(April 28, 2012 at 3:27 am)FallentoReason Wrote:(April 28, 2012 at 3:21 am)teaearlgreyhot Wrote:(April 28, 2012 at 3:07 am)FallentoReason Wrote: ...
So it was interesting to see that he was rational in his reasons for leaving Christianity, but then I'm not sure what he saw in Islam that was rational to him. Maybe he isn't as informed as some of us with the history of it all.
Interesting. Seems that the arguments used for believing Islam are very similar to what I've heard for Christianity (i.e. Gospels mention real places in detail, a mass of followers wouldn't have arisen unless Jesus existed and did what the Bible says, etc, etc, etc).
Yes, very true. He did mention something to me and I was surprised that he was ok with that. "Qur'an" literally means 'the recitation' which is referring to the recitation of Mohammed's revelations amongst that community. How long was this 'recitation' or oral tradition going on for exactly? 10 years he said, until Mohammed was getting close to dying so they got literate people to start writing everything down.
Oral traditions aren't something I find rational to believe in. The OT is the same thing and the Gospels are short bursts of oral tradition i.e. hearsay... The Qur'an boldly states it's no different to this!
It's really illuminating for me coming from a Christian apologetics background to see apologetical defenses of other religions such as Islam. The arguments I use to use are really no better than what Islam can argue with. It ultimately boils down to which set of unverifiable and unfalsifiable set of spiritual beliefs sound better to you. One might as well just believe in native american religions. And if you look at probably most of the strongest and loudest apologists for any religion, you'll probably find a number of them admit (such as W.L. Craig has) that it was never reason that got them to believe, but just some religious experience. "Reason" is just a tool they have to "regrettably" (I've heard some of them actually say using reason is a necessary evil!) have to use to put out the fires of atheists. To many of them, reason and logic is just another language they have to learn and use to witness to modern heathens just like they might have to learn the tongue of a primitive tribe to spread the word in the 3rd world.
My ignore list
"The lord doesn't work in mysterious ways, but in ways that are indistinguishable from his nonexistence."
-- George Yorgo Veenhuyzen quoted by John W. Loftus in The End of Christianity (p. 103).
"The lord doesn't work in mysterious ways, but in ways that are indistinguishable from his nonexistence."
-- George Yorgo Veenhuyzen quoted by John W. Loftus in The End of Christianity (p. 103).
