Posted by Illuminati on 6/27/2009, 9:32 am, in reply to "Re: Paul's Contradictions 3"
75.173.17.91
Amir said:
revealed as long as there are people who have memorised the entire Quran.Several of the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad(peace be upon him) were appointed as scribes to record the words of the revelation DIRECTLY from the Prophet himself on parchment,leather,or whatever else was available. The most famous of these scribes was Zayd ibn Thabit,who also memorized the entire Qur’an,and he formed with the others a community of huffaadh that can be compared to academic societies of our present time.
The Bible on the other hand wasn t dictated by Jesus(peace be upon him
Since the Koran was not an organized book in the form we know it until Uthman, there was no way that anyone could memorize it. The only reason an individual like Uthman would burn copies of a holy book when he was making a new recension is because those copies contained ideas he disagreed with. Undoubtedly those copies had their own supporters who had memorized them.
Amir posted:
U said: ""To summarize, Caetani THOUGHT that the Qur'an as it exists today did not come word for word from the pen of the Prophet, ""
So we can see that he "THOUGHT".Am i going to accept his "THOUGHT"?He does not produce a single proof to support his interpretation and completely disregards the process of continuity which blows up his interpretation.
He claims:""the Qur'an as it exists today did not come word for word from the pen of the Prophet""
The Quran was revealed to the prophet.He ordered his companions to write the verses while others memorised them.Since we know that they memorised it word for word and on top of that the prophet Muhammad used to recite the whole Quran before his companions.So how can he make a claim like that when we know that even today,in any part of the world,the Quran is the same ,may it be on paper or in the mind.
Amir, you are back into your circular reasoning pattern again. You quote "authorities" who claim the Koran is pefect from God, and you expect us to believe them by faith. I quote a well known scholar who spent years studying the Koran and hadiths and you refuse to accept what he says by faith. In other words you are in the old "heads I win, tails you lose" mode.
Since you have quoted radical skeptics against the Bible, you can not avoid the implications of their approach for the Koran. Might I suggest you read Descarte's works and Humes works? There is no way that anyone can prove what you are claiming for the Koran. You certainly haven't proven anything.
The way radical skepticism works is that nothing is true unless you can prove it is true. Have you proven that the people surrounding Mohammad actually had perfect memories? Absolutely not. Have you proven that anyone wrote down anything at the time Mohammad lived. No. You can quote hadiths, but many of those are later traditions recorded one hundred or two hundred years after Mohammad supposedly lived. There is little you can say against the Bible which can not be said about the Koran. Worse yet, some alternative readings of the Koran have survived Uthman's fires, so the cat is now out of the bag.
Amir said:
SO how can we be so sure that the Quran today was revealed words for words?
I would simply summarise the main points in the transmission.First the Quran was revealed to the prophet.Immediately it was written down and at the same time meorised.The Quran was revealed in totality during the lifetime of the prophet.AFter its revelation was complete the companions of the prophet Muhammad(SAW) finished memorising while other people started to follow the examples of the companions after they were aware of its benefits mainly on spiritual ground.The Prophet used to recite the whole QUran and those who had memorised it could hence counter check their own memorisation.This memorising pattern hence proves that the QUran today is word for word of that which was revealed because it is conceivable that there would be much discrepancies if there had been the least variation in the Quran after the Prophet.Anyone who has memorised the QUran may it be in China,Australia or America,will read it word for word.If there had been variations then the reading would be different in each part of the world.
Uthman, did a great deal to standardize the Koran. He burned most of the variants. We do have some older fragments which survived. They demonstrate that your theory about the perfect Koran is false. Unfortunately for fundamentalist Muslims, we will never know what else was out there before Uthman burned the Korans he didn't like. Now that Uthman has standardized the Koran, the fact that everyone is quoting the same Koran means nothing.
Amir said:
"""I understand that many Muslims spend a great deal of time memorizing the Koran. I have also met people who have have memorized the Bible.""""
Allah revealed in the QUran that it had been made easy to memorise.This is phenomenal because children as young as 5 or 6 can memorise the whole QUran.Considering the premature development of the brain at such a tender age i believe it is not trivial.
The problem is that most of those children spend a great deal of time in rote memory of a book which is easily available in print. They could better spend their time learning mathematics, literature, and logic. It is my understanding that many who people come from Islamic schools have little knowledge about the real world. I would say that perhaps a little philosophy would help, but unfortunately people attending public schools in my country are often about as ignorant about philosophy as the students in Islamic schools.
Amir said:
""""Amir, I don't see any contradiction. Later on in this post, you quoted Jesus saying something very similar to what Paul said.""""
Paul says that u must believe "in the Lord" Jesus to get eternal life.SO u don seee any difference with Jesus' quotes?
Did Jesus say that we must believe he is God to obtain eternal life?
I don t think so.
I will quote Jesus on this one:
John 3:16-18
16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.
NIV
Amir posted:
Jesus said that those who believe in him won t die,in other words one would be eternal.What u fail to realise is hat to reach this state of eernal life(which occurs after death as u rightly mentionned) u cannot face a "spiritual death" during your lifetime.That is if U believe in Jesus then not only will u gain eternal life but also a protection against spiritual death.It doesn t make sense otherwise.SO Jesus said that u will gain eternal life if u believe in him but that goes without saying that at the same time u are being assured of getting protection agaisn t spiritual death.So Paul's words do constitiute a contradiction to Jesus claims.
If you understood what Paul and Jesus are saying, you would know the difference between a discussion about spiritually dying to sin, and a discussion about the immortality of the spirit.
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