" in any important sense, just different translator's choices of how to render the Greek and Hebrew texts into English. Do you have any sense at all of the processes of translation and how many ways there are of rendering one language into another? Some versions try to be as literal as possible, some try to render the meaning without sticking to the literal wording of the originals and there are many degrees in between; then the shades of meaning of some words seem to fit the original better than others according to judgment calls by the translators. The differences in meaning of the final versions are nevertheless for the most part negligible, although there are reasons to prefer some versions over others if you study up on the subject. This all adds up to the flimsiest of grounds, trumped-up I'd say, for a complaint that the Bible is therefore untrustworthy.
and the King James bible WASN'T edited to suit, uh, King James, Definitely it was not. King James had nothing to do with its translation except to commission it. The translation itself was done by "fifty-four of the greatest Bible scholars in Great Britain" according to the historical section in the back of my copy of the KJV.
and the Canonical books WEREN'T decided upon by a bunch of men some hundreds of years ago, I have no idea what this is supposed to suggest. At some point the canon WAS of course decided upon by the leaders of the church. I had thought this occurred at the Council of Nicaea, but others have corrected me. Now it appears that it may have been determined in a series of councils over years, by many different leaders of the many churches, and the determination was largely based on the judgment of the churches that had used the various separate books over the centuries {edit: as opposed to being the decision of just a few men}. Different traditions ended up with slightly different canons. How does this historical process give anyone an excuse to doubt the Bible? If anything it should increase its reliability, since the disagreements were minimal, the uninspired and less reliable manuscripts were eliminated by the process, by the good judgment of the best spiritual leaders of the church, over many centuries, and in the end only the best were kept.
and the Bible WASN'T translated and hand-copied hundreds of times by fallible men? Yes, of course it was, but there are thousands upon thousands of old manuscripts to check for possible errors, and the fact is the errors are amazingly minimal and the fact of there being so many copies means these errors are easily corrected from other copies. It is also possible to reconstruct the most reliable idea of the originals from all these copies. Again, the complaint is trumped up, based on ignorance of what information is actually possessed and of the processes involved in understanding it.
It remains, Faith, that the stakes of believing in the Bible are much higheer than those of believing a close friend who told me of his trip to an amusement park, so why shouldn't my standards of evidence be much greater? The fact is that the evidence is enormous and redundant and the complaints about it are based on ignorance and raw prejudice. To believe these complaints is to demonstrate a wilful refusal to accept the message of the Bible as there are no reasonable grounds for the complaints based on the actual facts. This message has been edited by Faith, 06-05-2005 10:21 AM
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1464 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I am not restricted from the science fora.
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