Tough Questions for Christians

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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Dear Xtians (= those who call themselves “Christians”, e.g. @reason4emotion ), please can you comment on the following [sorry, l’m just asking Xtians, and please, no computer gamers e.g. RealUn/Mary_Poppins/Socrates ]

What do you think of / do you obey the following:

PREAMBLE - THE EASIER STUFF

  • Christianity forbids a woman discussing theology without her head covered:
    "every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonours her head - it is just as though her head were shaved. If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or shaved off, she should cover her head. (I Corinthians 11:3-10).

  • Ephesians 5:22 "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. 24 Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. "

  • Job 37:18 invites to join God
    “can you join him in spreading out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze?”
    This reflects the Hellenistic beliefs of the time, that the sky was a metal mirror.

  • Regarding the Marriage of Mary to Joseph, Catholic Encyclopaedia ( CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: St. Joseph), says:
    “Mary, then twelve to fourteen years of age, Joseph, who was at the time ninety years old, went up to Jerusalem among the candidates; a miracle manifested the choice God had made of Joseph”

Would you have any reason to doubt the Catholic version? Why would it be wrong?
Do you feel it’s fair for Xtians to condemn the Prophet Muhammad (the blessings of Allah be upon him, and Peace) for marrying Lady 'Aisha under her father’s auspices when she was 9 years old? She had already been engaged to a pagan, the engagement had to be broken off. Nobody condemned the Prophet for this until circa the late 1900s, prominently the 1990s, by which time the 11 year old prostitutes of European cities had been conveniently criminalised to pave the way for self righteous anachronistic hate against Islam. The age of consent in the Talmud is 3 years and 1 day.

  • The Christian attitude seems to be handwringing and soulwrenching for blasphemers and rude people … but cold contempt for Muslims who pray and fast, call you “sister”, reverence Lady Mary (may Allah be pleased with her) at least as much as you do, their women dress like her, Muslims believe in the Virgin Birth, the Messiahship of Christ, the Ascension and the Second Coming, etc.

It seems like you find greater affinity for outright haters of you than for those nearer to you in faith.

THE “COMFORTER” PREDICTED BY JESUS (Peace Be Upon Him):

REGARDING MOSES (Peace Be Upon Him) CONFRONTING THE PHARAOH, THE QUR’AN EXCELS THE BIBLE IN HISTORICAL ACCURACY, REVEALING THE BIBLE TO BE TAMPER-EVIDENT:

The source for most of this (l highly recommend watching the entire video, it has convincing CGI graphics of the Pharaoh, very close to what he would have looked like, according to my gut feeling, terrifying):

SUBHEADING: KING VS. PHARAOH:

Prophet Yusuf (Joseph) (peace be upon him) lived between 1747 BCE and 1637 BCE.
The Qur’an only ever calls the ruler of Egypt at his time “Al Malik” (the King).
e.g. Surah Yusuf, 12:50 - “And the king said: Bring him unto me …”

“Pharaoh” originally meant “Palace”. It was in use long before Moses but was only applied to the human Ruler after 1400 BCE, during the 18th Dynasty, which covers the time Prophet Musa (peace be upon him) lived.

The point is, at the time of Yusuf, the ruler was a Hyksos king, they styled themselves “King”.
The Hyksos were the kings of the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt (fl. c. 1650–1550 BCE).
The Exodus is traditionally dated c. 1446 BCE (early date) and c. 1250–1270 BCE (late date), associated with the reign of Ramesses II.
The Qur’an correctly only ever calls the King of Joseph “King” (“Al Malik”)
The Qur’an correctly only ever calls the King of Moses “Pharaoh” (“Fir’awn”)

The Bible calls the ruler of Egypt “Pharaoh” 274 times in the OT. It sometimes indiscriminately alternates between “Pharaoh” and “King”. King is used roughly 50 times, and of those times, Pharaoh and King are sometimes used together e.g. Genesis 41:46 “Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from Pharaoh’s presence and traveled throughout Egypt.” Genesis 40 also mentions the ruler of Egypt as “King”. However, as l say, the terms are used interchangeably throughout the OT and even within the story of Joseph.

POSSIBLE MIRACLE: Only with the advent of modern Egyptology have we been able to make the historical distinction between the King of Joseph and the Pharaoh of Moses.

SUBHEADING: MID-MORN ON THE DAY OF BEAUTY:

The Qur’an in Surah Taha 20:59 relates to the contest between Pharaoh’s magicians and Moses being arranged for the “Day of Beauty” (Yawm al Zinah) at mid morning:

20:59 “(Moses) said: Your tryst shall be the day of the feast, and let the people assemble when the sun hath risen high.”

Translators unanimously seem to call this “Day of the Feast” or “Festival”, however the literal translation of Zinah is “beauty, adornment, ornament, or decoration”, often referring to elegance. The OT doesn’t mention a national day, the encounter just occurs inside the Palace.

The “Day of Beauty” appears to be the “Opet Festival”, an annual national holiday in Ancient Egypt, wherein houses and temples were decorated, idols were adorned and paraded through decorated streets, and people dressed in special clothes.

POSSIBLE MIRACLE: There was no way people could have recalled this until the advent of modern Egyptology. The ancient Egyptian language was lost centuries before Islam.

The Qur’an’s timing of the contest being mid-morning is remarkable too: the ancient Egyptians believed magic to be most powerful during festivals and at dawn and mid-morning.

POSSIBLE MIRACLE: The Qur’an records Moses has challenging the pagan Egyptians at the time they felt stongest - The Day of Beauty, at mid-morning. None of these nuances appear in the OT. There was no way people could have recalled this until the advent of modern Egyptology.

SUBHEADING: MAYBE THE BIBLE GOT HAMAN WRONG, NOT THE QUR’AN, OR AT LEAST THERE WERE 2 HAMANS:

The Qur’an in 6 places names “Haman” as some kind of minister of the Pharaoh at the time of Moses, e.g.:
28:38 “And Pharaoh said: O chiefs! I know not that ye have a god other than me, so kindle for me (a fire), O Haman, to bake the mud; and set up for me a lofty tower in order that I may survey the God of Moses; and lo! I deem him of the liars.”

This was decried by the Judaeo-Xtian scholarship throughout the centuries, as a glaring error because Haman is the Prime Minister of the Persian King Xerxes I in the Book of Esther. His plot to destroy the Jews occurred circa 474-473 BCE, and thus they conclude the Qur’an got both the time and location wildly wrong!

In fact, the historicity of the Book of Esther is also widely doubted by scholars, including Judaeo-Xtian scholars (the Universal Jewish Encyclopaedia states “The very tone of the book itself, its literary craftsmanship and the aptness of its situations, point rather to a romantic story than a historical chronicle.”

The Jewish Encylcopaedia had already asserted that: “The vast majority of modern expositions have reached the conclsion that the book is a piece of pure fiction.”

I can give more and more denouncements of the Book of Esther, but that’s enough for now.

There exists an unhistorical Haman in the Book of Esther. This unhistorical Haman is portrayed as the Prime Minister of Ahasuerus (Xerxes I?), King of Persia. Though the author shows familiarity and knowledge of Persian life and courtly customs, the events recorded in the Book of Esther show little correlation with those of the actual reign of Xerxes I. Long ago theologians both Jewish and Christian, had a difficult time accepting the Book of Esther whose canonicity was held in low esteem, especially in the east among early Christians.

Finally though, get this: There was a rank / title in the Pharaoh’s court, which would correspond to the possibly Arabised name “Haman”:

From Wikipedia: The description of Haman in the Quran serving in both a priestly religious role and that of one who’s in charge of building projects answerable to the Pharaoh himself draws parallels with the High Priest of Amun.

McAuliffe’s Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān reports multiple possible identifications of the name: Muhammad Asad (Leopold Weiss) identifies the name with a supposed Egyptian title Hā-Amen, as a high priest.

Also, according to an inscription / inscriptions in the Hof Museum in Vienna, Egyptologist scholars compiled a dictionary of personal names from the New Kingdom. “Haman” is listed as a personal name, and his role was Chief of Stone Quarry Workers.

Sources:

  • Walter Wreszinski, Aegyptische Inschriften aus dem K.K. Hof Museum in Wien (Egyptian Inscriptions from the K.K. Hof Museum in Vienna) (Leipzig: J C Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung: 1906).
  • Hermann Ranke, Die Ägyptischen Personennamen, Verzeichnis der Namen (The Egyptian Family Names, Listing of the Names), Verlag Von J J Augustin in Glückstadt, Band I,1935, Band II, 1952.

POSSIBLE MIRACLE: So, again, in ways inconceivable before modern scholarship, the Qur’an may have gotten right, what the Bible got badly wrong.

SUBHEADING: HEAVEN & EARTH WEPT NOT FOR THE PHARAOH & HIS ARMY:

The Qur’an says of the drowned Pharaoh and his entourage, of Moses’ time:
44:29 “And the heaven and the earth wept not for them, nor were they reprieved.”

This curious motif, of the sky and the earth weeping, actually finds a possible root in the Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts of the Fifth Dynasty, which predate the Pharaoh of Moses (said to be Rameses II, of the Nineteenth Dynasty) by about a thousand years:

https://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/pyt/pyt33.htm
1364d. that thou remain Chief of the mighty ones (or, spirits).
1365a. Thou purifiest thyself with these thy four nmś.t-jars,
1365b. (with) the špn.t and ‘ȝt-jar, which come from the sḥ-ntr for thee, that thou mayest become divine.
1365c. The sky weeps for thee; the earth trembles for thee;
1366a. the śmnt.t-woman laments for thee; the great min.t mourns for thee;
1366b. the feet agitate for thee; the hands wave for thee,
1366c. when thou ascendest to heaven as a star, as the morning star.

POSSIBLE MIRACLE: So, again, in ways inconceivable before modern scholarship, the Qur’an got something right that couldn’t have been known to the Arabs of Makkah

SUBHEADING: PHARAOH WAS PRESERVED FOR POSTERITY

The Qur’an also mentions the fate of the drowned Pharaoh:
10:92 “But this day We save thee in thy body that thou mayst be a portent for those after thee. Lo! most of mankind are heedless of Our portents.”

POSSIBLE MIRACLE: But at the time of the Prophet Muhammad, nobody knew that mummification was a practise of the Ancient Egyptians.

It is a popular view that the Pharaoh of Moses was Rameses II, and his mummy is indeed very well preserved to this day. French officials bowed to it when it arrived in France in 1976 for a makeover.

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Buddha and Andrew Tate debate each other in A.I
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You obviously do not read what I write.
What you have laboriously written is based on
The Douay–Rheims Bible. Catholic based.
This is an English translation of the Latin Vulgate, not the original Hebrew and Greek and potentially Catholic-based translations like the Douay–Rheims—can be influenced by the Vatican to alter crucial doctrines compared to the Protestant tradition.
At this point you still continue to use Catholicism in regard to Christianity.

Tough questions are obviously for you as you lack the capacity to distinguish the difference between the two, even though, you have been given simple definitions of both.

The New King James Version of the Scriptures holds all the answers for your questions.

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I’m sorry but you have barely touched anything l’ve written. I feel Xtianity in the colonies is sanitised, ahistorical. Oceans,sea voyages, islands, rainforests, have stripped your beliefs away, and they were re-assembled according to your cultural mores in your vast colonial backwater (not a backwater anymore ofc).

There’s no reason for the Catholics to have this wrong. What does the Orthodox church say?

Are you suggesting the Catholic church smeared Lady Mary and Joseph on the basis of age of consent in 2026, the plan being some Jesuit order would gradually raise AOC until it made Lady Mary look bad?

There’s no reason for them to do this.

From Google AI, it is seen that the tradition is ancient, as old as the establishment of Trinitarian Xtianity:

  • Mary’s Age: Tradition often places Mary at around 12–14 years old, which was a common age for betrothal in ancient Jewish custom, marking the beginning of adulthood.
  • Joseph’s Age: While some early, non-biblical traditions (like the Protoevangelium of James) portray Joseph as a very old widower (even up to 90), most modern scholars consider him to be a younger adult, likely in his 20s or 30s, capable of the strenuous labor required for carpentry and the journeys to Egypt and Bethlehem.<<<< IT IS RISIBLE FOR MODERNS TO INFER THIS YOUNGER AGE

Also please comment on the stuff about Moses at least? How is it that the Qur’an gets right stuff that only modern Egyptologists would rediscover? The Arabs couldn’t have known these minute details about Ancient Egypt. It even gets to the point that the OT is in the dark about it, whereas the Qur’an is very clear.

And puh-lease, don’t direct me to one specific latter day translation as the answer!

@Ichthus77 you are welcome to answer faithfully too.

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By the way, for my Bible quotes, l looked at sites like BibleHub, which had a page full of different English versions, for each verse

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It took me about 6 hours to write this up, believe it or not, please put more effort into your response, l’ve been fair in what l’ve put. :cat_face:

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People may wonder how it can be that Islam teaches 99 in 100 or 999 in 1000 peple are going to hell. As a Muslim, you begin to understand why. The only true faith will drag out the demons in people, cause gnashing of teeth. You won’t see this unless you are a Muslim.

Also, especially today, people put out videos of murder, rapes, people dying in awful ways, online. They do this for free. The reason is that once you see it, you become party to the crime (regardless of what the national law states). Your heart eventually dies because you keep coming back to watch more and more and more, on the deep web and gore sites.

Eventually you become a Wraith, an evil internet spirit, who makes creepy statements about mass-murder, interspersed with equally unsettling truisms about peace, love, harmony, even congratulating others on their babies. These two extremes in one person. It is demonic possession, no? Watching this vile content online is an evil deed and when you do enough evil, God seals your heart and you are written off. You have the evil eye, Satan / demons look through your eyes.

Thank you for reading.

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(Admittedly, Gog and Magog are counted in the damned, and they outnumber ordinary humans)

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@reason4emotion I look forward to yours and @WeSee 's and @Ichthus77 's responses, though from past experience, l’m expecting passively aggressive replies.

It’s important that observers understand: from the Muslim POV there is minimal hate, so this is not an energy well for vampires to feast on by entering the thread and skewing it. Sure, l dislike the evasiveness and low-key aggression in Christian responses, but it’s not food for the demonic types that love hatefests. Peace.

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I was under the impression that the correct way to say that is peace be unto her?

…are you posing?

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For non-Prophets that are nevertheless venerated, we say “May Allah be pleased with him / her”.
This corresponds roughly with Saints, but not quite, l mean it’s only a small group we venerate in this way. I think they are (may Allah be pleased with them all):

The 4 Holy Women of Islam:

  • Lady Ashiya (the wife of the Pharaoh of Moses, who converted to the religion of Moses and thus got executed by the Pharaoh)
  • Lady Mary
  • Lady Khadijah (the first wife of the Prophet)
  • Lady Fatima (the first daughter of the Prophet, through Lady Khadijah)

(though all the wives of the Prophet are considered our “mothers”)

  • The Rightly Guided Caliphs i.e. the first 5, namely:
  • Abu Bakr
  • Umar ibn Al Khattab
  • Uthman ibn Affan
  • Ali ibn Abi Talib
  • Husayn ibn Ali
  • Hasan ibn Ali

Some people extend the honorific to other friends of the Prophet.

I believe in making the honorific only once, per conversation, at the first mention of a personage. Constantly making the honorific makes conversations unreadable. I also am against abbreviating it to “R.A.” (Radiallahu Anhu = “may Allah be pleased with them”) or “A.S.” (Alayhi Salam = “peace be upon him” - for Prophets only) or “PBUH” (Peace and Blessings Be Upon Him, for the Prophet Muhammad only).

And we are all posing in some form in this existence. Welcome.

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Why are you opposed?

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Because there’s no tradition in doing so, it’s a modern thing. Also, the irony of writing pages and pages of tracts, yet not fully writing out just one blessing on a holy personage.

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The only questions I can think of would probably be considered offensive.

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I think l’m posing the questions (see the OP) and l’m hoping for a response, but okay what questions do you have?

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I won’t be offended by mere questions unless they are effectively telling in bad faith, rather thank asking in good faith :slight_smile:

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I am meaning to ask and not tell ( or show ) … why do you accept the teachings of someone who comes late on the scene and contradicts earlier teachings that are more widely accounted for in historical documentation? To me this is like Mormons accepting the words of Joseph Smith and so forth, claiming things like people stay married in the afterlife, even though that is contradicted by Jesus’ own words. Jesus was/is perfect. Mohammed and Joseph Smith did weird stuff with young women. Why don’t you have higher standards for truth, and yet you have people like Al Ghazali producing the kalam cosmological argument? Why not take the good stuff and leave the incoherent, false stuff behind?

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You’re very bad at pretending to be from a different culture. Just saying.

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Seems vague and circular and hand-wavey. I’d pursue actual examples if you can give any. Otherwise it seems you’re saying “They are right and your religion came along and watered it down with not-right stuff, so, who is more right?”.

The Prophet Muhammad claimed to be the last. Jesus claimed “Ahmad” (“one who speaks alongside”) would arrive after him, and be “another” like himself would arrive after himself. So Muhammad was born. Check out my OP, the quoted section from another thread, it gives some pretty powerful arguments.

Thus Joseph Smith is delegitimised. Sure, he would claim otherwise but we don’t drop everything at every claim to prophethood. We look at merits and Muhammad was clearly the seal of the Prophets.

Incidentally, the Scrolls of Abraham (peace be upon him) claimed by the Mormons, only have precedence in the Qur’an:

087.018 Lo! This is in the former scrolls.
087.019 The Books of Abraham and Moses.

… and:
053.036 Or hath he not had news of what is in the books of Moses
053.037 And Abraham who paid his debt:

I have no problem with it.

I think Jesus is consdiered sinless in Islam too. However, any differences betwen Prophets on this scale are immaterial (the Prophet Muhammad was reprimanded in the Qur’an for frowning and turning away from a pedantic old man who kept pelting him with mindless questions), we need not concern ourselves with that.

As for “weird stuff with young women” please understand the objections against our Prophet:

  1. Only came about in the modern era, circa 1990 onward, once Europe and USA had finally moved above 11 as the age of consent and prostitutes that age were no longer legal. Let that sink in, this was only a polemic against Islam since around 1990.
  2. The enemies of the Prophet would say and do anything against him. Why didn’t they make an issue of this?
  3. In Islam marriages are set up with at least the bride’s father’s oversight - see my OP.
  4. Once a female reaches puberty please may l ask, what should she do? Of course, she should ovulate in her daddy’s house, it makes most sense doesn’t it?
  5. What about the age of Lady Mary (circa 12-14) and Joseph (circa 70-90)? See my OP.
  6. The people objecting to this in the modern age are in 2 types:
  • Men who are watch very illegal pornography and who seek to detract from this. This typifies the far-right. They are an army of sexcases.
  • Older women who yearn for their youth. They feel slighted by the passing of time. Someone has to pay. They want to crush a younger females ovaries to dust. Teach them to never, EVER get any ideas. These older women will have typically stuffed up past relationships by treating men as disposable, per cancel culture. They will have listened to Satan who told them it’s okay to slap men, to scream at men, to cancel men, despite females having constructed very little of this world. This only gets the female so far, and then she has to use makeup, more and more makeup with each new relationship. She has to push the boat further and further out to get noticed. It’s natural that she eventually falls into demanding, all self-entitled, that a man MUST stick to HER age group.

Please ask yourself: what do you want from makeup? To look like younger? Or older?

This seems circular, glib, again. You are saying we are wrong, so, you know, we are wrong, so why are we so wrong? Clearly we are so wrong that we don’t realise we are wrong.
etc.

Honestly, these theological debates are corollary issues and l have solved the Kalam issue in my debate here: Interrogating Islam - #5 by LampAndNightingale

Sorry, but l’ve no idea why you are telling me this. I’m talking theology.

Please do not run off screaming, let’s debate any objections to the end.

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Let me also point out: In Islam we marry for life, for eternity even. We dont cancel so easily. If a partner loses their hair, loses a breast, loses an arm or leg or whatever, in sickness and in health we keep troth.

You don’t need to keep revamping yourself with makeup as you age, in order to stay relevant to the dating scene, in Islam. You stay you.

But l agree that even better, is for a male / female once they attain puberty, to pleasure themselves in a pleasure-pod (a bedroom in daddy’s house) and for the female to produce eggs in daddy’s house, and for male and female to search online for ¯_(ツ)_/¯
And then the boy and girl can get hardened psychopathic traits as they age because their hearts are never fulfilled in marriage and so their hearts die early on.

That is perhaps better than the Islamic (and for that matter, the Christian) way.
But at least Islam is a close second to your modern ways, can we get a silver star?

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@reason4emotion @Ichthus77

Actually, not just the Catholics, but also the Orthodox Christians probably believed in a young age for Lady Mary’s marriage to Joseph. Consider marraige among the Orthodox Christians:

According to William of Tyre, Agnes was only eight on her arrival at Constantinople, while Alexius was thirteen; in fact Alexius was born on 14 September 1169.[[3]] Child brides, whether Byzantines or foreign princesses, were the norm rather than the exception, especially from the late twelfth century. Irene Ducaena, wife of Alexius I Comnenus, was twelve at her marriage, and empress before she was fifteen; the Byzantine princess Theodora, Manuel’s niece, was in her thirteenth year when she married Baldwin III of Jerusalem; and Margaret-Maria of Hungary married Isaac II Angelus at the age of nine. Agnes’s age, then, was not unusual, especially as it was customary for young engaged couples in Constantinople to be brought up together in the house of the socially superior partner.[[4]]

Nicetas Choniates then, with morbid relish, claims that Andronicus (who was born c. 1118 and was thus about 65 years of age) sexually exploited the eleven-year old princess.[[13]] Despite the fact that his marriage to Anna, some fifty years his junior, may well have been made for political reasons – and Andronicus had portraits of Mary of Antioch in the capital replaced with ones of himself either alone or accompanied by his child-bride[[14]]–

Anna Comnena, who was put into the care of her future mother-in-law, the dowager empress Mary of Alania, before she was eight years old so she could be brought up with her fiancé Constantine (Anna Comnena, Alexiad 3.1.4; cf. 2.5.1 for a further example). ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ CHRISTIAN SAINT, MARRIED AT 8.