Nice video telling about finding the truth

masadjie

I just watch this video from a link in facebook. It describes his experience learning various religious book from all religion.

I hope this post will not break rule1#. To Moderator: If it is not appropriate please remove this post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYMKQKSV0bY

hivizman

I don't think that this is outside the forum charter, because a consideration of Islam as a religion must include an understanding of why some people from other religions become Muslims.

The guy in the video is Joshua (Yusha) Evans, who appears a lot on YouTube (this link will take you to a list of some of the videos in which he appears).

Evans is an example of one of the common paths taken by converts to Islam. They have been brought up as Christians, often in a family context that puts emphasis on church-based worship but does not spend much time discussing theology. At a particular point (often in their late teens or early twenties), they start to explore Christianity more deeply but (possibly because they don't have anyone with a deep theological understanding to talk to), they start to identify what they see as contradictions in the Bible and incoherencies in Christian doctrines (such as the Trinity). This leads them to reject Christianity, but if they are people who want to maintain a strong religious faith, they look for alternatives. Islam becomes attractive because it appears to have answers to their doubts - complex doctrines such as Trinity, Atonement, and Justification by Faith are not part of Islam, while the Qur'an is seen as being without internal contradictions.

Most Christians who question the doctrines and evidential basis for Christianity, and are not satisfied with what they find, end up as agnostics or even atheists, so it would be interesting to understand the factors that lead some, but by no means all, questioners to Islam rather than rejection of religion.

Jaafa

Very interesting video. I'm about an hour through now. I'd like to hear a Christian view on this. Is any of what this man says about the bible untrue? Or does he stretch the truth in any places?

ISAW

Jaafa wrote: »

Very interesting video. I'm about an hour through now. I'd like to hear a Christian view on this. Is any of what this man says about the bible untrue? Or does he stretch the truth in any places?

Ill crosspost this to the christian forum. And you can move over there maybe to get the answer.

ISAW

ISAW wrote: »

Ill crosspost this to the christian forum. And you can move over there maybe to get the answer.

here is a brief view of the first half hour or so.
i had a bit of a tragedy today so cant post more.
First of all christians unlike Muslims regard the Bible as inspired rather than “innerant word of god”

The speaker is from a fundamentalist Christian Background his references to Bob jones university and conservatism attest to this.
Mainstream Christians would not be similar to this guy.
He mentions about Noah being an alcoholic. The Bible mentions once about Noah getting drunk but not about being an alcoholic. I realise Islam may expect prophets to lead perfect lives but christians believe all have sinned ( except Christ). The story of David committing adultry is also in the Bible but the idea of “how can you trust such a prophet “ is again assuming prophets all live sinless lives.

The idea that “One thing you do not do in Christianity is ask questions” is wrong.
The idea that “you are justified by faith” is again a fundamentalist idea . Mainstream christians believe in “faith and good works”.



So on to New Testament.

The idea that Matthew or Luke was not written by Matthew or Luke is not right since the book itself refers to the author.
About 23:50 he refers to the “inspired word of god to guide mankind” when earlier he referred to the inerrant word. A stark contradiction. And the idea that nobody decided to pen down who wrote it is wrong since for example Luke himself is mentioned in Luke and Acts.

As regards "one God" Jesus always says there is one God and
Christians believe in one God. they are monotheists.

The story of follow the commandments are incomplete since the man referred to in the bible says “but I do follow the law" after Jesus says "follow the commandments" . he continues "What additional thing can I do” and Jesus then says “give up everything you own give it all away and follow me” and thought the man a lesson in humility and materialism and how it was harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. the video commentary does not refer to this context.

As regards following the commandments Christians believe Christ created a new covenant and that all the old Mosaic laws such as those regarding circumcision diet etc did not apply anymore. That is what “I have come to fulfill the law” is taken to mean.

At 34:00 he returns to “inherent word of God” again returning to the contradiction of “inspired word”
That's the first half hour anyway.

There

The idea that “One thing you do not do in Christianity is ask questions” is wrong.

What he meant by that statement, is when you start asking hard questions, you dont get enough of an answer in Christiantiy, in a sense even high ranking scholars of christianity cannot justify you with an answer and its instead put down to faith. Thats what he meant.

ISAW

There wrote: »

What he meant by that statement, is when you start asking hard questions, you dont get enough of an answer in Christiantiy, in a sense even high ranking scholars of christianity cannot justify you with an answer and its instead put down to faith. Thats what he meant.

That it what you believe he meant. But let us take up your point. This brings to mind a discussion on faith and reason . You may remember the Pope was criticised for attacking Islam. In fact he was not attacking Islam but that is how the newspapers like to portray things.

The point being made is that "hard questions " are asked.
It is suggested Christianity says "it is faith" rather than answer.
I would say that Christianity relies on reason too and the suggestion by the Pope was that for Islam scholars have said that Allah can act outside reason.

Here is a link to the address and I'll quote the part of the discussion where the Islamic scholar says this:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html

first here is the background A Byzantine Emporor is being sieged by an Islamic Army and they start to write letters to each other

In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to some of the experts, this is probably one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that we find unacceptable, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”[3] The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".[4]

The references are in the site quoted
Now the media took this as an attack on Islam when it was an attack on using violence to convert people.
But the missed the next bit bold added by me:

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature.[5] The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.[6] Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that. God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.[7]

The bits in bold illustrate the difference.

Where does that leave your "Christianity puts the answers to hard questions down to faith and Islam doesn't" argument?

hivizman

ISAW wrote: »

Where does that leave your "Christianity puts the answers to hard questions down to faith and Islam doesn't" argument?

There was a recent discussion on the Christianity forum about anthropomorphism in different religions, and as part of that discussion I made the statement below:

hivizman wrote: »

Muslims say that there are certain verses in the Qur'an that are true, but we cannot probe into how they are true. For example, Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the founder of one of the four great schools of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence, said about these verses: "We believe in them and consider them true, without 'how' and without 'meaning' (bi la kayfa wa la ma‘na)."

The relevance of this is that the relationship between reason and faith is a complex one in religions generally. Both Islam and Christianity have had major debates between those who believed that all the tenets of the religion could be justified using human reason alone and those who saw these basic principles as lying in some way outside the domain of reason.

In the case of Joshua Evans, and other converts from Christianity to Islam, what I suspect happens is that the person asks relatively unsophisticated Christians to explain complex doctrines that even learned theologians don't agree on, and get either confusing answers or demands to rely on faith. This response is unsatisfactory, but the response of Muslims appears more straightforward. Some of the problematic Christian doctrines are denied as not part of Islam, so there's no need to explain them, apparent inconsistencies in the Bible are explained away as "corruptions", and emphasis is placed on the practice of Islam rather than on deep theological issues. The normative status of the Qur'an and Sunnah makes it harder to question beliefs that appear to be well-grounded in these sources. By the time many converts come to address these complex theological matters (if they ever do), they are so embedded in Islam that they accept the bi la kayfa wa la ma‘na approach that appeared unsatisfactory when advanced by their Christian interlocutors.