Vicar Philip

Hi Magus, sorry I haven't been back sooner.

I take exception to your remark above, that we are in love with the world. I am in love with LIFE, which happens to include the world, I suppose, but also leaves room for my wife, kids, good old manual labor, etc. I'm not seeing where sin enters that picture.

We take the easy road, huh? What exactly does that mean? Is this the old morality argument in sheep's clothing?

I noticed you avoided addressing my question about your Argument from Numbers. You know, where if a million people believe the moon is made of cheese, that makes it true. Well?

Do I believe we are all born Christians? Absolutely not. I believe we are all born atheists and get religion drilled into our heads by well-meaning, but misguided, human beings. If it was god who gave us religion, why does he make it curiously resemble a cultural tradition more than a universal belief?

net2002

Because the prophecies in the OT speak of the Lord coming to Earth.

Mojo : Yes vishnu, prabhu,Shiva were all gods who became flesh


god/godess's coming down and saving their people spirtually is a fucking myth that predates crosstianity from thousands of years.


Dave Matson :Specifically, the passion stories of the gospels strike me as altogether too close to contemporary myths of dying and rising savior gods including Osiris, Tammuz, Baal, Attis, Adonis, Hercules, and Asclepius. Like Jesus, these figures were believed to have once lived a life upon the earth, been killed, and risen shortly thereafter. Their deaths and resurrections were in most cases ritually celebrated each spring to herald the return of the life to vegetation. In many myths, the savior's body is anointed for burial, searched out by holy women and then reappear alive a few days later.


Innana the godess of Sumeria : We also know that circulating in the Middle East were very ancient legends regarding the resurrection of the goddess Inanna--also known as Ishtar--who was crucified in the underworld, then rescued and raised back to earth by her divine attendant, a tale recounted in a four thousand year old clay tablet from Sumeria.[38]

Paul modified these myths to suit his 1/3 trinitarian god.


Have you seen the film universal soldier? Notice how it is a mishmash of the terminator and robocop? apply it to christianity

The Bible says the word of God became flesh and dwelt among us.

Who gives a fuck? do the jews? the orthodox jews say your god is a idol on a stick? what kind of plan is your god up to?





Jesus was called Immanuel, which means God with us or God among us.


I think you are unaware of the recent mcfall-till debate on alt.bible.errancy.


Mac: Yes, and he was born in Isaiah's day void of the attributes that
>accompany the meaning (vs. 16).

TILL
What Isaiah said would happen is the only point relevant to our discussion,
and you have now agreed that Isaiah said that a woman would give birth to a
son and name him Immanuel. Mary gave birth to a son but didn't name him
Immanuel, so how did "all these things" fulfill Isaiah 7:14?


Mac: You have elements that are correct, but if prophetic fulfillment
>was seen in Jesus' birth only, then why do we not see Matthew seizing on
>the use of Immanuel throughout his writings?

TILL
Well, I can only speculate on that. The book of Matthew shows that (1)
this writer had a huge interest in claiming that Jesus had fulfilled OT
prophecies, and (2) he took great liberties with those OT prophecies to
twist them into events that allegedly happened in the life of Jesus. As I
have said before, you may as well ask why he picked just one aspect from
Micah 5 and claimed that Jesus had fulfilled this. You may as well ask why
Matthew lifted an aspect of Hosea 11:1 completely out of context and said
that Jesus had fulfilled it. He obviously was more interested in
manufacturing prophecy fulfillments than he was in making proper
applications of the prophecies he quoted.

McFALL
> As I've said to you repeatedly, Matthew felt that Jesus fit the meaning
> behind Immanuel after a reflection of his life and death. From what we
> know, nobody
>referred to Jesus as Immanuel while he was alive.

TILL
Yes, you have said this repeatedly, but when are you going to SHOW that
this was the obviously intended meaning of the prophecy-fulfillment
claim? The fact that nobody referred to Jesus as Immanuel while he was
alive (as far as we know), is clear proof that "all these things" did not
fulfill what Isaiah had spoken.


McFALL
>The verse you quoted above, vs. 22, says ALL this was done in prophetic
>fulfillment. The "all" encompasses vs. 21 which also says that Jesus was
>in the saving business. To Matthew, "God with us" fulfilled ALL these
>elements.

TILL
And your point is what? What Matthew may have thought "in retrospect" is
irrelevant to a prophecy that said a son would be named Immanuel and a
later claim that the circumstances of Jesus's birth had fulfilled that
prophecy.

You can't seem to get into your head that "call his name X" in Hebrew was
just a way of saying that a person was given X as his name. In French, one
does not say, "My name is Pierre"; he says, "Je m'appelle Pierre," which
literally means, "I call myself Pierre." An issue you are ignoring is that
Isaiah said the child's name would be called Immanuel, which was an
idiomatic way of saying that the child would be NAMED Immanuel, so the
prophecy could not have been "fulfilled" unless the alleged subject of the
fulfillment had been named Immanuel.

I have quoted already several passages that show that "call his name thus
and so" meant to give "thus and so" as the actual name of the person, but
it seems that I will have to use overkill on you.

>Genesis 5:28 And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat
>a son:
>29 And HE CALLED HIS NAME NOAH, saying, This same shall comfort us
>concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which
>Yahweh hath cursed.
>Genesis 16:15 And Hagar bare Abram a son: and ABRAM CALLED HIS SON'S
>NAME, which Hagar bare, ISHMAEL.
>Genesis 19:37 And the firstborn bare a son, AND CALLED HIS NAME MOAB: the
>same is the father of the Moabites unto this day.
>38 And the younger, she also bare a son, AND CALLED HIS NAME BENAMMI: the
>same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day.
>Genesis 25:25 And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment;
>and they CALLED HIS NAME ESAU.
>26 And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on Esau's
>heel; and HIS NAME WAS CALLED JACOB....
>Exodus 2:10 And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's
>daughter, and he became her son. And SHE CALLED HIS NAME MOSES: and she
>said, Because I drew him out of the water.

If you keep up your "retrospective" line, I will quote more examples to
you. "Call his name" in Hebrew was the way Hebrews said that a specific
name was given. Hence, when Isaiah said that the young woman would call
the name of her son Immanuel, this meant that the actual name of the son
would be Immanuel. He didn't mean that this son would retrospectively come
to be considered Immanuel.

If not, why not?

A genuine fulfillment of this prophecy would have required (1) the birth of
a son, and (2) the giving of the name Immanuel to this son.

If not, why not?

> >Till
> > As for what Matthew intended by the word "parthenos," why don't we let
> >the context in which it was used explain what he meant?
> >
> > >Matthew 1:22 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was
> > >spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,
> > >23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and
> > >they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.
> > >24 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord
> >>had bidden him, and took unto him his wife:
> > >25 AND KNEW HER NOT TILL SHE HAD BROUGHT FORTH HER >>FIRSTBORN SON: and he called his name JESUS.
> >
> > Matthew made a point of saying that Joseph did not "know" Mary until
> >Jesus had been born. That is clear evidence that he meant for "parthenos"
> >to convey the sense of virginity.
> >
> > McFALL
> > >To put it another way, prophecy fulfillment was not seen in the birth,
> > >rather, it was seen after this special Jew's death by way of reflection
> > >on his entire life (vs. 21). To Matthew, he was seen as "God with us."
> > >Again, if that were not so, why do we not find the mention of Immanual
> > >elsewhere.

TILL
Yes, you can "put" it that way, but the text will still say what it
says. When I taught American literature, I always gave essay tests. When
the test called for the interpretation of a literary passage, I would
stipulate in the question that the answers had to be justified by analysis
of the passage. I'm now going to give you the same test question.

Justify your claim that Matthew 1:23 was merely the writer's retrospective,
symbolic interpretation of Isaiah 7:14.

> > TILL
> > Once again, I will quote what Matthew said.
> >
> > >Matthew 1:22 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was
> > >spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,
> > >23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and
> > >they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God
> >>with us.
> >
> > Matthew said that this happened to fulfill what was spoken in Isaiah
> > 7:14. McFall said that it didn't. Hence, McFall is arguing with his
> >own "fallible" agent who wrote under the "influence" of God.
> >
> > Oh, wait a minute. That's Bell's position, isn't it?
> >
> > At any rate, McFall is arguing that Matthew didn't mean what he said. Why
> > is he arguing that Matthew didn't mean what he said? The only reason
> >I can think of is that McFall is working overtime to try to prove that a
> > statement in an errant Bible was not an incorrect statement.
> >
> > If* [you mean "is"] McFall really a closet inerrantist?

TILL
Yes, I did. Could there be so many "ifs" in your position that I had "if"
on my mind? By the way, you didn't answer the question, even though you
understood what I intended to say.

McFALL
>Mac: If you interpret parthenos in the same sense as almah (which was
>the sense of interpretation up until the time of Matthew's writing) the
>focus of the prophecy shifts the emphasis to Immanual being the point of
>Matthew's quotation; in which he cited to support his own virgin
>narrative.

TILL
Nancy and I have both shown by textual analysis that Matthew obviously
intended "parthenos" to mean "virgin." Be that as it may, Matthew quoted
the entire "prophecy" [both aspects of it] and said that "all these things"
had happened to fulfill it.

McFALL
>In that regard, I've contended all along that Matthew reached out to
>Isaiah's Immanuel to tie it in to known characteristics that support
>Matthew's view on the conception of Jesus. In short, Isaiah's Immanuel
>lived and died in Isaiah's time; and Matthew saw in Jesus
>characteristics that he gleaned (by way of reflection in retrospect)
>from the meaning of Isaiah's Immanuel.

TILL
So you keep saying, but you have yet to do a contextual analysis to show
that this was what Matthew meant.

So justify your answer.


ENJOY





Jesus claimed to be God, people called Him God and worshipped Him.

People worship a dick in india.Did the dick speak?



Jesus performed miracles, and came back from the dead.


Someone said : Caesar must have been resurrected. Nobody found his body either. Ditto for Socrates, Plato....in fact, nearly everyone must have been physically resurrected



No records of any other Messiah's coming back from the dead.


richard carrier : Nevertheless, Christian apologist Douglas Geivett has declared that the evidence for the physical resurrection of Jesus meets, and I quote, "the highest standards of historical inquiry" and "if one takes the historian's own criteria for assessing the historicity of ancient events, the resurrection passes muster as a historically well-attested event of the ancient world," as well-attested, he says, as Julius Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon in 49 B.C.[5] Well, it is common in Christian apologetics, throughout history, to make absurdly exaggerated claims, and this is no exception. Let's look at Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon for a minute:

First of all, we have Caesar's own word on the subject. Indeed, The Civil War has been a Latin classic for two thousand years, written by Caesar himself and by one of his generals who was definitely an eye-witness and who knew the man personally. In contrast, we do not have anything written by Jesus, and we do not know for certain the name of any author of any of the accounts of his physical resurrection.

Second, we have many of Caesar's enemies, including Cicero, a contemporary of the event, reporting the crossing of the Rubicon, whereas we have no hostile or even neutral records of the resurrection until over a hundred years after the event, and fifty years after the Christians' own claims had been widely spread around.

Third, we have a number of inscriptions and coins produced soon after the Republican Civil War related to the Rubicon crossing, including mentions of battles and conscriptions and judgments, which in fact form almost a continuous chain of evidence for Caesar's entire march. On the other hand, we have absolutely no physical evidence of any kind in the case of the resurrection.

Fourth, we have the story of the "Rubicon Crossing" in almost every historian of the period, including the most prominent scholars of the age: Suetonius, Appian, Cassius Dio, Plutarch. Moreover, these scholars have a measure of proven reliability, since a great many of their reports on other matters have been confirmed in material evidence and in other sources. In addition, they all quote and name many different sources, showing a wide reading of the witnesses and documents, and they show a regular desire to critically examine claims for which there is any dispute. If that wasn't enough, all of them cite or quote sources which were written by witnesses, hostile and friendly, of the Rubicon crossing and its repercussions.
Compare this with the resurrection: we have not even a single historian mentioning the event until the 3rd and 4th centuries, and then only by Christian historians.[6] And of those few people who do mention it within a century of the event, none of them show any wide reading, never cite any other sources, show no sign of a skilled or critical examination of conflicting claims, have no other literature or scholarship to their credit that we can test for their skill and accuracy, are completely unknown, and have an overtly declared bias towards persuasion and conversion.[7]


Fifth, the history of Rome could not have proceeded as it did had Caesar not physically moved an army into Italy. Even if Caesar could have somehow cultivated the mere belief that he had done this, he could not have captured Rome or conscripted Italian men against Pompey's forces in Greece. On the other hand, all that is needed to explain the rise of Christianity is a belief--a belief that the resurrection happened. There is nothing that an actual resurrection would have caused that could not have been caused by a mere belief in that resurrection. Thus, an actual resurrection is not necessary to explain all subsequent history, unlike Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon.[8]



Now could the Apostles have just read the OT and wrote the NT to make it look fullfilled?

me : after watching the war in iraq i make a prophecy and say sadam is doomed in about 3 days. Is that a real prophecy, or has the sadams troops losing the battle helped me out to make the prophecy/prediction?





Well, why would the Apostles follow their lie so passionately?



Why would the die quite greusome deaths to support a lie that THEY made up?


Me : why would people wanna crash planes (which is probable 10 times more gruesome) into building because of thier faith?


also what makes you think the apostles died cause of your god-man bullshit?


visit : http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...on/index.shtml

ed babinski : Human beings have "suffered" at each other’s hands for as long as human beings have had hands. "Suffering" for almost any conceivable reason, including "suffering for the Gospel," is therefore not unique. Throughout history and in fields of human endeavor as diverse as religion, politics, science, art, and education, great minds have suffered at the hands of little minds; great hearts and souls have suffered at the hands of the heartless and the soulless; obstinate hearts, minds and souls have suffered at the hands of equally obstinate hearts, minds and souls. Those inflicting the suffering often thought they were "right" to do so. And those experiencing it took succor in believing that their faith, or ideas, or actions, were "right."

Speaking of non-Christians who have suffered: Jews have suffered for over a thousand years at the hands of Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Moslems, and Germans. Which reminds me of the Jewish story of a rabbi facing the Inquisition, who was asked to deny his faith. He asked for time to think it over. The next morning he said, "I will not become a Catholic, but I have a last request - before I’m burnt at the stake my tongue should be cut out for not replying at once. To such a question ‘No!’ was the only answer."

Christian antisemitism has been the cause of much Jewish suffering over the past 1900 years. And, like the modern day disavowal of the importance of pro-slavery Biblical passages, most of today’s Christians disavow the importance of anti-Jewish New Testament passages, which is certainly an improvement over the past. Still, neither the antisemitic passages, nor the pro-slavery passages, have been erased from the Bible, and some people continue to find such passages "divinely inspired." According to the author of Antisemitism in the New Testament, "Nearly every book in the New Testament expresses slander and contempt for Jews. Most Christians have maintained that the New Testament is not anti-Jewish but that antisemitism arose as a result of the misunderstanding of it. Examination of the contents of the New Testament does not support this claim."[155]

And what about the religion known as "Bahaism?" It began when the Persian holy man, Ali Muhammad (1819-1850) set out to reform Islam and bring people back to the worship of a purely spiritual God (not unlike how Jesus set out to reform the Judaism of his day). His movement caused much religious ferment. This led to his execution in 1850 by order of the Shah’s chief minister and at the instigation of Muslim clerics who saw his movement as a threat to orthodox Islam. Besides Ali Muhammad, 20,000 of his followers were martyred for their beliefs. Yet the "Bahai" religion survived, and it has communities in 205 countries.[156]

The early Mormons were persecuted by the "orthodox" Christian majority, and the founder of Mormonism was killed by a mob. Yet that religion continues to do quite well.

And what about agnostics, atheists, "heretical" Christians and "heretical" Muslims, all of whom have suffered at the hands of "orthodox" Christians and "orthodox" Muslims for daring to speak and publish their "blasphemous" or "heretical" ideas? Christians and Muslims have publicly burnt the books of their critics, so that even today, the words of Christianity’s earliest critics only survive in the form of excerpts in the works of their Christian opponents. In colonial America, there were laws that made "blasphemy" a crime punishable by death. Even up till the early 1900s, the authors of "blasphemous" literature in Great Britain and America could be put on trial, fined, and/or imprisoned for their "crime." Some Muslims still view "blasphemy and heresy" as crimes deserving the death penalty.

As I said above, human beings have "suffered" at each other’s hands for as long as human beings have had hands. "Suffering" for almost any conceivable reason and belief is therefore not unique.






If Jesus wasn't who He said He was, why did Christianity succeed?


It didn't you prick . Islam challenged Christianity and "won" the Middle East, North Africa, parts of Eastern Europe, parts of Russia, parts of India, and parts of Indonesia, to become the most widespread non-Christian religion on earth.

Furthermore, there are millions of devout Hindus more moved by the story of Krishna in the Hindu holy book, The Bhagavad Gita, than by the story of Jesus. As one Indian Catholic priest candidly told a British journalist, "Although my family had been Christians for generations and I had been through the full rigors of a Jesuit training, I still, in my heart of hearts, feel closer to the God Krishna than to Jesus."[100] (In Indian courts of law, people swear with their hand on The Bhagavad Gita not the Bible, and there are even popular Indian books with titles like, The Bhagavada Gita for Executives by V. Ramanathan.)


Why didn't the Apostles just forget Christianity?

me :Because there where other myths in the air about dieng and rising gods to support the foundations of thier pagan beliefs .It is like a back up battery thing.

They wouldn't have been executed first of all.

me :Your a first class DIPSTICK


If Jesus wasn't who He said He was, when He died on the cross - the Apostles should have said - wth - He's really dead - how is a dead Messiah gonna offer us life,

if He can't even bring back his own life? The Apostles would have just passed Jesus off as a fraud, like messiahs that promised things before Jesus and fell through on their promise.



RC: So we start with Mark. It is little known among the laity, but in fact the ending of Mark, everything after verse 16:8, does not actually exist in the earliest versions of that Gospel that survive.[28] It was added some time late in the 2nd century or even later. Before that, as far as we can tell, Mark ended at verse 16:8. But that means his Gospel ended only with an empty tomb, and a pronouncement by a mysterious young man [29] that Jesus would be seen in Galilee--but nothing is said of how he would be seen. This was clearly unsatisfactory for the growing powerful arm of the Church a century later, which had staked its claim on a physical resurrection, against competing segments of the Church usually collectively referred to as the Gnostics, though not always accurately. So an ending was added that quickly pinned some physical appearances of Jesus onto the story, and for good measure put in the mouth of Christ rabid condemnations of those who didn't believe it.[30] But when we consider the original story, it supports the notion that the original belief was of a spiritual rather than a physical event. The empty tomb for Mark was likely meant to be a symbol, not a historical reality, but even if he was repeating what was told him as true, it was not unusual in the ancient world for the bodies of heroes who became gods to vanish from this world: being deified entailed being taken up into heaven, as happened to men as diverse as Hercules and Apollonius of Tyana, and Mark's story of an empty tomb would simply represent that expectation.[31]

A decade or two passes, and then Matthew appears. As this Gospel tells it, there was a vast earthquake, and instead of a mere boy standing around beside an already-opened tomb, an angel--blazing like lightning--descended from the sky and paralyzed two guards that happened to be there, rolled away the stone single handedly before several witnesses--and then announced that Jesus will appear in Galilee. Obviously we are seeing a clear case of legendary embellishment of the otherwise simple story in Mark. Then in Matthew a report is given (similar to what was later added to Mark), where, contrary to the angel's announcement, Jesus immediately meets the women that attended to his grave and repeats what the angel said. Matthew is careful to add a hint that this was a physical Jesus, having the women grovel and grab his feet as he speaks.[32]

Then, maybe a little later still, Luke appears, and suddenly what was a vague and perhaps symbolic allusion to an ascension in Mark has now become a bodily appearance, complete with a dramatic reenactment of Peter rushing to the tomb and seeing the empty death shroud for himself.[32a] As happened in Matthew, other details have grown. The one young man of Mark, which became a flying angel in Matthew, in this account has suddenly become two men, this time not merely in white, but in dazzling raiment. And to make the new story even more suspicious as a doctrinal invention, Jesus goes out of his way to say he is not a vision, and proves it by asking the Disciples to touch him, and then by eating a fish. And though both Mark and Matthew said the visions would happen in Galilee, Luke changes the story, and places this particular experience in the more populous and prestigious Jerusalem.[33]

Finally along comes John, perhaps after another decade or more. Now the legend has grown full flower, and instead of one boy, or two men, or one angel, now we have two angels at the empty tomb. And outdoing Luke in style, John has Jesus prove he is solid by showing his wounds, and breathing on people, and even obliging the Doubting Thomas by letting him put his fingers into the very wounds themselves. And Jesus eats not only fish this time, but breaks bread as well. Like Luke, the most grandiose appearances to the Disciples happen in Jerusalem, not Galilee as Mark originally claimed. In all, John devotes more space and detail than either Luke or Matthew to demonstrations of the physicality of the resurrection, details nowhere present or even implied in Mark. It is obvious that John is trying very hard to create proof that the resurrection was physical, and at the end of a steady growth of fable, he takes license to make up a lot of details, far more than any storyteller before him.[34]

We have no primary sources on what was going on in the forty years of the Church between Paul in the year 58 and Clement of Rome in the year 95, and Paul tells us almost nothing about what happened in the beginning. We only conjecture that the Gospels were written between Paul and Clement, though they may have been written even ten or twenty years later still. But what I suspect happened is something like this: Jesus died, was buried, and then in a vision or dream appeared to one or more of his Disciples, convincing them he had ascended to heaven, escaping death before the End Times, and then what began in the simple story of Mark as a symbolic allusion to an ascended Christ soon to reveal himself in visions from heaven, in time led some Christians to believe that the resurrection was physical, and they heard or came up with increasingly elaborate stories proving themselves right. Overzealous people often add details and color to a story they've been told without even thinking about it, and as the story passed from each to the next more detail and elaboration was added, securing the notion of a physical resurrection in popular imagination and belief.




Something made Christianity succeed, something made the Sabbath be moved to Sunday, and something made so many people follow Jesus to their deaths, bodly proclaiming His word. That something is the ressurection.



Did that ressrection also divide the christians into sects? According to the 2001 edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia, there are 33,800 Christian denominations around the world. Just trying to research 16 such denominations was extremely challenging. Not only did I find variation between denominations, but also many times I found conflicting information within the same denomination on how one is saved. If these various groups cannot even agree (and believe me, some argue among themselves!) on a few basic beliefs, how can they seriously expect any outsider to consider their claims as valid?

i think these christians are confused just like your beloved apostles





quote:
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What about the billions of people who have been impacted by Allah, for example? Why are they wrong, but you, the Christian, are right? What credence does belief in numbers give an argument? What if all of those people are WRONG? "Flat-earthers" come to mind. I would guess 99% of humanity believed in a flat earth at one time, did that make them right?This is one item I just can't get my brain around.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Billions of people haven't been impacted by Allah. Billions have been impacted by Mohammed, claiming to be sent from Allah but never showing any reason to believe Him.


Gilberto Simson a christian who became a muslim say's : > The fundamental
> difference is that in Biblical thought, sin necessarily separates us
> from God.

Right. For you. Sin is more real. The nature of sin sets up the rules
that God is bound to abide by. The nature of sin, according to your
kind of Christianity, constrains God's mercy.

According to Islam, God's mercy isn't constrained in the same way.
Therefore, the Islamic conception of God is more merciful than the
Christian one. That's all I'm saying. If you can't or don't believe
that God really is that merciful, then that's something you have to
deal with. I don't know how to convince you otherwise. But it remains
that one is more merciful than the other.

> The basic reality of Islamic thought is
> that there is no reason for humanity to go to hell, other than Allah
> wants to send some there.

And there is no reason for humanity to go to the Garden, other than
Allah wants to send some there. In fact, its a consequence of
omnipotence that there is no reason for anything in reality to be the
way it is, other than that's the way God willed it. Otherwise, you end
up saying that something is more powerful than God. But you sound as
if this were a bad thing.

There are plenty of passages I could quote from the Quran and hadith
but another one is:

Sahih Muslim
Book 037, Number 6642:
Abu Huraira reported from Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him)
that his Lord, the Exalted and Glorious, thus said. A servant
committed a sin and he said: O God, forgive me my sins, and God (the
Exalted and Glorious) said: My servant commited a sin and then he came
to realise that he has a Lord Who forgives the sins and takes to
account (the sinner) for the sin. He then again committed a sin and
said: My Lord, forgive me my sin, and God, the Exalted and High, said:
My servant committed a sin and then came to realise that he has a Lord
Who would forgive his sin or would take (him) to account for the sin.
He again committed a sin and said: My Lord, forgive me for my sin, and
God (the Exalted and High) said: My servant has committed a sin and
then came to realise that he has a Lord Who forgives the sins or takes
(him) to account for sin. 0 servant, do what you like. I have granted
you forgiveness.

A similar passage from hadith:

(2) God the Almighty said: O son of Adam, so long as you call upon Me
and ask of Me, I shall forgive you for what you have done, and I shall
not mind. O son of Adam, were your sins to reach the clouds of the sky
and were you then to ask forgiveness of Me, I would forgive you. O son
of Adam, were you to come to Me with sins nearly as great as the earth
and were you then to face Me, ascribing no partner to Me, I would
bring you forgiveness nearly as great as it."


And note that this is addressed to "O son of Adam" not "O Muslim" or
"O Christian"







Mohammed never said He was Allah, never performed miracles, nobody died for Mohammed, and He never died and came back from the dead to prove it.

Me : neithe did moses,abraham you prick

He offered followers enticing things like sex with virgins

1. Okay,but your god before incarnating into pig/woman/man gave the order to moses to

Moses was angry with the officers of the army-the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds-who returned from the battle. "Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them. "They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD's people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man [Numbers 31:14-18].

So, in the Joshua account, God Himself forces the Israeli enemies to wage war, so as to give Himself an excuse to "exterminate them without mercy." In the Deuteronomy account, God says to take women and children as "plunder" to be "used." What exactly does it mean for people to be termed "plunder" and to be "used"? Clearly, this at least means slavery. And it seems to be implicit approval of rape as well--women and children! And in the Numbers account, Moses orders the killing of the boys and non-virginal women, but said to go ahead and keep the virgins for themselves. Again, an implicit approval of rape. (And how were the men supposed to determine who were virgins anyway?) So, when Geisler says that Paine is "factually wrong" about the Bible showing God ordering cruel executions, how am I supposed to take anything else he says seriously?

A moslem once responded to jesus's commandment to moses by sayin : It is true that God states in the quran that He has punished many nations due to their disbelief and rebelion against Him, but such punishements were (mostly) of natural disaster types like floods, hurricanes or rains of firey stones, which caused instant death to all but did not spare virgin girls who did not lay with men, yet!

and young boys,

is there any explicit verse that says this in the koran?

Paul5204

To all:

If you call yourself a Jew or Christian and doubt a "triune" God, please read Genesis 18: And appeared to him [Avraham] YHWH, and looking up he [Avraham] saw three men....." And after running to meet these three "men," Avraham bows to the ground and utters the famous....'adonai, if now I have found favor in your eyes, I pray, do not pass away from upon your servant."

As any student of the Torah knows, the 'adonai here is the plural form of 'adon that is otherwise reserved exclusively for God. Add to that the fact that this plural 'adonai is immediately spoken to in the singular [as the Jewish Publication Society reports in its Torah Commentary on Genesis], i.e., Avraham is the servant of this singular being he began by addressing as the plural 'adonai. Last time I checked, there was only one being in the Torah referred to in both the plural and singular...God. Which might explain why old Abe first protrasted himself to the earth before these three men.

But the clincher comes with the response....'adonai, if now I have found favor in your eyes, I pray, do not pass away from your servant....AND THEY SAID, do according as you have said.

Abraham:.....'adonai.....AND THEY SAID....Apparently, these three men understood themselves as being spoken to when ole Abe uttered his 'adonai. And since there is only one God......with the moral here being that wherever it is that God is [as it were], he is a single being...but if he had to be confined in this earth suit that we call a body...there would be three of him.

To those who doubt a historical Jesus, please read Frank Morison's Who Moved The Stone?

As a next to last comment, since a long while back Schroeder's The Hidden Face of God was a subject of discussion on the s.web, please note that Schroeder reported that with the creation of man at Genesis 2:7 a rather important transition occurred, which he apparently believes to involve the use of language and the corresponding increase in human spirituality. I agree. Of course, it was only my Lord [see the gospel of John] who is reported to have said.....my words to you are spirit and they are life. Indeed.

As a last comment, and back to Schroeder here, the NT has the ultimate in the "unity" theory written of by Schroeder....as that other Paul told some Greeks....for in Him we live and move and are. And to my Jehovah's Witness friends, you who far more often than not read the "in" or the Greek "en" as "in union with"....you have a problem here since these were pagan Greeks who worshipped idols to such a degree that Paul's spirit was pained within him, seeing the city full of images....and apparently, they were so "not in union with God" that that other Paul had to declare [in the words of the KJ]: Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. So much for their being "in [union with] Him. But they were and we are literally in Him, and live and are.

With that I am outta here. Keep the faith!

YHWHtruth

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<If you call yourself a Jew or Christian and doubt a "triune" God, please read Genesis 18: And appeared to him [Avraham] YHWH, and looking up he [Avraham] saw three men....." And after running to meet these three "men," Avraham bows to the ground and utters the famous....'adonai, if now I have found favor in your eyes, I pray, do not pass away from upon your servant."

As any student of the Torah knows, the 'adonai here is the plural form of 'adon that is otherwise reserved exclusively for God. Add to that the fact that this plural 'adonai is immediately spoken to in the singular [as the Jewish Publication Society reports in its Torah Commentary on Genesis], i.e., Avraham is the servant of this singular being he began by addressing as the plural 'adonai. Last time I checked, there was only one being in the Torah referred to in both the plural and singular...God. Which might explain why old Abe first protrasted himself to the earth before these three men.

But the clincher comes with the response....'adonai, if now I have found favor in your eyes, I pray, do not pass away from your servant....AND THEY SAID, do according as you have said.

Abraham:.....'adonai.....AND THEY SAID....Apparently, these three men understood themselves as being spoken to when ole Abe uttered his 'adonai. And since there is only one God......with the moral here being that wherever it is that God is [as it were], he is a single being...but if he had to be confined in this earth suit that we call a body...there would be three of him.
Believers in the Trinity have tried to find support for their doctrine from the account of Abraham and Lot. But careful, frank examination shows that it no more teaches the Trinity than does the Bible as a whole.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Abraham received a visit from “three men” who clearly were from God. Greeting them, Abraham said: “Jehovah, if, now, I have found favor in your eyes, please do not pass by your servant.” (Genesis 18:1-3) Of course, Jehovah God himself had not appeared in the flesh to Abraham, for ‘no man may see Him and yet live.’ (Exodus 33:20; John 1:18) Hence, Abraham must have expressed himself this way because of recognizing that these “men,” and perhaps one of them in particular, represented Jehovah. This agrees with other occasions when angels of God appeared to humans and were spoken of as “Jehovah” for they were heavenly representatives of the Most High. Compare Genesis 16:7-13; Judges 6:12-16.

After the “three men” delivered that important message involving the foretold “seed,” attention was turned to Sodom and Gomorrah. A comparison of Genesis 18:22 and 19:1 proves that the “men” who had visited Abraham were angels. While one of these representing Jehovah remained with Abraham, the other two heavenly messengers went to Sodom. There, at the mouth of two witnesses, they assured Lot and his family that destruction was coming on the cities and that flight was necessary. Once Lot and his two daughters were safe, destruction came on the wicked cities. We read: “Then Jehovah made it rain sulphur and fire from Jehovah, from the heavens, upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah.” Genesis 19:24.

In many older Bible translations, this verse speaks of “the Lord” raining down fire from “the Lord.” Some commentators who believed in the Trinity claimed that it meant that the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, brought destruction from the Lord God, the Father. But the Hebrew text shows that both references are to “Jehovah,” who was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and who was different from Jesus. Exodus 6:2, 3; Acts 3:13.

It is consistent with Hebrew idiom to speak of a person’s doing something in reference to himself. We read: “Solomon proceeded to congregate the older men . . . to King Solomon.” “To Moses [Jehovah] said: ‘Go up to Jehovah . . . ’” “[Jehovah] went on to say: . . . I will save them by Jehovah.’” (1_Kings 8:1; Exodus 24:1; Hosea 1:6, 7; Zechariah 10:12) In this same way Genesis 19:24 tells us that Jehovah brought the unprecedented sulfur and fire from himself, “from Jehovah, from the heavens.” So rather than being a strained prop for the unscriptural Trinity doctrine, this verse underscores the point made at Psalm 83:18: “That people may know that you, whose name is Jehovah, you alone are the Most High over all the earth.”

It might be mentioned in passing that there is another aspect of this account that ardent believers in the Trinity have attempted to use in support of their doctrine. They have stressed that there were three who appeared to Abraham and who represented God, so they suggest that a trinity is indicated.

That there were three angels, though, is hardly a valid indication of a triune deity, for nothing in this account speaks of a plural Godhead. German scholar Franz Delitzsch observed that “the idea that the Trinity is represented in the three is in every point of view untenable.”

So, why did God send three heavenly creatures representing him? The angels came to tell Abraham that he and Sarah would produce a son. (Genesis 18:10) Evidently God considered it appropriate for this prophetic message to be presented by three witnesses, even as the Law later said that “at the mouth of two witnesses or at the mouth of three witnesses [a] matter should stand good” or be established. (Deuteronomy 19:15; 1_Timothy 5:19) Abraham would have reason to doubt that he and Sarah, considering their age and physical condition, could produce a son. (Hebrews 11:11, 12) But the witness of three angels would certainly be convincing.


Max

YHWHtruth

<<<As a last comment, and back to Schroeder here, the NT has the ultimate in the "unity" theory written of by Schroeder....as that other Paul told some Greeks....for in Him we live and move and are. And to my Jehovah's Witness friends, you who far more often than not read the "in" or the Greek "en" as "in union with"....you have a problem here since these were pagan Greeks who worshipped idols to such a degree that Paul's spirit was pained within him, seeing the city full of images....and apparently, they were so "not in union with God" that that other Paul had to declare [in the words of the KJ]: Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. So much for their being "in [union with] Him. But they were and we are literally in Him, and live and are.>>>>

Again, "in union" is an acceptable rendering of this greek word. That is why Williams NT, The New English Bible, Revised English Bible and the Good News Bible also use this. Why? Are these translations using "in union" to conform to their doctrine?

Let us look at John 14:20 where the Lord Jesus stated: "At that day ye shall know that I am IN my father, and ye IN me, and I IN you." Really, now, are we physically IN each other? Is the in-ness literal? If so, isn't the end result a polyinity. The rational approach by the above translators is that the in-ness here relates to unity of purpose not the unity of several persons composing one God.
The spirit is different, as the Bible gives it liquidity.

"Many words associated with God's spirit give it the attributes of a liquid, which by definition cannot refer to a person. This liquid language is consistent with the spirit being His presence and power. We are baptized (literally 'dipped') with and in it like water (Matt. 3:11; Acts 1:5). We are all made to 'drink' from the same spirit, as from a well or a fountain (1Cor. 12:13). It is written in our hearts like ink (2 Cor 3:3). We are 'anointed' with it, like oil (Acts 10:38; 2 Cor 1:30; 1 John 2:27). We are 'sealed' with it as with melted wax (Eph. 1:14). It is 'poured out' on us (Acts 10:45; Rom. 5:5). It is 'measured' as if it had volume (2 Kings 2:9; John 3:34-KJV). We are to be filled with it (Acts 2:4; Eph. 5:18). This 'filling' is to capacity at the new birth and to overflowing as we act according to its influence." One God & One Lord by Graeser/Lynn/Schoenheit, p.598

Fortman says, "The Jews never regarded the spirit as a person; nor is there any solid evidence that any Old Testament writer held this view....The Holy Spirit is usually presented in the Synoptics and in Acts as a divine force or power." The Triune God,
pp. 6, 15

Max

River

Jesus's very name " Yehesa" in Aramaic and " Isa" in arabic translates to " Son of Adam" and to some degree " Son of Man". Your claim that Jesus called himself Son of God is bogus. However the "Son of God" to be more precise "sons of God" title has been used in Talmud and other Jewish scripture for many Prophets including Adam and Noah.

Magus55

Mat 27:40 And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest [it] in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.

Mat 27:41 Likewise also the chief priests mocking [him], with the scribes and elders, said,

Mat 27:42 He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.

Mat 27:43 He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God.



Jesus or Yeshua does not mean Son of Adam, it means Salvation. Yeshua is the Hebrew spelling of the name Joshua, and Jesus is the Greek.

YHWHtruth

Ye·shu´a` or Yehoh·shu´a` and means “Jehovah Is Salvation”.

Max

B. H. Manners

To even make a distinction between being saved by faith or works is redundant in my opinion. If "faith" is something you "do" then you are saved by "works". If you have to do works to have a saving "faith" then indeed works are required for salvation. Paul wrote a redundancy when he said we are saved by faith and not works.