Jesus Dreams, Visions, Vistations Among Muslims--Various Reports and Related Issues

reply to post by BO XIAN


Hallelujah!

Praise be to God!

See! Prayer do work!

By the power of the Spirit, the Lord's Will be done. That all who earnestly seek, shall find!

reply to post by NOTurTypical

Who was using Islam? I was just doing an extension of the silly 'If "blah and blah" happened today' argument.

I did read your article (despite its very suspect authorship), and watch as much of the video as I could. How do you think I was responding to them? Your link claimed Islam taught God was capricious, yet gave examples that were pretty similar to how God acted in the Bible as well (as the example I gave with Job and Abraham).

reply to post by Deetermined

Originally posted by Deetermined
Some evidence of the differences found between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hebrew Bible would speak louder than words here. Don't tell me which books were different. Tell me what events were different. Events that mattered.

Oh, so I suppose your "best" version of the Bible wouldn't need any other text than "OT: Adam and Eve sinned, and created the original sin, which all humans have" and then "NT: Jesus came, died on the cross, and saved us from our sins if we believe in him". If I write that on two pieces of paper, it would still be the Bible to you, because "events are the same, even if the books are different"?
I'm sorry, but according to the Bible, "ALL Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness", so if one text says one thing, but another text (like the Dead Sea Scrolls) says something completely diffferent, I guess God is okay with scriptures being totally distorted and changed, and that lesson wasn't important anymore?
How would I show it to you? The Dead Sea Scrolls aren't available for viewing for the public. How would you verify? All I can do is give you the research of scholars.The Oxford Companion to Archeology, for example, says that Exodus and Samuel have "dramatic" differences in language as well as content. Another source also speaks of Jeremiah.

Originally posted by Deetermined
It's real easy to say that the Qu'ran is closer to any "original" when it was written by only one man versus many books that were written by over 40 authors as proof of Jesus' existence and words.

...Are you now admitting that the Quran is more textualy reliable than the Bible? Because having "40 authors" who copy some stuff from each other, contradict each other on other stuff, and whose books don't match the supposed same books from the same authors as discovered close to the original time of authorship isn't a point in your favour.

Originally posted by Deetermined
Who do we have as witnesses and authors in the Qu'ran to what Muhammad did?

What, is that a trick question, where the answer is "Haha! But the Bible does"? Again, having "multiple authors" of one book, isn't proof of authenticity or originality. But since you ask, yeah, there is way more contemporary historical evidence for the existence of Muhammad than there is for the stuff Jesus did.

Since when did this turn into a "My scripture is better than yours!" argument? Honestly, that is a very silly path to go down.

reply to post by babloyi


If you knew anything about the Bible, you would know that many of the same stories are repeated over and over again by different authors in different books. Not so in the Qu'ran. One story by one man. No witnesses.

reply to post by Deetermined

So different authors copy each other (and still get things wrong). I don't see your point. Again, that isn't evidence for authenticity, or originality, or correctness to the originals.

reply to post by babloyi

(despite its very suspect authorship)

That's ad hominem and "poisoning the well" fallacy. It renders your entire argument invalid. You may not care, but..

reply to post by NOTurTypical

No it doesn't. My argument follows that, which you didn't respond to.

And if you didn't want "ad hominem" attacks, you shouldn't have used "Oh, he's an ex-muslim!" as an argument.

In the same way that "It seems very obvious that this man is a liar, or at least hugely ignorant" is an irreleveant argument without actually pointing out WHY (which I still did, though, which you didn't acknowledge), and you called this an "ad hominem" attack,

much the same "This man is an ex-muslim" is ALSO a very irrelevant argument, unless you point out HOW it is relevant. He certainly doesn't know much about Islam (or even Christianity/Judaism, considering the examples he was using in his article), so the claim he had "insider knowledge" is pretty much void, never mind that all the scripture, with dozens and dozens of different translations is freely available online, so there is no "insider knowledge" anyhow.

Still, I suspect very strongly if I provided a link to an article by a supposed ex-christian (as if that gives him some sort of qualification), who made absurd claims like...I dunno...Christianity requires that we all be in preparation to kill everyone, you would as well call BS on that, and point out that you very much doubt that the individual has any real knowledge of Christianity.

Originally posted by babloyi
reply to post by Deetermined

 

So different authors copy each other (and still get things wrong). I don't see your point. Again, that isn't evidence for authenticity, or originality, or correctness to the originals.

What are you talking about when you say, "still gets things wrong"? You can say that, but until you point out the differences that change the story, you've got nothing. I'm guessing you can't because you've never read the Bible. That's the only reason I can imagine that you keep making these claims, but don't point out any of them.

reply to post by babloyi


While talking about "suspect authorship"....

[046:009] "Say: "I am no bringer of new-fangled doctrine among the apostles, nor do I know what will be done with me or with you. I follow but that which is revealed to me by inspiration; I am but a Warner open and clear."

www.answering-christianity.com...:9&search_type=And

Muhammad admits he knows nothing about what's going to happen to himself, let alone other people.

And I doubt God would be the one inspiring someone like Muhammad because:

abrahamic-faith.com...

reply to post by Deetermined

Are you talking about the Bible in general, or the differences between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Old Testament we have now?
Because, as I said, I don't have access to most of the Dead Sea scrolls, but the scholars who DO have said this.

Unless you mean points in the Bible we have currently where it contradicts itself. In which case, there are lists and lists and websites dedicated to this very purpose all over the web. I don't want to have to link any of these, because they are quite obviously biased, and many of them are faulty contradictions, but I am sure you can look up the several real ones in websites like skepticsannotatedbible, evilbible, infidels.org, etc. Off the top of my head, I could mention what Jesus was hung on...was it a cross, a pole, a tree? What is Jesus's genealogy? What were his last words?

Now you COULD excuse these contradictions with claims like "These books were written by normal people inspired by God, and normal people make mistakes, remember different things differently, etc.", but when the crux of your argument is "Look at how many people attested to Jesus's existence and teachings, and how all these vastly diverse authors all speak the same thing, thus the Bible is true and original and authentic", and these same authors don't agree on the words of their Messiah (his teachings and his sayings, which I'd say are pretty important), the method of his death (which seems half of the religion for some Christians), and the exactness of his genealogy (which Christians seem to obsess over as proof of validity of his Messianicness), I'm going to call you out on that argument.

As for the verse you quoted to me from the Quran, what of it? It seems to be the exact same position Jesus takes, i.e. that he has no knowledge of the future except that which God gave him through inspiration.

It is true, I've never read the Bible from beginning to end, but I've noticed that most christians haven't either. Have you? And since you are also making huge assumptions and leaps about Islam and the Quran, let me throw back the same accusation at you. I bet you have never read the Quran.

reply to post by babloyi


Yes, I've studied both.

It's obvious you haven't studied either one, so there's no point in continuing a debate where you aren't even capable of coming up with one example and giving your own explanation for it.

Peace.

Originally posted by Deetermined
reply to post by babloyi

 

If you knew anything about the Bible, you would know that many of the same stories are repeated over and over again by different authors in different books. Not so in the Qu'ran. One story by one man. No witnesses.

the Quran is written in Urdu also... it is the oldest unchanged language I believe on the planet...

you know what happens when your language is not updated?

not much of anything really... and back in those days man was closer to animals!

evolution of a language is very important because it also helps the human race as a whole to evolve. English is not the international language of business because of our economy that's for sure... but the reasons English is the international language have to deal with the same reasons we have been to the moon and given the world the internet.

the evolution and refinement of a language does just that...

Anyone here seen that movie Stargate? where writing was forbidden... in effect preventing them to learn and in turn be free. It is the same thing when you do it with a language because the two "language and writing" are directly connected.

reply to post by Deetermined

"Studied"? I thought you said "read". If by "studied" you mean "got my information from websites with an axe to grind", then yeah, I haven't really studied either religion .

reply to post by SisyphusRide

While there probably are translations of the Quran in urdu, I think it was developed less than 500 years ago in India...it certainly isn't all that old or unchanging.

Arabic, which is the language of the Quran isn't that old or unchanging either. Most arabs can probably understand the arabic of the Quran as easily as if someone asked you to undertand Le Morte D'Arthur in the original writing.

reply to post by babloyi


My comment about the man being an ex-muslim wasn't an attack. It was a rebuttal to your claim that I don't know Islam. I don't you're correct, however ex-muslims do know Islam. Punting to an ex Muslim shields me from that claim of a bias or ad hominem attack.

Your comment was one though, you didn't address anything the ex Muslim had to say, but attacked him as a person thinking it in someway debunked what he actually said.

It didn't whatsoever.

reply to post by NOTurTypical

Errrmmmm...I don't know if you read my posts or not, but I did respond to the content of the article. Go look it up. That response also explained one of the reasons I suspect the guy isn't an ex-muslim at all...he seems to be having a completely bizarrely incorrect understanding of Islam. It'd be as if (I gave another example before), someone claimed to be an "ex-christian" and wrote articles about how Christianity is false because Jesus thought the colour green was satanic. Bizarre nonsense that gives a very obvious impression that the person has no idea what he's talking about.