tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10248241.post6357419760627495243..comments2023-09-11T08:06:16.906-04:00Comments on IMRAN™: In My Humble Opinion: Oh God, Where Are Three, I Mean, Thee?IMRAN™http://www.blogger.com/profile/03919552891874811342noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10248241.post-16893418963097108082010-07-14T20:47:32.796-04:002010-07-14T20:47:32.796-04:00Hi Imram,
I didn't realize you'd actually...Hi Imram,<br /><br />I didn't realize you'd actually posted a response here! I'm glad you did. I'd like to point out that WikiPedia is a terrible source for reliable information on so important a topic. Even so, if the Apostle's Creed were to disappear today, never to be seen again that would not harm Christianity because the Creed doesn't settle Truth, the Scriptures do. <br /><br />That said, the Creed is merely a statement agreeing to what is already known. It is not the origin of the ideas agreed to within. Has there never been a statement put together by an organization that clarifies what that group already believes?<br /><br />The Apostle's Creed itself MUST agree with Scripture or be discarded because Scripture is the final written authority.~Markhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01819856178499938127noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10248241.post-41787048020947841632010-01-18T23:46:26.030-05:002010-01-18T23:46:26.030-05:00I've spent plenty of time trying to understand...I've spent plenty of time trying to understand Hinduism. I reject it, but I don't make facile comments about it. You can't just say, "Hindus believe cows are god. How stupid can you get?" If it were really that dumb, intelligent people couldn't believe it. <br /><br />No, Imran, you didn't settle it all with a neutral article. You pointed to one Wikipedia article on the Apostle's Creed.<br /><br />Showing when the Apostle's Creed was written doesn't at all get into the question of when the belief about Christ's divinity and belief in the Trinity got started.<br /><br />It's not that you didn't cite a neutral source. It's that you cited a source irrelevant to the question.<br /><br />I think you are just relatively unfamiliar with the sources and questions involved. <br /><br />No one maintains that belief in Christ's divinity developed later than the fifth century! :p No scholar, not even atheist scholars, dates the Gospel of John to later than the early second century (most date it earlier) and it tells us that Christ was God's Eternal Word who had lived forever and was Himself God. It tells us that Jesus claimed to have existed before Abraham and that He was the Great "I Am".<br /><br />Then there is St. Paul who tells us that Christ was the image of the invisible God who emptied Himself for our sake and took on human flesh. No unbelieving scholar dates that to later than the first century.<br /><br />Trinity and Incarnation are fundamental beliefs of historical Christianity. They are not options for orthodox Christians. To disbelieve in the them is like a Muslim believing that the Quran is a book written by men. We are not dealing with something parallel to problematic hadith in Abu Dawood's collection or something like that. This is central stuff.<br /><br />Yes, some Christians call Muslims swine. And plenty of Muslims return the favor in various ways.<br /><br />Why should that mean that either Islam or Christianity in its classic forms are stupid? Billions of intelligent Christians and Muslims all around the world believe that unless those who reject Mohammed and the Quran or those who reject the salvation of Christ without excuse will be condemned.<br /><br />Some are charitable about it. Some are not.<br /><br />My quarrel with you is that you appear to think that educated or historically informed Christians don't believe in the divinity of Christ or the Trinity. Only silly uneducated fundamentalists do. <br /><br />But that is far from being the case. :p Lots of highly intelligent people trained in the historical method and capable of the highest degree of abstract thought believe that those things are true and write scholarly and deeply cogent works defending them. <br /><br />They won't all call you names! :p Lots of them will be very friendly to you. But I think if you spent some time getting to know them, you would set aside your idea that you can dismiss these ideas in a sentence or two. They have far more staying power than that! <br /><br />Let me say for the record: I don't believe you are a swine. I think you are very nice and intelligent individual who is very much worth reading. But you are someone who has a superficial idea of what Christianity is like.<br /><br />Spend some time talking to more of us and your ideas will deepen, as my idea of Islam have deepened from spending time with educated Muslims. <br /><br />I don't mind it when Muslims call me names. And they certainly have! :p One fellow told me that Muslims must curse all Christians. I replied by saying that if he really thought that was true, I had no objection to his cursing me. But my response was to ask God to shower him and his family with blessings and happiness.<br /><br />We are good friends, despite his Salafist views! :p<br /><br />Views which I treat with respect, and, yes, try to understand without sneering at them.Jeffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05362705229107017257noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10248241.post-13437864229373452352010-01-18T21:42:36.394-05:002010-01-18T21:42:36.394-05:00Jeff, when was the last time you tried to understa...Jeff, when was the last time you tried to understand, say, Hinduism and their belief in the Holy Cow or other animals? You believe what you believe.<br /><br />I pointed out specific neutral sources of information showing how Christianity as practiced today was created centuries after Christ. That is something we Muslims also see in certain suspect "Hadith" (words or actions attributed to Prophet Muhammad but not in the Holy Quran) that may have been inserted by well- or ill-meaning "scholars".<br /><br />Fortunately, we've avoided so far rewriting the Quran into new versions as Christianity has been updated over the centuries with "versions" of the Bible.<br /><br />The last point you made is the point I was making, about people like the "Pastor" calling others who do not subscribe to his polytheistic or his vision of a man being a God that can also die, etc. as swine. That is neither faith, nor opinion, but proof of idiocy of people like that in every faith. :-)<br /><br />Regards<br /><br />ImranIMRAN™https://www.blogger.com/profile/03919552891874811342noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10248241.post-83208432071359407112010-01-18T10:09:20.403-05:002010-01-18T10:09:20.403-05:00Well, Imran, if you don't TRY to understand th...Well, Imran, if you don't TRY to understand things, then you can't understand them! :p<br /><br />My point about the flat/round earth is not that you can prove that God is both One and Three. You are right: Science can prove things in ways that religion cannot.<br /><br />But that is not the question. The question is whether things that can SEEM contradictory are reconcilable. Whether we can PROVE them or not is a different question.<br /><br />Religion says that things may be true even though we cannot prove them. If you don't want to accept that, then you have to be a rationalist and give up Islam and Christianity both.<br /><br />Is the earth flat? Well, it depends on your definition of flat, doesn't it? And that keeps changing and seeming more contradictory as you learn more. No we know that space itself is curved, so the definition of flat recedes into the distance.<br /><br />God is not a physical entity in space and time. Mathematics is the science of counting...and counting applies to objects in space and time. God is beyond space and time...He is not an entity like a fork or a swan. We would expect Him to be ultimately beyond our categories of understanding. <br /><br />I have explained the Trinity to many believing Muslims who ended up saying, "Yes, I understand that. No logical contradiction. I don't BELIEVE it, but I see how Christians can believe it..."<br /><br />It's really not that hard to understand, provided you don't start out by chuckling and teasing and refusing to try! :p<br /><br />***<br /><br />It is very easy to find evidence far earlier than the fifth century for the fact that Christians worshiped Jesus as divine. You don't need the Apostle's Creed.<br /><br />Roman pagan authors from the first and second centuries say so. The writings of the Apostle John say so. So do the writings of the Apostle Paul. <br /><br />Scholars disagree on the dating of these writings, but all date them very early...far earlier than the Apostle's Creed.<br /><br />We believe that God the Holy Spirit lives in the Church and guides it into all truth over time. That's no harder for God to do than sending an angel to a prophet with a "perfect book". <br /><br />All of these questions are matters of belief. Most Muslims believe that Christians are wrong. Most Christians believe that Muslims are wrong. This is a matter of opinion and of faith. <br /><br />All you have to do is watch some of the wonderful debates now available on YouTube to discover that there are no definitive answers to any of these disputes.Jeffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05362705229107017257noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10248241.post-54388371325086341042010-01-16T04:04:37.408-05:002010-01-16T04:04:37.408-05:00Jeff, you are welcome to your beliefs, but somehow...Jeff, you are welcome to your beliefs, but somehow, believing in THREE things does not equate to believing in ONE entity. So, Jesus is a God to you? But he died (at least as Christians believe, since Muslims revere him and believe he was taken by God alive for the day he shall return) so, can God die? <br /><br />If he was a creation of God (a miracle as we too believe in the virgin Mary) then how can he BE God? If God is the energy in all of us then that energy, life, whatever, is also within us. We are not gods. Worshipping a MAN (regardless of how great Jesus was, he was a MAN) is NOT faith and practice of belief in and worship of THE God that created everything, including Jesus.<br /><br />Sorry, but relating that to a spurious comparison of the earth being flat (which it is not) and spherical at the same time makes no sense. What Science proposes, it also provides mechanisms to prove (otherwise they are merely hypotheses). Religion offers no proofs which is fine. I am OK with faith being based on the argument that we do not have the mechanisms to prove God exists or not and so it does not necessarily mean he does not exist, as atheists would like us to believe. But, superior holier than thou preachiness of fundamentalist crazy Christians is as distasteful as that of crazy Muslim, crazy Jews or crazy any others.<br /><br />Faith should not require proof, but then it also should not be assumed superior to others' faiths by certain people who you can read about, to whom, anyone to whom Jesus is not God, is swine. Spoken like a good Christian Taliban would say it. ;-)<br /><br />Mark, plenty of sources to read up more than IMRAN's blog on that topic... but, basically....<br /><br />"The Apostles Creed (Symbolum Apostolorum) was developed between the second and ninth centuries." <br /><br />(I am positive Jesus did not live to be 100 or 900 years old to develop this himself). <br /><br />"It is the most popular creed used in worship by Western Christians. Its central doctrines are those of the Trinity and God the Creator. " <— which leads to:<br /><br />"The Apostles' Creed (Latin: Symbolum Apostolorum or Symbolum Apostolicum), sometimes titled Symbol of the Apostles, is an early statement of Christian belief, a creed or "symbol".[1] It is widely used by a number of Christian denominations for both liturgical and catechetical purposes, most visibly by liturgical Churches of Western tradition, including the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, Lutheranism, the Anglican Communion, and Western Orthodoxy. It is also used by Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists."<br /><br />And this came about:<br /><br />"The name of the Creed comes from the probably fifth-century legend" <— Hmmm, Fifth Century... interesting... not the lifespan of Jesus Christ or any normal human being, but something created centuries later.<br /> <br />"that, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit after Pentecost, each of the Twelve Apostles dictated part of it. It is traditionally divided into twelve articles.<br />Because of its early origin, it does not address some Christological issues defined in the later Nicene and other Christian Creeds. It thus says nothing explicitly about the divinity of either Jesus or of the Holy Spirit."<br /><br />So, I repeat, even something in the FIFTH CENTURY, it says nothing "about the divinity of either Jesus or of the Holy Spirit." <— so that stuff came even LATER!<br /><br />"This makes it acceptable to many Arians and Unitarians. Nor does it address many other theological questions that became objects of dispute centuries later." <— Meaning, most of modern Christian practices were created CENTURIES after Prophet Jesus was not around any more.<br /><br />Regards<br /><br />Imran<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChristianityIMRAN™https://www.blogger.com/profile/03919552891874811342noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10248241.post-60287495671332648882010-01-16T00:25:35.983-05:002010-01-16T00:25:35.983-05:00Hello imram,
I am still interested in your answe...Hello imram, <br /><br />I am still interested in your answer to my questions which even evidenced by your own post here, you never gave. <br /><br />I am more than willing to have civil discussion and I don't think anything I offered falls under the heading of "bigotry".~Markhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01819856178499938127noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10248241.post-167044804713713102010-01-04T07:58:01.977-05:002010-01-04T07:58:01.977-05:00Now how come the things your interlocutors say abo...Now how come the things your interlocutors say about Islam are "bigotry" but the things you say about Christianity aren't?<br /><br />Don't get me wrong: I am a Christian but I have no objection to your saying them. I think you honestly believe them. God bless you.<br /><br />But I don't myself believe they are accurate. There are many brilliant Christians who are deeply versed in history, for example, who are not at all persuaded that a simple study of history shows that Christian teaching was "invented" centuries after the fact.<br /><br />After a great deal of historical and theological reading *I* am not persuaded of that.<br /><br />And I don't have any difficulty believing in the Trinity, which is not a question of "three entities", but of the single fount of all existence in the form of three persons. That's odd and mysterious, but not any more odd and mysterious than flat things being round (the earth) or straight lines in space being curved or many other things modern science proposes for our belief.<br /><br />My point is just this:<br /><br />Muslims often see Christianity and Christians too often see Islam in ways that believers in those religions find baffling. And sometimes offensive or hurtful. That's not "bigoted", it's just a difference in opinion.Jeffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05362705229107017257noreply@blogger.com