Originally Posted by
experiencedguy
This will be my only post on this.
First point: to know the content of any religious book or text you must read it at source. Who here has read the Koran in it's original Arabic? Who knows what it ACTUALLY says? For that matter, who has read any sources of the Bible? Things get lost in translation. A case in point: When the texts that came to make up our bible were being translated from their original Aramaic and Hebrew they were translated into the main classical language of the time, which was Greek, before being translated into the Slavic languages and Latin. The main point here is that the Greek language has no word equivalent of 'the' or 'a'. Whether you mean one or many is taken from the context of the sentence. Therefore, the oft quoted 'THE son of god' becomes irrelevant without consulting the original text. This, combined with the only prayer Jesus ever gave was 'OUR father', not 'My Father', and combined with the fact that Jesus never claims to be the son of god in the bible, renders the main pillar of Christianity as questionable. This is purely point of fact. Given that there were also a lot more gospels found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, including one known as the 'Book Of Q' (purported to be the sayings of Jesus without narrative, regarded as heresy by all Christian churches), the evidence supporting Christianity is severely compromised. Therefore, people claiming to know what the Koran ACTUALLY preaches should learn Arabic first. I personally do not know, and do not claim to know.
Next point: Science relies on faith. This may surprise people, but consider the claim that Coca Cola will clean a penny. Have you tried it? How many haven't, but take on good FAITH the claims of others that this experiment will work? Let's substitute cleaning a penny with using vinegar to dissolve an eggshell. How many have done it? Yet it is still claimed as fact. Let's take theoretical physics. How about Quantum theory? How about the earth revolving around the sun? Superstring theory? Thermodynamics? Who has the TIME to investigate all of the theories for themselves? Therefore we take it on faith. The only difference between religious dogma and science lies in provability, and even that is questionable given the nature of theoretical physics.
Lastly, Dawkins book 'The God Delusion'. I also think it should be taught in schools but for different reasons. It should be taught as a lesson in self justifying atheism, just as religious books are examples of self justifying theism. It's logic is sound. However, in debunking the idea of a supernatural being, he reduces only four forms of God worship into two (dismissing agnosticism far too lightly) and then goes to work on those two ideas. He forgets one thing. He forgets that any scientific discovery is the product of an open mind, no matter how distasteful the idea may be. Indeed, Darwin was shocked by his findings, having huge crises of faith, but that did not stop him. Here we have a scientist dismissing all notions that do not concur with his own, and the only reason I can find is ego. As an atheist, he claims 'I am agnostic, but only in the sense that I am agnostic about there being the possibility of fairies at the bottom of the garden'. Given the nature of the universe at large, the existence of dark matter in the universe and the like, this is an intensely arrogant thing to say. We do not know everything. Therefore, no matter how hard we try, we just simply do not know if there is a supernatural god or not. We may never know. So the writing and publishing of this book masquerading as a scientific text is nothing short of an ego trip. In fact the last time I saw reasoning like this was in Aleister Crowleys works. Draw what you will from that.
So, back to the topic. What we have here is a clash of egos. The ego of the Christian fundamentalist that is trying to make Muslims pay emotionally for a perceived injustice. How mature. Also be aware that I'm on nobody's side here. Everyone is equally misguided in my eyes.
Ghandi said it best: 'I love your Jesus. He was a great man! But you Christians are so unlike your Jesus."
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