UM Interfaith Dialogue (Round 2) on Basic Beliefs will be held on Monday. More details here
The CDPC website has a brand new look, check out the interfaith forum on God's existence and inerrancy...
Made a new friend at the last interfaith dialogue... we kept in touch and had a drink in SS2.
He said after watching Matrix, he asked himself whether the faith he inherited from birth was true... And there is no peace until he discover to be true, really true.
Left to our own device, we'd never find the truth... we need a God who reveals Himself to us, he said.
But which scripture?
There are three contestants - Old Testament... Injil... Al Quran...
He argued that the Bible fails the test because of
- logical contradictions, discrepancies
- it's human framework
- its texts has been corrupted. I replied with the (Auntie Sally's recipe analogy)
While the Koran passes the test because of
- no contradictions
- well preserved
- its 'bentuk tulisan' was dictated word-for-word with no human intervention
How does he know that it is the Word of God? He did it by eliminating other possible alternative explanations
- It can't be Prophet Mohammad's own device because he was illiterate
- It can't be the smart fellas in Arabia because a challenge was issued to them to come up with one short 'sura' with a quality that equals the Al Koran and no one has successfully attempted, much less succeeded in answering it for 1500 years!
- Therefore, the only remaining option is it must be of God...
What do you think of the apologetic power of his sharing?
Comments
Christians had no such problem since there's a plurality of Persons in the Godhead...
Anyway his answer was two fold...
1) 'before creating the world' implies time sequence (before and after) so it's meaningless to talk of a 'before' before the creation of time.
2) Even if there is, in eternity, God can still have the *potential* to love. (the term is of his own choosing)
I ask him, so he has 'unactualised potentials'? He said yes.
1) Here the question is not necessarily implying temporal sequence but logical sequence.
Even if there is no temporal sequence prior to creation, there should be logical sequence in God's eternal mind otherwise we'd have to conclude that punishment logically precedes sin? or other such irrationalities to god...
2) It's the second answer which i think we could nail him... here he admits that there is unactualised potentialities in God himself. therefore to selfactualise his potential to love HE NEEDS the creation or his creatures otherwise he can't actualise his love. :)
That would have significant if not destructive ramifications on his claims about the self sufficiency of god
On the no contradictions part, I think every believer of religion will claim that there are no errors or contradictions in their holy scripture. Yet, one often finds what one is looking for. I would say to your new friend to try to be fair and evaluate the other side's scripture with an equal standard as yours. Don't judge it with harsher criteria than you are ready to use when reading your own scripture. Even better, read the other parties' scripture to understand its meaning and message and not to find fault with it on such superficial levels. Otherwise I can show him a compilation of 'contradictions' in his. (and likewise, vice versa!)
2) Well preserved? This sounds primitive. Since when is preservation a test for divine revelation? A bigger issue to me is why, in his system of belief, did God choose not to 'preserve' the earlier revelations which is claimed to be corrupted, which He is very able to? Then again, Ibn Warraq's book shows that there are textual variations that alter the meaning of the text; not just 'dialectical variations' as they would like u to believe. Even their traditions (the sahih ones!) reveal that portions of original were lost. As one of your commentators stated earlier. They must come clean on the truth of the state of the 'manuscript evidence'. Yet the very admission could very well mean deat... Then there's the concept of abrogation....Not so preserved?
3) The bentuk tulisan dictated word for word?
A very odd 'defense'. This is just an illustration (please, no cartoonifada) For even mediums can dictate 'oracles/messages' word-for-word from the spirit world. Does that imply that the source of inspiration is necessarily from God?
As for illiteracy, I find it very hard to believe in light of the Arab's great hospitality. Mo's uncle, as a true Arab will ensure that the former would be educated for that is his duty. On the other hand, if he were indeed illiterate, how would he know that those who wrote the recitations down did it correctly? Maybe errors of itacism were committed?
As for the challenge, apparently, see their chapter 72 - almost the entire chapter are the words of 'spirit' or jinn which has become part of their revelation. So the jinns have answered the challenge and the bluff is called!
I want to emphasize that I don't mean to hurt anyone's feelings on this - it is just that the overall apologetic power is just not logical and hence unconvincing.