Creation based Gender equality in the Quran and the Bible

[jessehove]

I would argue that both the Quran and the Bible see the original creation of men and woman as equal companions to one another. Here is a good comparative analysis of how this plays out scripturally:

http://mercyandmessiah.blogspot.ca/2013 ... quran.html

Can this be a foundational element for ecumenical conversation between Muslims and Christians? Particularly for women who share in the falsity of a male dominated world in both Christianity and Islam.

-Jesse

[jessehove]

I would concede defeat if I knew what your point was? You have to interpret the Bible literally or it is not valid? Even though the majority of Orthodox Christians have never interpreted scripture literally?

I concede that modern people think you have interpret scripture literally. I will never concede that modern perceptions are the right way to think.

[Divine Insight]

I would concede defeat if I knew what your point was? You have to interpret the Bible literally or it is not valid? Even though the majority of Orthodox Christians have never interpreted scripture literally?

Yes, that is indeed my point.

The bible must be accepted literally or it is meaningless in terms of demanding that anyone should accept it as the "Word of God"

The reason should be quite obvious.

If you need to reject what the Bible literally has to say in favor of making up alternative ideas to suit your own personal taste, then one of the following two situations must necessarily be true:

1. You don't like what the Bible literally says, and you would prefer to make up your own fantasies concerning what it might have actually meant at some previous time before it was supposedly corrupted by language translations as you claim.

(by the way the you here includes any Orthodox Christians who do this. I don't care if they are backed by large donations and have built large stone cathedrals, that doesn't change the fact that they obviously don't like what the Bible literally has to say. After all, why else would they reject a literal interpretation of the Bible?

2. You are placing your FAITH in the idea that some genuinely righteous God might exist, and you are desperately trying to replace the unrighteous literal stories of the Bible with your personally abstract interpretations in an attempt to push what you consider to be righteous onto a mythological God who would otherwise not be righteous if the stories were taken literally.

That's fine and dandy. I support your right to do this sort of thing entirely.

However, (and this is a very important "however"), if you are then going to attempt to suggest to other people, like myself, should accept your personal fantasy interpretations that actually fly in the face of Biblical literacy, as the "Word of God", you have no meaningful ground upon which to place this ideal.

In other words, if you're going to confess that you don't like what the Bible has to say literally, so much so, that you need to twist it into some totally different fantasies, then why should I (or anyone else) accept that your imagination represents the "Word of God"?

I think that's a valid question.

In other words, if you want to reject what the Bible literally states, and pretend that it says something totally different for the sake of salvaging the "righteousness" of an imagined God, please be my quest.

But don't you dare hold up the very book that you literally renounce in an attempt to proclaim that it contains "God's Word" which you have correctly interpreted whilst blatantly rejecting what the book actually literally has to say.

That is nothing short of fraud. You would be fraudulently holding up a book that you, yourself, confess that you don't even agree with literally and proclaiming YOU hold the "Word of God" in your hand, if and only if, I ignore what it says literally, and instead allow YOU to dictate to me what it was "supposed" to have actually said according to YOUR imagined fantasies.

(Again, please note that the terms "YOU" and "YOUR" refer to anyone who proposes this scenario, which according to you, would include the bulk of Christiandom.)

I concede that modern people think you have interpret scripture literally. I will never concede that modern perceptions are the right way to think.

Well, like I say, as a matter of purely personal FAITH, more power to you.

No one has any right to tell you what you should place your FAITH in. And I most certainly wouldn't even want to suggest what you should place your personal faith in.

My objections ONLY come into play if you're going to then hold the Bible up as being "Word of God" whilst simultaneously rejecting what it literally has to say in favor of replacing that with your own imagined twisted interpretations.

Why should I believe that YOU know what God wants whilst YOU are simultaneously proclaiming that God's Book has become totally corrupt and untrustworthy in a literal sense due to bad translations?

As far as I'm concerned, once you have rejected the Bible on literal grounds, you have nothing left to resurrect. At the very best all you can possibly do at that point is offer your own personal ideals of what you wish it might have originally meant.

But gee whiz, if you can do that then why can't I do it too?

And if you allow that I can do this too we may (in fact I can guarantee that we will) come up with dramatically different make-believe personal interpretations of what we think should be "righteous".

So, in other words, once you've established that it's ok to reject the Bible literally and make up your own stores, this renders the Bible utterly useless in terms of being proclaimed to be the "Word" of any God.

You've reduced it to nothing more than ancient fodder for personal fantasies.

That is my POINT.

And like I say, if you wish to create your own "Faith-based" fantasies in this way, more power to you. I accept and will respect your own faith-based ideals for YOU.

But don't try to push your "Faith-based" fantasies onto me. I could take the same book and come up with a completely different story from yours if I'm allowed to ignore what the Bible literally has to say.

So once you renounce a literal interpretation of the Bible, you've simultaneously destroyed any chance that it could ever be held up in any "authoritative" manner.

This is why I agree with the Fundamentalists. If they are going to hold the Bible up as the authoritative "Word of God", they better be holding it up literally.

And IMHO, what the Bible has to say literally is absurd. So for this reason I reject the Bible literally.

That's my point.

[jessehove]

The Bible is only absurd from the perspective you are reading it in. It would be like me saying that science or evolution is absurd because some scientists are immoral or because some political worldviews have adopted a "social evolution" for murdering people, the biological reality of it must no longer be true.

The Bible contains genres which must read different ways, literalism fails at this. Even in contemporary writings it fails. I can't pull a sentence from an article, and declare that this what is wrong with that person's argument, unless I have fully understood that person's argument and what that sentence means in the context of of the article or novel. This is a basic understanding of literature. Because the Bible has nuance and complication does it mean that it is no longer the word of God? I apologize for my attacks, I just have troubles understanding how people can have such black and white worldviews in a world that is anything but black and white.

[Divine Insight]

From my perspective it seems pretty simple. If you reject the Bible literally, then you literally reject the Bible.

Like I say, if you enjoy placing your faith in a non-literal interpretation of the Bible please do so. If it makes you happy and enhances your life, more power to you. I support you in that completely.

However, if you're going to suggest to me that this is what "Our Creator" expects from all of us, then you've opened the door wide for me to voice my opinions on the matter. And my opinion is that if the Bible isn't taken literally it holds no authority at all, and it's meaningless to hold it up as the "Word of God" when it's just being interpreted into things that it doesn't actually say.

On the other hand if it's taken literally then I reject it as being highly immoral nonsense.

So it doesn't work for me either way.

Both scenarios produce a situation where the Bible cannot be held up as the "Word of God" in any meaningful way.

[jessehove]

Your still unproperly understanding the Bible as primarily a rule book. The Bible is not about what the creator expects as much as it is about who the Creator is, and a description of our world in its reality, and how God plans to make it right.

It's authority is in how it relates to the world. The idea of the Bible as presenting universal expectations is ridiculous. It is describing for us the horrible reality of our world, and a way forward in the midst of that reality through the death and resurrection Christ in the midst of that reality. Genesis 3 is a description of the world gone wrong, Genesis 1 a description of the world when it is right. Christianity then is not about expectations, but an invitation back into the garden.

You can reject it if you want, but that doesn't make it any less of a reality. And the fundamentalists can take the passages they like to use literally if they want, but at the end of the day the Bible is telling us a story which speaks to reality, not a list of do's and don'ts, not a list of expectations. But a call to life in Christ.

[jessehove]

Your literalist argument is like saying Victor Hugo believes God is bad in his book Les Miserables because Jean Val Jean unfairly goes to jail for many years. When in reality Victor Huge certianly does not believe God is bad, and it will take you the length of the Novel to realize that he actually sees God as one who is merciful and just. But you will have to read the whole (or watch the whole movie) to get it. Your refusing to read the whole story. Your stuck in the world gone wrong, and refuse to see the greater hope in the story.

[Divine Insight]

Your still unproperly understanding the Bible as primarily a rule book.

A rule book?

Before I could possibly accept it as a rule book, I must first be convinced that it was written by someone who has the authority to make rules.

So convince me that this book is actually from a divine all-wise, all-intelligent creator is paramount, BEFORE, we can even talk about any "rules".

The Bible is not about what the creator expects as much as it is about who the Creator is, and a description of our world in its reality, and how God plans to make it right.

But the Bible quite literally proofs that it can't be the word of our creator.

The Bible proclaim that we brought sin, death, and all manner of imperfections into the world via this "Fall From Grace" that is being described in Genesis in the story of Adam and Eve.

But today we know that this is a lie. Today we know that death, and all manner of imperfections and disease existed long before humans appeared on planet Earth. The world was a dog-eat-dog world long before humans came alone. All disease and death existed long before humans did as is clearly shown in the fossil records of life on Earth.

So we have proof positive that the accusations made by these myths are false.

The claim that our supposed "fall from grace" from a creator was not the event that brought death, disease, and all manner of imperfections into the world.

It's authority is in how it relates to the world.

But it doesn't relate to the reality of the world at all. Therefore it has no authority.

The idea of the Bible as presenting universal expectations is ridiculous. It is describing for us the horrible reality of our world, and a way forward in the midst of that reality through the death and resurrection Christ in the midst of that reality. Genesis 3 is a description of the world gone wrong, Genesis 1 a description of the world when it is right. Christianity then is not about expectations, but an invitation back into the garden.

The horrible reality of our world?

I'm sorry that you have such a dismal pessimistic view of life. I understand now why you desperately need a dream of something better to cling to.

You can reject it if you want, but that doesn't make it any less of a reality. And the fundamentalists can take the passages they like to use literally if they want, but at the end of the day the Bible is telling us a story which speaks to reality, not a list of do's and don'ts, not a list of expectations. But a call to life in Christ.

It doesn't speak to reality at all.

On the contrary, it's a myth about a God who is supposedly angry with us because of what some hypothetical Adam and Eve did in a story the does not match up with the reality of the real world.

Also, how can you claim that it speaks to reality and then suggest that it's a call to life in Christ?

What was the Christ?

A collection of rumors about a demigod who was supposedly born of a virgin mortal woman, taught a bunch of nonsense, was crucified and then rose from the dead?

Where is there any reality in that? There is nothing about that scenario that even remotely hints at reality.

First you have a demigod being born of a virgin woman that this imagined God supposedly impregnated. (basically a copy of many previous man-made myths).

There's nothing even original about this myth. The superstitions of demigods had been around for hundreds if not thousands of years before the story of Jesus.

Why would a real creator of the universe copy existing man-made myths as his method of attempting to communicate with us? Couldn't he come up with something original?

Then you have the blatant inconsistencies and contradictions of Jesus refuting the teaching of the Old Testament whilst supposedly teaching precisely the opposite behaviors.

For example, the prophets of Old taught that God has commanded us to judge others as sinners and to stone sinners to death. They clearly give this as commandments directly from the LORD they God, and demand that we must obey these commandments whether we like it or not. Just read the first 5 books of the Bible.

But then was does Jesus do?

First off he proclaims, that he did not come to change the law of the prophets of Old and that not one jot nor one tittle shall pass from law.

But then he goes on to teach people not to judge others and not to cast the first stone.

Well, duh?

He just refuted the laws of the Old Prophets that have proclaimed that God had commanded us to judge others and stone sinners to death. Where do you think these people got those ideas from in the first place?

So you speak about "rules". What rules? Should we do as the prophets of Old say based on the teaching of Jesus that not one jot nor one tittle shall pass from law.

Or should we refuse to obey those commandments of God and instead do as Jesus says and refuse to judge others or cast the first stone?

It's not even a consistent story.

Which rules are you even supposed to obey? The rules of the God of Abraham? Or the rules of Jesus which conflict with his own proclaiming that not one jot nor one tittle of the laws of old shall pass from law until heaven and earth pass.

So not only do you have a totally unrealistic story, but you don't even have clear rules to follow? All we have are mixed messages and contradictions.

Also in the story of Jesus, it is said that Jesus died to pay for our sins. But that doesn't even fit in with the bigger picture of this religion.

What is the wages of sin? It's death. Permanent spiritual death.

What is the reward for being a saint? Well, after your body dies you'll be resurrected and given eternal life in heaven.

What happened to Jesus in this story? Did he pay the wages of sin for anyone by dying permanently and never being heard from again? No he didn't. According to these superstitious myths Jesus was resurrected and ultimately ascended to heaven to have the gift of eternal life. Christians hold that he's still alive today sitting at the right hand of God.

So these superstitious myths don't even make any sense. Jesus could hardly have paid for the sins of mankind when he didn't even pay the wages of sin for a single man. He got precisely the reward that saints are supposed to receive, eternal life in heaven.

So these superstitions don't even add up. They are totally inconsistent with their own ideals.

They are totally inconsistent with reality as well.

So they have no "authority" to be making any rules. And besides, as I have pointed out, even the rules they try to make are totally mixed messages that cannot all be followed simultaneously.

So there's nothing there.

There's no reason to suspect that there is any authority behind the rules presented in these myths.

Most of the rules in the Old Testament were made up by a male-chauvinistic society that was using their imagined God to support their own actions, (like killing people who refuse to accept their religion). They used it as an excuse to commit genocide in the name of God.

I don't see where the "rules" in the Bible are even moral.

The closest things we see in terms of morality come solely from Jesus in the New Testament, and everything that Jesus taught in terms of morality conflicts with the Old Testament and the God of Abraham.

In fact, the moral values that Jesus taught are far more in line with the moral values that had been taught by Buddha some 500 years earlier.

So we have absolutely no reason whatsoever for believing that the Bible has any authority to make any rules.