- The sky being blue, or, the ubiquity of peoples grasp thereof, is in NO way analogous, not even a little, to your assertion for which I asked a cite.
- Are you having a brain event or something? Why on earth would I give you a cite that indicates that Americans know a lot more about the Koran than they do the Bible??
It may not be the world’s greatest analogy, but surely you can think of SOME way it might be analogous.
Yes, thank you for asking. It’s the Brain Event of the Year! Buy two, get one free, till Christmas. We must be CRAZY to sell them this cheap!
Mods, please note that he asked me a direct question, so this is not spam.
Sorry, I thought it was as obvious as the sky being blue:
a) After noting that a poster’s assertion about Islamic belief was mistaken, I treated it as an example showing that most Americans’ knowledge of Islam (or, in the context of the post, Islamic belief) is abysmal.
b) You refused to allow this dastardly smear of Americans’ religious knowledge to stand without a cite. I thought that the truth of my assertion was so obvious that I didn’t want to spend much time looking for cites, but to be fair, the post I was responding to was only anecdotal evidence (even though the poster in question is known to be much more highly educated and engaged in world affairs than the average American). So I offered to meet you halfway, and gave a cite that I already had handy, showing that most Americans know next to nothing even about the Bible — on the level of the new graduate of a speed-reading course who read War and Peace in 20 minutes, and said, “It’s about Russia.”
c) I think that this might be where you lost track, but it follows that unless most Americans know much more about the Quran than they do about the Bible, my assertion is verified.
d) So it remains for you to provide a cite that Americans DO know much more about the Quran than the Bible, if you want to defend their knowledge of Islam.
I think everyone may be looking at this the wrong way. I’m not convinced that it’s the case (certainly not from their Statement of Faith) , but it is possible that Wheaton (or at least the specific individuals there behind this) have a specific belief about the relationship between the god worshipped by Christians and the god worshipped by Muslims that is not what people are assuming.
Some Christians believe that Muslims (and Mohammad specifically) are not merely mistaken about the nature of God, but have been deceived. They believe that Mohammad had a genuine encounter with a supernatural being who claimed to be the angel Gabriel speaking on behalf of Yahweh, but who was in fact Satan or a demon in his service, and that Satan has continued to inspire Muslims and without their knowledge to usurp their worship intended for God. (An even less charitable version is no doubt that the Muslims know the truth or allow themselves to be deceived.) It has nothing to do with how similar or different Christian and Islamic conceptions of God are. Even if they were shown that Muslims have beliefs about God more similar to their own than other denominations they accept as worshipping the same god, it wouldn’t matter, because the issue is not one of similarity or difference, but of identity.
ETA: I forgot to add that they base this belief on a passage in I Corinthians in which Paul says that the Greek gods are actually demons.
I think that most participants in this thread have said that Wheaton can believe whatever it wants, but if it is using its Doctrinal Statement as the basis of Dr. Hawkins’ suspension, then they need to show where she violated the Doctrinal Statement, rather than some bizarre belief that is not even hinted at by that statement.
ETA: and the particular belief you mention seems to me to be something that Christians would not want to entertain. If Satan can convincingly impersonate emissaries from God, how do we know that it wasn’t Satan who did any number of things attributed to God or angels in the Bible?
In fact, it would help explain a lot of things.
The edit window on my last post is closed, but I just wanted to note that I’m well aware of Bible verses attributing all sorts of deception to Satan. But it seems to be to be qualitatively different for an omniscient and omnipotent Yahweh to permit a supernatural being to not only deceive a given person at a given time, but billions of people for centuries.
I’ve often thought that if I were Satan, I wouldn’t spread my evil influence by offering people guitar lessons, or even promises of power. I’d pretend to be good. I’d tell people to honor justice and peace, and to love their neighbor as themselves. I’d tell them that I myself am love and the source of all love. I’d tell them that those who reject me don’t know love and cannot love. And I’d tell them that the loving thing to do is to kill neighboring tribes and to practice slavery and to treat women as chattel. Unless, of course, they started to wise up, in which case I’d tell them that was all a misunderstanding, that of course, I never meant for my followers to kill or enslave anybody (and if I did, I had a really good reason that doesn’t apply anymore). And then I’d explain that it was probably the evil gay people and Jews and uppity women who had caused that awful misunderstanding, and that my followers should do whatever they had to to ensure that my message of love and peace wasn’t perverted any more. And so on.
But your point (and RT Firefly’s) about Wheaton’s doctrinal statements are well taken. I wasn’t defending their actions, merely pointing out that it is logically possible to believe that Christians and Jews worship the same god and that Muslims worship a different one, even though it makes no sense taxonomically.
Yeah, that sounds really evil.
Hey, wait a minute…
And, back when I first lived down the block, saying that would shut up the students who asked, “Have you been saved?” I figured they had given up on Catholics because their version of Christianity was so boring, lacking all of the bells, whistles, incense, and general quirkiness that made being Catholic fun, that they couldn’t get any traction. That changed around 1978, so I started replying, “Sorry, I’m Jewish.” By the early '80s some of them realized how many [del]indulgences[/del] Brownie Points converting a Jew was worth, so I moved further east.
And we have a thread winner!
We need a transubstantiation debate, but I’m too lazy. Any takers?
I’ve dealt with a number of private “Christian” Colleges, and what I’ve noticed is that their biggest fear is that their rich donors will start giving to The Santorum Sanitarium or Bibles For Burma or some other cause instead.
The Powers That Be live every day in fear that a donor or two will get pissed off about something the school is doing. Worse if the school looks like heretics.
One anecdote, partly to lighten up this thread: Some students got in trouble for putting up a sign during Frosh Week: “Official Freshman Girls Drop-Off Site”, in front of what was functionally a frat house. Well, yes, there were guys in speedos in lounge chairs with umbrella drinks hooting at all the mini-vans with freshman girls.
In his Very Sternly Delivered Lecture to the lads, the college president admitted that he was “literally scared that one of those parents might turn out to be a big donor”.
So, a teacher in the classroom might stay under the radar, but a teacher on social media might get noticed by rich evangelical donors, who are not known for being open-minded. My guess is that this was a big part of hWheaton’s reaction.
That is simply not true. To say that Jews believe in a different God to Christians you would have to ignore large parts of the New Testament. I could see how saying that would could get you chucked out of Wheaton. And it is illogical in the extreme to say that Jews worship the same God as Christians, but Muslims don’t.
Again this doesn’t mean that Muslim teaching is compatible with Christian teaching, but however misguided (from the Christian point of view) their beliefs are it is undeniable Theologically speaking that they are praying to the same God.
Likewise for saying that Yahweh and God are different entities, that seems unorthodox in the extreme, and very much counter to Christian teaching.
There are plenty of Christian sects (and Christians) that have a different statements of belief to the ones at Wheaton. This professor did say she BELIEVED the same thing as Muslims, or that Islam is in accordance with that statement of beliefs.
But to say everyone who doesn’t have exactly the same set of beliefs regarding God as you (including Jews) is worshiping a different God as you is not part of mainstream Christian teaching.
This clearly has more to with Islamophobia than statements of belief.
Missed edit window. I meant DIDN’T not did.
They simply don’t believe God considered the Jews to be the chosen people, that’s all.
Christianity does not consider Jesus to “be God.”
Christianity added some new layers on the Jewish God, but it never changed him into something else. Same for Islam.
BTW, if it hasn’t already been mentioned, there’s this goofy-ass theological theory out there among some Christians that Allah (which of course simply means “God” in Arabic and is the same word Arab Christians use) is actually not the God of Abraham, but some kind of weird pagan moon god that morphed or something. It’s probably the dumb-fuck theory Wheaton subscribes to. God forbid (so to speak) that Muslims be worshipping the same god as Christians do. Can’t have that.
That is not a simple question. See Monophysite Heresy for more details.
I think it’s simple enough for this context.
How many Christians would say “we don’t worship the same God that Jesus did?”
Absolutely yes. Muslim and Christians believe very similar things about this. That their God is indeed the same God who spoke to Abraham (the muslim call to prayer says as much) and considered the Jews to be the chosen people. But they both believe that his message was rejected by them and they failed to comprehend the meaning, and that those teachings have been superseded (or improved upon) by subsequent teaching. The difference is the Muslims ALSO believe that about the New Testament teachings.
I think its good she got suspended. Enough of leaking more gasoline on bonfire. Muslims are not into the belief that Jesus was a human. Koran shares lots of similarities with Bible and Jewish stuff but Muslims really don’t like to admit to it
I really can’t make heads or tails of this post.