I was having an interesting discussion with a Muslim about criteria in religion, and wanted to see how this is applicable within Christianity,
Basically, this will not work for someone who was brought up Christian and stayed, although it will work for anyone who was ever at any point in time outside of Christianity and was looking inside
Faith , in the religious sense cannot be proven, I cannot say "show me angels" and you will,
But in order to maintain intellectual honesty, in choosing a faith to follow for the rest of your life, you have to separate it from all the other ones,
And it is this action of separating faiths in order to find the true one, which criteria did you use?
(Eg, is it consistent, is it morally good) <- those are examples of criteria
This is a good question.
One of the basic criteria is God. By that I mean what is the god in the various religions. Many religions try to have no god, or nature is god, or man is god. Those fell by the wayside pretty fast.
Then we get into the various gods. It seems almost strange but many of them really aren't even taken seriously as god by the very people who taught them, and often we simply see a subcategory of nature worship where various parts of nature and given names and become a god with special powers.
Again those fall down pretty fast.
It didn't take too long to end up with Judaism, Islam, or Christianity.
Now the basic criteria there is Jesus. Jews reject Jesus, Islam says he was the second greatest prophet, Christians say he is God.
Let's take Islam first, the basic way that Jesus is dealt with is that the scriptures were falsified.
There is among them a section who distort the Book with their tongues: (As they read) you would think it is a part of the Book, but it is no part of the Book; and they say, "That is from Allah," but it is not from Allah (3:78 AYA).
They change words from their context and forget a part of that whereof they were admonished (5:13 MP/14 AYA).
But the transgressors changed the word from that which had been given them (2:59 AYA).
Among them are unlettered folk who know the Scripture not except from hearsay. They but guess. Therefore woe be unto them who write the Scripture with their hands and then say, "This is from Allah," that they may purchase a small gain therewith (2:78-79 MP).
The Quran clearly teaches that the scriptures are true.
O ye who believe! Believe in Allah and His Apostle, and the scripture which He hath sent to His Apostle and the scripture which He sent to those before (him). Any who denieth Allah, His Angels, His Books, His Apostles, and the Day of Judgement, hath gone far, far astray (4:136 AYA).
We believe in Allah, and in what has been revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Ismail, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and in (the Books) given to Moses, Jesus, and the Prophets, from their Lord: We make no distinction between one and another among them (3:84 AYA).
Those who follow the Messenger (Mohammed), the Prophet who can neither read nor write, whom they will find described in the Torah and the Gospel (which are) with them (7:157 MP).
And when there cometh unto them (Jews) a Scripture (the Qur'an) from Allah, confirming that in their possession (2:89 MP).
So we have the question of what did Jesus actually say and do and what has been passed down to us. In order to accept the Muslim position, thing had to be changed.
While we do see through textual criticism that there have been mistakes and additions. The text as we have it in the critical text today seems quite solid. We just don't find evidence of wholesale tampering to change the story.
That leaves us with Jesus who claimed to be God, as either God or a scoundrel. The position of the Muslims of Jesus as a good man and a prophet can only be maintained by a position that I could find no support. The Quran talks about the books given to Jesus from God, what books would that be? You end up back to at least some of the New Testament with the story that it was changed after the fact.
I can see where the story would have been pretty believable a few years ago, but to cling to it when there really is no evidence for it and much against it isn't using criteria it's just deciding beforehand.
I also noticed that many Muslims believe that they have the original Quran and that every copy of the Quran in Arabic is exactly the same, I can't tell you how many times I have heard that. Problem is that's completely myth. The original Quran was written on a variety of things, leaves, rocks, whatever was handy. And it was memorized by many people. It was kept in memory for a time, but it was feared it would be lost and it was also noted that the various accounts were differing. So a written form was made. It appears that many things that were not agreed to by the various people present at the time were left out.
And then there were copies made and they were distributed. The original quran has been long lost, but people continue to claim that everything is exactly syllable for syllable correct and in agreement and that there never is any variation in Arabic. Something that doesn't stand up at all to examination.
But even those copies vary slightly. Just input "textual criticism Quran" into google and you can read about it.
So anyway, the story given by Islam about the Bible and Jesus don't stand up. Evidence is that Jesus did indeed claim to be God and indeed that he proved it.
At this point Judaizm doesn't need to be looked at much because we've already rejected their view of Jesus.
So then we are left with the various people that recognize the deity of Jesus. Rejected Mormonism and Jehovah Witnesses and such on the basis that there is one God. Not multiple Gods. That there is one God has just been held so true for so long that it would be unbelievable that God would permit it to continue among his chosen people without correction if it wasn't true.
Then we basically get down to doctrines and how they line up with what is trustworthy-scripture. And that's how I ended up a Lutheran whenever I found people add to scripture it always ends up with things contrary to scripture so I stopped with scripture.
Hope that didn't get too long, but that's the basic path I spent traveling over several years back when I pretty well chucked everything and started over. I know just because that's the conculsions I reached it doesn't make it right, I'm really nothing to base anyone's faith on. But I found Jesus to be trustworthy, and his view of scripture (It is written...) I tried to accept as my own.
Mohammed's story was the closest second, but I just didn't find the superstitious stuff surrounding it to stand up to history. And when I read the Quran it troubled me how it changed it's commands from one time to the next.
That hung me up on the Bible for awhile too, but then I learned how the Old and the New Testaments meshed and so it wasn't different teachings, but a progressive revelation. The book of Hebrews was most helpful in that and remains a favorite of mine to this day.
Marv