Evidence for God from Science

Daniel Pipes wrote an article on this subject that you can find here:

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2714

Small clip from the article:

Is Allah God?

Asked if Muslims worship the same Almighty as Jews and Christians, President Bush replied some months ago, "I believe we worship the same God." The Islamic deity, known as Allah, in other words, is the same Supreme Being to whom Jews and Christians pray.

The president's statement provoked widespread dismay among Evangelicals; one poll found 79% of their leadership disagreeing with this view. Pat Robertson pungently explained why, observing "the entire world is being convulsed by a religious struggle. … whether Hubal, the Moon God of Mecca, known as Allah, is supreme, or whether the Judeo-Christian Jehovah, God of the Bible, is Supreme."

Muslims at times agree that God and Allah are different. Irshad Manji has recounted how her teachers at a madrassah in Canada taught her this. And a Jewish scholar, Jon D. Levenson, finds the claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same God "if not false, then certainly simplistic and one-sided."

I'd like some opinions from my Christian friends and from Muslims if there are any on this site.

Thank you.

In reading the comments following the article on your link, I found myself agreeing with those who said no.

There are too many differences but the biggest one is the denial of Jesus, who is God. How can we have a common God if they don't believe in ours?

Although we came out of judaism we don't agree with them either, theirs is an incomplete expression of the nature of God. I don't find the current trend of minimizing differences for the sake of unity to be either worthwhile or possible. It is sufficient to love your neighbors and let God sort out the rest, He created us and He can resolve our differences.

Ignoring major theological conflicts for the sake an artificial unity will never work, in fact it will inevitably backfire.

This statement on the site: In Islamic doctrine (Sura 3:67), Abraham was the first Muslim. Moses and Jesus introduced mistakes into the Word of God; Muhammad brought it down perfectly. Islam views Judaism and Christianity as flawed versions of itself, correct on essentials but wrong in important details. This outlook implies that all three faiths share the God of Abraham.

I find the above to be true. If all 3 claim to worship the God of Abraham, then how can they be worshipping different entities? However, the missing piece of information is that Muslims are worshipping a misrepresentation of God. Most of what they believe Him to be is wrong, as is the violent way of life that they espouse to. In essence they have been deceived.

Remember in the garden how Satan stated the truth but manipulated it, so that it became a lie. I think the same thing happened with Muhamed, so that Muslims are no longer worshipping the same God, but in fact they are worshipping a lie.

Hi j316,

My position is that we do not worship the same God as the Muslims, but I base my position on the teachings of the Qur'an vs. the Bible. In other words, I think that this subject goes beyond whether Jesus was God incarnate or not.

For instance:

God in the Old Testament says not to multiply wives and God says He hates divorce. Jesus made a statement on divorce which conflicts with the Qur'an, but Allah allows divorce and multiple wives.

Look at these differences:

"Believers, take neither Jews nor Christians for your friends." (Surah 5:51)

"They say, 'Accept the Jewish or the Christian faith and you shall be rightly guided.' Say, 'By no means! We believe in the faith of Abraham, the upright one. He was no idolater.'" (Surah 2:135)

"Fight against such as those to whom the Scriptures were given [Jews and Christians]...until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued." (Surah 9:29)

"The Christians say: The Christ is the son of Allah; these are the words of their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; may Allah destroy them." (Sura 9:30)

"Prophet make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home." (Surah 9:73)

The Qur'an conflicts with the teachings of Jesus:

Surah 3:140, If a wound (and killing) has touched you, be sure a similar wound (and killing) has touched the others.

Jesus: Matthew 5: 38"You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' 39But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. 40If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. 41And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. 42Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.

Jesus: Luke 6: 29To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. 30Give to everyone who asks of you. And from him who takes away your goods do not ask them back. 31And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise.

32"But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. 35But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil.

How can the Qur'an contradict the Bible in so many ways and be from the same God?

I agree with Felgar that the muslims may have been misled, it is precisely the sort of evil that the devil is fond of. I have seen it suggested that the Dome of the Rock is the abomination that makes desolate, I can't say whether or not I agree with that, but it would tie in with a world religion that is anti jewish and christian.

I haven't taken the time to research the Koran but just looking at the fruits of the hardliners interpretation of it, it can't be the benign work that some apologists try to make it out to be. Christian fundamentalists cause enough problems but at least the Bible doesn't preach murder and mayhem.

j316 wrote:I haven't taken the time to research the Koran but just looking at the fruits of the hardliners interpretation of it, it can't be the benign work that some apologists try to make it out to be. Christian fundamentalists cause enough problems but at least the Bible doesn't preach murder and mayhem.

Agreed, and although Christian fundamentalists cause mayhem and claim to be Christian, at least it can be shown that in fact they are behaving in defiance of direct Biblical instruction.

Christian2,
You seem to have some familiarity with muslim theology, what is their position on evil? How do they, or do they, view what we see as the actions of satan?

And to respond to your contention that their scriptures are more significant than their dogma, I would have to agree that the essence of them is more significant than their basis. It is the hostile tone of them that is remarkable, especially when compared to the rest of the historical [buddhism, hinduism et al] theological systems.

J316,

You asked:

You seem to have some familiarity with muslim theology, what is their position on evil? How do they, or do they, view what we see as the actions of satan?

I'll do better than that for you. I will ask my very well-educated, well-informed Muslim friend and get back to you with his answers.

Here is your answer from my Muslim friend:

Muslim position on Evil is the same as that of Christians and Jews.

If you think evil is satanic or comes from Satan and you view that as the actions of Satan, we are fully with you in that regard.

God is Good and Satan is Evil.

Do you have any further questions, J316?

Sorry I haven't responded sooner , 4th weekend.

I noticed something interesting in your post, we wonder whether or not the muslims actually believe in the same God, but it certainly seems to be the same devil. That strikes me as being rather curious.

To j316,

I noticed something interesting in your post, we wonder whether or not the muslims actually believe in the same God, but it certainly seems to be the same devil. That strikes me as being rather curious.

Could you expand on that thought a bit?

A silly argument in my opinion is when a Muslim will say, "Of course we worship the same God. In fact Arabic speaking Muslims call God 'Allah.' Allah is in their Bibles as the name of God."

The answer to this argument is this: Christians who speak Arabic would naturally say "Allah" when speaking of God because "Allah" means God in the Arabic language, but perhaps it there is more to it than I realized.

I ran across this article: http://www.letusreason.org/Islam6.htm

Clip:

The first Arabic translation of the Bible came into existence about the 9th century. Nowhere is the name of Allah found in the Old or New Testament. When Islam became the dominant political force people were coerced to use the name Allah for God or suffer the consequences from the hands of militant Muslims. Because of Islam's dominance Allah became the common name of God. The translators of the Bible gave in to the religious pressures and substituted Allah for Yahweh in the Arabic Bibles, but this is not the name of the God of the Hebrews, nor of the creator who made heaven and earth because of its source in paganism. His nature and attributes have only a few basic similarities and many more differences.

There was no source backing up this statement and I have been unable to confirm this allegation.

My position when trying to answer my original question is that the name of God is not important at this point; it is the character of God that is most important--Yahweh and Allah have different characters, leaving the nature (trinity) out of it completely.

To me, the character of Allah in the Qur'an is more like the character of Satan.

Christian2 wrote:

If you think evil is satanic or comes from Satan and you view that as the actions of Satan, we are fully with you in that regard.

This only partially correlates with the Christian belief in Satan. We know that Satan has the ability to do certain evil acts, but only when God allows him in order to fulfill His own greater purposes. More often than not, though, Satan simply acts as a deceiver, coercer, and accuser. The evil we as men end up doing comes from our own hearts, and we are the ones who have to take responsibility for it. We can't simply say "The devil made me do it."

Hello,

I wanted to make sure that you realized that what you quoted:

If you think evil is satanic or comes from Satan and you view that as the actions of Satan, we are fully with you in that regard.

came from a Muslim.

You wrote:

This only partially correlates with the Christian belief in Satan. We know that Satan has the ability to do certain evil acts, but only when God allows him in order to fulfill His own greater purposes. More often than not, though, Satan simply acts as a deceiver, coercer, and accuser. The evil we as men end up doing comes from our own hearts, and we are the ones who have to take responsibility for it. We can't simply say "The devil made me do it."

Good points and I agree.

There are some who think that it could have been Satan who came to Muhammad, but perhaps this is giving Satan too much power and too much "credit."

Just for the sake of discussion, you said:

We know that Satan has the ability to do certain evil acts, but only when God allows him in order to fulfill His own greater purposes.

Would God allow Satan to come to Muhammad with an evil message? For what purpose?

Satan comes out the winner if people do not accept Jesus Christ as their Savior and God's salvation on the cross. Satan is probably dancing about that turn of events because we now have over a billion Muslims who don't accept Jesus as their Savior. They deny that He died on the cross. According to Islam Allah saved Him and translated Him into heaven.

Christian2 wrote:Would God allow Satan to come to Muhammad with an evil message? For what purpose?

That's the crux of it. Why has God allowed Muslim teaching to become so entrenched?

The same can be reversed as well. If Muslims are correct, why has Christianity become so established.

Clearly there are things about God's nature that we don't understand.

Felgar wrote:That's the crux of it. Why has God allowed Muslim teaching to become so entrenched?

He doesn't want them to be Muslims, of course, but if you look at where the Muslim lands are, you see they're in a prime spot to fulfill some important prophecies from the Old Testament. Namely the ones about certain lands rising up against Israel(either in Ezekiel or Isaiah -- I forget which). If you research all the lands mentioned and look at them nowadays, you'll notice that they are all Muslim-occupied lands.

Given the conflicts in the Middle East, it's not too farfetched to imagine them rising against Israel -- if they could get over their own internal struggles and work together, of course. Also, Russia has currently made deals with some Islamic lands(part of Russia is mentioned in the prophecies, too, as one of the places rising against Israel). There's no telling how far in the future these prophecies are supposed to take place, but it seems pretty clear to me that the stage is being set.