The point I believe is that many people do that with the Koran also. Pick and choose verses to make their point that Muslims are evil.

I Wear Pants;482380 wrote:The point I believe is that many people do that with the Koran also. Pick and choose verses to make their point that Muslims are evil.

Exactly. To understand the Qur'an, you have to understand the structure. The structure is based off of pre-Islamic Arab poetry, which is broken into 5 lines. That is why I made mention earlier that you have to take passages as groups of 5 lines, not just one. There is really no one verse, just a group of them. The Arberry translations take this into consideration and group them in fives.

Before I translated portions of the Qur'an, I had to learn the structure and meter of pre-Islamic poetry, as it really is the basis for the Qur'an. Also, the Qur'an was recited and is meant to be an oral "text". It is not meant to be read, but recited, hence the beauty of its language and movement.

I Wear Pants;482380 wrote:The point I believe is that many people do that with the Koran also. Pick and choose verses to make their point that Muslims are evil.

I can buy that, and I still refrain from posting my personal beliefs on the Qu'ran as like I said in the other thread, I only read one translation and it could have been a good or bad one.

And to be honest, I don't even remember which translation it was (been about 8 years).

That's a very reasonable thing to do. It's also why I have been having arguments about the idea/validity of the accusations of the Koran promoting violence because I'm not that well read on it. I'm in no position to cite certain portions of it or whatever. I can however deduce that there are many misinterpretations of it used to make it look bad. Just like the Bible.

Just fyi, I found this (Taking a sick day from work). It is a pretty close to what I learned about the chronological order of the Qur'an.
http://www.bombaxo.com/chronsurs.html

And the 1st sura chronologically is 96, the blood clot, form Arberry:
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
96:1 Recite: In the Name of thy Lord who created, created Man of a blood-clot. Recite: And thy Lord is the Most Generous, who taught by the Pen, taught Man that he knew not.
96:5 No indeed; surely Man waxes insolent, for he thinks himself self-sufficient. Surely unto thy Lord is the Returning. What thinkest thou? He who forbids
96:10 a servant when he prays --
What thinkest thou? If he were upon guidance
or bade to godfearing --
What thinkest thou? If he cries lies, and turns away --
Did he not know that God sees?

96:15 No indeed; surely, if he gives not over,
We shall seize him by the forelock,
a lying, sinful forelock.
So let him call on his concourse!
We shall call on the guards of Hell.
No indeed; do thou not obey him, and bow thyself, and draw nigh.
http://www.mlivo.com/translations/Arberry.htm

Pretty much says God created man, and that without God man is nothing. The we is unclear (maybe God or angles) and says that man should kneel before God and submit to God. I like this sura as it shows the power of God and that without him man cannot do anything.

ptown_trojans_1;482453 wrote:Just fyi, I found this (Taking a sick day from work). It is a pretty close to what I learned about the chronological order of the Qur'an.
http://www.bombaxo.com/chronsurs.html

And the 1st sura chronologically is 96, the blood clot, form Arberry:
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
96:1 Recite: In the Name of thy Lord who created, created Man of a blood-clot. Recite: And thy Lord is the Most Generous, who taught by the Pen, taught Man that he knew not.
96:5 No indeed; surely Man waxes insolent, for he thinks himself self-sufficient. Surely unto thy Lord is the Returning. What thinkest thou? He who forbids
96:10 a servant when he prays --
What thinkest thou? If he were upon guidance
or bade to godfearing --
What thinkest thou? If he cries lies, and turns away --
Did he not know that God sees?

96:15 No indeed; surely, if he gives not over,
We shall seize him by the forelock,
a lying, sinful forelock.
So let him call on his concourse!
We shall call on the guards of Hell.
No indeed; do thou not obey him, and bow thyself, and draw nigh.
http://www.mlivo.com/translations/Arberry.htm

Pretty much says God created man, and that without God man is nothing. The we is unclear (maybe God or angles) and says that man should kneel before God and submit to God. I like this sura as it shows the power of God and that without him man cannot do anything.

I definitely read parts like that in the Qu'ran that had identical messages throughout the Bible. If you read the Bible you will see that there are many passages that say this exact same truth.

redfalcon;481577 wrote:tit for tat. Both religions have very violent pasts, and extremists on both sides are still active.

Very true- but the issue of the founder & his disciples, and the initial 200 years or so of each religion's existence, are vastly different. I disagree with Isadore on a lot of things, but he had it right below:

isadore;481600 wrote:Of course he would claim I was racist, because he can not tell the difference between an ethnic group and a religion. But what the hell for him ignorance is bliss.
Interest that all but two of your quotes are from the Old Testament. Predating Christ.
Romans is from Paul, who took a very strict view of things but as opposed to Muhammed and his disciples never assassinated anyone, never practiced genocide, never conquered or enslaved anyone. Just died a martyr.
And Christ is standing up for parents in Matthew 15, but does he kill anyone, does he commit genocide, does he enslave, does he assassinate.
From the get go Christianity was different in its essence from Islam.
Christ and his disciples killed no one, they spread their faith by proselytizing and by their examples. They died as martyrs to their faith. For their first 250 years that was the way Christianity spread around the Mid east and the Mediterranean.Muhammed and his follower began with murder and conquest, then spread their religion using those methods. For their first 250 years they conquered by the sword from Spain to Pakistan gaining most of the population centers Islam controls today.

I Wear Pants;482449 wrote:That's a very reasonable thing to do. It's also why I have been having arguments about the idea/validity of the accusations of the Koran promoting violence because I'm not that well read on it. I'm in no position to cite certain portions of it or whatever. I can however deduce that there are many misinterpretations of it used to make it look bad. Just like the Bible.

I'll defer to ptown and others who have read the Quran, as I have not.

We see that question "What would Jesus do?"
We should look at the question "What would Muhammad do?"
Well if we did what the Prophet did we would
ethnically cleanse.
we would assinate
and we would pracitice genocide
all of which the founder of lslam did.

To be fair, Muhammed never claimed to be the son of God. Or, as believed by christians, God himself in human form (father, son, holy spirit all the same, etc).

Sykotyk;490546 wrote:To be fair, Muhammed never claimed to be the son of God. Or, as believed by christians, God himself in human form (father, son, holy spirit all the same, etc).

Not God, but the last prophet sent by God to man, right? But that must set a really high standard for conduct, just so it doesn't interfere with Muhammad's ethnic cleansing, assassination and genocide.

The people that wrote all these stories about gods were eating mushrooms and tripping out. If anyone of us today told people that god spoke to them and what he told you needs to be written in the bible or quran they would call you a nut case.

Save yourselves no one or god is going to do that for you.

More indoctrination of the people to keep them inline.

Fear has been the dominant method used for social control of individuals and groups throughout history. Courage and using your intelligence is the antidote

cosmosprivateer;498564 wrote:The people that wrote all these stories about gods were eating mushrooms and tripping out. If anyone of us today told people that god spoke to them and what he told you needs to be written in the bible or quran they would call you a nut case.

Save yourselves no one or god is going to do that for you.

More indoctrination of the people to keep them inline.

Fear has been the dominant method used for social control of individuals and groups throughout history. Courage and using your intelligence is the antidote

So are you claiming to be omniscient and omnipresent? Because you pretty much have to in order to say that at no time ever in human history has God ever spoken to man and guided/inspired the writing of a holy book. Most rational people can look at historical evidence (such as fulfilled prophecies), or lack thereof, and make an informed decision.

And btw, "fear" works both ways. It can be used by atheists to avoid the acknowledgement of a deity, or an afterlife, or a final judgment, etc.

It's pretty tough to say who was talking to these men that wrote the Bible. Now they claim it was god but there were many gods throughout history.
I claim to be neither omniscient nor omnipresent but some believe others have the ability to determine that a dreamed up deity is. I would say that man at one time was very fearful of his environment and made up stories to explain it.

Don’t take me the wrong way I believe in an afterlife many civilizations did. I even believe that Jesus walked on this planet I just don’t believe in gods.
Gods were created as a fear mechanism to keep us in line.

^^^ If you could prove it (?)

The case for or against cannot be proven. It takes a certain level of faith to believe one or the other.

CenterBHSFan;502226 wrote:^^^ If you could prove it (?)

The case for or against cannot be proven. It takes a certain level of faith to believe one or the other.

True, but that faith is more credible when based on historical evidence, such as fulfilled prophecies, or the historical testimony of those who claimed to witness Jesus' miracles or resurrection (i.e., the writers of the New Testament).

It takes faith to believe that Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey, or that Caesar ruled Rome. Both examples are based on a certain amount of historical evidence.

Historical evidence can also be a double-edged sword. It also takes a level of faith to believe it. Remember that old addage: History isn't what happened, history is what was written down".