But for the record, in essence of your reply to my question, you're saying that all the sources I quoted from believers in false gods, as well as the ones you just quoted, are ALL divine truth.
No, I'm not, and you've been around and around this thing in circles yet again, without saying a cottonpicking thing that has anything to do with what I've stated. All you're trying to do is reframe what I DO say to create something that resembles the cannon fodder you wish it to be. You should know by now your re-frame has failed, and I will continue to refuse to let you try to re-spin it in any other way where you can make it stick, because your every contention is still false. I already stated my position on the matter, I was very clear in doing so, I shot down the very same contentions you are continuing to re-spin, so I will simply repost it again, and you can take it or leave it:
(1) I have NOT EVER, in any comment made on this particular point, described what I have stated about biblical truths that appear in other religions as "inspired." You are injecting into my comments an entirely foreign aspect that I have neither stated nor implied. I believe in open discussion and for that reason use great restraint in using the "report" feature available on this forum. But with your REPEATED straw man attempts to force that language upon my comments, that option becomes more and more a possibility, since you don't appear to be about to cease from your false accusations on that point any time soon.
(2) All I have stated concerning divine biblical truths which also find expression in other religions, is that--given the fact that there are some which predate even Christianity--that they MUST have received that truth by some means of revelation from God. Otherwise, we must accept some strange notion that something which is a divine truth--given its appearance in the Bible, which IS divine truth--came to someone else by some other means. That simply cannot be. I am willing to concede divine revelation, by whatever means that may be explained, as the means by which other religions came by SOME truths; more specifically, the one in question and/or any others which are essentially the same but seem to predate our own. But I have not once called it "inspiration," which is quite a different proposition. So again, I thank you kindly to dispense with your false accusations and suggestions that I have either stated or implied any such thing, for I most certainly have not.
(3) You seem to be suggesting that a truth of God found in the Bible becomes a contextual issue when found somewhere else, and can be dismissed and declared as false merely for its appearing in the texts of another sacred book. It's either true or it's not true, regardless of where it appears. Truth is not contextual, and depends on no context or any other such thing for its being true. What you suggest is very much akin to situational ethics, and I truly thought you knew better.
why on earth would you quote a false source, from a false religion (Sunni Islam), that "many or more Muslims" view as false?
That's just it, I didn't--that was YOU.
Or, are you trying to suggest you quoted it from another source;
I never said I "quoted" it from ANY source, that's just YOU talking. I answered this once already, didn't you read it?
Please tell us, did you quote Mishkat-el-Masabih, OR NOT?
How many times are you going to ask questions that were already addressed?
In order to place it before you in the manner intended--that being, not quoted from any Bible version nor from the sacred writings of any other religion--what was posted was extemporaneous, as already noted. The purpose was, to TRY to get you to simply state whether the truth itself can be taken as a divine truth or not, and prevent your evasiveness, by causing you to have to deal with the concept itself rather than the various renditions of it. With the approach you took, you totally circumvented it again, though.
I'll tell you what--check out post #42 above, and the list of different expressions of this truth, and compare them with any Bible translations you care to, and you will find that not all of THOSE are cited directly from Bible versions, but are nevertheless expressions of the same truth. I half-expected at the time I posted the one you now address, as well as the others that were mixed in with the various translations, that one of them just MIGHT match directly with one of the various English translations of the Bible. But I never had the slightest notion that you would try to match it up with something else. I should have realized though, given your track record, that you'd STILL manage to invent something.
You really ought to get you a shorter horse and a lower hat, and come down off the high horse and quit trying to high-hat me from every oblique angle you can invent, and deal with this honestly. By honestly, I mean: deal with the MEANING, which is what makes this a truth of God--the MEANING of what Jesus stated, which is and will always be true no matter where it is stated. And in case you hadn't noticed, when I HAVE cited or made reference during this discussion, it has been to the EGYPTIAN version of it, primarily because, PREDATING the Judaeo-Christian context of it in our Bible, no counter-claim can be made that the source could be considered derivative. And it's a very intentional position, and one I have taken many times in similar discussions. It puts the debating opponent in the position of having to either acknowledge it came by some sort of divine revelation, or to explain how it was that the Egyptians apprehended it by purely human means.
So why would I abandon that advantage, which you foolishly wish to convince readers here, and begin citing from a source which by simple reckoning of its origins, would almost IMMEDIATELY elicit claims of being derivative from the Christian expression of it in the Bible?
For the record, I never heard of any Mishkat (though I'm picking up a strong indication of polecat on my radar), and as I pointed out, it is not germane to this discussion anyway, not being a VSL in any Lodge, nor appearing on any list of accepted VSL's in any lodge anywhere that you could name.
You could try discarding it back wherever you found it, and quit wasting bandwidth with your ad hominem filibustering.
What is most amazing is the fact that what I found was WORD FOR WORD of what you posted!
Incredible! Especially to claim "word for word" after adding all that stuff that I DIDN'T say!
I also find it to be irrelevant, since it's pure coincidence. Where'd you find that thing anyway? Have you even bothered trying to match up any of the whole list of them I posted? You may wind up matching some more that were not quoted from any source. There are so many ways of expressing this truth, and so many ways even in the English alone, that if enough of them are put out there, you're bound to hit SOMETHING sooner or later.
And I really don't care how much you go boo-hooing about it "matching," doing so is disingenuous anyway, since the original was probably in Arabic, and you are looking at yet another English translation. Find the original, put it before another interpreter, and doubtless you will have yet another English expression of it.
Since you persist in this, though, I thought it might be worthwhile to take a look around and see what people are doing with this, and see how it pans out when taken in the whole scheme of things. Boy, was I ever right. Not every place you look has what you posted. I came up with several expressions of it, all relating it to the Mishkat:
Do unto all people as you would they should do to you. [This one did NOT have the trailer you tried to tack onto MY statement]
Do unto all men as you would they should unto you, and reject for others what you would reject for yourself.
Do to all men as you would wish to have done unto you; and reject for others what you would reject for yourselves.
"Do unto all people as you would they should do unto you, and reject for others what you would reject for yourself."
Do to all people as you would wish to have done unto you; and reject for others what you would reject for yourselves.
Do to all men as you would wish to have done to you; and reject for others what you would reject for yourselves.
Do to all people as you would they should do unto you, and reject for others what you would reject for yourself.
What I found really has quite a bit of variations--nor is this an exhaustive list, I don't have the time for any such thing. But it's easy to see: some have "Do unto," others "do to"; one of them did not even have the second part; there are some with single quotes, some with double quotes, some with no quotes at all; one of them has the "all" underlined; some omit the second "do"; some have "unto" after the second "do," others have "to"; some have "would," others have "would wish"; some have a comma before the second part of the statement, others have a semicolon; etc. etc. etc.
With all those variations, one can only wonder how many hit-and-miss efforts you had to make before you got the "right" one that you could use to plug this phony Inquisition as you try to play your Torquemada games.
Interesting point, but you didn't provide a single citation to support it.
I really didn't list a source for that particular information, because I incorrectly assumed that since you posted it as though you quoted from it directly, rather than citing the webpage you found on your surfing trip, that you just MIGHT already know that information. But since you indiscriminately post from sources that you don't even have the least inkling what they are, in your attempts to continue your pursuit of "discredit-everything-at-any-cost," perhaps this will be a wake-up call for you to learn what you're posting from before you post it.
The information I shared can be found on just about any Islamic information page, for anyone who actually reads such things before they cite Islamic materials. Once such page is quranic.org. Go there and look for "Contradictory Hadiths," or go to any other Islamic information site and look for the same term, you can find bundles of info about it. Here's a statement on the matter from quranic.org:
As we have seen, God says that the Quran is protected and free from all contradictions. God brings testimony to His statement by the fact that the Quran is His own word. By analogy, we deduced in Chapter 6 that hadiths could not constitute a source for religion as they clashed even with the Quran. These discrepancies are proofs of our contention. We shall be witnessing the fact that truth and falsehood are inextricably mixed together. It would be worthwhile to note that even though, when a given hadith does not conflict with the Quran and is not contrary to reason, it does not necessarily follow that it is the word of the Prophet and need not be taken as such. Religion cannot be based on such conjectures. Therefore no hadith can be considered having a religious connotation.
Be a little more forthcoming yourself, and you might get better response when you make such notations. It's part of what we're discussing, remember? That if you wish someone to behave a certain way, you behave the same way toward them?
And, please don't waste any more of our time and try to convince us that it doesn't matter, because the 'gist' of it came from Jesus Christ.
Oops, my bad. I thought since you were a fellow Christian, that you would feel differently. But don't worry, I won't trouble you any further with things that Jesus Christ said, since you apparently don't wish to be bothered with them, and consider it "wasting your time."
