Mohammed

[Amoon]

You have me confused here about the hour What do you mean Jesus does not know when the hour was to come. He foretold it in John. 12:21

Now the hour has COME for the SON OF MAN to be glorified. In all truth I tell you unless a wheat grain falls into the earth and dies it remains only a single grain, but if it dies it yields a rich harvest.

I am talking about this verse:

Matthew 24:36 “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.

This verse shows that Jesus knowledge was limited, and God’s knowledge is greater than Jesus’s.

 

[Amoon]

God had to reveal the trinity to us because he came into the world as a man. Understanding the trinity clarifies how God can be invisible (as the Jews believed) and invisible as well as visible (as Christians believe).

An idea can be hard to understand, but this fact doesn’t mean that the concept is incorrect.

In Islam, (1) God has always existed.

(2) He can make himself present anywhere in the universe.

(3) God can do anything he wishes.

(4) He uses perfect justice in his decisions.

(5) God knows everything about his creation.

Can humans really understand these five ideas? No.

But does the existence of difficult concepts mean that they are automatically false? No.

We might even conclude that Allah’s nature is whatever he wills it to be at a given point in time. Might he even be a Trinity if he wills it?

So, if Allah’s nature is unknowable, how can you make a statement about his nature, i.e., that he is “one” ?

God can do anything and He does what He will, but God is Perfect and anything He does is also Perfect. God is The Ever-Living so He does not die, and God is Sufficient so He does not need food and air to survive. He created food and air so why would He need them!

God is The Most High, above all, and He is above Jesus and the Holy Spirit and all His creations. Nothing is as great as Him, and nothing is equal to Him.

God is so great that He can forgive sins without the need of someone’s sacrifice or someone’s blood to clean our sins. He forgives sins because He is Oft Forgiving, Most Merciful.

 

[jlhargus]

For Muslims to say that God is One, they mean it, and it is easily understood because God is One and no buts! For Christians, God is One, **but ** also Three!

JL: GOD isn’t THREE Gods, GOD is ONE BEING there are three person in that ONE BEING of GOD. God has no partners in a trinity, the Trinity is the ONE GOD. The Quran is in error in 5:73 when it says those that say: God is the third of a triad, and there’s no god but One God.

To me Amoon this gives obvious and strong evidence the Quran is only of human origin. An all knowing God would never have made such an error in what Christians teach. Christians have NEVER taught such a silly error that GOD IS THE THIRD OF A TRIAD. Only a man who is ignorant of the true teaching regarding the Trinity could make such an obvious error.

Certainly an all knowing God would have known better. The Trinity IS the ONE GOD. There is no such thing as God being a THIRD of the Trinity. The TRINITY IS the ONE GOD there are no partners in the Trinity=God. It is ignorance of the truth to say one third of the triad is God and two thirds not God. It is error to say God has partners. There is only ONE INDIVISABLE GOD the TRINITY Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

This is the third error, on the Trinity, in the Quran I have noticed and I don’t even know that much about the Quran. The other two being the Quran implying Christians teach God has partners in the Trinity and Mary is one of the partners, 5:116.

 

[Trebor135]

God can do anything and He does what He will, but God is Perfect and anything He does is also Perfect. God is The Ever-Living so He does not die, and God is Sufficient so He does not need food and air to survive. He created food and air so why would He need them!

He could die, and he would need food and air, if he took on a human nature. Do you believe that God, the one who can do all, is unable to take on a human nature?

God is The Most High, above all, and He is above Jesus and the Holy Spirit and all His creations. Nothing is as great as Him, and nothing is equal to Him.

Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not God’s creations. They are eternal and divine.

God is so great that He can forgive sins without the need of someone’s sacrifice or someone’s blood to clean our sins. He forgives sins because He is Oft Forgiving, Most Merciful.

Would you also say, “I know a doctor who is so great that He can declare diseases to be cured without the need to use medicine. He declares diseases to be cured because He is Oft Curing, Most Kind.”?

As you can imagine, if a doctor declares diseases to be cured, the patient who comes to him for treatment is still sick no matter how firmly they both believe otherwise.

The doctor has to actually do something in order for the patient to recover. Sweeping a problem under the rug and making an effort to fix the problem are two entirely different things.

If God is perfect, then he should want to make us perfect like him–but God is not going to be able to do this by pretending our flaws don’t really matter as long as our deeds end up fifty-one percent good and fourty-nine percent evil at our judgment.

 

[sedonaman]

God can do anything and He does what He will, but God is Perfect and anything He does is also Perfect. God is The Ever-Living so He does not die, and God is Sufficient so He does not need food and air to survive. He created food and air so why would He need them!

God is The Most High, above all, and He is above Jesus and the Holy Spirit and all His creations. Nothing is as great as Him, and nothing is equal to Him.

God is so great that He can forgive sins without the need of someone’s sacrifice or someone’s blood to clean our sins. He forgives sins because He is Oft Forgiving, Most Merciful.

This is all very interesting, but it doesn’t answer my questions.

 

[OurBeloved]

The first sentence might be the word of Jesus, but the second is yours! Because Jesus said no one can go to God without him, he must be god! I can say that I cannot be saved if I don’t follow the path of Mohammed, but that doesn’t make Mohammed God.

If Jesus was god, he would have said that clearly. There is no reason for him not to declare it clearly. Again I will ask this, why do you think Jesus did not know the answer when he was asked about the Hour?

I think the question here is simple friend. Let us not get Theological. What is your answer to the following?

“Why should anyone believe in Prophet M.'s authority?”

The argument here is going to be along the lines of “If Prophet M. has no reasons to give us to believe that he has authority, then there is no reason to believe what he revealed about Faith and Morals”.

There are several common answers you might now give

1. The Koran, which was written by him, has a lot of predictions that have come true

Possible counter-objection: But if we grant that the Koran had accurate predictions, that only proves that he was good at making some future earthly predictions. That does not give us any reason to think the rest of his book is accurate on the after-life or about God. There is nothing done by Prophet M. to make us feel that he also knows anything about the supernatural or what happens after death.

1. Prophet M. couldn’t write so him writing the Koran was the miracle

Possible counter-objection: Even if we grant that it was a miracle, it still does not give us any reason to believe him regarding what he wrote about the afterlife, God, morals and the supernatural. There are people who have many other miraculous experiences in their lives like getting cured from their illness. It doesn’t mean we should believe them at all.

1. What reason is there to believe the Bible is authoritative on Faith and Morals?

Possible counter-objection: Even if there was no reason to believe that the Bible was authoritative, it still won’t be a reason to believe the Koran as authoritative either. So your reasonable course of action in that case would be to abandon both faiths, Islam and Christianity.

BUT, there is good reasons to think the Bible is authoritative. Why? It comes from the Apostolic successors of the first Apostles who were taught by Christ about these truths. But why believe Christ? Because the man died and rose from the dead. I think it makes sense to believe the man who has seen what is after death and then risen again about things after death than believe in someone who made good earthly predictions. Don’t you think so?

Now as for resolving why Jesus didn’t know the hour, that is a theological question and the Church has given some good reasons for it.

newadvent.org/cathen/08675a.htm

But anyway, engaging in Theological argument is useless to decide whether the Koran is right or the Bible is right. We can both find “mistakes” in each others which are more likely due to lack of knowledge on both our parts about that of others. Even if there were no such errors in both books, it does not give us any reason to believe either of them anyway. Logical consistency by it-self is not proof that something is true.

**So the correct approach is to ask which book is the more reasonable one to believe. Or more accurately, which person/s are worthy of belief regarding faith (after-life, God etc) and morals? That is a matter of REASON and not a matter of knowing what the Koran or the Bible teaches. In fact, one does not even need (and *should ****not *need) to flip a single page of either book to answer the question.

I think the answer here is resoundingly clear to that question for anyone who is honestly seeking. This is what every religious person in the world should ask rather than pick a holy book and try to justify the religion using Theology which is a meaningless exercise if you already have the wrong book. So what you should find out is which book was given from a person worth believing before you pick it up in the first place.

I invite you to ponder the above question and really ask yourself why you believe in the reliability of the person who gave the holy book to you regarding matters beyond this world. As far as I can see, there is really no good reasons to believe what he has written about anything beyond this world.

 

[Jacques_Parent]

This is a story of a muslim women who left the faith to become a christian, a must watch

her name is Nonie Darwish and you can find her testimonies doing a google search under her name.

 

[Trebor135]

Possible counter-objection: But if we grant that the Koran had accurate predictions, that only proves that he was good at making some future earthly predictions. That does not give us any reason to think the rest of his book is accurate on the after-life or about God. There is nothing done by Prophet M. to make us feel that he also knows anything about the supernatural or what happens after death.

Possible rejoinder: By this reasoning we should not accept the divine origins of the Bible. If we grant that the book had accurate predictions, that only proves that the various authors involved were good at making some future earthly predictions. That does not give us any reason to think the rest of the tome to which they made contributions is accurate on the after-life or about God. There is nothing done by these writers to make us feel that they also knew anything about the supernatural or what happens after death.

Possible counter-objection: Even if we grant that it was a miracle, it still does not give us any reason to believe him regarding what he wrote about the afterlife, God, morals and the supernatural. There are people who have many other miraculous experiences in their lives like getting cured from their illness. It doesn’t mean we should believe them at all.

Possible rejoinder: By this reasoning we should also reject the resurrection of Christ. Even if we grant that this event occurred, it still does not give us any reason to believe the New Testament writers regarding what they wrote about the afterlife, God, morals and the supernatural. There are people who have claimed to see many other miraculous events in their lives like others getting cured from their illness. It doesn’t mean we should believe them at all.

 

[rinnie]

I am talking about this verse:

Matthew 24:36 “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.

This verse shows that Jesus knowledge was limited, and God’s knowledge is greater than Jesus’s.

Oh, Okay, See Christ did not live this life in his Divine Form he has kept that hidden in his human form while he lived here on earth.

Christ did not come into his glory until he emptyied himself, that what we call the incarnation.

But what Christ is saying he will not reveal to us in his human form, will be revealed to us in his Divine Form.

 

[OurBeloved]

Possible rejoinder: By this reasoning we should not accept the divine origins of the Bible. If we grant that the book had accurate predictions, that only proves that the various authors involved were good at making some future earthly predictions. That does not give us any reason to think the rest of the tome to which they made contributions is accurate on the after-life or about God. There is nothing done by these writers to make us feel that they also knew anything about the supernatural or what happens after death.

You are exactly spot on. There is no reason to believe the Bible unless the proof comes from the authority of the authors.

So in the case of Christianity, you had to first seek Christ, because you know about the truth of the resurrection. Given that the Resurrection is true, then you turn to the students of Christ, in that case the Apostles to learn what he taught.

Therefore, the question in that case if whether you believe in Christ as authoritative or not. If he indeed seems to be authoritative due to his resurrection, you give assent to everything else he taught. The choice of which person to believe must be made entirely on reason. Then you give assent by faith. Otherwise your choice is merely arbitrary.

Possible rejoinder: By this reasoning we should also reject the resurrection of Christ. Even if we grant that this event occurred, it still does not give us any reason to believe the New Testament writers regarding what they wrote about the afterlife, God, morals and the supernatural. There are people who have claimed to see many other miraculous events in their lives like others getting cured from their illness. It doesn’t mean we should believe them at all.

That does not follow. We believe the authority of what is taught by the Apostles because we believe it comes from Christ. If we are not sure about that, then we should indeed abandon Christianity.

Since Christ did die and rose from the dead (and since you are not denying this as false), he has been to the place after death and has come back by his own power. Logically, that would be the guy I want to listen to since he knows how to defeat death, and therefore probably how the world beyond our visible world works. So since I too feel drawn to live eternally in happiness, he is the one that seems like the most reasonable choice to listen to.

Overall, our belief does hinge on the resurrection. If it is true, then Christ is the reasonable choice to turn to. If you feel otherwise, I would certainly like to hear your reasoning. But if you do feel that the resurrection is not proof, then you do fall under the same category as the Pharisees at that time and cannot be convinced anyway.

What you have to realize is that the key concept here is authority. Someone who did die and rise from the dead by his own power has more authority regarding the supernatural than someone like Prophet M., Lord Buddha, any others you can think of.

Another thing I’d like to add is you might have confused observing miracles with deriving from miracles. If someone observes a miracle, that is not the problem here. The point I made was on the problem here of claiming that because I experienced a miracle, you should believe what I say about things that don’t seem directly relevant or something that logically follows from the miracle. To give you an analogy, if a doctor cures me from Pneumonia, I cannot then claim that I know the field of medicine.

So in any-case, the question even you as a Christian needs to ask is which person is worth believing, not based on what he says (because the important stuff, which are supernatural and transcendent cannot ever be verified till its too late and you are dead), but based on what he has done to make us trust his authority. If you personally feel that you cannot justify anyone as authoritative, then you must reject every religion.

 

[LtTony]

I am talking about this verse:

Matthew 24:36 “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.

This verse shows that Jesus knowledge was limited, and God’s knowledge is greater than Jesus’s.

It doesn’t say that. It says “only the Father”, not “the Son.” Elsewhere, Jesus said He and the Father are one.
If you take that verse so literally, why don’t you accept this one?: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

God can do anything and He does what He will, but God is Perfect and anything He does is also Perfect. God is The Ever-Living so He does not die, and God is Sufficient so He does not need food and air to survive. He created food and air so why would He need them!

You’re right, God is eternal. But the Son of Man can die a human death, then rise from the dead. Only God can do that.

God is so great that He can forgive sins…

Just like Jesus did. (mark 2, for example.)
Or give others authority to forgive (John 20).

 

[LtTony]

1. Prophet M. couldn’t write so him writing the Koran was the miracle

Possible counter-objection: Even if we grant that it was a miracle, it still does not give us any reason to believe him regarding what he wrote about the afterlife, God, morals and the supernatural. There are people who have many other miraculous experiences in their lives like getting cured from their illness. It doesn’t mean we should believe them at all.

Did M. “write” the Koran, or did he merely repeat to others what he was allegedly told in the cave (and they wrote it down)? Or both?

 

[Curious_Seed]

Amazing how some Catholics think they know what confronted Mohammed, much less what an angel would say or do, so much less so with that angel being Gabriel.

The Qu’ran must have gotten that presentation wrong, and now is misleading over one billion Muslims.

I wonder what Mohammed, may Peace be upon him, could have been thinking?

 

[OurBeloved]

Did M. “write” the Koran, or did he merely repeat to others what he was allegedly told in the cave (and they wrote it down)? Or both?

Well, in either case, the question would still be what reasons do we have to consider Prophet M. as authoritative regarding matters beyond death or the transcendent.

In Christianity’s case, Jesus taught, Apostles and their Apostolic Successors wrote and passed things down in the form of Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. Therefore, the question that a Christian needs to answer (or has answered) is what reason is there to consider the teachings of Christ authoritative. The resurrection therefore is the hinging point for all Christians and Christianity since it is what makes it reasonable to turn to Christ as the authority. If the authority is valid, then we give assent to the Apostles and their successors, and by virtue of their instruction, to Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture.

 

[OurBeloved]

Amazing how some Catholics think they know what confronted Mohammed, much less what an angel would say or do, so much less so with that angel being Gabriel.

The Qu’ran must have gotten that presentation wrong, and now is misleading over one billion Muslims.

I wonder what Mohammed, may Peace be upon him, could have been thinking?

The point being made here is that it is irrelevant what confronted Prophet M. What is important is the answer to the question “what reasons do we have to believe in his teaching authority regarding matters beyond the grave and the transcendent?”. The answer to that question seems to be “none” as far as we know. But if you provide us with reasons to think he is authoritative in these matters, we will definitely reconsider.

(Do keep in mind that the evidence you give would have to be of non-theological nature. In other words, I should be able to know of Prophet M.'s authority by reason and not by first having faith in a holy text which he wrote)

 

[Curious_Seed]

The point being made here is that it is irrelevant what confronted Prophet M. What is important is the answer to the question “what reasons do we have to believe in his teaching authority regarding matters beyond the grave and the transcendent?”. The answer to that question seems to be “none” as far as we know. But if you provide us with reasons to think he is authoritative in these matters, we will definitely reconsider.

(Do keep in mind that the evidence you give would have to be of non-theological nature. In other words, I should be able to know of Prophet M.'s authority by reason and not by first having faith in a holy text which he wrote)

My post addressed the initial post.

As for your post, speaking of authority, I have to ask - are you kidding?

You want to know the authority of Prophet M, and the evidence must be non-theological.

Let me ask you - what is the authority of Mr. J, as you insist, by reason only, without faith in a holy text?

 

[mab23]

In regards to the apparitions from the angel Gabriel to Mohammed and if the apparitions are true or is this a false religion, I think this information will be helpful as the main clue:

In the Old and New Testaments, when an apparition comes from heaven, the messenger always has the same comment and it is “Do Not Be afraid”. This is the same as the angel Gabriel to Mary and Jesus at the Transfiguration as well as Our Lady of Guadalupe, Fatima, etc. If the messenger does not address the person with “Do not be afraid”, I think the safe bet is “Do not believe”. I do not remember Gariel saying tis to Mohammed.

Peace

interesting concept!

 

[OurBeloved]

My post addressed the initial post.

As for your post, speaking of authority, I have to ask - are you kidding?

You want to know the authority of Prophet M, and the evidence must be non-theological.

Let me ask you - what is the authority of Mr. J, as you insist, by reason only, without faith in a holy text?

The resurrection is outside the text and a historical fact. It is from the resurrection that gives us reason to think that Christ has the authority. I did state this few times if you did pay attention

As for Prophet M. there is no reason to even remotely to think he has authority. You are welcome to give us reasons if you believe to the contrary as I asked before. It appears that you haven’t met this objection. So even if you do not have sufficient reason to believe Christ, it does not mean you can believe Prophet M or reduce the standard of reason to fit what you have. The logical thing to do would be to abandon both.

But honestly, if you do use reason, I can’t see why you would think that Christ lacks authority given the resurrection is a historical fact.

What you have to remember is that Christianity is not a religion of the book. We didn’t have a book till about 300 from the resurrection. Our belief was in the authority of Christ because of his resurrection which is attested to by the witness of those who saw him resurrected.

 

[sedonaman]

… Therefore, the question that a Christian needs to answer (or has answered) is what reason is there to consider the teachings of Christ authoritative.?]…

You have touched on an important point here that applies to teaching in general, and that is the question of trust and truth. We have all been told in school that the earth is round, but how many people have actually verified it independently? Not many; we just trusted our teachers would be teaching the truth.

How many people would be willing to verify scriptures personally, i.e., is the Bible or Koran you have the correct one?

Not to hijack the thread, but I think that is why education is in a sad state of affairs in this country: teachers have been indoctrinating students into the “correct” ideology, not teaching. Some have even gone so far as to redefine truth.

 

[OurBeloved]

You have touched on an important point here that applies to teaching in general, and that is the question of trust and truth. We have all been told in school that the earth is round, but how many people have actually verified it independently? Not many; we just trusted our teachers would be teaching the truth.

How many people would be willing to verify scriptures personally, i.e., is the Bible or Koran you have the correct one?

Not to hijack the thread, but I think that is why education is in a sad state of affairs in this country: teachers have been indoctrinating students into the “correct” ideology, not teaching. Some have even gone so far as to redefine truth.

I think you are spot on about our education system.

Just to weave what you said in to this thread, I don’t think everyone needs to be a Physicist or a Theologian for an example to accept the truths in those fields or necessarily verify them. But one would need to be reasonable in choosing who to believe in a certain field of knowledge. One would also need to know which question belongs to which field.

I think today we have a failure on both of the above. Most students aren’t taught who to believe. They just look it up on the internet and believe anything and anyone as authoritative in a field. With the lack of subjects like Philosophy, most students do not even understand the limitations and scope of ones own field. This is probably why someone like Stephen Hawking would try to answer the philosophical question of ‘something from nothing’ and also be able get away with it.

The crux when it comes to religion is that Theologically important concepts are usually not verifiable (until one is dead at which point it is too late anyway). They are transcendent truths. What we do in Theology is we accept the truths by faith and then infer from it using logical and philosophical rules of inference. We cannot however verify theologically that the basic theological truths we initially accepted are true. But you would still see many who would like carry out the debate of a certain religion vs. another strictly on the theological plane. This gets nowhere because in the end, each party would simply be trying to show some inconsistency between two or more theological results of the other to prove that religion wrong. But usually there exists solutions to reconcile these seeming inconsistencies in most cases and more problematically, even if there wasn’t, it wouldn’t prove ones own religion true. Logical consistency by it-self does not imply that it mirrors the transcendent truths perfectly.

So unlike in other fields, religion is kind of unique in that it comes down to accepting an authority. We cannot become an authority in transcendent truths because we cannot study the transcendent by our-self. Therefore, we have to evaluate each person who claims to be an authority regarding the transcendent to see if he/she is worth believing. In our present world, we have Lord Buddha, Prophet M., Jesus Christ and others who claimed to be authorities regarding the transcendent. But there has to be reasons to believe any of the three have authority and just their word is not enough.

In my analysis, Jesus Christ seems to be the only authoritative figure in this case by the fact of his resurrection. The others simply lack any reason to consider them authoritative. If a person wants to rise from the dead, and be happy, it seems like the reasonable thing to do is listen to someone who has done just that. However, after realizing this point, that person has no choice but to give assent to the teachings of Christ on Faith. Some of the teachings might be verifiable through philosophical analysis (Reason) but that is just a bonus. Now since a person does not have direct access to learn from Christ himself, that person would have to turn to the Apostles. But since a person today does not have direct access to the Apostles, he/she will have to turn to the Apostolic successors instituted by them to learn the teachings of Christ. This is how one would arrive at the Catholic Church through reason and then become a Catholic by accepting the truths taught by faith (& also through reason when possible).

But rather than go this route, our society has fallen in to this comfort zone where we just go “What you believe is your faith, what I believe is mine, no ones wrong, there is no logical way for you to arrive at my faith (this one sort of falls under the heresy of Modernism too I think), you just need to believe, we are all correct, lets just get along”. Then comes the loss of any faith because someone will ask the inevitable question “if we cannot know which of these religions that preach so many different things is worthy of belief, why believe in any of them”.