Murad wrote:...I am not putting words in your mouth, im using logic and reasoning...
Logic and reason work in more than one direction. For example, around the world printing presses have produced copies of the Qur'an. And since human beings are responsible for these printing presses, at times "Qur'ans" have been produced with letters, words, and perhaps even entire verses or pages added or left out. At some point, presumably, the error(s) in these "Qur'ans" would be detected and subsequently discarded and replaced with corrected text. Now for me, the fact that some "Qur'an" somewhere was printed with these types of human errors does not (by itself) mean that the Qur'anic text is somehow "not holy." If this logic makes sense to you, then you should understand that human errors can occur, and human errors can be corrected, and the presumed "holiness" of the text, whether Qur'anic or Biblical, is not thereby affected.
Murad wrote:...Ok, lets say i don't have an understanding of the 'trinity' like you do. Please do explain what the trinity is, and where 'Jesus praying' falls into it...
Christians and Jews all believe in One God and only One God. Early Christians, however, were faced with the situation where Jesus said things and did things that only God could say and do, and yet Jesus was obviously human. Furthermore, Jesus was obviously in contact with his Father, and his Father was also God. And Jesus spoke of a "Spirit of God" in personal terms, a Spirit who was also Divine, but who was not Jesus and not the Father.
Faced with this seemingly confusing and conflicting information, Jesus' followers likely would not have continued to think anything more about these things after Jesus had died on the cross and was buried. But then Jesus rose from the dead, with a physical body that was unlike any other sort of body--a body that could be touched and felt, a body that had scars, a body that could eat food, but yet which could appear and disappear even within rooms that were shut and locked. Faced with this unexpected yet undeniable reality, Christians understood that their earlier concept of One "monochromatic" God, One "monophonic" God, had to be nuanced. The reality of Jesus life, death, and bodily resurrection meant that Jesus' words and teachings were true, and yet God is still One. These early Christians did not have the concepts and the categories to explain or even understand this, and yet it was as true to them as Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. God is one, and yet God is more mysterious and more wonderful than anyone could have imagined.
Murad wrote:...Also many christians say water is similar to God, it has 3 forms, do you believe the comparison with water and God help us understand God better?
Christians use a variety of analogies or illustrations or metaphors to help them wrap their minds around the concept of One God in Three Persons. Most of these analogies are more helpful to some people than to others. For myself, I think of the difference between the Jewish God and the Christian God as the difference between
monaural AM radio and
FM stereo, or the difference between
monochromatic vision versus
trichromatic vision. Obviously these are just analogies. In the same way that two-dimensional "flatlanders" would have difficulty understanding how mutliple distinct (two-dimensional) squares could somehow comprise a single (three-dimensional) cube, so also our finite human understanding strains to comprehend the infinite reality of the One True God.
Now of course I don't expect any Muslim to
accept these things. What we can expect, however, is to increase our mutual understanding of each others' beliefs without falling into ridicule or attack mode, which doesn't really reflect well on either side.
Perhaps at this point you could explain your views on the Islamic understanding of human Free Will with respect to Allah's forenowledge?
