| johanfh wrote: |
| About the garbage-argument: the Qur'an isn't a 'normal' book. It has surah's which have been ordered by length (as far as I know), so the change of subject isn't that strange. It's a little bit like you reading the Canterbury-tales and then complaining about all the different subjects. It's not mend to read from the first page 'till the last. That doesn't work. Read one surah and think about it. Like you read one poem from a collection, not one hundred.
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It is extremely repetitious. I guess you could call that poetic. Confucius would take incredibly profound passages from the Book of Changes and interpret them in the form of meaningless pompous poetry. He created a school of scholarship that did wonderful work, Mencius’ prose commentaries are extremely penetrating and invaluable, but Confucius’ poetry was facile and shallow. Beautiful in poetic terms is a euphemism for superficial and trite when it is nothing dressed up in flowery language.
Beautiful spiritual poetry should speak of selfless love. The Bible does that with great frequency, especially in the New Testament. Just look at what happened earlier in this thread when a_dubDesign quoted the wrong verse and yet it was still about compassion and love. There is absolutely nothing about selflessness or compassion in the Qur’an. Instead it is deeply interwoven with many different strategies for encouraging bigotry against other religions.
A major portion of the Qur’an is alternative Biblical histories. They are told in a very choppy manner, usually it is just a paragraph or two implicitly stating that the Bible is wrong on this particular fact about a Biblical personage and the Qur’an is giving you the real truth on the matter. It is like walking down old familiar streets that are all painted pink. It is a means of impugning Christians and Jews by endlessly implying that they believe in a false religion, even as it deceptively pretends to pay respect to those religions.
The Qur’an slips in an alternate cosmology that encourages bigotry by asserting that there are no demons. Muslims do not believe in demons because angels can’t fall. There are only jinn -- spirits, some of which are good and some of which are evil. In Christianity every soul is a battlefield, but in Islam the dark side doesn’t stand a chance. Anyone that goes to Hell is dishonest and deceptive disbeliever and the individual Muslim reading the Qur’an is only in real danger from such disbelievers. The danger from within is addressed only in the most bland and shallow terms; only in terms of rules like the Ten Commandments, never in terms of what is in your heart. All of the focus is external, almost none of it is internal. It is easy to judge others but much harder to objectively judge yourself; discouraging self examination encourages double standards, which is the root of all bigotry.
It is like the way AIDS first attacks the body’s ability to recognize the virus’ presence. If evil can downplay its strength and take the believers off their guard then it can strike much more effectively. Once there is no room for suspecting evil it can say all sorts of subtly corrupt things that people just absorb without critical analysis and get programmed by. Over and over the Qur’an ironically pretends to pay respect to the “Peoples of the Book” as it condemns most of them to Hell. For example, in the same sentence the Qur’an encourages Muslims to harshly judge Christians and Jews even as it says to forgive them, by impugning their motives with Satanic implications. ‘Forgive those Satanists, God will deal with their sins, which incidentally are the most vile of possible sins’. The Qur’an always expresses forgiveness in exclusively hypocritically terms of harsh judgment.
Another hypocrisy is that along with many virgins for each male Muslim there is alcohol in Heaven, even though alcohol is forbidden. It gets around this ban by not actually saying the word ‘alcohol’ but only implying it with a description of the new and improved Heavenly version as a beverage that doesn’t give you a headache no matter how much you drink. Heaven is portrayed exclusively in terms of carnal sense gratification, primarily for men. Sensual companionship for women in the afterlife is never described. Where all the virgins come from is not addressed either. To be one of many for each man is obviously not an ideal Heavenly fate for a female reader of the Qur’an to contemplate. Heavenly benefits described exclusively in terms of carnal sense gratification are totally contrary to every other religion on the planet.
| johanfh wrote: |
| About the night: God spoke to Samuël in the night (1 Samuël 3). You wouldn't call Him a demon, would you?
About the carrying: God carried Philip from a road to a city a long distance away (Acts 8). About the cave: God put Moses in a cave when He showed His might to him (Exodus 33:21 ) About the terror: Gideon is afraid he will die when he saw God. (Judges 6:22). So what about his "gut" reaction? |
That is completely different, Gideon only experiences momentary fright, sort of like jumping when someone comes up behind when you thought you were alone. God says, “you’re not gonna die”, as a mocking hyperbole. Kind of like telling a child crying from a minor tumble, “looks like we’re gonna have to amputate!” Mohammed’s terror was much more prolonged and intense.
The Bible says that the devil can do mighty deeds too, it doesn’t say only the devil can do mighty deeds. Each case is individual. If you have a good argument that these people were deceived by charlatans I’m open to here it. I don’t just automatically assume that locutions are demonic, I have to see some evidence of lying and hypocrisy in the entity’s statements.
