The Central Flaw of Christianity (another article)

[Hamza Asadullah]

I can appreciate that you may feel like I overstepped in what I said. I even respect you for defending one whom I assume you consider a friend -- at least an internet friend. But I am not apologetic. I truly feel as if Hamza moved the goalposts. He may have intended to ask that the "proof" of the concept of blood atonement came from prophets who preceeded Jesus. But in those post to which I responded what he asked for was from "ANYWHERE in the Bible." His words and his emphasis; not mine. So to then object to my lists on the grounds that it contain Pauline material is to raise unwarranted objections.

Futher, he goes on to assert "what you have done to desperatley try and prove your weak position is to quote the one person who actually brought in this false concept in the first place - PAUL." Well, I did quote Paul, but his statement is only a half truth. For Paul was not "the one person" I quoted, but one among many. And whatever you may think of me, it doesn't make that which I have said of Hamza any less true. He did indeed speak falsely. The record is plain for all to see.

It is also plain to see for all that read this thread that you have clearly NOT done what you have said you have done and that is to provide a shred of evidence to prove your position regarding the blood atonement.

I asked you to provide proof and evidence from the teachings of Jesus, God and the Bible where the teaching of the blood atonement is explicitly taught and all you have done is to provide vague verses in which you deceptively change and twist their meanings to try and prove your position.

So clearly you have quoted NOTHING which proves your position at all but ONLY makes you lose all credibility in this forum. In your desperation when you KNOW that there are no EXPLICIT teachings of the blood atonement in the Bible you then sneakily quote the one person whom who abrogated, contradicted and changed the teachings of Jesus and Moses which are NOT supported ANYWHERE in the teachings of ANY Prophet, Jesus or God - PAUL.

So Grace Seeker i ask of you to stop being so deceptive and instead have an honest debate because rather than help Sol who needed your help here because he was out of his depth, you have actually done the opposite and weakened his position further and by being deceptive lost all your credibility in this forum.

So once again Grace Seeker please: "Cover NOT the truth with falsehood, nor conceal the truth when you know."

 

[Hamza Asadullah]

there we go with explicit statements etc. "when i tell you that you owe me such and such a thing" will you then exclaim "no way, i'm not indebted to you at all because you have not said the words 'you are indebted to me'"? such argumentation is simply pathetic.

go back and try to disprove my argument concerning debt motifs.

Let us not get frustrated now as that only shows that you have a weak argument. I will let Grace Seeker help you out here. I apologise for putting pressure on you.

 

[Grace Seeker]

Greetings Grace Seeker,

What is clear for ALL to see is that when you take out all the passages from Paul who is actually the creator of the paganistic concept of the blood atonement then there is NOTHING in the verses you have quoted which even in the slightest proves your position at all but what you continue to do is ONLY strengthen my position and argument that NO Prophet of God, Nor the Christian deity, Nor Jesus or ANYWHERE in the Bible is the concept of blood atonement explicitly taught!

All you have continue to do is quote vague verses (NONE from the actual words of God or Jesus) and try to assert that the verses talk refer to the blood atonement. All you continue to do is deceptively try to change and twist its meanings to what you want the verses to refer to.

This is quite a different thing than what you said above. What I heard you saying above was not that you disagreed with me or found the material provided unconvincing, but that I had not even provided any thing except Pauline material. And that simply isn't true. What I hear you saying in this post is that you don't find the non-Pauline material convincing and that only the Pauline material (in your opinion) makes any argument for blood atonement. I might disagree with your opinion, but I can respect that it is yours opinion. If this is then is meant as a clarification of what you originaly meant by your post above, I can accept it as apology.

But tell us Grace Seeker HOW can a concept so fundamental to Christianity NOT be taught ANYWHERE in the central Christian doctrine? Why would such a fundamental concept be so shrouded in mystery and hidden until well after the departure of Jesus from this earth?

Much of the Christian faith consists of looking back on God's past activity and seeking to understand what he is doing/has done. I disagree that there is no teaching ANYWHERE about this concept, the reality is that you have been shown where God told the nation of Israel to make blood sacrifices and these were understood as being done as an atonement: "For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life" (Leviticus 17:11). But of course the specific Christian understanding of how this relates to the life of Christ would not appear until after the crucifixion, for only after the event might they reflect back on it.

Still, there were foreshadowings of not just the fact that Jesus was going to die (Matthew 16:21 & 20:28), but that it was on behalf of others and would result in the taking away of their sins (again Matthew 20:28, 27:28, & John 1:29). But if you don't see it there, then you aren't going to see it anywhere else either, thus I suspect there is no helping you.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Let us not get frustrated now as that only shows that you have a weak argument. I will let Grace Seeker help you out here. I apologise for putting pressure on you.

hamza, why do you hate logic so much? prove how my statement that "the bible describes sin as a debt" is at all wrong.

 

[IAmZamzam]

proof please (and by this i mean my whole post). why is it that you keep bringing this up but consistently fail to quote this post where i supposedly lied?

Every time I think you can never conceivably stoop lower and astound and appall me even more, you always prove such optimism wrong. It's like you're inhumanly good at topping yourself. Are you really so bold and overconfident as to think that anyone who has even so much as skimmed through this thread did not already see the post you just deliberately lied about existing?! Or that they would somehow forget it?! And you even act like you've asked me to quote it before, several times! I'm actually offended not only at your dishonesty but also at how insulting you're being to the people reading this thread. What do you take them for?! But just for the sake of (I admit out of spite at this point) exposing your lies yet again, here it is again, from the bottom of page 11:

"Greetings yahya, for someone who keeps mentioning his ailing hands whenever the matter of continuing with our discussion comes up, those post of yours that you have graced us with would almost beg us to differ. anyway, you claim that i am side-stepping a relevant part of the argument and as such i would ask you how at all my posts are predicated on the concept of original sin? we should note that i have asked this before and have yet to receive a response on this question. can you begin to quote from my article and show how exactly the quoted portion only makes sense if we start with original sin as a foundation? notice how many times i have asked individuals in this thread to simply quote my posts that actually have to do with the this thread and then start attacking them? notice how there has yet to be such a post forthcoming?"

once again, if you feel that my points are at all based on the doctrine of original sin, then please quote from my post and show how this is so. if however you fail to do this in your next post then i'd have to say that there you go again with making claims that you can't at all show to be the case.

now, if you thought your arguments to have been that great you would join me in encouraging the participants of this thread to get back to the main topic and yet strangely you have not done so but encouraged discussion that has nothing to do with the points i had brought forth to refute your claims. if you think that your argument and post are at all salvageable, will you then join me in asking for a return to such a discussion?"

Originally Posted by Me: "As it is the whole basis for the twisted notion of redemption that you're peddling, the very foundation, it couldn't possibly be more relevant!"

Originally Posted by Him, in response: "Anyway, you claim that i am side-stepping a relevant part of the argument and as such i would ask you how at all my posts are predicated on the concept of original sin? we should note that i have asked this before and have yet to receive a response on this question. can you begin to quote from my article and show how exactly the quoted portion only makes sense if we start with original sin as a foundation?...Once again, if you feel that my points are at all based on the doctrine of original sin, then please quote from my post and show how this is so. if however you fail to do this in your next post then i'd have to say that there you go again with making claims that you can't at all show to be the case."

Now here is my post at the bottom of page 12, read it and weep:

"Your claim was that the matter of original sin was relevant to my post. i disagreed yet gave you the option (as with any other participant in this thread) to actually quote from my post and show how my logic is predicated on the matter of original sin. so far neither you nor anyone else has done so. what i'm asking for is pretty simple. if my logic is predicated on the subject of original sin, why is it that you simply cannot quote for us the sections which only make sense when such a logic is appealed to. you keep wasting your precious health writing diatribe after diatribe when all you really need to show are the quotes from my post which are predicated on original sin. once again you're simply claiming things that you have not backed up. however, i certainly am glad that you have joined me in calling for a returned focus of my rebuttal towards you. this will certainly be entertaining."

Amazing. Your response to my exposition of your straw man attack is simply to repeat it. Wow. My claim was not that the matter of original sin was "relevant to your post" but that it was the foundation of the atonement doctrine and since that's a faulty foundation the whole thing comes tumbling down. Who do you think you're fooling? Other than yourself?

Not only did you both (a) rely on everyone reading this thread to have the memory of a dead gnat, and (b) start pretending out of nowhere that this isn't the first time you have asked me to provide the quote I just gave a page or two before, but also you immediately proceeded to go and do the whole thing all over again with brother Hamza! He asked for examples from PREVIOUS prophets, you ignored this and provided only quotes from CONTEMPORARY AND/OR SUBSEQUENT WRITERS, and then (at least at first) you tried to ignore it altogether and continue acting like you'd been asking him for his evidence of biblical prophets, period, repeatedly and he was the one dodging you! Is this the only trick you've got? The only thing worse than evil is unimaginative and stupidly redundant evil, and it seems as though you can't even be bothered to think of any new tactic beyond the solitary one of misquoting someone and then making up an imaginary repeated challenge to them that they just keep on avoiding. Honestly, if you're going to be a liar then at least don't modify it by also being a one-trick pony. You're like a magician who knows only one magic trick--say sawing a woman in half--and keeps doing it over and over and over again before the same crowd even after everyone in the crowd chimed in that the woman is obviously curled up inside and the feet sticking out of the box are fake, and when finally called upon to acknowledge them you pretend that they were offering a different explanation, and for pulling a rabbit out of your hat, which you haven't done. And then goes right back to sawing.

I mean, holy jeez, you've even admitted to selectively quoting hamza!

I truly feel as if Hamza moved the goalposts. He may have intended to ask that the "proof" of the concept of blood atonement came from prophets who preceeded Jesus. But in those post to which I responded what he asked for was from "ANYWHERE in the Bible." His words and his emphasis; not mine.

You're incredible.

 

[Grace Seeker]

hmm, i think that there's been a slight misunderstanding here. yahya claimed that the atonement was predicated on original sin and i denied this and proved how it wasn't. i then asked him to prove his position (that the atonement is predicated on original sin) and he has consistently failed to do so.

i do indeed believe that the atonement destroys the sin nature but not that it is predicated on original sin (i did say that it might emphasize the point of the atonement but you can't get from original sin to the atonement). sinning (and the debt thereof) forms the basis for the atonement. original sin might very well add credence to this but simply positing original sin, you could not get to teh atonement. in order to get to the atonement sin must be seen as a debt and that sin ends in death. the debt of sin and it leading to death is not predicated on original sin for any sin does this. it is only from sin being a debt which is paid through blood that one can get to the atonement. hope that clarifies what i'm saying.

Yes, this does clarify. Apparently I misunderstood who was saying what. Seems you have really said the same thing as I have in response to something that mis-states the true position of Christianity.

If you are going to continue to discuss the atonement, you might be interested in reading some of the earlier pre-Anselm presentations of it, for the whole idea of a satisfaction theory is a construct that is only about 1000 years old. Biblically based, but not much articulated until the 11th century. Paul himself ariculates more of a Christus Victor argument in 1 Corinthians 15 which that was the dominate understanding of atonement for the first several centuries of the Church. And for Luke, it may even be that Jesus' sacrificial death was less about securing atonement than about the establishing of a new covenant that incorporated all the nations of the earth into what God was now doing.

I can recommend a couple of books if you're inclined to read in this area.

edit: but i am quite glad that you possess enough decency to be there to correct me should it be the case that i am simply wrong or am willfully misrepresenting christianity. it's quite nice to know that even were i to wish so, i could not get away with lying seeing as other christians are quite ready to hold me accountable to the truth of christianity.

I think we all try to do that with one another.

 

[Sol Invictus]

this will be a teaching moment i'm sure yahya. notice that i had asked you to quote my full post and lo and behold, you decided not to. let's see what i had actually said in full:

your claim was that the matter of original sin was relevant to my post. i disagreed yet gave you the option (as with any other participant in this thread) to actually quote from my post and show how my logic is predicated on the matter of original sin. so far neither you nor anyone else has done so. what i'm asking for is pretty simple. if my logic is predicated on the subject of original sin, why is it that you simply cannot quote for us the sections which only make sense when such a logic is appealed to. you keep wasting your precious health writing diatribe after diatribe when all you really need to show are the quotes from my post which are predicated on original sin. once again you're simply claiming things that you have not backed up. however, i certainly am glad that you have joined me in calling for a returned focus of my rebuttal towards you. this will certainly be entertaining.

(as it comes to original sin being the foundation of the doctrine for the atonement, i would disagree. you maintain that jews did not believe in original sin and yet they still went through with blood atonement so even if you now try to dodge the matter in such a manner you are still shown to be incorrect.)

notice that i refuted both ways in which one could possibly understand the question. in your post above you simply display the one which didn't have to do with your particular question and pretend that the other one didn't exist. better luck next time i suppose.

He asked for examples from PREVIOUS prophets, you ignored this and provided only quotes from CONTEMPORARY AND/OR SUBSEQUENT WRITERS, and after I pointed it out your next post ignored it altogether and continued acting like you'd been asking him for his evidence of biblical prophets period repeatedly and he was the one dodging you!

yes because isaiah is a contemporary prophet or subsequent prophet to christ:

in the same way will christ pay the final sacrifice with his own blood. hence why in isaiah 53 describes him like a lamb led to the slaughter (isaiah 53:7) and outrightly calls him a guilt offering (isaiah 53:10)---the very offering offered by the jews to gain forgiveness of sin. the above is why christ repeatedly predicts his death and resurrection and goes so far as to say that it is absolutely necessary:

so once again you have been refuted yahya.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Originally Posted by SolInvictus
I truly feel as if Hamza moved the goalposts. He may have intended to ask that the "proof" of the concept of blood atonement came from prophets who preceeded Jesus. But in those post to which I responded what he asked for was from "ANYWHERE in the Bible." His words and his emphasis; not mine.
You're incredible.

yahya, how low will you sink? what you have tried to pass off as my words aren't even mine. really, in your bid to find something--anything---wrong with my argument you would now stoop to passing off other people's words as my own. dear lord, the state of muslim apologetics certainly is a disaster.

 

[Hamza Asadullah]

This is quite a different thing than what you said above. What I heard you saying above was not that you disagreed with me or found the material provided unconvincing, but that I had not even provided any thing except Pauline material. And that simply isn't true. What I hear you saying in this post is that you don't find the non-Pauline material convincing and that only the Pauline material (in your opinion) makes any argument for blood atonement. I might disagree with your opinion, but I can respect that it is yours opinion. If this is then is meant as a clarification of what you originaly meant by your post above, I can accept it as apology.Much of the Christian faith consists of looking back on God's past activity and seeking to understand what he is doing/has done. I disagree that there is no teaching ANYWHERE about this concept, the reality is that you have been shown where God told the nation of Israel to make blood sacrifices and these were understood as being done as an atonement: "For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life" (Leviticus 17:11). But of course the specific Christian understanding of how this relates to the life of Christ would not appear until after the crucifixion, for only after the event might they reflect back on it.

Grace Seeker you should know by now that the teachings of Paul have absolutely no weight or credibility in the eyes of Muslims as well as many Christian scholars, researchers and some Christian denominations as well as many Christians themselves who can easily differentiate between the true teachings of monotheism of Jesus and Moses and that of Greek mythological influence of Paul.

We as Muslims believe in the teachings of Jesus in accordance with the teachings of the Qur'an which is an extension of the revelations of the past and the final message of God. The message of Jesus is NO different from that of any other Prophet of God but these teachings were clearly changed, abrogated, edited and taken away from by Paul but I guess that is another thread.

Still, there were foreshadowings of not just the fact that Jesus was going to die (Matthew 16:21 & 20:28), but that it was on behalf of others and would result in the taking away of their sins (again Matthew 20:28, 27:28, & John 1:29). But if you don't see it there, then you aren't going to see it anywhere else either, thus I suspect there is no helping you.

There is NOTHING to see there at all. I have already proven to you that the teaching of the blood atonement CANNOT be found ANYWHERE in the explicit teachings of God, Jesus or the Bible.

This is contrary to what is found in the Torah where God says: “ ...every man shall be put to death for his own sin” (Deut. 24:16)

but these teachings can be explicitly found by those who created, expanded upon and taught this concept after the departure of Jesus - Paul.

God says: “... the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son” (Ez.18:20-22). Personal responsibility is also stressed in the Quran where God says: “... no bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another... man can have nothing but what he strives for” (Quran 53:38,39).

The doctrine of original sin gave Paul the means to justify pagan influence in his scheme of salvation. His teachings are NOT consistant with the teachings of ANY Prophet of God, nor are they consistant with the teachings of Moses or Jesus but clearly he brought in his influence of Greek mythology into his concepts


“O People of the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion, nor say of God aught but the truth. Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, was no more than a Messenger of God... for God is One God; glory be to Him: far exalted is He above having a son. To him belong all things in the heavens and on earth. And enough is God as a Disposer of Affairs.” (Quran 4:171)

 

[ProudMuslimSis]

We have to be responsible for what we do as we are responsible for what we type on this forum...and, we have to own up to our mistakes and learn from them.
We can't just contact the webmaster for an automatic erase every time we mess up, so we tend to be more careful of our actions.

The whole idea of putting all the burden on Jesus seems to reduce our growth potential as human beings.

 

[Hamza Asadullah]

hamza, why do you hate logic so much? prove how my statement that "the bible describes sin as a debt" is at all wrong.

Sol why is it that whenever i ask you for direct solid evidence in explicit words from the teachings of ANY previous Prophet, Jesus or God of the blood atonement of Christ that you are clearly unable to do so EVERYTIME?

If you are out of your depth here which is quite clearly the case and if i am putting too much pressure on you then i apologise and i will leave you be for a day or so until you are ready to actually respond to my posts. Until then i await a direct response from you....

 

[Hamza Asadullah]

We have to be responsible for what we do as we are responsible for what we type on this forum...and, we have to own up to our mistakes and learn from them.
We can't just contact the webmaster for an automatic erase every time we mess up, so we tend to be more careful of our actions.

The whole idea of putting all the burden on Jesus seems to reduce our growth potential as human beings.

Not only that but the evidence is overwhelming that the concept of salvation in Christianity – its Doctrine of Vicarious Atonement – came NOT from God but from man via pagan rituals and beliefs.

Paul effectively shifted the center of worship away from God by saying that Jesus was the divine agent of their salvation (Gal. 2:20).

In so doing, however, Paul set aside all teachings of God's prophets, and even the concept of monotheism itself, since God in Christianity needs Jesus for His divine "helper".

Thus did Islam seek to restore the true meaning to monotheism, for in the Qur'an God asks:

"Who can be better in religion than one who submits his whole self to God, does good, and follows the way of Abraham the true in faith?" (4:125; 41:33).

 

[IAmZamzam]

yahya, how low will you sink? what you have tried to pass off as my words aren't even mine. really, in your bid to find something--anything---wrong with my argument you would now stoop to passing off other people's words as my own. dear lord, the state of muslim apologetics certainly is a disaster.

So you do know another trick, and are now so desperate that you have to pretend I've misidentified someone else as you. At this point even you aren't foolish enough to think you can still get away with pretending not to have said what you've said, so with no other recourse you now shift your ground, in complete contradiction to your previous position, and claim instead that it was someone else who said it! Everyone here is fully capable of clicking page eleven, scrolling to the near bottom, and seeing for themselves that it was you so unless no one bothers (which is what you're apparently relying on) you've REALLY painted yourself into a corner this time!

I am asking nicely out of concern for you: please, for your own sake, PLEASE stop embarrassing yourself. You've already lost: if you walk away now, you can still walk away with some remote, microscopic measure of dignity. Just know, whether or not you do--and I would be very surprised if you were wise enough to do so--but just know that come Judgment Day you're going to have to answer for everything you've ever done, and while God most certainly forgives honest mistakes He does not forgive willful disbelief in Islam borne of even self-deception, let alone external deception. Nor does Allah take kindly to people trying, even most pitifully and unsuccessfully, to steer someone away from Islam and onto the wrong path by repeatedly lying to them. That is likely to be the most punished type of kafir in the hellfire, and to be a kafir of any kind, if I am not mistaken, gets you the maximum amount of punishment, possibly eternally. You really have no idea what you're bringing upon yourself! Stop and think, I beseech you!

 

[Grace Seeker]

The whole idea of putting all the burden on Jesus seems to reduce our growth potential as human beings.

Interesting turn of the phrase "all the burden." In one sense you are right that we Christians do see all of the burden put on Christ. I hope you understand that there is nothing more that most of us would rather do than this. For most of us would prefer to see ourselves as capable people, able to pull ourserlves up by our own boot straps. Good people to whom God owes a chance at salvation. But this view is a denial of what we understand reality to be. For the Christian, realizing that there is nothing that one can do to save one's self is the first step in moving toward repentance and returning to God who has moved in Christ to redeem us and restore us to fellowship with himself in which he created us to live.

So, in terms of event which effects our salvation you are right that we Christians do understand that all of the burden is on Jesus, for we are actually powerless to effect our own salvation. But how different is that really from the Islamic view, that no matter how good one is, that one still stands before Allah fully dependent on his grace and not one's own merits? As I'm sure that you don't think that such a standard reduces our growth potential as human beings, the problem with Christianity then would not be in how our salvation is effected, but whether or not that is the end of the story.

And sadly, I think that here there is some degree of legitimacy in Muslim objections to the practice of Christianity. Now, mind you, I specifically said the practice of Christianity. For there do seem to be some individuals who claim to be Christian, claim to be "saved" and then return to behaving just like the unrepentant sinful persons they were prior to their "salvation" experience.

Of course, such behavior does not exhibit true Christianity, and I know of no organized Christian community that would support such practice, and yet I can't deny that it does exist. There are several reason for it. Among those reason that some churches have a doctrine of eternal security which has become popularized by the phrase "once saved, always saved." It is not meant to imply that one simply needs to confess Jesus and one then has a license to live however one wants without fear. Such a view is actually contrary to the whole idea of salvation itself. But some people make that association nonetheless. Another reason is that some churches teach that the act of receiving baptism alone is sufficient to bring about a saving work of God in one's life and the result is roughly the same in the lives of some so baptized as the "once saved, always saved" practices. But I think the biggest reason we seek supposed Christians behaving badly is the simple fact that many of us fail to allow the life of God to be manifest in us to the extent that he desires to shine through us. For some this is because doing so is work and we are by nature lazy. Others having realized what it means to truly submit to God's will in our lives turn around, go back, and abandon our faith in practice though perhaps try to retain claim to the name. And then for all the rest of us, we simply have not matured enough to be as consistent in our daily walk as we know we are called to be, but we are trying.

And its that last part I also hope you hear. We are trying. We are trying to daily learn to submit oursevles to the will of God as revealed to us in the life, work, and teachings of Jesus Christ. While the work of salvation may be that which is effect by Christ on our behalf, we do understand that subsequent to that experience we must commit ourselves to living out our salvation. That we will be judged on what we do. And so we cannot remain static in our faith, having received salvific faith and nothing more. Salvation is the beginning of a process known as sanctification. Christian must grow in Christ. And that growth is a work of the believer aided by the presence of God's Holy Spirit who convicts us of sin, calls us back to righteousness, and seeks to guide us to live lives that reflect the presence of Christ living within us. But this walk is one in which God and man work as a team. Once saved, we no longer put all the burden on Christ, now we too are responsible to work out our salvation.

 

[JPR]

I'm not sure where everyone is going on this thread but I'll try to capture some of the main points said so far.

Christians say Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins (by ours I mean every single human being that ever lived and that will ever live) as a perfect sacrifice to God

Muslims answer (other than the Qu'ran saying he didn't really die on the cross) that blood sacrifices (read atonement/reconciliation here) are nowhere in the Bible and that everyone is accountable for their own deeds.

In support of the christian point of view, I would ask everyone the question: who has never sinned? Such is the nature of the human race; we're all sinners, we're born with that spiritual defect gene. I mean sinning usually feels physically good on the spot (sex, alcohol, looking at the pretty ladies...), it's in the long, long, very long run that it's not good for you. Under this argumentation, the justice of God is served, but Allah's infinite justice and mercy come in contradiction since you cannot be infinitely just and not punish sin, and if you always punish sins then there's no room for mercy (I'll define the word mercy using a web dictionnary: the discretionary power of a judge to pardon someone or to mitigate punishment, especially to send to prison rather than invoke the death penalty. —Synonyms 1. forgiveness, indulgence, clemency, leniency, lenity, tenderness, mildness.) If I have the wrong kind of "mercy" term and if it's badly translated from arabic, let me know. So far I've not seen mostly "Allah the Merciful" on this forum so if I make a mistake, correct me please.

In support of the Muslim point of view, why would Jesus die for barely born babies? Are they sinners too? They shouldn't receive any kind of punishment or be barred from Heaven because they didn't do anything wrong. Using this point of view, then Allah's mercifulness is better served than God's justice, since, according to the arguments I've read so far, you should be judged by your deeds.

Stemming from the two positions and the counter-arguments proposed by the muslim brothers, it would seem that the concept of "Original Sin" has crept into the debate. Either as a way to prove/cope with the baby needing redemption. Although I don't see how or why it is needed since no one is in the shoes of God judging 6 months old souls. Does he really need to mete out justice to a soul barely conscious of the world?

I know these are only two paragraphs crudely summing up about 10 pages of argumentation but I just want to make sure I got the gist of what is actually been said and that this debate doesn't devolve further. Maybe the real question people should ask themselves instead is how is my faith making this world a better place. From my own point of view, thinking that my sins crucified Jesus makes me hate sinning and want to live a better life and give glory to God through my actions.

Peace out!

 

[Sol Invictus]

So you do know another trick, and are now so desperate that you have to pretend I've misidentified someone else as you. At this point even you aren't foolish enough to think you can still get away with pretending not to have said what you've said, so with no other recourse you now shift your ground, in complete contradiction to your previous position, and claim instead that it was someone else who said it! Everyone here is fully capable of clicking page eleven, scrolling to the near bottom, and seeing for themselves that it was you so unless no one bothers (which is what you're apparently relying on) you've REALLY painted yourself into a corner this time!

yahya, do you really mean to keep up with these lies? i hope that everyone here actually goes to the eleventh page and presses ctrl+ f for the following:

"I truly feel as if Hamza moved the goalposts. He may have intended to ask that the "proof" of the concept of blood atonement came from prophets who preceeded Jesus. But in those post to which I responded what he asked for was from "ANYWHERE in the Bible." His words and his emphasis; not mine."

it's simply not there. yahya, if you wanted to pass the above off as my words then you should at least taken care not to use capitalizations. i simply don't write like that. more than being amused by this i must wonder why you must resort to such lies? is it not enough that i have already refuted your argument, must i now embarrass you as well by exposing you to be a liar?

do yourself a favour yahya and go to the 11th page and see if you can find me saying anything as you imply in the above. it's repulsive that after having been proven wrong, you would now resort to lies and passing off words which i have never said as my own.

 

[Sol Invictus]

i have since found which post you tried to pass off as my own (even though i have repeatedly told you that it wasn't mine. i suppose that you thought that maybe if you made the lie big enough, it would more easily be believed):

http://www.islamicboard.com/showthread.php?t=134303456&p=1437327&viewfull=1#post1437327

so yet again, you are completely proven wrong yahya. though watching you get caught in your own web of lies was nothing if not amusing.

 

[JPR]

i have since found which post you tried to pass off as my own (even though i have repeatedly told you that it wasn't mine. i suppose that you thought that maybe if you made the lie big enough, it would more easily be believed):

so yet again, you are completely proven wrong yahya. though watching you get caught in your own web of lies was nothing if not amusing.

Deeply disturbing, completely unethical intellectually wrong and again, deeply disturbing...

I didn't even caught on to that. Ya learn something new everyday.

 

[Hamza Asadullah]

Please let us not let this discussion turn into a bitter fued. We are here discussing important matters and i am sure our aim is to please God so let us post that which will please God and not that which will please Satan.

 

[Sol Invictus]

the truth pleases god for "the truth will set you free". i do not take kindly to the fact that such a scenario has been orchestrated where my name is juxtaposed with the words of another individual. furthermore this circus continued even after i had claimed that the words weren't mine. it isn't that we are pleasing satan or anything of the kind, we are coming to the truth for my character had been called into question and i have since shown that the accusations were nothing but lies. while i sincerely harbor no ill-will towards yahya i will not pretend as if he has shown himself to be a dignified individual by the manner in which he carried on this campaign to sully my character if he could not at the least prove me wrong.

that said, on my part, i have been advised to let the matter go and so i'm quite prepared not to talk about what just happened, anymore.