Wow - real life took over! Apologies
So 1. We accept that humans are succeptable for failure, and 2. we have a very long tradition of sacrifice payment to rectify that. Jesus removed the need for sacrifice, which is the evolutionary step for religion.
(July 16, 2012 at 6:04 am)Rayaan Wrote: To clarify, fr0d0, the deception of Allah never lies in Him deceiving about His nature, about His existence, about the Quran, nor anything related to Islam. Those are the things that we regard as the truth. Allah is also the Truth (Al-Haqq). However, Allah never deceives us in those key matters nor in matters of faith and worship. Rather, His deceptions were only against certain people who wanted to commit acts of aggression against the Prophet Muhammad and/or those who wanted to stop the spread of Islam.No I can't accept that answer Rayaan. Allah directly deceiving his believers, for whatever reason, even if it might be for the greater good, is still Allah lying. If he's truth.. then how can he lie? To me that's a fundamental I can't get past.
In other words, Allah's deceptions consisted of helping the Muslims to create their own schemes in order to derail all the other schemes made by their enemies. This was only to protect His followers from those who were attacking them. As I said before, deception and scheming by itself is something evil, but when they are done for the purpose of derailing or outmaneuvering the evil plans of others, then it is positive. To me, that is a justifiable deception.
So, justifiable deception goes along with one of Allah's 99 attributes which is The Just (Al-Muqsit), and being Just (Al-Muqsit) doesn't negate Truth (Al-Haqq).
(July 16, 2012 at 6:04 am)Rayaan Wrote: I don't want to go into explaining the same verses all over again because then I would have to explain to you the Arabic, transliteration, and all that stuff, and I find that to be quite a tedious and a laboring task for myself. I already explained them to you one time. It seems to me that your problems are only a result of a lack of knowledge of some of the semantic aspects of the verses.You accept the crucial points as correct. It seems that the rubbing point is your acceptance.
(July 16, 2012 at 6:04 am)Rayaan Wrote: And still, even though I appreciate that you answered the question, I find it very irrational that God would punish Himself for the sins of others by hanging on a cross. What kind of a logic is it to think that God would punish Himself? I mean, did he commit any crimes? Is He guilty of our sins? No, so, I don't understand why He would have to forgive our sins by making Himself go through so much pain and suffering.If God committed the crimes deserving punishment, then he couldn't die as an innocent sacrifice, paying for the wrongdoings of others. Just like innocent animals are slaughtered as sacrifices.. it isn't them doing any wrong, but the person that had done wrong wanting to pay back their debt and purchase back their innocence so that they could placate God, with a clean slate.
So 1. We accept that humans are succeptable for failure, and 2. we have a very long tradition of sacrifice payment to rectify that. Jesus removed the need for sacrifice, which is the evolutionary step for religion.
(July 16, 2012 at 6:04 am)Rayaan Wrote: I don't mean to insult your intelligence when I say this, though. It's just that it doesn't sound reasonable to me that a God would punish Himself.I hope that answered your question. I'll try again if you could perhaps get more specific.