How is Christianity true while Islam is false?

ebia said:

Not quite true, but so what? Most texts stand or fall on their content, not on knowing a few facts about the person who wrote it.

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Somewhat true, I suppose, to be more clear. Scholars are convinced Paul wrote about half the letters ascribed to him, the rest are most likely forgeries. Why does that matter? Well, it's dishonest for one thing, and it jeopardizes the authenticity of the entire message for another. If God cares so much about getting the "absolute truth" out there for everyone to read, why use spurious writings? This is a serious question, if you honestly value truth.

atrophy none said:

Somewhat true, I suppose, to be more clear. Scholars are convinced Paul wrote about half the letters ascribed to him, the rest are most likely forgeries.

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Still heavily distorted. Most of the longest and most important are not disputed by anyone serious. Even for the most disputed of the major Pauline epistles (Ephesians) the extent to which it is disputed has been grossly exaggerated. Meta-studies show that at the height of skepticism about it, in the mid eighties, scholarship was roughly evenly split, and since then has been tending back towards accepting it as genuine. Even if some of them are not by Paul himself (as 2 Peter is probably not by Peter) that doesn't make it a forgery. Writing in another's name was quite acceptable in certain genres.

Why does that matter? Well, it's dishonest for one thing, and it jeopardizes the authenticity of the entire message for another. If God cares so much about getting the "absolute truth" out there for everyone to read, why use spurious writings? This is a serious question, if you honestly value truth.

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You make some modernist assumptions about what it means for a text to claim to be written by a particular person.

ebia said:

No it doesn't. The new testament is raw data. We know that these texts came to be written in the first century by a community that we have some other additional data about. That fact, that historical data, demands explanation. That's completely different from saying "the texts are reliable - what they say is true". If the resurrection did not happen you have to explain how that community came to exist, and how it came to believe what it did and write what it did.

If one doesn't believe the Quran one can see where it's various ideas draw from and how it took much of the shape it did.

That isn't true of the NT.

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The question of the reliability of the new testament is still of crucial importance. I don't know how we can say otherwise.

The gospels were written 40 - 70 or more years after the death of Jesus. How is that an accurate witness? And we are to believe that every word of Jesus was perfectly preserved after 70 years, most likely by people that did not know him? That takes a lot of faith to accept. I have difficulty with that.

Explaining the resurrection story is not hard. It could have been a hallucination by one of his followers, the story and person of Jesus may have been entirely fabricated to start a new religion (why were none of the gospels written until after the temple's destruction in 70 A.D.?), perhaps as a way to understand why God abandoned his people, the Jews, and allowed his temple to be destroyed by the heathen Romans? There could be many possible explanations. It doesn't have to be, "We can't think of any other explanation, therefore, it must be true." There are other explanations, if one stops to think for a moment about these things. Stories about dying and resurrecting gods are quite common in other mythologies. There's nothing particularly unique about the resurrection of Jesus in this vein. I'm not saying I accept any of these views, but simply to say that explaining the resurrection is not that difficult a task if given proper attention.

Also, even if the resurrection story were true, that still does not yet prove the rest of the contents of the bible, nor how Christianity itself is true, nor which branch of Christianity is the "correct" one.

ebia said:

Still heavily distorted. Most of the longest and most important are not disputed by anyone serious. Even for the most disputed of the major Pauline epistles (Ephesians) the extent to which it is disputed has been grossly exaggerated. Meta-studies show that at the height of skepticism about it, in the mid eighties, scholarship was roughly evenly split, and since then has been tending back towards accepting it as genuine. Even if some of them are not by Paul himself (as 2 Peter is probably not by Peter) that doesn't make it a forgery. Writing in another's name was quite acceptable in certain genres.


You make some modernist assumptions about what it means for a text to claim to be written by a particular person.

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I suppose we'll have to disagree on the importance of fraudulent documents. For a book that is attributed to God himself, I would expect better than a collection that is filled with spurious documents. I thought truth was of the utmost importance to God and Christians?

I'm not a scholar, but even when reading many of the new testament texts, I had doubts about the authorship of some books I read at the time. What am I to place my faith in, contemporary scholarship or blind faith in baseless presuppositions that have no factual evidence to support them? Contemporary scholars have nothing to lose if they are wrong, save some reputation.

atrophy none said:

The question of the reliability of the new testament is still of crucial importance. I don't know how we can say otherwise. The gospels were written 40 - 70 or more years after the death of Jesus. How is that an accurate witness? And we are to believe that every word of Jesus was perfectly preserved after 70 years, most likely by people that did not know him? That takes a lot of faith to accept. I have difficulty with that. Explaining the resurrection story is not hard. It could have been a hallucination by one of his followers, the story and person of Jesus may have been entirely fabricated to start a new religion (why were none of the gospels written until after the temple's destruction in 70 A.D.?),

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The resurrection story is being told in summary by Paul by about 50Ad and he is referring people to masses of eyewitnesses. And while the earliest gospel is likely 65-ad ish the resurrection stories in each gospel bear a number of hallmarks of being much older than the rest of the texts in which they appear.
"The story was just made up" won't fly. It's too daft an idea in that world. A made up story wouldn't look like the story we have - it would have less discrepancies, it would not have women as eyewitness, it would have OT proof texts (at least Daniel 12),... The community to make up the story would not exist. The people who made up the story or knew it to be untrue wouldn't bet their lives on it,... No, that one doesn't begin to fly. People don't pull that radical an idea about life after death out of thin air.
At the very least the community knew the body had gone and believed they had met the risen Jesus in the flesh.
Hallucination won't fly either - mass hallucinations to produce the claimed number of appearances to the number of people is the stuff science fiction, not real psychology. And visions (hallucinations) were something that world was familiar with - they would mistake that for what they were claiming.

Stories about dying and resurrecting gods are quite common in other mythologies,.

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Stories about cycles of death and rebirth are common for gods, usually to do with seasons and crops, but that's completely different from what the resurrection is claiming. This isn't a cycle and it's a human. This is going through death and out the other side - the once for all New Creation. No other religion had that except in seed form in Judaism, and even there it's not supposed to look like this. Greek mythology explicitly had stories to refute the idea that coming back from the dead was possible.

We dawn plot Christian thinking evolving and this isn't "Jesus is God therefore he could resurrect" but "Jesus resurrected, therefore,.... (Several layers of therefore), therefore he is somehow YHWH"


There's nothing particularly unique about the resurrection of Jesus in this vein. I'm not saying I accept any of these views, but simply to say that explaining the resurrection is not that difficult a task if given proper attention. Also, even if the resurrection story were true, that still does not yet prove the rest of the contents of the bible, nor how Christianity itself is true, nor which branch of Christianity is the "correct" one.[/QUOTE]

atrophy none said:

I suppose we'll have to disagree on the importance of fraudulent documents. For a book that is attributed to God himself, I would expect better than a collection that is filled with spurious documents. I thought truth was of the utmost importance to God and Christians?

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Putting words in the mouth of a previous person is only fraud if it is intended to deceive. There are several genres in that world where it was accepted practice; not deception but a literary form. The audience of 2 Peter would know, as the audience of Enoch would know, that this wasn't actually by that person. Literary devices are not fraud.

I'm not a scholar, but even when reading many of the new testament texts, I had doubts about the authorship of some books I read at the time.

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Without being a scholar you couldn't possibly have the tools to make that assessment. As I said, scholarship is moving in the direction of increasing acceptance of the Pauline corpus. I can give you academic citations for that if you want.

What am I to place my faith in, contemporary scholarship or blind faith in baseless presuppositions that have no factual evidence to support them? Contemporary scholars have nothing to lose if they are wrong, save some reputation.

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At the moment you seem to be putting your faith in very 1980s overstatement of where scholarship was then.

Everything I've said I can give academic citations to back up.

atrophy none said:

Perhaps, but the bible was written over almost 1000 years by over 100 or so authors, none of whom we know the identity of. Even the gospels are actually anonymous, if contemporary scholarship is accurate. That says nothing also of the books which the church deliberately rejected.

The prophecies may well have been written a posteriori, that is after the fact. Do you have any evidence that shows the old testament prophecies, say of the Babylonian siege for instance, happened prior to the prophecies, and not after? As far as I know, there is no such evidence. They may well have been written long after the event itself and are merely describing such things. What is more credible, from a historical perspective?

The bible may have a low degree of contradiction or error, but it is not without either. This is particularly troublesome for a book that claims to be divine and the very "Word of God" himself. If God wrote the bible, he got a few facts wrong. If God is omniscient, as Christian doctrine says, how could God get several facts completely wrong? I ask in sincerity because I want to know, not to be argumentative. If I have sufficient evidence to believe the bible, I would certainly accept it.

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Think about how advanced we are and how we have the benfit of the mistakes of history along with computers now etc and we still suff things up badly (MS windows is a good example of something written that should have no error). the bible is a pretty good effort. You also have to remember much of the stories were hand me down oral traditions written into books decades after events. All ancient history was recorded this way. The bible is a pretty good effort. The Nag hammadi find helps validate the accuracy of the passing on of scribe writings of some books like Isaiah.

The Dead Sea Scrolls - Home

also have a read of this author from ahistorical perspective it is great:

johndickson.org

atrophy none said:

It depends on how serious you take the claims for exclusivity. Some groups take it to the ultimate extreme, like a certain group in Kansas for example. Regardless of that, the question I have, that I'm asking everyone else is, where is the evidence for this religion being the "right" one? Beyond the bible, that is.

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There is no such obvious evidence. You simply have to choose one.
Or you choose none.

The doctrine of a religion is explained in its literature.

If the more scriptures it has the more true the religion is, then go for the Buddhism. They have a whole library of scriptures. Christianity has ONE book.

If you like to have a religion which is able to answer ANY of your question, I would choose Christianity. Other religions DO NOT talk about a certain important issues.

Do not push for evidences. It is an useless effort in choosing a religion.

I could care less what they believe but they lie about Christians & Jews in their propaganda:





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It's my understanding that the Muslims believe in the same Old Testament as Christians do. Or at least, they accept the first five books as true. It also seems like they consider the New Testament to be true as well, at least to some extent. They believed that Jesus was a prophet, not the Son of God, as He claimed to be in the New Testament.

While a source cannot be used to prove itself, if the question is which of the two--Christianity and Islam--is more believable, you can look at scriptures to see if they are consistent. The Bible was written by hundreds of people in multiple languages and on different continents. Yet the message fits together very nicely. We even have hundreds of Old Testament prophecies about the promised Messiah, starting in Genesis 3.

On the other hand, the Islamic texts are highly inconsistent, not only with the Old Testament, but within themselves. They even replaced the demons of the Bible with Jinn, which was a concept borrowed from a non-Judeo-Christian religion that Muhammed happened to be exposed to. Not to mention, the religious leader of the Muslims was a self-appointed prophet and supposedly sinless man who was known to have encouraged his followers to lie, to steal from, and to kill nonbelievers.

GrayAngel said:

It's my understanding that the Muslims believe in the same Old Testament as Christians do. Or at least, they accept the first five books as true.

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Not quite. They accept that there is some truth to it, but it is "corrupted". An obvious example is that Muslims believe Abraham was instructed to sacrifice Ishmael, not Isaac.

GrayAngel said:

It's my understanding that the Muslims believe in the same Old Testament as Christians do. Or at least, they accept the first five books as true. It also seems like they consider the New Testament to be true as well, at least to some extent. They believed that Jesus was a prophet, not the Son of God, as He claimed to be in the New Testament.

While a source cannot be used to prove itself, if the question is which of the two--Christianity and Islam--is more believable, you can look at scriptures to see if they are consistent. The Bible was written by hundreds of people in multiple languages and on different continents. Yet the message fits together very nicely. We even have hundreds of Old Testament prophecies about the promised Messiah, starting in Genesis 3.

On the other hand, the Islamic texts are highly inconsistent, not only with the Old Testament, but within themselves. They even replaced the demons of the Bible with Jinn, which was a concept borrowed from a non-Judeo-Christian religion that Muhammed happened to be exposed to. Not to mention, the religious leader of the Muslims was a self-appointed prophet and supposedly sinless man who was known to have encouraged his followers to lie, to steal from, and to kill nonbelievers.

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Whatever agrees with them is uncorrupted and whatever disagrees with them is corrupted.

When they try to quote the bible to prove that Islam is right they never would never say it is corrupted but if you turn around and show them that the verse does not work for them they will change their mind and say it was from the corrupted part.

Plus the Quran says that Jesus was sent to confirm the scriptures between his hands which means the Old Testament. We know exactly what Jesus would be confirming because we have the dead sea scrolls.

They say Jesus was given the Gospel which means Good news but if Islam is true then Jesus didn't die for our sins and was a complete failure whose message got corrupted and nothing he did lasted that long.

They must also try to explain why the Old Testament agrees with Christianity. Why would the Jews purposely help prove Christianity?

atrophy none said:

I am wondering how Christianity is considered "true" as a faith, while Islam, for example, is false? I am well versed in the Christian/Jewish bible and have read the Qur'an as well, though my knowledge of the Qur'an isn't as good.

I am wanting to know some hard evidence why Christianity is true over other religions. The more detailed sources the better. I am a serious seeker and investigating the truth, historically and factually behind these faiths.

Thanks for replying, I will try to address every point if I can.

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1. First you may have to understand what "witnessing" is.
All human history is laid in a form of human witnessing, that is, we have to rely on other humans to write history down for us to believe what had happened. This is how a historical truth is conveyed from a point in history to humans till today.

For us to validate a historical truth, we need to cross reference multiple accounts of history written from the various source of various historians. We can thus say that a certain event most likely to be a truth (historical truth) if the majority of a bunch of historian writing consistently saying the same about that event.

Plus that in terms of a court case, the more witnesses testifying about a certain event, the more the event is believed to be the truth.

That's the way how we humans are approaching a truth happened in the past, especially in the case that evidence can hardly available that we have to rely on human witnessing to approach such a truth.

From a certain perspective, the Bible is considered to be a human witnessing of God's existence and His deed. It is composed of more than 40 accounts (from God's prophets as His witnesses). They consistently witness the same God about how He appeared to them.

And the Jews had the tradition that if one is to accuse someone of a crime, he needs at least 2 human witnesses to testify for him. (the situation in a court case).

From this perspective, the Quran is a one man witnessing about a god called allah. It's thus not trustworthy to stand a court case and as valid account for human witnessing. To put it another way, if God is truly behind Quran, and He would like to be witnessed in a valid way, He's needs multiple accounts to support the witnessing. To simply put, a single account can hardly be considered as a valid human witnessing.


2. You may need to understand why the Second covenant is an eternal covenant that it is the final and permanent one that no other prophets are required to write another Bible.

Here is what a covenant is and why the Quran/Mohammad is never needed.

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The big picture is that, if Adam failed to keep God's Law, when he's inside the Kingdom of God (living with God), it is expected that no humans can actually keep God's Law. This simply means all humans may have to die (second death) in front of God's Law ever since Adam. This is what Roman 5:14 trying to say. That is, even before Mosaic Law was put in place, death reigned over everyone including those who didn't break an obvious command as Adam did. It is because God's Law is always in place. And sin at anytime is a breaking of God's Law (the various forms of God's Law) one way or another.

At the same time, it says that God's Law is not completely equivalent to Mosaic Law. Mosaic Law is a covenantal Law. A covenant is composed of basically 3 important parts. 1) Law (covenantal law) and commandments, 2) Grace, and 3) a scope covering a certain group of humans. Mosaic Law is such a covenantal law attached to a covenant with a scope covering the Jews.

It is because humans ever since Adam cannot keep God's Law in complete (as witnessed and proven in the period between Adam and Noah), a covenant is needed for humans to be saved at all. A covenant simply means "You don't need to obey God's Law in complete, but you only need to obey the partial law specified in a covenant" such that you can be saved. Humans don't need to keep God's Law in full but only the covenantal law to be saved because God has grace for humans through each and every covenant. God doesn't need humans agreement but enforce a covenant to a group of humans simply because humans can only be saved through a covenant.

And the Grace part of a covenant is usually in the form of Faith, that is, God's Grace is usually granted through faith. And faith can save because in the end Jesus Christ will make a sacrifice. To simply put, humans don't need to (and can't) keep God's Law in full to be saved. They just need to keep what is said in a covenant. It is so because each covenant contains God's Grace through Jesus Christ.

As a result, the New (Second) Covenant is a far more advanced covenant. Whoever covered by this covenant no longer need to subject himself to the judgment of Law. The Grace through Christ is complete in this covenant. This covenant is permanent and eternal. The Law/Commandment part of this covenant is kept to a minimal while its Grace is maximized that mostly you need only Faith in Christ to be saved.

The same verse also reflect the fact that after Adam being driven out of Eden, humans are no longer inside God's Kingdom and no longer living with God directly as Adam did. Under this circumstance, humans will be more and more sinful as time goes by, and generations after generations. In effect more and more humans will be "sentenced to death" in front of Law (covenantal Law). However, God will increase the "Grace" portion and decrease the "Law/Commandment" portion through each of His successive covenant, until the final one - the Second Covenant which is permanent and eternal! (with the Law/Commandment portion minimized and the Grace/Faith portion maximized).
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To summarize:
From the perspective of how a truth is conveyed via human witnessing, a single account such as Quran/Mohammad is hardly a valid account. (similarly Buddhism is just yet another single account witnessing). Only multiple accounts can efficiently identify such a truth. If God exists He will employ a more efficient way for conveying a truth.

From the perspective of God's covenants. There is no room for another "prophet" like Mohammad to write another "bible" like the Quran.

ebia said:

Not quite. They accept that there is some truth to it, but it is "corrupted". An obvious example is that Muslims believe Abraham was instructed to sacrifice Ishmael, not Isaac.

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Oh, yeah. I forgot about that stuff with Ishmael. That's just weird. So Abraham's promised decedents came from his servant woman he slept with out of desperation, not the wife who was miraculously impregnated at an old age.

GrayAngel said:

Oh, yeah. I forgot about that stuff with Ishmael. That's just weird. So Abraham's promised decedents came from his servant woman he slept with out of desperation, not the wife who was miraculously impregnated at an old age.

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No weirder than biblical stories like Judah and Tamar.

atrophy none said:

Yes, I know all of this, thank you. What I'm asking is, How do we know this is true?

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Well ask God if He wants to reveal Himself to you. I didn't believe He existed, so I asked for wonders for a year which all happened and then I went to a church, invited Him in my life and met Him Personally. He healed me, He lives in me, He speaks to me, He answered my prayers. He's the only God you can have a loving relationship with as far as I know. I never felt the need to check other religions out and He gives visions to muslims or heals them, so they get convicted He's real.

Serendipity.. said:

I think maybe the Koran is a bit suspect compared to the bible. The Koran was written by an illiterate guy over 23 years.


The bible was written by many learned writers over thousands of years. The foretold prophecies came true and considering the amount of books and authors it has an extremely low level of contradiction and error.

Those are the basis of the 2 faiths.

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To be quite honest, in regards to The Prophet - as Muhammad is called in Islam, the Qu'ran wasnt written by him at all - its a revelation that he received and he memorized it and then told those who were to later become his followers and they compiled it all. During those times, the people were very good with memorization skills due to their culture and customs. I am not sure to be quite honest if it was compiled and wrote out during his lifetime or after. Is there any one in here who is a Muslim that knows the answer to this and also, am I right about the memorization skills to be very good during their time within their tribes and customs?

Yes, he was illiterate and historically, that is proven to be true due to the illiteracy rates during Muhammad's time. Also, there has been studies done as well, in regards to illiteracy during the time when the disciples were around and it appears that as well, some of them might not have been able to write as well. So, its a wrong assumption to be suspect of the Qu'ran just because of that.

Yes, I am a Christian as well. Why? Very long story, but the short answer is because of study and research on who Jesus is and was back then. Yes, there are early Christian writings that do state that Jesus was never crucified but God had made it appear that he was crucified at the time but those writings are of the Gnostic groups and historically they have been considered heretical by the early accounts of Christians and their writings as well as early Church fathers and other historical figures at that time that did write about Christ, that wrote about the Christ being crucified, etc.

But not only that, but I have had exposure to many, many, and yes one more, many religions during the past 20 years. I had become a "fundamentalist hard-core born again" Christian at the age of 16 or for short a "bible thumper" as other people have called them During those times in my younger years, I was so adamant that everything I was told and heard was true. Back then I never checked things out for myself but took things that other Pastors and Christians had said at face value because who was I to judge. They were older than me and more versed in the Bible then I was at that time.

But after going through many different branches and denominations of Christianity, I swore it off and began to look into other religions as well. Zen, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Hare Krsna, Satanism, Wicca, and even Islam - that was the one where I spent the most of my time looking into. Within the Qu'ran are many, many scientific backed statements on mountains, developments of a fetus and so many others that have actually been verified by scientists a few years back. Also within it are stories of the prophets of old - Noah, Lot, Solomon, and even Jesus is in there as well. Same miracles, same stories but for me, and this is only for me, its the way I have experienced forgiveness, peace, joy, love, happiness that I have got during my prayer times when I have prayed, when I have worshiped, and the most recent was today when the grace, peace, mercy and forgiveness of Christ came down upon me during praise and worship and everything that had been building up inside of me, just melted away once the Holy Spirit descended upon me - that is something I cannot deny and never will.

It was unlike anything I have experienced before in my past when I was more of a committed Christian. But today, it came down and it was so powerful and just brought me to my knees, hands lifted up, tears streaming and just thanking God for drawing me back because I had been praying for a very long time to show me the way back to Him. So, to end, for me, its because of my experience of the Holy Spirit, the same spirit that was in Christ, that has made me a believer and has made me come back to Jesus

Hi atrophy_one, I want to just ask you why you compare Islam to Christianity? Christians believe words that are recorded eye-witness accounts of humans that were with Jesus at the time, whereas Muslims believe words that were dictated by an angel thousands of years after the fact. Why do you think that someone being told something by a spirit that is not human is comparable to someone saying what they have seen?

Having spent 5 years studying Islam in 2 Masjids (masjid Ahlu Sunnah, and Masjid Omar Ibn Sayyid), I have been asked this question many times. Here is my reply.

First, the Qur'an and Hadith state that Allah is self sustaining. He needs nothing, and is dependent upon no-one. If this statement, which is made via various Islamic scholars, found in the authorative books of Islam (Qur'an / Sūrah Āl `Imrān: 2 , Sūrah TāHā: 111 etc., and Hadith Muslim: On the authority of Abu Dharr al-Ghifaari ) can be proven false, then one can conclude that Islam itself is false.

To be fair, we will dictate this same statement upon Christianity. The Christian God is self sustaining. He needs nothing, and is dependent upon no-one (Isaiah 40:12-17, 27-31, etc.).

We will propose a hypothetical statement on both Christianity and Islam. By using human logic, we will see which one of these statements holds true.

Hypothetically, if all of Allah's creation was to be removed from existence (Jinn, angels, prophets, mankind, animals, all types of beings, etc.) and it was Allah alone that was left, COULD ALLAH HAVE RELATIONSHIP? Answer; NO! A relationship is to have relations. More than one is required to have relations. Therefore, the most fundamental and important teaching of Islam known as TAWHID (the Oneness of Allah) dictates that Allah would be absolutely DEPENDENT upon His creation to have relationship or community. This is a direct proof of the fallacy of Islam. It's own teachings implode within when they are viewed in light of logic.

Now, from a Christian standpoint;

Hypothetically, if all of God's creation was to be removed from existence (angels, demons, prophets, mankind, animals, and all other types of beings, etc) and God alone was left, COULD GOD HAVE RELATIONSHIP? Answer; YES! A relationship is to have relations. More than one is required to have relations. Therefore, one of the most fundamental and important teaching of Christianity known as the Trinity, or more accurately, the Godhead; Colossians 2:9, (GOD the Father, GOD the Son, and GOD the Holy Spirit) demonstrate direct proof that that God would not need anyone or anything to have a relationship. In fact, He IS relationship. He IS community!

This simple test of logic can easily demonstrate the fallacy of Islam (or any other oneness religion), and the Truth of Christianity on a basic level.

*NOTE* To those Muslims (or others) who will say you can state that Jesus is not God because in the Bible He never said He was (and I beg to differ, but I digress), you to must also them apply the same standard to your Prophet Mohammad as Mohammad NEVER said in the Qur'an that he was a Prophet. So therefore, by your own standards and logic, You are denying the prophet-hood of Mohammad. He cant be one as he never said in the Qur'an that he was one.**

Would you want to serve a "god" that tells you that you should convert or die? Or to convert others, giving them only 3 chances or they die? That is islam in a nutshell. Christ would never ask this of you, why? Because He was the sacrifice.