Dr Rick

The original assertion has now been so gutted by pleas for literary interpretation and equivocations of terminology to the point that if the same license to employ vagaries was granted other written works, one could easily defend any Marvel comic book as an accurate scientific text and any issue of People magazine as a rewritten Shakespearean play.

The defense of the Qur'an on this thread amounts to nothing more than claiming that there are so many ways to interpret the authors' intents that one of them must be pretty close to right.

Darth Dane

For one thing, the verses up say that there are seven *different* heavens.

Looking from the outside, God would be able to look into all of the heavens, as all seven are in God's House or domain, and so it is one divided into seven, connected by teh eye of God, God is everywhere or something right?





DD - Love & Laughter

TheDiddleyMan

I fail to see what you are saying and what it has to do with anything....

If it is one heaven to God then why is calling it seven? and either way, if what you are saying is true, it still defeats River's point..

Kevin

River

I understand where everygone is coming from. This is due to the popular misconception that the Qur'an can only be extracted Literally. This is not true. Yes the Qur'an is the Literal Word of G-d. But this LITERAL Word of G-d has both LITERAL and allegorical passages and meaning ( as indicated from within the Scripture).

Demigawd

Answers based on observation and experimentation are the best tools humanity has in regards to understanding and interacting with our environment. Anything else, including religion, is merely guessing. I readily admit that my knowledge of anything is limited and potentially inaccurate. You, on the other hand, cannot afford to do the same as such an admission would blow your dogma right out of the water.

I don't have to be sure about anything. You, due to your faith, have to believe your bible is 100% accurate, and therefore you have closed your mind to learning anything beyond your religious party's dogma. That's pretty sad, but hey, it's your life and intellect to waste if you so choose.

Boro Nut

So explain to me why St Thomas of Asisi is a gospel and not David Koresh's drivellings. The selection process and critical thinking applied bemuse me. If Revelation can be a gospel, it would seem to me a gospel doesn't need to be based on fact, as even you couldn't argue that Revelation has happened.

If I wrote an account of an incident based on reading someone else's, why would you believe it corroborates the original?

Why select the 66 books that they did and leave out the hundreds of others simply on the basis that they conflict? Why do some bibles have some books that others don't? Why leave out a conflicting account if it could be the true one and the 66 false?

Why is your god so good at creating universes but so crap at dictating letters?

Boro Nut

Wyz_sub10

Not all bibles, of course. The Catholic bible has a different number of books that the King James bible.

You can begin by addressing this before tackling why books by female authors were left out, why the Gospel of Thomas or Gospel of Mary Magdelene, or any of an addition 100 or so books were left out.

Except your "book store" has been edited to remove sources that so not verify the claims made. So this analogy is far from accurate.

Add to the fact that the books in the bible do not verify the claims made in each.



I'm not sure at who this is directed, but I have two pieces of news for you: 1) many atheists are quite aware of the bible's history and its construction, 2) many Christians are clueless of what the bible consists of.



I think you may need a history lesson in this regard. They were not put together "so people didn't have to go buy 66 separate books" (especially since the bible was not available for the common man to read anyway).

They were put together to create a defined source - "Mark, word of god. Thomas, not word of god." Prior to this, many of the books no longer recognized as "valid" were used by the church and in church teachings.

River

The following article is by Dr. Maurice Bucaille, author of the Bible , the Quran and Science


A man of Muhammad's time could easily distinguish between the Sun, a blazing heavenly body well known to the inhabitants of the desert, and the Moon, the body of the cool of the night. The comparisons found in the Qur'an on this subject are therefore quite normal. What is interesting to note here is the sober quality of the comparisons, and the absence in the text of the Qur'an of any elements of comparison that might have prevailed at the time and which in our day would appear as phantasmagorial.



The Sun and the Moon.

The Sun is a shining glory (diya') and the Moon a light (nur). This translation would appear to be more correct than those given by others, where the two terms are inverted. In fact there is little difference in meaning since diya' belongs to a root (dw') which, according to Kazimirski's authoritative Arabic/French dictionary, means 'to be bright, to shine' (e.g. like a fire). The same author attributes to the substantive in question the meaning of 'light'.

The difference between Sun and Moon will be made clearer by further quotes from the Qur'an.

--sura 25, verse 61:
"Blessed is the One Who placed the constellations in heaven and placed therein a lamp and a moon giving light."

--sura 71, 15-16:
"Did you see how God created seven heavens one above an other and made the moon a light therein and made the sun a lamp?"

--sura 78, verses 12-13:
"We have built above you seven strong (heavens) and placed a blazing lamp."

The blazing lamp is quite obviously the sun.

Here the moon is defined as a body that gives light (munir) from the same root as nur (the light applied to the Moon). The Sun however is compared to a torch (siraj) or a blazing (wahhaj) lamp.


It is known that the Sun is a star that generates intense heat and light by its internal combustions, and that the Moon, which does not give of flight itself, and is an inert body (on its external layers at least) merely reflects the light received from the Sun.

There is nothing in the text of the Qur'an that contradicts what we know today about these two celestial bodies.



Whereas the Bible calls the Sun and Moon "lights" and merely adds to one the adjective "greater' and to the other 'lesser", the Quran ascribes differences other than that of dimension to each respectively. Agreed, this is nothing more than a verbal distinction, but how was one to communicate to men at the time without confusing them while at the same time expressing the notion that the Sun and Moon were not absolutely identical 'lights'?

Lobstrosity

You simply say the moon glows because the sun shines on it (or it reflects the light of the sun). It's not that hard.

echidna

So how does one decide when to use literal and when to use allegorical interpretation ? The Quran suffers just as equally with the Bible in terms of multiple interpretation & being used to justify slective agendas.

Just how do you plan to go about proving that River's interpretation is the One True Meaning of the Quran ?

Surely such an omniscient and omnipotent being would have left his message a little less ambiguous. Sure as heck I'd be pretty disappointed in myself if my words could be so easily reinterpreted to justify concepts as simple as civilian murder, female circumcision and so forth.