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Post #568636

Author
Akwat Kbrana
Parent topic
Religion
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/568636/action/topic#568636
Date created
6-Mar-2012, 5:06 PM

The fact that you think I'm trying to discredit Islam somehow shows that you've completely failed to comprehend my argument clearly. Moreover, you're just repeating yourself rather than responding to my specific comments. In particular, this one:

It's not quite that simple, though. Islam does not teach that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all worship the same God. Rather, it holds that Allah is the only true and living God to which the Jewish and Christian Scriptures originally testified. However, those Scriptures have become corrupted over time and therefore by the time of Muhammad were no longer to be considered completely reliable. Just as Joseph Smith's angelic vision is held by Mormons to signal the restoration of doctrinal truth, so also Muhammad's angelic vision is held by Muslims to signal the restoration of doctrinal truth. This is the Islamic doctrine of abrogation: where the Old and New Testaments err, the Qu'ran and Hadith correct them--and one of the most egregious errors in Jewish and Christian Scripture, according to Islamic teaching, is the departure from belief in Allah and the concomitant advocacy of false gods (Yahweh/Jehovah, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, etc.). The only way that Jews or Christians may come to worship the true God to whom their Scriptures originally pointed, is by converting to Islam. That's why the Islamic version of hell contains two levels reserved for the everlasting punishment of Jews and  Christians (Al-Hut?amah and Laz?a respectively; cf. Dictionary of Islam, edited by Thomas Patrick Hughes [Clifton: Reference Book Pub., 1965], 171.)

You seem to think that just because the same label is applied to two different concepts of deity, that makes them one and the same. The analogy you made about Inception would be far more accurate if we were talking about three different movies that all had the title Inception, but had different storylines, characters, and actors. Obviously, the fact that these three hypothetical movies are called by the same title doesn't mean that they're the same movie.

If I say that I worship the "God of Abraham" but then when you ask me to describe him I list off the characteristics and attributes of Vishnu, can I rightly claim to be worshiping the same God as Jews, Christians, and Muslims? Even though my doing so would deeply offend all three communities of faith, given the peculiarities of the deity I label "the God of Abraham?"

Your argument is clear. It's simply wrong.

Gee, you convinced me. Taking a page out of the "Twooffour's Guide to Intelligent Debating Tactics," huh?