I believe the claim that "Muslim nations are more repressive, less tolerant, and less liberal than Christian nations" is only true of our local point in history. I gather that the opposite was the case ~500 years ago. (Compare, e.g., religious tolerance in the Ottoman empire vs Catholic Spain.) In particular, there's a much longer history of antisemitism in Christian nations.
I'm not an expert on history, but my sense is that taking that into account, Christianity has had a more positive effect than Islam. Of course, it's possible to cherrypick one or two examples of prosperous Muslim empires, but it would be hard to analyze Islam's overall impact in detail.
Would it be possible to set a standard in advance as to what would not be “cherry-picking”? Dismissing hundreds of years of history across not only major Muslim empires but arguably the *central* Muslim empires which claimed the caliphate seems dubious without first creating a framework for evaluation.
Given your position that the subjective probability of any event being an overall, long-run good is very nearly 50%, it's not clear how you could turn this into a forceful argument. Even if you can find some sense in which the impact of Christianity severely beats that of Islam in expectation, it seems like probabilities are the more relevant thing to be looking at vis-a-vis truth rather than action.
The Islamic golden age was more then 500 years ago. The Europeans had clearly surpassed them by 1500. Crusaders were pushing back Islam all over the Mediterranean. The ottomans had to rely on kidnapped Christian children to fill out the janisarries. Islam was some geopolitically lucky rivers and trade routes from China to Europe.
It seems like the four wives thing led to cousin marriage and genetic degradarion. By contrast the c Catholic Church ban on cousin marriage raised the genetic profile of Europe.
Jews were both more tolerated and more persecuted under the Christians, but regardless even major Jewish narcissists don't think that levels of anti-semitism is the chief determinent of how good a civilization is. Go find the top ten prettiest mosques, then go find the top ten prettiest cathedrals. Now do the same for music, art, philosophy, any aspect of human civilization. Case closed.
Incidentally—as a former Muslim—these arguments against Islam were ones that I *didn’t* find particularly convincing. Islamic morality and alleged scientific errors in the Quran are issues often addressed by apologists. The reason I didn’t find *their* arguments convincing was largely because I think literature as a medium of divine communication is an innately flawed concept—but like with most of the reasons I no longer believe in Islam, Christianity isn’t much better in that regard.
I’d often seen apologists explain away scientific errors in the Quran* (how exactly they do this depends on the verse in question) or excuse apparent ethical errors by arguing for divine command theory, which I thought they did well enough that I wasn’t inclined to reject Islam on the basis of Islamic morality/Quranic errors alone.
*Mohamed Hijab and the YouTube channel Farid Responds are two that come to mind
The fact that the Quran is supposedly written by God, and therefore not really open to revision or reinterpretation worries me. Islam is uniquely positioned to resist moral progress
Many Muslims are also committed to the view that none of the prophets of God have ever sinned. Even someone like David who took a man’s wife then had the husband sent off to battle to be killed.
Muslims will say that this story is fabricated, just going to show how corrupted the Christian and Jewish scriptures had become. But said scriptures are also taken to be indicative of Mohammed’s eventual coming, so they have to say it’s reliable enough to prophesy Mohammed, but not enough to tell us factual information about the important figures of the Abrahamic faiths.
Both bible and Quran teaches prophets are righteous and Role models , But there is no sin that a biblical prophet can’t do (even idolatry) , it’s an inconsistency within bible , Quran is free from this inconsistency ,
Secondly, if I remember correctly you don’t accept biblical passage regarding God when he commands evil (for eg command to kill baby )
If so you think bible is reliable enough to tell us factual information about the important figures of Abrahamic faith but not enough to give information about God ?
I don’t see any inconsistency whatsoever in Muslims using bible to show the prophethood of Muhammed ﷺ ,
1)I can use this as a internal critique
2)suppose bible predicts our conversation with precise details, I can believe that part is uncorrupted as it’s unlikely given corruption to have highly specific prophecy
3)If Islam is true , it is expected the prophecy of Muhammad ﷺ remain even when others parts are corrupt
Islam doesn't have a trinity problem. It's pure monotheism. Against Christianity, that's a significant advantage. It also doesn't claim Jesus rose from the dead.
The apparent faults of the Quran are diminished once you become familiar with its interpretative traditions. Also, if you're a theist, you have an answer to the problem of evil and can port over familiar moves here too. God made a world this imperfect already if that's consistent with theism, a beautiful and prima facie flawed message and messenger are also in bounds.
You should check out The Vision of Islam for a sophisticated philosophical view of the religion.
If Cerberus's existence is possible, then the Trinity is possible. Cerberus's existence is possible; therefore, the Trinity is possible. Which premise is probably false here?
That analogy doesn't work. The trinity is three people in one, I don't know about you, but I don't think of my body, mind, and soul as three separate people.
I’m glad that you looked into Islam , However, I have to say that your research has been very poor
Quoting shamoun and wiki Islam indicates that
I Will ignore the hell part , I agree that objection has some force
Rest moral objections rely on assuming liberals and/or secular values to standard of morality which occurs due to Cultural bias :When you live under the delusion that all of human history, and future generations to come, must all abide by what is considered morally acceptable, and refrain from that which is considered morally unacceptable, in the century you happened to be born in.
You didn’t explain how Christians can get away with this , Authors of bible even QOUTE God that he commands to kill babies , it’s not just they messed up when conveying the message , the whole message is false that has serious theological implications, why on earth should anyone trust the Bible on anything else if it portrays God’s character wrong ,Remember it’s NOT slight like the author bible got the age of kings wrong (2 Kings 8:26) , Also what was God doing when he was gravely misrepresented in the book supposed be book of his true religion , Also why can’t Muslims say human prophet or his followers misrepresented Quran by adding and subsisting to it , or maybe the prophet is lying that Quran is verbatim of God , maybe he is just inspired , To me this is extremely absurd , but if you allow that for Christianity, why not for Islam
Tom holland has been refuted by many on his claim that Christianity morally transformed the world,Given the history of Christianity (intolerance of jews and even other sects) and biblical instruction (such as Jesus triumph over his enemies in his coming plus OT ) it unlikely they influenced liberal values , it’s probably the other way around, Or liberalism maybe arose as response to Christian values , note Adultery, divorce and gays are rampant in west which are clearly sins according to scriptures and early Christians
Islam on the other hand brought “profound mora transformation “ acc to what IT CONSIDERS to be moral , Early history of Islam shows that Islamic Golden and its vindication of Jews and Christians sects from persecution of Christians , Unlike Christianity where you have some bizarre theory of moral transformation, Islam has rules and regulations that helped the reformation (ie we have the causal link )
If liberal values are better than Christian values, then Christianity is false bcz it conflicts with former, if Christian values are better , then failed to morally transform the world acc to them , either way Christianity is false
As for Islam , if liberalism is better value then Islam is in trouble, but Islam is better value , then it did transform the world
Note : Islamic world is more happy , more satisfied people , less divorce rates , less suicide and less depression than Christian counterparts ,even in the midst of war (Thanks to ‘tolerant’ liberals who force their values on others )
Also you posted 9:5 , Did you read 9:1-4 ? If no then you haven’t done enough research , if yes then you are bit deceptive for not showing it
I will help you here, next use 9:29 instead of 9:5 , you are embarrassing yourself when you use the latter without mentioning the context
As for wife beating, I will ask you a question to know whether you understand verse , suppose a wife beats husband using a rod ,can husband hit back with the rod acc to orthodox view of Islam?
As for copying legends , Tom holland has weird views like Islam is not originated in Mecca , The very reason he say that is bcz acc to him it’s extremely unlikely that author of Quran know these stories given he is in Mecca , it’s interesting you don’t quote him here
Unlike bible Islamic stories of biblical figures are consistent ,For eg: bible calls the king during Joseph ‘pharaoh’ while Quran doesn’t make that mistake , Harun(a prophet who is supposed to role model for others ) committed idolatry (most heinous crime according to bible ) and not punished even when others who did the same crime are severely punished
Quran corrects them ,Quran rejects that Solomon disbelieved, Job’s story in bible depict devil as right about Job and God is wrong , Again Quran corrects them , Quran got the identity of Jesus correct even when both Jews and Christians accuse him of claiming to be God etc……
As for prophesies, have you read the prophesies regarding tall building by Bedouins , Arabia being Green Again ,Return of Dhul Khalsa, Fire in Hijaz ,Mongal invasion ?
If No , again poor research
If yes what’s your response to Mongal invasion
As for shamoun’s article , I don’t know why you think he is reliable on Islam and Arabic , you need ashamed to share his blunder
He makes four points regarding the Rome prophecy
1)Abu Bakr (r) misunderstood the word
So what ? We don’t believe Abu Bakr is All knowing lol , The Arabic word ‘Bidh'un’ does mean 3-9 years
2)The exact year is not mentioned
Response: Which biblical prophecy mentions exact year and date , Also this doesn’t show the prophecy is failed
3)The Quranic text has no vowels , it could have been quite possible for a scribe to deliberately tamper with the text, forcing it to become a prophetic statement.
Even if we grant this nonsense, it’s only a undercutting defeater for the prophecy, Merely pointing out a wild possibility is not enough to make rebutting defeater ie to show there is a failed prophecy in Islam
Moreover the variant is rejected due lack of authenticity, plus incompatible with authentic hadith of Abu Bakr (as shamoun himself pointed out) , Also Quran is live book , people byheart and recite them , shamoun make it sound like people were waiting until the vowels are added so they can start reciting 🤣, Also if all the relevant incidents occurred before Uthman r , then why should he add a failed prophecy in the Quran Lol,
Plus the verse says the believers will rejoice Shamoun says there is so much uncertainty about the correct reading which is factually wrong , Also it’s ironic that you are ok with bible being in error ,human prophets being error , but argument is based on error is commentary 🤔
4) “Bidh'un, signifies a period of three to nine years; yet according to some scholars the victory did not come until nearly twelve years later “
See even shamoun says “some scholars“ FYI In Islam we don’t believe scholars to be infallible, As mentioned above at max you get an undercutting defeater , you can’t show there is failed prophecy in Quran
“In 622, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, was ready to mount a counter-offensive against the Sassanid Persians who had overrun most of the eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire. He left Constantinople the day after celebrating Easter on Sunday, 4 April 622.[1] His young son, Heraclius Constantine, was left behind as regent under the charge of Patriarch Sergius and the patrician Bonus. In order to threaten both the Persian forces in Anatolia and Syria, his first move was to sail from Constantinople to Pylae in Bithynia (not in Cilicia).[2] He spent the summer training so as to improve the skills of his men and his own generalship. In the autumn, Heraclius threatened the Persian communications to Anatolia from the Euphrates valley by marching to northern Cappadocia. This forced the Persian forces in Anatolia under Shahrbaraz to retreat from the front-lines of Bithynia and Galatia to eastern Anatolia in order to block his access to Persia.[3]
What followed next is not entirely clear, but Heraclius certainly won a crushing victory over Shahrbaraz somewhere in Cappadocia. The key factor was Heraclius' discovery of hidden Persian forces in ambush and responding to this ambush by feigning retreat during the battle. The Persians left their cover to chase the Byzantines, whereupon Heraclius' elite Optimatoi assaulted the chasing Persians, causing them to flee.[3] Thus, he saved Anatolia from the Persians. However, Heraclius had to return to Constantinople to deal with the threat posed to his Balkan domains by the Avars, and left his army to winter in Pontus.[4]”
As for other failed prophecies, it is from hadeeth , you can give excuses to hadith as it is not verbatim just like you excuse bible , (NB I think this absurd but it works for ,right ?)
Secondly Daniel 2 and 7 predicts Rome will be defeated by God’s people and Muslims defeated Rome , so either Islam is true or Bible contains false prophecies
If it’s the former , welcome to Islam , if it’s latter Islam is no worse than Christianity in regards to false prophecies
Finally seven earth is not falsifiable and muddy spring is perception of dhulqarnain
I urge you to learn more , it seems like you have only seen the tip of the iceberg
The South. I’m definitely not well-educated on this stuff, but it seems plausible to me that it could be a majority view? (And to be clear, I’m distinguishing between literalism and inerrancy - BB’s post refers to inerrancy, not literalism)
It’s still not great. The most technically correct interpretation of it would be that people who believe the Bible is the non-literal word of God are Biblical inerrantists, but who knows if that’s what the respondents actually meant. In my brief search, I’m having trouble finding reliable surveys that asked whether respondents believed the Bible was without error.
In any case, I know it’s a pretty common view among Catholics, and I feel very comfortable saying that it’s the dominant view among Evangelical Protestants, who make up a plurality of American Christians.
Even among mainline protestants, the view doesn’t seem uncommon to me (although definitely not dominant). I grew up in a fairly progressive urban mainline church, and people still routinely referred the Bible as “the word of God” there. If you’d ask them what they meant by that, I’d guess at least a third would have said it was without error, but I’m just spitballing here.
As an evangelical, I'd say that for a church to accept inerrancy in some form, often with words like, "the Bible is the only infallible rule of faith and practice" and/or "the Bible is without error" in its statement of beliefs, is more or less required for that church to be considered "evangelical." Though as you point out with regards to "literalism", not everyone means the same things by these words -- we might differ as to whether inerrancy implies a fully literal understanding of Genesis 1-11, for example.
In my understanding, Catholicism has a somewhat different view of inerrancy, teaching that the Bible may (or may not) have certain inaccuracies in irrelevant or "profane" matters, but is inerrant with regard to its teaching about God and salvation.
So as the Mainline churches are evaporating, the large majority of churchgoing Americans on any given Sunday are attending churches that teach inerrancy in some form. Though in practice, the people in the pews, always and everywhere, vary in the degree to which they agree with or even understand their church's doctrine. The mostly elderly people that occupy the pews of most Mainline churches, while generally to the theological left of evangelicals, are there largely out of habit and inertia and tend to be more theologically conservative than their denomination's clergy and bureaucracy.
And in truth, I don't believe even the Mainline churches formally insist on the belief that the Bible has errors, they merely don't affirm that it is without error.
Hello, I have a good-faith question: what is the ethical framework you use to evaluate the plausibility of Islam’s ethical claims, and from where do you derive it? Is “plausibility” even a relevant factor when discussing ethical claims?
Islam was founded by a guy who literally knew he was possessed by the devil, married a 6 year old, owned slaves and had a nasty head-chopping habit. But het, feel free to worship the « prophet » (vomit be upon him)
In all likelihood, Islam was started by a cabal of Jews. Why indeed would an “anti-Semitic” Religion adopt a Jewish God and Jewish patriarchs? How, indeed, would they even have such close knowledge of such things? How suddenly do a people acquire this intelligence, organization, initiative and ability? Indeed, to the extent we accept any of the dubious historicity of the faith and its personages, might we assume Mohammed’s “Sahabah” were Jews? But of course, all this is made obvious by the consistent support Judaism lent to Islam both during its conquest of Europe, seen most emblematically in the opening of the gates of Toledo, and during its rule.
In any case, the Talmud permits marriage with girls as young as six in certain circumstances. Abraham also chopped heads and owned slaves. Fuck both of you. Fuck both of you so hard. Your kike smoke screens won’t work here. My gods don’t live in the desert.
The best argument for Islam is its extraordinarily rapid spread. Who would have predicted that the two major world empires would enter a 50 year death match right before some epileptic Arab managed to unify his surrounding tribes and they would just conquer everywhere? Everyone at the time thought that this heralded the apocalypse one way or another. If you already believe in a God who exercises providence, it seems He went out of his way to promote Islam.
To an extent, I agree with you, but it seems like this reasoning tells you to follow different religions depending on what time you live or what historical events you're talking about. I've heard Christians, for instance, say that Christianity's being spread so far by the European empires and taking over the Roman world are evidence of its divine origin.
Granted, neither of these things were as rapid as what Muhammed did, but I don't think a neutral observer in the 1st century would have predicted the rise of Christianity any more than one in the 6th would have predicted the rise of Islam.
But, minus thewindow dressing about how Moses and Jesus were ackshully Muslims, isn't that what Muslims believe? Judaism was the truest religion; then Christianity came along and was even truer, and then Islam came along and is the truest.
Most of the ethical complaints you list they'll handwave away with some manner of divine command theory, though a few they'll say you're taking out of context, like 9:5.
There are lots of Muslims who favor various kinds of scientific and quasi-numerological miracles in the Qur'an, in addition to the general arguments for theism they lift wholesale from Christians (see, e.g., Harun Yahya and creationism). However, I get the sense that the relatively more sophisticated Muslim apologists (a description I admit isn't saying much) like Hamza Tzortzis grudgingly admit that these are silly and erroneous. For example, for a while their big knock-down proof of Islam was supposed to be the miraculous foreknowledge of modern embryology in Surah 23, and Tzortzis' institute wrote glossy brochures[1] about this great apologetic coup. But later some skeptics managed to convince him he was wrong[2], which incidentally did raise his estimation in my eyes.
The one completely unique and distinctive argument for Islam that they *do* put all their stock in, and which they are arguably doctrinally committed to putting all their stock in, is the so-called "inimitability argument," or i'jaz. It's actually a supremely convenient line of defense, insofar as it's so vague and subjective as to be a meaningless challenge. But it does have the redeeming virtue of being funny to read about.
I’m sure there will be lively debate in this comments, but nothing in this article is new. It’s just standard first-round polemics that has been around and debated from both sides for ages. Meaning, that all the relevant arguments and counter arguments are well-trodden ground
In Islam the Quran is considered to be dictated directly by Allah, but it's also accepted by many interpreters of the Quran that each verse was from a historical micro-context, which matters for interpretation.
Even for traditional-minded Muslims, a lot of this has to go on -- in particular it's important to figure out when one verse abrogates another. The most famous example is with alcohol, where some verses (generally regarded as chronologically first, from the early Mecca years) say there is good and bad in alcohol depending on how it is used, while others (generally regarded as chronologically later, from after Muhammad was powerful) just say to avoid it. The traditional story is that these were revealed over time to slowly nudge the new Muslim community away from drinking alcohol.
And for more liberal Muslims, they have room beyond this to do the exact same sorts of things that liberal Christians do with Paul. Apparent endorsements of slavery, subservience of women, attacks on LGBT people, etc., were messages intended for the people alive at the time the Quran was being revealed, in that particular flawed culture -- and maybe even intended for really specific micro-groups of people hanging around Muhammad at really specific times.
The most common argument you hear from Muslim apologists is the "Quran's linguistic miracle." They say the number of rhetorical devices present in the shortest Surrah is too many to have been conjured by an illiterate Bedouin and thus must have a divine origin.
I believe the claim that "Muslim nations are more repressive, less tolerant, and less liberal than Christian nations" is only true of our local point in history. I gather that the opposite was the case ~500 years ago. (Compare, e.g., religious tolerance in the Ottoman empire vs Catholic Spain.) In particular, there's a much longer history of antisemitism in Christian nations.
I'm not an expert on history, but my sense is that taking that into account, Christianity has had a more positive effect than Islam. Of course, it's possible to cherrypick one or two examples of prosperous Muslim empires, but it would be hard to analyze Islam's overall impact in detail.
Would it be possible to set a standard in advance as to what would not be “cherry-picking”? Dismissing hundreds of years of history across not only major Muslim empires but arguably the *central* Muslim empires which claimed the caliphate seems dubious without first creating a framework for evaluation.
Also The effect of religion is most likely seen in immediate years of its triumph, not after it being influenced by other ideologies
Given your position that the subjective probability of any event being an overall, long-run good is very nearly 50%, it's not clear how you could turn this into a forceful argument. Even if you can find some sense in which the impact of Christianity severely beats that of Islam in expectation, it seems like probabilities are the more relevant thing to be looking at vis-a-vis truth rather than action.
Sorry but you are one who cherry-picked the present
The treatment of women is a black mark on Islam. Wherever it spread, they lost out.
Alice Evans has argued that the atrocious situation of Muslim women today is no coincidence, but the result of a particularly misogynist Arabic culture that spread as a result of Islam. One of her articles: https://www.ggd.world/p/why-is-the-middle-east-and-north-africa-so-patriarchal?utm_source=publication-search
The Islamic golden age was more then 500 years ago. The Europeans had clearly surpassed them by 1500. Crusaders were pushing back Islam all over the Mediterranean. The ottomans had to rely on kidnapped Christian children to fill out the janisarries. Islam was some geopolitically lucky rivers and trade routes from China to Europe.
It seems like the four wives thing led to cousin marriage and genetic degradarion. By contrast the c Catholic Church ban on cousin marriage raised the genetic profile of Europe.
Jews were both more tolerated and more persecuted under the Christians, but regardless even major Jewish narcissists don't think that levels of anti-semitism is the chief determinent of how good a civilization is. Go find the top ten prettiest mosques, then go find the top ten prettiest cathedrals. Now do the same for music, art, philosophy, any aspect of human civilization. Case closed.
Incidentally—as a former Muslim—these arguments against Islam were ones that I *didn’t* find particularly convincing. Islamic morality and alleged scientific errors in the Quran are issues often addressed by apologists. The reason I didn’t find *their* arguments convincing was largely because I think literature as a medium of divine communication is an innately flawed concept—but like with most of the reasons I no longer believe in Islam, Christianity isn’t much better in that regard.
Why didn't you find them convincing?
I’d often seen apologists explain away scientific errors in the Quran* (how exactly they do this depends on the verse in question) or excuse apparent ethical errors by arguing for divine command theory, which I thought they did well enough that I wasn’t inclined to reject Islam on the basis of Islamic morality/Quranic errors alone.
*Mohamed Hijab and the YouTube channel Farid Responds are two that come to mind
The fact that the Quran is supposedly written by God, and therefore not really open to revision or reinterpretation worries me. Islam is uniquely positioned to resist moral progress
Many Muslims are also committed to the view that none of the prophets of God have ever sinned. Even someone like David who took a man’s wife then had the husband sent off to battle to be killed.
Muslims will say that this story is fabricated, just going to show how corrupted the Christian and Jewish scriptures had become. But said scriptures are also taken to be indicative of Mohammed’s eventual coming, so they have to say it’s reliable enough to prophesy Mohammed, but not enough to tell us factual information about the important figures of the Abrahamic faiths.
Also always didn’t understand why would the scriptures literally fabricate bad stories about *their own* prophets
They even fabricate bad stories about God ?
Have you read Talmud ?
Both bible and Quran teaches prophets are righteous and Role models , But there is no sin that a biblical prophet can’t do (even idolatry) , it’s an inconsistency within bible , Quran is free from this inconsistency ,
Secondly, if I remember correctly you don’t accept biblical passage regarding God when he commands evil (for eg command to kill baby )
If so you think bible is reliable enough to tell us factual information about the important figures of Abrahamic faith but not enough to give information about God ?
I don’t see any inconsistency whatsoever in Muslims using bible to show the prophethood of Muhammed ﷺ ,
1)I can use this as a internal critique
2)suppose bible predicts our conversation with precise details, I can believe that part is uncorrupted as it’s unlikely given corruption to have highly specific prophecy
3)If Islam is true , it is expected the prophecy of Muhammad ﷺ remain even when others parts are corrupt
Islam doesn't have a trinity problem. It's pure monotheism. Against Christianity, that's a significant advantage. It also doesn't claim Jesus rose from the dead.
The apparent faults of the Quran are diminished once you become familiar with its interpretative traditions. Also, if you're a theist, you have an answer to the problem of evil and can port over familiar moves here too. God made a world this imperfect already if that's consistent with theism, a beautiful and prima facie flawed message and messenger are also in bounds.
You should check out The Vision of Islam for a sophisticated philosophical view of the religion.
If Cerberus's existence is possible, then the Trinity is possible. Cerberus's existence is possible; therefore, the Trinity is possible. Which premise is probably false here?
That analogy doesn't work. The trinity is three people in one, I don't know about you, but I don't think of my body, mind, and soul as three separate people.
I’m glad that you looked into Islam , However, I have to say that your research has been very poor
Quoting shamoun and wiki Islam indicates that
I Will ignore the hell part , I agree that objection has some force
Rest moral objections rely on assuming liberals and/or secular values to standard of morality which occurs due to Cultural bias :When you live under the delusion that all of human history, and future generations to come, must all abide by what is considered morally acceptable, and refrain from that which is considered morally unacceptable, in the century you happened to be born in.
You didn’t explain how Christians can get away with this , Authors of bible even QOUTE God that he commands to kill babies , it’s not just they messed up when conveying the message , the whole message is false that has serious theological implications, why on earth should anyone trust the Bible on anything else if it portrays God’s character wrong ,Remember it’s NOT slight like the author bible got the age of kings wrong (2 Kings 8:26) , Also what was God doing when he was gravely misrepresented in the book supposed be book of his true religion , Also why can’t Muslims say human prophet or his followers misrepresented Quran by adding and subsisting to it , or maybe the prophet is lying that Quran is verbatim of God , maybe he is just inspired , To me this is extremely absurd , but if you allow that for Christianity, why not for Islam
Tom holland has been refuted by many on his claim that Christianity morally transformed the world,Given the history of Christianity (intolerance of jews and even other sects) and biblical instruction (such as Jesus triumph over his enemies in his coming plus OT ) it unlikely they influenced liberal values , it’s probably the other way around, Or liberalism maybe arose as response to Christian values , note Adultery, divorce and gays are rampant in west which are clearly sins according to scriptures and early Christians
Islam on the other hand brought “profound mora transformation “ acc to what IT CONSIDERS to be moral , Early history of Islam shows that Islamic Golden and its vindication of Jews and Christians sects from persecution of Christians , Unlike Christianity where you have some bizarre theory of moral transformation, Islam has rules and regulations that helped the reformation (ie we have the causal link )
If liberal values are better than Christian values, then Christianity is false bcz it conflicts with former, if Christian values are better , then failed to morally transform the world acc to them , either way Christianity is false
As for Islam , if liberalism is better value then Islam is in trouble, but Islam is better value , then it did transform the world
Note : Islamic world is more happy , more satisfied people , less divorce rates , less suicide and less depression than Christian counterparts ,even in the midst of war (Thanks to ‘tolerant’ liberals who force their values on others )
Also you posted 9:5 , Did you read 9:1-4 ? If no then you haven’t done enough research , if yes then you are bit deceptive for not showing it
I will help you here, next use 9:29 instead of 9:5 , you are embarrassing yourself when you use the latter without mentioning the context
As for wife beating, I will ask you a question to know whether you understand verse , suppose a wife beats husband using a rod ,can husband hit back with the rod acc to orthodox view of Islam?
As for copying legends , Tom holland has weird views like Islam is not originated in Mecca , The very reason he say that is bcz acc to him it’s extremely unlikely that author of Quran know these stories given he is in Mecca , it’s interesting you don’t quote him here
Unlike bible Islamic stories of biblical figures are consistent ,For eg: bible calls the king during Joseph ‘pharaoh’ while Quran doesn’t make that mistake , Harun(a prophet who is supposed to role model for others ) committed idolatry (most heinous crime according to bible ) and not punished even when others who did the same crime are severely punished
Quran corrects them ,Quran rejects that Solomon disbelieved, Job’s story in bible depict devil as right about Job and God is wrong , Again Quran corrects them , Quran got the identity of Jesus correct even when both Jews and Christians accuse him of claiming to be God etc……
As for prophesies, have you read the prophesies regarding tall building by Bedouins , Arabia being Green Again ,Return of Dhul Khalsa, Fire in Hijaz ,Mongal invasion ?
If No , again poor research
If yes what’s your response to Mongal invasion
As for shamoun’s article , I don’t know why you think he is reliable on Islam and Arabic , you need ashamed to share his blunder
He makes four points regarding the Rome prophecy
1)Abu Bakr (r) misunderstood the word
So what ? We don’t believe Abu Bakr is All knowing lol , The Arabic word ‘Bidh'un’ does mean 3-9 years
2)The exact year is not mentioned
Response: Which biblical prophecy mentions exact year and date , Also this doesn’t show the prophecy is failed
3)The Quranic text has no vowels , it could have been quite possible for a scribe to deliberately tamper with the text, forcing it to become a prophetic statement.
Even if we grant this nonsense, it’s only a undercutting defeater for the prophecy, Merely pointing out a wild possibility is not enough to make rebutting defeater ie to show there is a failed prophecy in Islam
Moreover the variant is rejected due lack of authenticity, plus incompatible with authentic hadith of Abu Bakr (as shamoun himself pointed out) , Also Quran is live book , people byheart and recite them , shamoun make it sound like people were waiting until the vowels are added so they can start reciting 🤣, Also if all the relevant incidents occurred before Uthman r , then why should he add a failed prophecy in the Quran Lol,
Plus the verse says the believers will rejoice Shamoun says there is so much uncertainty about the correct reading which is factually wrong , Also it’s ironic that you are ok with bible being in error ,human prophets being error , but argument is based on error is commentary 🤔
4) “Bidh'un, signifies a period of three to nine years; yet according to some scholars the victory did not come until nearly twelve years later “
See even shamoun says “some scholars“ FYI In Islam we don’t believe scholars to be infallible, As mentioned above at max you get an undercutting defeater , you can’t show there is failed prophecy in Quran
“In 622, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, was ready to mount a counter-offensive against the Sassanid Persians who had overrun most of the eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire. He left Constantinople the day after celebrating Easter on Sunday, 4 April 622.[1] His young son, Heraclius Constantine, was left behind as regent under the charge of Patriarch Sergius and the patrician Bonus. In order to threaten both the Persian forces in Anatolia and Syria, his first move was to sail from Constantinople to Pylae in Bithynia (not in Cilicia).[2] He spent the summer training so as to improve the skills of his men and his own generalship. In the autumn, Heraclius threatened the Persian communications to Anatolia from the Euphrates valley by marching to northern Cappadocia. This forced the Persian forces in Anatolia under Shahrbaraz to retreat from the front-lines of Bithynia and Galatia to eastern Anatolia in order to block his access to Persia.[3]
What followed next is not entirely clear, but Heraclius certainly won a crushing victory over Shahrbaraz somewhere in Cappadocia. The key factor was Heraclius' discovery of hidden Persian forces in ambush and responding to this ambush by feigning retreat during the battle. The Persians left their cover to chase the Byzantines, whereupon Heraclius' elite Optimatoi assaulted the chasing Persians, causing them to flee.[3] Thus, he saved Anatolia from the Persians. However, Heraclius had to return to Constantinople to deal with the threat posed to his Balkan domains by the Avars, and left his army to winter in Pontus.[4]”
As for other failed prophecies, it is from hadeeth , you can give excuses to hadith as it is not verbatim just like you excuse bible , (NB I think this absurd but it works for ,right ?)
Secondly Daniel 2 and 7 predicts Rome will be defeated by God’s people and Muslims defeated Rome , so either Islam is true or Bible contains false prophecies
If it’s the former , welcome to Islam , if it’s latter Islam is no worse than Christianity in regards to false prophecies
Finally seven earth is not falsifiable and muddy spring is perception of dhulqarnain
I urge you to learn more , it seems like you have only seen the tip of the iceberg
Sorry for so many spelling and grammar mistakes; I was in a bit of a hurry
Plus these sufficiently debunk Aron’s claim of borrowing stories (for which he is not ready to give proper reference) https://www.islamic-awareness.org/quran/sources/
I’m not sure about Christianity generally, but in the part of the US where I live, belief in biblical inerrancy is very common
Where do you live? That's a minority position among American Christians overall.
The South. I’m definitely not well-educated on this stuff, but it seems plausible to me that it could be a majority view? (And to be clear, I’m distinguishing between literalism and inerrancy - BB’s post refers to inerrancy, not literalism)
Here’s the best data I could find on the subject:
https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/database/interpreting-scripture/
It’s still not great. The most technically correct interpretation of it would be that people who believe the Bible is the non-literal word of God are Biblical inerrantists, but who knows if that’s what the respondents actually meant. In my brief search, I’m having trouble finding reliable surveys that asked whether respondents believed the Bible was without error.
In any case, I know it’s a pretty common view among Catholics, and I feel very comfortable saying that it’s the dominant view among Evangelical Protestants, who make up a plurality of American Christians.
Even among mainline protestants, the view doesn’t seem uncommon to me (although definitely not dominant). I grew up in a fairly progressive urban mainline church, and people still routinely referred the Bible as “the word of God” there. If you’d ask them what they meant by that, I’d guess at least a third would have said it was without error, but I’m just spitballing here.
As an evangelical, I'd say that for a church to accept inerrancy in some form, often with words like, "the Bible is the only infallible rule of faith and practice" and/or "the Bible is without error" in its statement of beliefs, is more or less required for that church to be considered "evangelical." Though as you point out with regards to "literalism", not everyone means the same things by these words -- we might differ as to whether inerrancy implies a fully literal understanding of Genesis 1-11, for example.
In my understanding, Catholicism has a somewhat different view of inerrancy, teaching that the Bible may (or may not) have certain inaccuracies in irrelevant or "profane" matters, but is inerrant with regard to its teaching about God and salvation.
So as the Mainline churches are evaporating, the large majority of churchgoing Americans on any given Sunday are attending churches that teach inerrancy in some form. Though in practice, the people in the pews, always and everywhere, vary in the degree to which they agree with or even understand their church's doctrine. The mostly elderly people that occupy the pews of most Mainline churches, while generally to the theological left of evangelicals, are there largely out of habit and inertia and tend to be more theologically conservative than their denomination's clergy and bureaucracy.
And in truth, I don't believe even the Mainline churches formally insist on the belief that the Bible has errors, they merely don't affirm that it is without error.
Hello, I have a good-faith question: what is the ethical framework you use to evaluate the plausibility of Islam’s ethical claims, and from where do you derive it? Is “plausibility” even a relevant factor when discussing ethical claims?
The stupid hadiths on stuff like peeing standing up also make Islam retarded.
Right. Like Judaism doesn’t have any toilet laws….
Islam was founded by a guy who literally knew he was possessed by the devil, married a 6 year old, owned slaves and had a nasty head-chopping habit. But het, feel free to worship the « prophet » (vomit be upon him)
One has to hate Jews a lot to say that Jews invented the ultimate Jew-hating cult. But hey, u do u…
In all likelihood, Islam was started by a cabal of Jews. Why indeed would an “anti-Semitic” Religion adopt a Jewish God and Jewish patriarchs? How, indeed, would they even have such close knowledge of such things? How suddenly do a people acquire this intelligence, organization, initiative and ability? Indeed, to the extent we accept any of the dubious historicity of the faith and its personages, might we assume Mohammed’s “Sahabah” were Jews? But of course, all this is made obvious by the consistent support Judaism lent to Islam both during its conquest of Europe, seen most emblematically in the opening of the gates of Toledo, and during its rule.
In any case, the Talmud permits marriage with girls as young as six in certain circumstances. Abraham also chopped heads and owned slaves. Fuck both of you. Fuck both of you so hard. Your kike smoke screens won’t work here. My gods don’t live in the desert.
The best argument for Islam is its extraordinarily rapid spread. Who would have predicted that the two major world empires would enter a 50 year death match right before some epileptic Arab managed to unify his surrounding tribes and they would just conquer everywhere? Everyone at the time thought that this heralded the apocalypse one way or another. If you already believe in a God who exercises providence, it seems He went out of his way to promote Islam.
To an extent, I agree with you, but it seems like this reasoning tells you to follow different religions depending on what time you live or what historical events you're talking about. I've heard Christians, for instance, say that Christianity's being spread so far by the European empires and taking over the Roman world are evidence of its divine origin.
Granted, neither of these things were as rapid as what Muhammed did, but I don't think a neutral observer in the 1st century would have predicted the rise of Christianity any more than one in the 6th would have predicted the rise of Islam.
But, minus thewindow dressing about how Moses and Jesus were ackshully Muslims, isn't that what Muslims believe? Judaism was the truest religion; then Christianity came along and was even truer, and then Islam came along and is the truest.
You're right, that's a fair point.
Most of the ethical complaints you list they'll handwave away with some manner of divine command theory, though a few they'll say you're taking out of context, like 9:5.
There are lots of Muslims who favor various kinds of scientific and quasi-numerological miracles in the Qur'an, in addition to the general arguments for theism they lift wholesale from Christians (see, e.g., Harun Yahya and creationism). However, I get the sense that the relatively more sophisticated Muslim apologists (a description I admit isn't saying much) like Hamza Tzortzis grudgingly admit that these are silly and erroneous. For example, for a while their big knock-down proof of Islam was supposed to be the miraculous foreknowledge of modern embryology in Surah 23, and Tzortzis' institute wrote glossy brochures[1] about this great apologetic coup. But later some skeptics managed to convince him he was wrong[2], which incidentally did raise his estimation in my eyes.
The one completely unique and distinctive argument for Islam that they *do* put all their stock in, and which they are arguably doctrinally committed to putting all their stock in, is the so-called "inimitability argument," or i'jaz. It's actually a supremely convenient line of defense, insofar as it's so vague and subjective as to be a meaningless challenge. But it does have the redeeming virtue of being funny to read about.
[1] https://www.kalamullah.com/Books/Embryology_in_the_Quran_v1.1.pdf
[2] https://www.hamzatzortzis.com/does-the-quran-contain-scientific-miracles-a-new-approach/
What are your general thoughts on the mass revelation argument for Judaism?
I’m sure there will be lively debate in this comments, but nothing in this article is new. It’s just standard first-round polemics that has been around and debated from both sides for ages. Meaning, that all the relevant arguments and counter arguments are well-trodden ground
In Islam the Quran is considered to be dictated directly by Allah, but it's also accepted by many interpreters of the Quran that each verse was from a historical micro-context, which matters for interpretation.
Even for traditional-minded Muslims, a lot of this has to go on -- in particular it's important to figure out when one verse abrogates another. The most famous example is with alcohol, where some verses (generally regarded as chronologically first, from the early Mecca years) say there is good and bad in alcohol depending on how it is used, while others (generally regarded as chronologically later, from after Muhammad was powerful) just say to avoid it. The traditional story is that these were revealed over time to slowly nudge the new Muslim community away from drinking alcohol.
And for more liberal Muslims, they have room beyond this to do the exact same sorts of things that liberal Christians do with Paul. Apparent endorsements of slavery, subservience of women, attacks on LGBT people, etc., were messages intended for the people alive at the time the Quran was being revealed, in that particular flawed culture -- and maybe even intended for really specific micro-groups of people hanging around Muhammad at really specific times.
The most common argument you hear from Muslim apologists is the "Quran's linguistic miracle." They say the number of rhetorical devices present in the shortest Surrah is too many to have been conjured by an illiterate Bedouin and thus must have a divine origin.
God can use metaphors and tell stories as much as prophets. Literality does not follow from the fact that Islam claims it is the word of god.