On Friday, September 5, 2003, 5:08:00 PM, Paul Makepeace wrote:
PM> http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/features/beginner/index.shtml
PM> ``You have to believe that there is only one God, Allah, who created the
PM> entire universe, and that Muhammad (peace be upon him) is his final
PM> messenger on earth.''
I know what Muslims believe, and what the Koran teaches. However just
because someone utters a statement such as "There is no God but Allah. The
Prophets merely carry his word" doesn't mean that they aren't treating the
Prophets in a near-identical fashion to the way in which Allah is
worshipped.
Self-proclamations of belief are generally fairly worthless: eg Stalin
spent decades proclaiming that the Soviet Union's socio-political system
was the pinnacle of human achievement and a near-Utopian society. Just
because he said it was so, didn't make it so.
PM> I thought this was common knowledge? Perhaps I'm biased living & working
PM> in East London for a few years.
I was brought up in East London and went to a school which had more
practising muslims than christians, so I consider myself reasonably aware
of what religions profess. My point is that as a militant atheist trying
to observe the religions objectively, I believe that of the three main
self-proclaimed monotheistic religions, Judaism seems to be the only one
that treats its minor deities more as superhumans rather than out-and-out
gods.
Anyway, I started this whole thing by saying that this was one of my
favourite "wind up the Christians" tactics. Perhaps I've trolled too
successfully.
Let's talk about Buffy. Or Ponies.
--
Iain | PGP mail preferred: pubkey @ www.deepsea.f9.co.uk/misc/iain.asc
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