metacristi
Junior Member
- Joined
- Jun 10, 2003
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- Basic Beliefs
- fallibilist, I doubt we will ever find arguments which to strongly 'anchor' our knowledge; we should remain open to possible non trivial changes in ALL parts of what we accept today as knowledge
I've read both the Bible and the Quran (several translations). When comparing them I used a variety of metrics and I couldn't find any relative difference. They might as well have been the same book.
As it turns out, it wasn't just my opinion. Here's a textual analysis where simple word counts and expressions have simply been tallied.
http://odintext.com/blog/textanalysisbible2of3/
Whatever argument you have for relative moral merits of Islam vs Christianity you've got to find that difference some place else than their religious texts.
The more you know
Well even the author of that study recognises openly that it is rather a superficial research And superficial it is indeed. Primarily given the existing evidence, at least the last 70 years are totally relevant: in spite of a long exposure of Islam to Modernity 'the end of the tunnel' is not in sight, we still witness extreme violence and the liberal forces are still extremely weak all over the Islamic world where Islam is majoritarian. Finally even if the quran and the bible were equally violent at the theoretical level it would still be valid that islam is more violent at the practical level.
But the study is misleading at the core because it does not take in account the fact that the Bible is actually the equivalent of the Quran+Hadith+sunna of Muhammad, muslims take the Quran as being the 'uncreated' word of god (a huge stumbling block, unlike the situation in Christianity and even Judaism, see below*), the laws in the Leviticus and Deuteronomy are not considered binding for Christians, the status of unaided Human Reason is different in islam and the other Abrahamic religions (not an accident that in islam we have 'slaves' of allah whilst in the other religions we have 'servants' of god, Job for example can even argue with god), the morality in Islam is what allah wants (even if completely immoral in our eyes) whilst in the other religions the inner nature of god is morality and can be known independently of revelation (that's why Job can argue with god in face of sheer injustice), it's rather straightforward to contextualize violence in the past in the case of Christianity and very difficult to do so in Islam (if the 'perfection' of the Quran and Muhammad is retained) and so on. Tina Magaard is much closer to the truth i'm afraid:
http://10news.dk/after-three-years-...concludes-islam-is-the-most-violent-religion/
http://10news.dk/danish-professor-jihadis-are-just-following-the-example-of-mohammed/
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/11/research-islam-really-is-the-worlds-most-violent-religion
* as Bernard Lewis puts it well in one of his books:
Arthur Jeffery’s book was entitled Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’an: The Old Codices, 1937. To his horror, his study was immediately denounced and publicly burnt by order of the leading Muslim religious authorities at Al-Azhar Mosque and University. Professor Jeffery...had excellent relations with the people at Al-Azhar, and was the more startled and horrified by their reaction to his book. He pointed out that what he was doing was no different from what the most pious Christians and Jews do to the texts of the Old and New Testaments. To which they replied, “But that is different. The Koran is not like the Bible. The Koran is the word of God.” By this they were not merely casting doubt on the authenticity or accuracy of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. They were pointing to the profound difference between Muslim perceptions and Judeo-Christian perceptions of the very nature of scripture. For Christians and Jews, the Bible consists of a number of books, written at different times and in different places, divinely inspired, but mostly committed to writing by human beings. For Muslims, the Koran is one book, divine, eternal and uncreated. It is not simply divinely inspired; it is literally divine and to question it in any way is blasphemy.
The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain
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