How can a good God allow suffering

No, you said the Bible contradicts Christianity, not itself, at least in conversation with me.

Now maybe we can discuss examples, if you have them.

Are you asking to provide examples of inconsistencies in Bible? There are many examples I can give. Would you like the examples from OT or NT or both?

Let me also ask you how you view Paul the apostle who apparently wrote 14 out of 27 books in NT.

Thomas Paine did a wonderful job of giving such examples hundreds of years ago in his book The Age of Reason an the book can be downloaded from the Gutenberg website.

Holy Spirit includes the spirit of discernment that enables people to choose what to believe/accept and what to reject.

At this point. Holy Spirit has allowed you to measure validity in terms of consistency vs. internal self-contradiction of a text. But I have given you another postulate to consider, which is that a very good lie can be internally consistent and avoid self-contradiction, yet that doesn't make it true. I am not accusing the Quran of being a 'very good lie,' by saying this, only pointing out that internal consistency does not equal truth.

If a thief came to you and gave you a perfectly consistent story about how he should be entitled to your property because the property was rightfully his, would that make him less of a thief? No, there is truth to be found and understood beyond the measure of internal consistency.

If you believe that intelligence is God-given to separate falsehood from truth, then can you also acknowledge that intelligence can be abused to pedal falsehoods as truths? This fact should cause you to realize that there has to be a calling to Truth/holiness that goes together with intelligence for someone to resist the temptation to abuse intelligence for immorality instead of morality.

Holy Spirit is the spirit of overcoming falsehood in favor of Truth. There is of course more to it than just that, but without that spirit of Holiness, how can anyone embrace the proper attitude toward God and earnestly seek to put their best effort into serving Him?

Habib quote:
"Are you asking to provide examples of inconsistencies in Bible? There are many examples I can give. Would you like the examples from OT or NT or both?"

Enough dissembling, I asked for an example. Put up or shut up. I don't care which testament.

You have to ask. What about Luke and the census?

The census didn't happen when Luke said it did, and no census required men to return to their places of birth.

Luke was spinning like **** to try to shoe horn previous prophecies into the Nativity.

There are historians who disagree with that but historical facts are not my interest. I asked Habib knowing (I hope) that he knows that contradictions in the spiritual message of the book are the only meaningful things in the context of our discussion.

Who the **** cares if the count of people at a gathering was 536 or 537? I'm not one who thinks every word is literally 'the truth'. It's the overarching story that I care about. I don't think you can address that from your POV.

I think all facts are important, especially historical ones. Whether or not Jesus existed is very important and the jury is still out on that one.

What you have is Luke twisting the truth from the very beginning. His gospel is founded on a massive lie.

One thing Habib did say that was important is that time changes certain truths. Sticking any religion in ice is bloody ridiculous, what may be true in one time or place may not be true in another.

I don't understand. Is there more than one Truth then? More than one God?

Or is it that different religions can be true to the same God in different ways?

I personally believe the latter, that there are different paths to the same universal truth. The reason I can believe this is because I believe that everything in the creation is fundamentally imperfect relative to its/our perfect creator. So everyone is sinful to the extent that we're not completely perfect(ed) yet, and so we have to accept that while many of us may be on the right track and have true insights in various ways, no one can have already reached perfection before joining God in heaven.

I believe there is nothing wrong with people discussing what we know and think because it can lead to deeper insight and further study in pursuit of better/more-refined Truth. But of course there are also situations where you have to deal with people are are trying to pull you downward, who are not striving for ascent of themselves or others.

I believe the Quran, like other holy scriptures, was written in good faith to Holy Spirit, and not as an exercise in taking opposition against Christianity; so I believe there are insights for anyone to gain from it, even if they don't choose to abandon other religions/philosophies.

I would consider it sinful to reject the potential for learning some Truth from a source just because you identify that source as outside of the religion you identify as your own. So as a Christian, I am not prejudiced against the Quran, Buddhist writings, Hinduism, or any other religion or philosophy prior to studying it and understanding meanings conveyed.

I do, however, study ideas carefully and attempt to discern what is good/bad, true/false, about them. I do not want to be misguided and/or tempted into a path of descent because I failed to foresee negative consequences of a given piece of information. I'm sure this is also what keeps you weary of various aspects of the Bible and/or other religious/spiritual information you might read.

Please understand it is not my intent to lead/tempt you in any direction that would cause your progress in Truth and righteousness to falter. I am personally very curious if Islam via a certain interpretation of the Quran, or certain interpretations of the Bible, etc. are ultimately the best/only path to God, or whether there is, as I suspect, universal truths that are communicated through various texts, which ultimately go beyond all textuality because they are fundamentally things which are conveyed to prophets via Holy Spirit, God's 'umbilical' connection with humans to convey Truth.

Peace and Blessings.

That's what I meant by 'not being able to address it from your POV. I think there is signicant historical evidence for Jesus' existence, but that is not why I believe in him. But what good does it do to say it is a revelation from God? As men All we can do is reason together and see if there is a coherent message that makes sense to us. I believe in him because in his words and the spirit we share I find something worth trading everything else I have for, something no other man or religion offers .

Damn, there I go banging on again about spiritual stuff.

Contemporary secularism has put a taboo on using grand language, such as describing the experience of truth as "revelation from God."

In a simple sense, however, nothing can be true except because it is independently true beyond the power of humans to shape it as such.

2+2=4 because ** + ** = ****; and we are able to see that by understanding the symbols and counting. It may be reasoning that leads us to the revelation that 2+2=4 is true, but the experience of truth itself is a moment of revelation from God, i.e. something is revealed to us as true and who else can we ultimately attribute such revelation to except God?

You could even go deeper and ask what is it about this universe that allows biological creatures like us to be able to discern truth from falsity and experience truth as awareness of something beyond our own power to control it. There is a lot of complexity that goes into making human existence and the experience of truth possible, so there is really nothing overly grand about divine attribution. It's merely a recognition of how far beyond the power of humans the universe is.

Christians have different sects and each sect drives their theology from Bible. Some believe in trinity and other believe in unitarian version of Christianity and still there are those who only believe in Jesus and God the father but not in holy spirit. What does this tell you?

Before you go and tell me that Islam had many sects too which I agree with but they all believe in one God. They all read the same Quran, they all pray to the same direction facing Qibla.

One example I can give you of theological discrepancy is the following:

Jesus PBUH and his earliest followers taught righteousness through the Law, Paul started to promote a message of righteousness apart from the Law:



So, according to Paul, no-one can be justified by obedience to the Law. A question then naturally arises: if no-one can become righteous through the Law, then why did God bother to give it to Moses in the first place? Paul offers the following reason:



Apparently, the purpose of the Law was to make man realize that he is guilty before God. In other words, it’s to prove to us that it’s impossible to keep the Law. This not only goes against Jesus, who believed that it was possible to keep, as he preached a message of total obedience to it, but also the Old Testament where God is clear: it is not too difficult to obey the commandments of the Law:



Do you see any difference? Jesus PBUH followed the law, Paul abolished the law. Now you need to decide who you want to follow Paul or Jesus PBUH. By the way I mentioned in one of my previous post that more than half the books in NT are written by Paul.

It’s an irony that you don’t see who is close to original message Christians or Muslims. To put things in perspective let me just list few things which in my opinion Islam has revived. We can go in depth for each of the items listed below if you want.

1. Revival of Creed of Allah’s absolute Unity
2. Revival of Allah’s supremacy in terms of His attributes and qualities
3. Revival of the doctrine of monotheism [worship of Allah alone]
4. Revival of the creed of Jesus’ prophethood
5. Revival of the creed of Jesus' humanness
6. Revival of the doctrine of Jesus' ascension (negating crucifixion)
7. Revival of no original sin
8. Revival of Salvation through submission to God only
9. Revival of the prohibition of augury
10. Revival of the prohibition of witchcraft
11. Revival of the prohibition of taking interest
12. Revival of the prohibition of consuming pork
13. Revival of the prohibition of consuming blood
14. Revival of the prohibition of alcoholic drinks
15. Revival of the prohibition of adultery
16. Revival of ablution before prayer
17. Revival of performing prayers physically
18. Revival of compulsory charity [zakah]
19. Revival of fasting
20. Revival of greeting with the supplication of peace
21. Revival of veiling [hijab] for women
22. Revival of polygyny
23. Revival of circumcision
24. Revival of the prohibition of abortion
25. Revival of the prohibition of same sex marriage

There is a 3rd scenario which you did not consider. God is one and the way of life he chose for us is also one.

If one religion believes that Jesus was a false prophet ( that's what Jews think), another maintains he is God ( Christians), and yet another that he was a human specially chosen to be a prophet (Islam), how can they all be true? Jesus PBUH, must inevitably be one of the three things mentioned above, and all three statements cannot be correct. Therefore, as only one of these statements can be correct, whichever is established as true determines that the others must then be considered as false.

I would encourage you to look into the thread (link below) where I am discussing why Islam is the only true religion.

https://able2know.org/topic/534961-1#post-6910249

What the **** is my POV supposed to mean? To be honest my POV is not at all fixed, I lean one way then another.

The spiritual message of Jesus changes depending on who's talking about it.

Ok, what's yours currently?

Not important. I'm not here to preach.

Here is what I read in the Bible story.
It was MAN who asked God for the Law because they were frustrated in dealing with God 'directly'. God never intended such an unholy idea.

Jesus said 'All the Law and all the prophets hang on this, Love God with all your heart mind and soul and love others as you love yourself. If you do that, you have fulfilled the law'.

That's a book length subject but sounds like you've been in it some.
Yes, of course you can jus say they lied about what he said, but I've said how I read it .

Didn't ask for a sermon, just what you think.