r/DebateReligion

Muslims use Allah as if it were gods name. this is an add on to my old post. to sum it up I claimed that Islam is an Arab religion and converts are pressured to adopt Arab culture to be considered true Muslims.

I'm from East Africa when I talk about God in English I say "God" when I talk about god in my native language, I say "Imana" (which means god in my language). Muslims no matter what language they always call God "Allah" as if it were his name, a convert that spoke Spanish originally would start saying "Allah" instead of "Dios" (God in Spanish) when talking about God. "Allah" is supposed to be the word for god in Arabic, yet it's used as if it were his name. If my name is John, it would be pronounced John in every language. Like the name Jose is pronounce like "Ho-zay" in every language since it's a name. This is Further proof that this is Arab religion and converts are pressured to adopt Arab culture. Never mind that converts are told they won't truly understand the Quran unless they learn Arabic.

Maybe I making a big deal out of nothing.

So in a lot of media I've seen the devil being the great evil but

from my point right now (I might be wrong since I didn't read

the Bible) God and Devil are colleagues like they made some

kind of contract where the Devil gets a place for exchange of

torturing methods of sinners. Let me explain this more

clearly: So I have three theories and the 1st one is: God is

doing some kind of business on collecting the good people

where he pays the devil to not let them go to heaven or earth

to not cause something bad. 2nd theory: God tries to make

the best place where only the good people can be so he lets

devil to do something more than he can do or obtaining

more power. The third one is that both God and the devil are

farming some kind of value through different ways where

God farms on good people (if he doesn't have much guts to

be torturing people) and Devil is farming value too but

through different methods. So for me it looks like if God and

Devil aren't friends then good coworkers.

Since the Bible allows you to beat your slaves (Exodus 21:20–21) and also allows you to marry them (Exodus 21:7–11, Deuteronomy 21:10–14) this means that it allows you to beat your wife so long as she’s your slave and so long as you don’t kill her in the process.

So if you’re a Christian, there is literally nothing you can criticize Islam about regarding morality except that it is found in your own scripture, not a THING.

If someone did something bad 
because a voice in their head told them to do it, 
I think most people would think they weren't acting rationally. 

Even if they said 
it was the voice of God.

So why do so many people think 
it's reasonable to do something 
because a book told them to do it? 

Even if they said the book 
was from God.

The scenarios aren't so different ........ 
in each .... 
there is a lack of valid moral reasoning.

Simply pointing to a source - - 
regardless of whether it's a mental voice ..... 
or a text - - 
is not a valid substitute 
for critical evaluation 
of the action itself.

The age of the text 
or the number of people who've read it 
doesn't make it any more worthy of consideration.

If you didn't know ....
There's more than one old, 
well read text "from God" 
out there to choose from.

If you use the bible for guidance 
without making evaluations 
based on moral principles 
and considering the well being of others, 
the guidance is no more valid 
than someone who follows a voice in their head.

It's how we get Christians 
who support or engage in: 
the persecution of marginalized groups, 
or misogyny, 
or the rejection of immigrants, 
or the beating of children, 
and a host of other bad actions.

It's an illustration of why the bible or Christianity 
has never been 
and will never be 
a valid foundation 
on which to base moral judgements and opinions.

Saying that the bible told me to do it 
is no better justification 
than saying a voice told me.

Lot's wife chose to die by saltification instead of listening to the Lord's angels.

Countless Egyptians chose to drown in the Red Sea for a lie. (They'd just witnessed the plagues)

Moses martyred 3000 Golden Calf worshippers who died for a lie. (See above)

Canaanites, who were given 400 years to recant, chose to die for a lie.

Well, you might say, these people had just deluded themselves, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They didn't "see themselves" as lying. Cool, same with the apostles, then.

But maybe these people never got a chance to recant. Cool, same with the apostles. Maybe they didn't get that chance either. Although the notion that Roman pagans were more merciful than God is probably not a hill Christians want to die on.

But maybe the OT shouldn't be taken literally; this is all just a theological metaphor, and these people didn't literally die in the manner described. Cool, maybe the apostles also died for other reasons, then theological myths were created after the fact.

Whatever symmetry breaks you might think exist could also apply to the apostles, because, as always, when discussing the alleged martyrdom of the apostles, I think it's important to note that: we don't actually know how or why they died.

But I think it's interesting that Christianity generally operates along the principle that God is just, he's not punishing people for errors or lack of knowledge, the guilty really are guilty and are simply "rejecting" truths they know to be true. "Hell is locked from the inside." And yet apologists treat the martyrdom of the apostles as this completely insane, "no one would ever do that" situation, while simultaneously believing that it's a regular, documented occurrence. You know, it just happens to people they don't like, not people they do.

My thesis is that the christian faith treats women as lower beings than men. Here is my evidence from scripture. Women are forbidden to do the following things:

- Speaking in church (if also a woman) (1 Corinthians 14:34-35).

- Homosexual intercourse between women (Romans 1:26).

- For a woman to pray without covering her head (1 Corinthians 11:5).

- Teach (or possibly only teaching men)(1 Timothy 2:12).

Thanks

Islam's scientific miracles all being retroactive shows makes them extremely unimpressive.

A lot of posts here will debunk singular scientific miracles but I thought today I would show the primary problem with every single one of them. There are 100+ alleged scientific miracles in the Quran. Not a single one of them has directly resulted in scientific discovery as far as I can tell.

This is problematic because the Quran is the second most, if not the most studied texts of all time and has been around for 1400 years. You would think that with all the science in the Quran, at least one of those things would result in scientific discovery. Not only this, but Muslims will claim that these scientific facts are very clearly laid out in the Quran and that the Quran is clear (Quran 15:1 and 15:15).

Even more problematic is that Muslims will claim that some of the most profound scientific discoveries are in the Quran. The reason this is problematic is because if these were mundane scientific discoveries, it would excuse it being overlooked. But Muslims claim the Quran predicted the universe expanding and evolution

These miracles being retroactively shown is a very clear example of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, a fallacy where by someone infers meaning from the end result retroactively. A classic example of this is a puddle of water that wakes up and thinks: "Omg, this hole I am sitting in fits me absolutely perfectly! It has sloping mud sides that perfectly match my form. It must have been fine tuned just for me!"

If the Quran provided actual scientific discoveries in it that couldn't be verified for nearly 1400 years, you would expect Muslims to be prophesizing them and incorporating them in their beliefs. Yet, something like evolution was only found with Darwin.

An argument I have heard is that Muslims were shy to profess these beliefs as they were not verified. This is silly because Muslims have no hesitation in professing much more ambitious things such as that we will be raised from the dead despite no verification for this.

Every single scientific miracle in the Quran without exception is simply retroactively fitting modern science into the Quran.

My thesis is that if the Father alone is unbegotten, then the Father has a unique ontological property that the Son and the Spirit lack. If that property is real and exclusive to Him, then the three persons are not fully equal in every relevant sense.

Classical Trinitarian theology says the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are co eternal, co equal, and of one essence. None is greater or lesser than another. At the same time, it says the Father alone is unbegotten, while the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father, or from the Father and the Son depending on tradition.

The usual response is that being unbegotten is merely a personal relation and not something that affects the divine essence. But this seems to create a problem.

If the Father alone possesses the property of being unbegotten, then He has something that no other divine person has. That makes His mode of existence unique. If that uniqueness has no real ontological significance, then it is hard to explain why it matters enough to distinguish the persons at all. If it does have ontological significance, then the Father possesses something the Son and Spirit do not, which seems incompatible with complete equality.

It seems like Trinitarians want the distinction to be real enough to distinguish the persons, but not real enough to imply any inequality. I do not see how both can be true at the same time.

If equality is taken seriously, then no divine person should possess an exclusive ontological privilege. That would seem to require the Father to be eternally begotten as well.

Some may object that this destroys the Father's identity. But why should eternal generation only work in one direction? If eternal begetting is not a temporal event and does not imply creation or causation, then there seems to be no logical contradiction in making it reciprocal. The Father could be eternally begotten of the Son, the Son eternally begotten of the Father, or each person could stand in an eternal relation of generation without any first source.

If that sounds impossible, I would argue it is no more mysterious than eternal generation itself. Once begetting is understood as an eternal, non temporal relation rather than a beginning in time, I do not see why it must remain one directional.

So my argument is simple. Either being unbegotten is a real and unique property, in which case the Father has an ontological distinction that the other persons lack, or it has no real significance, in which case it cannot meaningfully distinguish the persons. If Trinitarians want to preserve both meaningful distinction and complete equality, I think they need to explain why the Father cannot also be eternally begotten.

Thanks for reading. I haven't posted here in a while, so I figured I'd come back with something I've been thinking about. I'm interested to hear where you think my argument goes wrong, if it does.

In Galatians 4:22-31, Paul discusses the story about the relationship between Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. Paul explicitly says that this story is an allegory, with Hagar representing the Jewish law and slavery and Sarah representing Christianity and freedom.

People may say that Paul’s willingness to acknowledge that Genesis is an allegory strengthens Christianity, because it allows for an escape hatch, as it were, from the Christian’s having to accept Genesis as 100% true.

But this misrepresents Paul’s words. Paul is not saying that all of Genesis is an allegory, but only that portion of Genesis narrating the story about the relationship between Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar.

Given this narrower specification, the fact that Paul, when discussing Adam and his first sin, never says that Adam and/or Adam’s first sin are allegories for such things as inherent human inclination to be greedy, strongly suggests that to Paul, Adam’s life and first sin were historical events rather than merely allegories, because when Paul wanted to treat Genesis as containing an allegory when discussing Christianity, Paul said that Genesis contained an allegory. Further supporting this claim that that to Paul, Adam’s life and first sin were historical events rather than merely allegories is the fact that Paul presents Jesus as a perfected Adam, undoing the first Adam’s deeds’ consequences (1 Corinthians 15:20-22; 1 Corinthians 15:45-47). Because believers in Jesus as historical figure and believers in Jesus as a mythical figure agree that to the earliest Christians, Jesus’s salvific deeds were understood as having occurred at a definite time in the past (disagreeing merely about whether Jesus’s salvific deed was understood by the earliest Christians to have occurred on Earth during the 1st century CE), it follows that to Paul and the earliest Christians, Adam’s deeds were understood likewise as having occurred at a definite time in the past. Paul explicitly says that Adam was the first man (1 Corinthians 15:45).

The problem with a model in which Adam’s deeds were understood as having occurred at a definite time in the past is that the narrative about Adam in Genesis is presumably the basis for Paul’s understanding of Adam, because Paul gives no indicium of basing his understanding of Adam upon another source and reveals, through discussing the story about the relationship between Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, that he was familiar with Genesis. Genesis places Adam’s deeds upon the Earth, which included being all of humanity’s ancestor, only a few thousand years ago, which is contradicted by modern science and history. So, Adam must be dismissed as a non-historical figure. Efforts to make Adam not all of humanity’s ancestor would in effect serve to make Adam what Genesis and Paul do not present him as, in which case he would not be Adam as understood by Paul and Genesis, because he would not fulfill the role of being all of humanity’s ancestor only a few thousand years ago.

But with Adam as a non-historical figure, Paul’s theology collapses, because Jesus’s deeds would no longer be capable of or necessary for undoing the first Adam’s deeds’ consequences any more than, for example, deeds done by George Washington could be capable of or necessary for undoing the consequences of deeds done by the non-historical character Prometheus.

The Christian may claim that the mere fact that Paul discusses the story about the relationship between Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar and explicitly says that this story is an allegory does not mean that for Paul, Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar were not historical people whose deeds are accurately recorded in Genesis. But even if this is conceded to be true, the fact that Paul taught that the story about the relationship between Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar had an allegorical meaning allows Christians to accept the story in Genesis about the relationship between Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar as revealing truths despite not being about historical people whose deeds are accurately recorded in Genesis. By failing to say that Adam is some type of an allegory, Paul does not allow Christians to accept the story in Genesis about Adam as revealing truths despite not being about a historical person whose deeds are accurately recorded in Genesis. Indeed, by saying that Adam was the first man whose deeds are countered by the deeds done by Jesus, Paul requires one to accept that just as Jesus’s deeds were done at a certain time with a certain effect, so Adam’s deeds were done at a certain time with a certain effect.

The Christian may claim that because Paul describes Jesus as the second man (1 Corinthians 15:47) and the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45) even though even the Christians’ scriptures do not claim that Jesus was literally either of these things and acknowledge that people were born after Jesus and died after Jesus, Paul’s claim that Adam was the first man should similarly be dismissed as some type of allegory. But Paul’s claim that Adam was the first man, unlike Paul’s claim that Jesus is the second man and the last Adam, is clearly based upon scriptures which Paul regard as authoritative and presented Adam as literally the first man only a few thousand years ago.

The Christian may claim that because Paul says that Adam is a prefiguration of Christ (Romans 5:14), Paul understood Adam to be a symbolic figure. But even as Paul says that Adam is a prefiguration of Christ (Romans 5:14), Paul explicitly treats Adam as a historical figure (Romans 5:12, Romans 5:14, Romans 5:16-18), which is consistent with Paul’s explicitly saying that Adam was the first man (1 Corinthians 15:45) and regarding Genesis as authoritative scripture.

The Christian may claim that because mythicism is true, a heavenly saviour Jesus who saved spiritually rather than through deeds upon the Earth could save us from the deeds of some type of non-historical Adam. Former Director of the Dominican Biblical Centre for Teaching and Research Thomas L. Brodie O.P., in “Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery”, revealed himself to be a Christian mythicist. Two replies exist to this argument.

Firstly, for a Christian to accept mythicism is controversial even among Christians, and for a Christian to accept mythicism as teaching about a heavenly Christ who did not come in the flesh is condemned within the Christians’ scriptures, which say that Christians must believe that Jesus came in the flesh (1 John 4:3).

Secondly, because believers in Jesus as a mythical figure agree with believers in a historical Jesus that to the earliest Christians, Jesus’s salvific deeds were understood as having occurred at a definite time in the past, because Paul presents Adam a historical figure for reasons which I have argued earlier, it follows that even if Paul and the earliest Christians believed in a heavenly saviour Jesus who saved through spiritual deeds rather than through deeds upon the Earth, this would not change the fact that Adam’s deeds were understood as having occurred at a definite time in the past on Earth.

So in this post I am going to calculate the amount of people that god orders to kill in the Battle of Armageddon, based on this verse:

Revelation 14:18-20:

"The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God's wrath. They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses' bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia."

Let's assume that 1,600 stadia (320 kilometres = 320,000 metres) is the diameter of the lake of blood, therefore, the radius is 800 stadia or 160km. Let's also assume that a horse's bridle is approximately 1.5 metres from the ground, giving us its depth.

We can then calculate the volume of blood using the formula: V = pi*r*2*h. Assuming for the sake of simplicity that pi = 3 we get the formula:

3 × 160,000 × 160,000 × 1.5 = 115,200,000,000 = 1.152 * 10^11 cubic metres of blood.

1 cubic metre = 1,000 litres. So:

115,200,000,000 × 1,000 = 115,200,000,000,000 = 1.152×10^14 litres of blood.

If we divide this number by the average amount of blood in a human body, 5.5 litres:

115,200,000,000,000 / 5.5 = 20,945,454,545,500

So we find that according to scripture, at a bare minimum, God will kill approximately 2.0945 * 10^13 people. That's in the TENS OF TRILLIONS.

I would argue that this does not show that god is merciful and kind, but quite the opposite.

It is widely believed that all major theories of the origin of the universe fail due to the fact that none supply an origin for the laws, matter, energy, space, gravity, or time. Without a verifiable origin, there is no process by which they may be confirmed to be definable as law, matter, energy, gravity, space, or time.

At the same time, there is a viable theory that indicates that it is possible that the origin of the universe could, in fact, be conjectured to be founded in a balanced zero pre‑universe state. In the conjecture, the pre‑universe could be comprised of a photon of positive energy bound to gravity of negative energy with a net value of zero.

The concept of a zero‑value universe is not new; it is compatible with both General Relativity and Special Relativity.

The zero‑value pre‑universe implies that it is possible for there to have been a location where there is a timeless state outside the current universe that could, in fact, be the origin of the universe and time.

This pre‑universe would not require time, energy, space, laws, or mass to exist. The pre‑universe would not require time and therefore could be the origin of time. It also would not have a net value of energy or gravity, in that the positive and negative values cancel completely. This would mean that this pre‑universe state did not have any value. In effect, it could be determined to not exist in the sense that there was nothing to detect or to be impacted by it.

The pre‑universe would be imbalanced and would therefore be unstable. The unbalanced pre‑universe, due to the imbalance, would emit from the pre‑universe and emit energy into the universe with a redshift of the photons and leave a trail of gravity in its path. This would supply all the energy of the universe and would lay the framework for the emission of time and mathematics, as well as all that is within our current universe.

This, of course, means that this pre‑universe that is timeless, massless, energy less, and filled with the ability to build a universe could be the “God” of the universe, or it could simply be nature’s emission of the universe. It seems to be a candidate for the God of several different religions. Or not.
As a believer in God, this theory helps form the foundation of my belief in God. Your comments are welcome.

The rigid exclusivism championed by many religions and sects—the claim that an all-powerful and all-knowing God demands adherence to a specific set of beliefs to gain salvation and avoid damnation—is irreconcilable with the fractured religious landscape we actually observe. If a supreme being possessed both the infinite power to make His absolute truth unmistakable and the infinite knowledge to foresee how human psychology, geography, culture, and history largely determine belief - through no fault of the individual, He would not leave the eternal destiny of billions dependent on the accident of birth and in-group biases. It contradicts the very nature of a beneficent, omnipotent, and just Creator. The chaotic diversity of human faith proves that either God does not demand universal dogmatic uniformity, or more plausibly, that what we observe in the world around us is entirely the work of humans and not gods.

Christians imply that where there is free will, there has to be the ability to chose evil. I find it too restrictive for no reason. Free will is simply the ability to chose between different actions. They can be any — only good, good and evil, only evil, only neutral, neutral and good, etc

If it only counts as free will when there is the option for evil, I could as well say that it only counts as free will if things outside our control don't affect our choices like physics, logic, and instincts.

Hi! I have a question because I'm trying to understand a perspective that's very different from my own.

Last night I had a discussion with someone I know. He strongly defended Christianity, even though he isn't actually Christian himself. I said that I personally see most religions as having misogynistic elements, since many religious texts and traditions place women in a lower position than men.

He responded by saying that Christianity is the only religion that doesn't put women down. I brought up several Bible passages that, to me, seem to portray women as subordinate to men. His response was that those passages are metaphors or that I should consider the historical context in which they were written.

This left me confused. I understand that historical context matters, but I'm struggling to see why that changes the meaning of passages that appear to treat women as less equal. He also argued that I should appreciate Christianity because Europe and my country were built on it, and that women in some parts of the world have it much worse today. I replied that I believe many of the rights women have today came primarily from people who fought for equality, rather than from religion itself.

I'm not looking to restart that argument here. What I'm genuinely trying to understand is whether I'm interpreting the Bible incorrectly, especially the Old Testament. Am I missing something important about how Christians understand these passages?

Could you point me to Bible verses that are commonly seen as uplifting or affirming women, as well as verses that people interpret as placing women in a subordinate role? I'd also appreciate any explanation of how Christians reconcile those passages. I really want to understand what gives him this perspective, even if I don't end up agreeing with it.

Sorry if my English isn't perfect, it's not my first language.

As we know, humans are born with 1 of 2 genders for the most part, male and female. Males, biologically, tend to be stronger than women. Within our history, males tended to take power because they had the strength advantage against women, leading to the patriarchal society we live in today.

Now the Christian God is supposedly all knowing, all powerful, all loving, and values free will. Why would a god who values free will, create 2 divisions of his creation and have one of them be stronger than the other? That's just asking for the stronger one to take power earlier in their biological history. Which it did.

Men have notoriously taken away "free will" from women throughout most of our observable history, also accounting for around 90% of all murder and violent crimes.

The idea of a god that values free will creating one gender that can easily take away the other one's free will seems like a pretty good argument against Christianitys idea of a god that values free will.

Let's suppose Bob has free will under Classical theism.

ie God created Bob with free will.

It's Monday morning and Bob can either choose to drink coffee or tea as he likes both. Bob freely chooses tea.

But, that's merely a contingent fact. Bob could've chosen coffee instead.

God is Causally Responsible for creating this particular Possible world where Bob chooses tea this Monday. God could've actually Actualized a possible world where Bob chose coffee instead of tea. God isn't merely an Omniscient Observer who's causally isolated from us, but is the Necessary Being who sufficiently explains every contingency. God could've made a world where every single Contingent fact is the same EXCEPT Bob choosing tea and making that to a coffee.

So from God's pov, God can never create Free agents. Because God could easily create a possible world where the "free" agent does X instead of Y.

You don't need to agree with the Metaphysical modality presented by the Contingency argument for this to work. You could be a theist like Richard Swinburne who thinks God is also a contingenct being (Brute). This argument still holds as God is Causally Responsible for every other Contingent facts except himself (since he's Brute).

Edit:some grammatical errors