That's not quite true. If scholars of the calibre Nuh Ha Mim Keller argue that belief in macro-evolutionary transformation and variation of non-human species is compatible with Islam then clearly the theory of evolution does have support in Islam.:
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That's not quite true. If scholars of the calibre Nuh Ha Mim Keller argue that belief in macro-evolutionary transformation and variation of non-human species is compatible with Islam then clearly the theory of evolution does have support in Islam.:
I'm just going to change the topic AGAIN (Sorry!)
I'm just reading a book called "What everyone needs to know about Islam" which i am finding very interesting.
It says that we are all the children from the one God. Muslim's Allah and the Christain's God and the Jewish God are all the SAME God. According to the book. And this is what i believe too. There is only one God and we all share Him.
I had a conversation with a fellow co-worker who is Presbytarian (sp??) and asked him if he believed that our God was the indeed the same God. And he said no. The Christain God is different and so is the Muslim God.
What do you believe??
Same God, but we believe different things about him. For example, Christians believe that Jesus is God, and I think Muslims (and maybe Jews?) believe that he's a prophet.
ok i can only speak for myself here and this is form a christian point of view
I beleive that there is only one true God now there are many other gods i mean you can make a tree or a statue of something your god if you want to but to me there is just one true God that created the universe i will leave it at that as i dont want to preach.
There is one God. Everyone believes in the same God but I guess some religions don't want to share the same God.
Nelle-
You are right. We (Muslims) believe Jesus is a Prophet.
I appreciate your thoughts. But i have a question for you. I just want to learn more that's all. Not attacking any religion here.:
If Jesus is God, then why do i sometimes hear that Jesus is the "son" of God.
Plus, how do i/we change the title of this thread?? I think it should be called something like "Godly discussions" ;)
TD- I see no one has answered your question yet, probably bc the trinity is so hard to explain!!
Basically, God is 3 'parts' - the father, the son, and the holy spirit. They are all the one God but he exists as 3 persons. Jesus is the part of God called the Son. Not the same as in a human father and son but he is called this because he is God in human form and was created in Mary through the Holy Spirit.
I'm not very good at explaining it and it's very confusing but I hope that makes a little sense!!
Luke 1:
Hebrews 1:3:
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be calleda the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. 37 For nothing is impossible with God.”38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her.
:
3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.
Just to clarify this, JW's don't believe in the Trinity, they believe Jesus is the Son of God, not God Himself.:
Just :bump: this thread so we can continue our discussion - fascinating!
The God is the same (there is only 1 true God), but the way of worship and the beliefs are very different.:
christians worship according to the direction given by Jesus Christ, and Muslims worship according to the directions given by Mohammud.
Muslims believe both of these men are/were prophets sent by God, so the question is, to which one should we listen? Christians listen to Jesus because of the sacrifice that he gave in order to bring us closer to God. And because of Jesus sacrifice, God elevated him to a position above all others (including mohammad)
So yes, we worship the same God, but our method is very different.
I believe in evoloution, considering there is scientific proof of this.
I do not believe all the "magic" stuff it just does not seem in the slightest part possible, I think the bible has been made from chinese whispers along the way, it may well have started with a great man by the name of jesus whom was a great healer ie,Doctor..
I then believe over time its been more and more elaborated on.
Raising-dancers - evolution actually hasn't been proven, at this stage it is just a theory, like creation.
As for the bible being chinese whispers - well there have been old old copies found (I think the oldest complete Hebrew bible was from AD 1008) and the variations between copies is minimal.
There were some scrolls found in 1947 (the Dead Sea Scrolls) containing text of 830 books - 202 of them biblical texts. There was a community living in that area from 250BC till about 68AD - so super super early, and again, the variations minimal. The sort of variations we are talking about are like spelling differences (eg color/colour)
Anyway, I think the bible - if you look into it - is very credible as a historical text. Especially the New Testament!
I believe in the biblical account of creation.
Evolution is a theory. It is not proven fact, and it must be accepted by faith just like creation must be accepted by faith. And, given the order, beauty and precise balance of the world out there, I think the evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of an intelligent Creator, rather than random chance.
About God - TD, you did hit on one of the most difficult things to understand about what the Bible says about God. It clearly says he is one, and yet it also clearly shows that there are three "persons" working as God, and being worshipped as God - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So we believe in the Trinity - three persons, one being. All God.
Wow, great thread.
I am concerned about the concept that women have pain in childbirth because of eve's 'fall'. It seems like a patriarchal oppression of women through the physiology of their bodies. The idea that god says women must feel pain seems to deny us the opportunity to experience child birth beyond pain- which I believe I did achieve. To think that birth=pain plays into medical intervention and the paternal model of care we have today.
I would be interested to hear if Muslims also take this view on childbirth.
As for evolution, I am ok with a creationist idea that god created all things, but I do believe evolution has occurred...whether god is responsible for that doesn't matter to me...evolution of animals seems logical to me.
I have rejectEd a lot of my Christian upbringing so I hope not to offend anyone. The discussion so far has been awesome.
I remember reading something on this a while ago and I posted it in another thread::
:
The Bible clearly teaches that giving birth is a blessing to women. Although some women have pain in labor and birth for a variety of causes, there is nothing in either the Bible or the Jewish Talmud to indicate that such pain is either necessary or normal.
The so-called "curse of Eve", cannot be traced to the Scriptures or to early Judaism. It is first found in distorted Christian teachings of the third and fourth centuries A.D. Christian teachings promulgated that abstinence, even in marriage, was the way to salvation. A woman had to groan in labor to atone for her "sin" of marital sex. This teaching persisted for over a thousand years. When chloroform was discovered by Sir James Simpson in the early 19th century for use in cases of difficult childbirth, there was an outcry from the Christian church. This was construed as a blasphemous attempt to rebel against the curse that God had laid upon Eve. Even Queen Victoria in the late 19th century was criticized heavily for having used anesthesia, for having gone against the dictates of the "Christian" teachings with the birth of her 8th child.
Pain during child birth was actually a rare occurrence in our ancient ancestry. Pain and death was not associated with childbirth until the 16th and 17th century when people began to flock to the cities. Midwives, or wise women, were burned at the stake and falsely accused of witchcraft throughout Europe, especially if they administered any form of pain relief. They were admonished to make the women suffer. The masses of people no longer lived off of the blessings of the land, but used coin to trade for food, goods and services. The decline in health and sanitation until the 1940's, and the epidemics of child bed fever as women began delivering in the "houses of charity" (the precursor for the modern day hospital) created unhealthy conditions for our great great grandmothers to birth in.
The Bible does not degrade womanhood. It does not label child bearing as a curse. It is the interpretation of the words in the Bible that we must look at.
Genesis 3:16 is the passage commonly quoted by those who believe women have been "cursed to give birth in pain". That it is Eves punishment for having eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
The word translated as "sorrow" or "pain" is the Hebrew word estev. This word is also used when God curses Adam. This word is accurately translated as sorrow. Let's look at this Bible verse from the New Revised Standard Version. Genesis 3:16-17:To the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply your pangs (estev) in childbearing; in pain (estev) you shall bring forth children."
And to the man He said, "...cursed is the ground because of you; in toil (estev) shall you eat of it all the days of your life..."
When the Hebrew word is translated as "pain" for the woman and "toil" for the man, it is clear that the translator's cultural beliefs have biased his judgment as a scholar of the text. The best description of giving birth is toil, or labor.
Estev is also translated as "toil" in Proverbs 5:10, 10:22, Isaiah 68:3 and elsewhere. Again, it is translated as "toil" in Chronicles 4:9, which is the only verse in the entire bible that uses estev in connection with the actual birth of a child. To be consistent with other usage of estev in the Bible, Genesis 3:16 should be translated as toil.
And Jabez was more honorable than his brethren: and his mother called his name Jabez (which means "Height"), saying, Because I bare him with toil (estev).
Estev is used 16 times throughout the Bible. And not once does it convey the meaning of pain for which we are made to believe in Genesis 3:16. Rabbi Hirsch says: "Estev is only a mental pain and hurt feelings or worry...The root is...a modification of forsaken...the feeling that we have to give up something that we would have liked to keep, or to have attained."
This prevailing thought that child birth is a curse did not originate in Judaism.
Those of us who are already mothers know what we have given up. Our bodies are fatter, we have stretch marks, we lose sleep, we put our needs second to our offspring's wishes and desires, and our children, while an immense joy who cultivate our depth of love, try our patience and find ways to grieve our hearts. Perhaps this pain of childbirth is not the day spent in labor, but the life time of nurturing a child and letting go as that child reaches maturity and flies away from the nest. Perhaps it is the ups and downs of parenting with it's laughter and tears and merry-go-round of emotions.
When Eve gives birth she announces it with Joy! Every account of birth in the Bible is one of joy. Leah praises God at the births of her children. At the birth of Joseph, Rachel exclaims happily, "The Lord has given me another son!"
Thanks heaven! Great passage!
Only read parts of this and NEED to jump in with replies!
1. Scientific theory = "what we take to be fact". It doesn't mean "we think it's probably right." Therefore, evolution is seen as FACT and not some airy-fairy theory. It's the theory of gravity too, remember. Theory in science is different to theory in common parleance. Just as in science you don't weigh something in kg - weight is in newtons and is a force, whereas mass is a constant and is in grams. Or a scientific cell is different to a monk's cell - and in fact two different things depending on if you are into physics or biology.
2. The Bible and Evolution work together very well. Things evolve in the same order that the Bible states they were made. Why not use evolution? It seems a pretty nifty way of doing things. I'm not a literal 7-day person; I am not one to think that my 24-hour day is one that God is constrained by.
3. Predestination. Just because I know how a film will end doesn't mean I predestine it. (Yes, predestine is a word.) Just because God knows everything doesn't mean I am a puppet dancing to His string-twitching. God gave us free will. He pre-destined us ALL to be saved, all we have to do is accept it. God didn't pick who will and who will not accept their salvation: salvation is for ALL, not just a few. He chose, or pre-ordained, that we would have the choice and we could all choose to be saved. Just cos we don't doesn't mean God is picking for us to go to Hell.
4. Who is God? He is the Almighty. And yes, I believe that the God we know in the Bible is the God of Judaism (bit thick if I didn't think that, what with having the Old Testament telling me that!) and the God of Islam. Who is Jesus? I'll go back to my Anglican upbringing and recite from the book of Common Prayer: the vicar will say this
Also a set response is::
God so loved the world
that he gave his only Son Jesus Christ
to save us from our sins,
to be our advocate in heaven,
and to bring us to eternal life.
Jesus is clearly not the Father, who we know to be the almighty God. Yes, he is the Son of God and, if we think in terms of species, he's the same species as God (like we're humans and there are angels... and there is God. And His Son, who logically has to be god too, but isn't the same person, just as I'm human and you're human but we're not the same person.) but isn't the same person.:
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is,
seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
Also just read other posts here, this is something I was brought up with and always believed. How is Jesus seated at the right hand of the Father (something I sang every other week in my late teens) and also the Father? Doesn't make sense. I do believe in Father, Son and Holy Ghost - so in that sense believe in the Trinity - but it's more a species thing than same person thing. Species with the same personality, but just cos we don't have it on Earth doesn't mean that the most perfect of beings wouldn't be the same, personality wise.
Evolution is not a proven theory. Widely accepted, yes. Proven, no.
And it actually presents some insurmountable theological difficulties that you can not reconcile with the Bible. Was there death before the fall into sin? The Bible says no, and bases other doctrines on that fact. (death entered the world through one man's sin, and eternal life comes through one Man's perfect obedience.... etc.)
Genesis 1 is not written as poetry. It is historical narrative. When God says "there was evening and there was morning, the first day...." that's what he means. Why question it?
For me, the question is "who am I going to believe." Either I accept that the Bible, in it's entirety is true, or I can start chopping it up and accepting what I like and leaving what I don't. If I start leaving some parts out, or adjusting them to fit what men have said, then it is no longer the standard for truth. Science is. Or scientific theories. Or human opinion. I will not put my faith in any of those. For me, that's part of believing in God. I believe he is who has revealed himself to be in his Word, and I believe that everything he has said in his Word is true and trustworthy. That's why I personally can not accept theistic evolution.