Ban the Bible and the Qur'an?

[interminable]

Do you believe it is possible to be an honest person while following a religion other than Islam?

Yeah

 

[YmirGF]

Isn't this yours

Ban the Bible and the Qur'an?

Um, no... do try to follow along, child.

 

[chessplayer]

The missing point here is that Christianity is a relationship ( With God through Jesus ) and not a ritual , although some denominations have some liturgy and ritual in them , basically it`s about knowing Jesus as a friend , counsellor , healer, etc, all with ( I believe ) eternal consequences .

When you meet the author of any book it helps in understanding the book , especially with the Bible , as it has spiritual dimensions and effects as well as intellectual . We can meet God through Jesus .

Because the Bible has a spiritual dimension, it daily produces literally millions of sermons for church , or group Bible studies or just plain personal meditation , these happen every day and in every country in the world.

Take the story of David and Goliath . Goliath can represent the myriad problems that people can face today , health , financial, social ,addictions , fears etc. David defeated Goliath by ,firstly convinced of God`s greatness ( through meditation on Him and His creation ), then faced up to Goliath , and spoke Gods words to him , seconds later Goliath was dead and David`s victory is still discussed and known throughout the western world ,

Transposing that to our lives , we are encouraged to do the same , meditate on God`s Word , declare it in faith , and see God`s miracle power over our afflictions , problems etc. ( Mark 11 vs 23/24 )

Another obvious one is Psalm 23 , the Lord is my shepherd , we all need the shepherd in our lives , we are vulnerable before birth and for years as a child , when we sleep , when we are sick , choosing a life partner , career, as we get older and beyond ( although I can`t prove that one ) probably for over 60% of our time here on earth , we need care and help , laughable when you see us strutting around declaring "we are the masters of our universe " .

It truly is an amazing book and able to bless and transform any life given to it`s truth .

 

[interminable]

Um, no... do try to follow along, child.

[quote uid=56297 name="Kirran" post=4985445]You have to be an expert if you want to understand what is apparently the greatest and most sophisticated piece of literature ever written.<br /><br />Also, on the 'no grammatical errors in the Qur'an' thing - if you base Classical Arabic on how it's spoken in the Qur'an, then <i>obviously </i>there won't be errors!<br /><br /><br /><br />I am going to ask again - please can you transliterate into Latin script? I, and pretty much everybody else around here, can't read Perso-Arabic script. If I was speaking about India, or about Hindu philosophy, I would not use Devanagari script because you would not be able to read it.<br /><br />So what about the claim? That just shows insecurity, nothing more.[/QUOTE]<br />Besides which, I've had other Muslims, over the years, claim that one does not have to write the challenge up in Arabic.<br /><br />One point that I feel <b>nullifies</b> this so-called "challenge" is who, exactly, decides if a work meets or exceeds the challenge? Necessarily, Muslims would have to decide as they simply would not recognize any others ruling or judgment on this matter. The point is that given the highly vaunted status of the Qur'an, it is unlikely that any "scholar" would look on a challenger in an unbiased way. In effect, any effort would fail before it even began because those who would have to decide would never agree that a challenger was of greater merit. That alone makes this so-called "challenge" a fraud. One would think a god would understand that small point.

 

[interminable]

This is yours[emoji651][emoji651][emoji651][emoji651][emoji651]

 

[Fool]

I don't like this way of talking to others

Anyway

Do u think I have no any problems in mind about my religion????

I have some stuff that u even can't think about it simply because I know Islam very well
So don't say we are bigot or attached to the Qur'an

This problem will never be ended for us until becoming a gnostic

any consideration that epeolatry might be an issue in islam with the Qur'an?

vs the logos of the Qur'an?

 

[YmirGF]

[quote uid=56297 name="Kirran" post=4985445]You have to be an expert if you want to understand what is apparently the greatest and most sophisticated piece of literature ever written.<br /><br />Also, on the 'no grammatical errors in the Qur'an' thing - if you base Classical Arabic on how it's spoken in the Qur'an, then <i>obviously </i>there won't be errors!<br /><br /><br /><br />I am going to ask again - please can you transliterate into Latin script? I, and pretty much everybody else around here, can't read Perso-Arabic script. If I was speaking about India, or about Hindu philosophy, I would not use Devanagari script because you would not be able to read it.<br /><br />So what about the claim? That just shows insecurity, nothing more.<br />Besides which, I've had other Muslims, over the years, claim that one does not have to write the challenge up in Arabic.<br /><br />One point that I feel <b>nullifies</b> this so-called "challenge" is who, exactly, decides if a work meets or exceeds the challenge? Necessarily, Muslims would have to decide as they simply would not recognize any others ruling or judgment on this matter. The point is that given the highly vaunted status of the Qur'an, it is unlikely that any "scholar" would look on a challenger in an unbiased way. In effect, any effort would fail before it even began because those who would have to decide would never agree that a challenger was of greater merit. That alone makes this so-called "challenge" a fraud. One would think a god would understand that small point.

Ok, clearly, your misunderstanding of English is at fault here.

 

[icehorse]

He himself can't

I'm sorry, can you say that a different way, I don't understand. Thanks.

So again, what would the Iranians say if I told them that only I could be the judge of which movie is best? (I would guess that they would disagree that only I could be the judge, right?)

 

[interminable]

I'm sorry, can you say that a different way, I don't understand. Thanks.

So again, what would the Iranians say if I told them that only I could be the judge of which movie is best? (I would guess that they would disagree that only I could be the judge, right?)

Just i said
They will say he can't to be a judge himself

 

[Kirran]

Yeah

Well that's good - one often finds that a Muslim will assume dishonesty as soon as someone questions Islamic doctrine.

 

[Kirran]

Just i said
They will say he can't to be a judge himself

So by the same logic, Muslims shouldn't be the judge of whether a text is 'like the Qur'an', correct?

 

[interminable]

So by the same logic, Muslims shouldn't be the judge of whether a text is 'like the Qur'an', correct?

I told in my previous posts

There are lots of Arab unbelievers that can be a good judge

 

[Kirran]

I told in my previous posts

There are lots of Arab unbelievers that can be a good judge

And their verdict is clear from their lack of belief.

 

[interminable]

any consideration that epeolatry might be an issue in islam with the Qur'an?

vs the logos of the Qur'an?

Epeolatry

Didn't find in my dictionary
Sorry
Please say in an easier way

 

[Kirran]

Epeolatry

Didn't find in my dictionary
Sorry
Please say in an easier way

Epeolatry means the revering of words.
Same as idolatry means the revering of idols.

 

[Fool]

Epeolatry

Didn't find in my dictionary
Sorry
Please say in an easier way

epeolatry

the worship of words and literalism at the expense of the idea being conveyed.

 

[Fool]

Epeolatry means the revering of words.
Same as idolatry means the revering of idols.

it is the idolatry of words, yes. at the expense of an idea that can be conveyed innumerable ways.

like the idea of a house vs it's forms.

 

[interminable]

And their verdict is clear from their lack of belief.

Why not

U were trying to find a good judge
Who are better than unbelievers

 

[Laika]

Hmm. I'd started composing a response that takes some bits of the OP I had a problem with to highlight them, but that approach leaves much to be desired. Because what I want to point out can be summarized far more simply than that.

When I read through that OP, @Laika, I see something that is a reflection of your personal and cultural values. From there, it seems you want to enforce your personal values onto everyone else by utilizing a classic technique of the cultural genocide toolkit: prohibitions and censorship. It'd be just like back in the good old days, when the early Christian traditions systematically maligned the polytheistic religions of the times through slander, censorship, and slaughter. They very much accomplished their goal. So the question to ask, really, is do you or do you not want to wipe the Abrahamic religions off the map? Do you or do you not want to start engaging in a campaign of cultural genocide?

As a Pagan, I obviously wouldn't much mind, but nor would I support such an effort. But then I look at the reasoning behind what you are doing, and have to ask: am I under the bullseye too? Do you want to kill my culture too? Logically, you would have to include people like me in the campaign of cultural genocide, because contemporary Pagans draw inspiration from so-called old and outdated things, too. We have to go too, right? And there's other groups too, that would be targets, yes? Hindus have got to go, right? If it isn't new, shiny, and modern, it's got to go? That's the idea, isn't it? We're all "scientifically and morally" outdated?

Well, I'n glad someone read it.

No, you nailed it. Cultural genocide is accurate. Its emotive but given the imperialist implications of european conception of progres, its accurate.

The problem is that ideas or "cultures" not merely something existing in isolation. Ideas are tools. As our science and technology advance, we necessarily have to advance our ideas to correspond to them. This process occurs in part spontaneously as new ideas supplant old ones on the back of scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs. In so far as these ideas are used within the process of production-both physically and as an understanding of social organisation- each of those greatly increase mans power to create and to destroy. This could be described as progress, but progress is a procress of simultaneous creation and destruction. So it is nieve to confuse progress with a "pain-free" conception of growth.

The "imperialist" part is over whether some ideas are superior or inferior to others. Ideally, a wholly free exchange of ideas would mean that "superior" ideas are those which have greater degree of truth content and consequently are useful in the process of production. That is not the whole story though, because ideas are not simply the reflection of objective reality in their "true" content, but also the creation of human beings. Our ideas tell us not only about the world but about our humanity- the scope and limits of our powers. So of course, ideas can serve as tools to protect and legitimise those sources of power that may have an interest in keeping people ignorant or believing in politically useful falsehoods.

The dominance of Christianity and Islam is clearly not a reflection of the scientific accuracy of either the qu'ran or the bible. They are ancient and our knowledge far surpasses that of our counterparts in the 3rd and 6th centuries when they were assembled. Whilst such texts may well have served as a repository to accumulated knowledge in their respective times, the sheer speed of the advances and accumulation of knowledge has left them far behind.

So What of the morality in the bible and the quran? If we think of moral ideas as tools and as means to express the scope and limitations of our social organisation, the same problem applies. concepts of slavery, death penalty, forced marriage or even monarchy may well be represented in their pages but they are not appropriate in societies whose technological development has vastly exceeded the source of these ideas in terms of levels of literacy, education, means of contraception or mass media as a means to participate in the political process.

God, as an idea and a tool, may serve to represent man's submission to the forces of nature and as our projection of personality or consciousness onto the weather and natural pheneomena. But when mankind has itself become a force of nature and starts "playing god", thinking that our judgements should originate from or be left to a deity is gross failure to accept responsibility for the consequences of human actions.

The problem is the persistence of religious views in our time that are wildly out of step with the sort of freedoms and powers we have. This is to the point where blind trust in ancient texts as a source of scientific and moral authority or even reasoned argument still built on the assumption that man must serve god as representing the force of nature.

If instead of trusting our desire for spiritual enlightenment and happiness to 1st century carpenters or 6th century warrior-prophets, we tried to develop ideas about our own psychological and phyisological requirement based on scientific evidence- we may find it alot easier to attain enlightenment. We could satisfy those needs for meaning and purpose.

The reason for arguing for banning the bible and the quran is as part of the larger goal-assuming that they persist in such a way through accumulated status and privallage that prevents more productive ideas coming into the mainstream. You can read that as "Communism" but a radical liberal humanism probably would do just as well. I won't deny there is cultural genocide behind the label "progress" though.

 

[Kirran]

Why not

U were trying to find a good judge
Who are better than unbelievers

Yeah, and their judgement is that the Qur'an is not God's word. That's why they're unbelievers. So do you accept their judgement and become a kaffir?