abu_rashid wrote on Jul 3^rd, 2008 at 10:05pm:


Just a few episodes of a televangelist's rant will tell you the OT is trotted out and preached whenever convenient. The Catholic Church has (or had) a reading from the old testament included in the Mass as I recall.

Although, I believe it's generally true that Christians consider the NT more binding than the OT, I don't believe there is any formula for determining which is the more binding when applied to real circumstances in one's life. Does anybody know of one?

muso,

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Actually a lot of Islamic scholars are young people, and always have been. In fact out of all the trained people of knowledge I know, very few of them are over 40. Either way, age shouldn't really be an issue, unless you're ageist?

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Nope, just going to have a look at the original Arabic text and see if there actually is any contradiction. You just expect a ready to serve response, because this is a ready to serve argument that yo've found on answering-islam.com or something.

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Well actually the first verse doesn't say anyone is the "first true believer" at all, did you actually look at this first? or just paste it verbatim without even examining it? I don't expect you to find your own "contradictions" in the Qur'an, but if you're going to paste other's "pre-fab" contradictions, at least make sure they actually appear to contradict.

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See, nothing about first true believer.. Anyway.. onto the second so called contradiction:

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For a start Moses (Pbuh) said this, not God, so it's not a contradiction from God. Humans are liable to say things which can contradict.

Either way the meaning of the verse, if you read it is quite obviously "I'm the first one who'd do that!!" not "I was the first person ever to have done that in all recorded history". In Arabic this is a very common sentence  I'm the first to help you, I'm the first to welcome to you etc. Doesn't mean I'm the first person in all recorded history who's ever helped you. This one is quite clear.

Two down, one to go, even if the last one doesn't even hold the meaning that is claimed is irrelevant, since the other two verse aren't going to contradict it anyway.

Now in Islam, it's well known that the first believer was Adam (Pbuh), the first human, so quite obviously if it's mentioned in any other situation that someone is the first believer the meaning is not literal "The first person ever in recorded history to believe, and nobody believed before me", but it is a meaning of "I am the first to line up to be counted as a believer". First and last have many different shades of meanings in Arabic, they are used figuratively so many times throughout the Qur'an to refer to so many different things. For instance a group of people are known as "Al-awaleen" (al-awal = the first and -een is the plural suffix) so the literal meaning is "the first ones" but the actual meaning of this term is just "people from earlier times" or "ancients" whilst the opposite "Al-Akhireen" (al-Akhir = last, and again -een the plural suffix) which literally means "the last ones" refers to people of later times, but not necessarily the current time. Awal and Akhir appear so much in Arabic speech with so many different figurative meanings.

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Strangely the verse is cut short? Strangely there's a question mark there on what we're led to believe is the end of the sentence, and it's actually mid sentence?

The continuation reads "and he doesn't have a wife" How can he have a son and he doesn't have a wife is a little different to "How could he have a child".

Anyway onto the last one...

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It doesn't say every single member of his household was saved. Unless it's being that specific, neither can you in your claim.

Also the word translated as household is "ahl" which can have many meanings, one of which is extended family or tribe, another of which is co-religionists, for instance "Ahl al-Kitab" are the Jews and Christians, the "People of the Book", they're not a single household. Or "Ahl as-Sunnah", the Muslims, people who follow the Sunnah of Muhammad (Pbuh). Either way, it never specified every single member of "ahl".

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Don't bother.

I'm the kind of person who will waste my time sincerely answering from my own knowledge, you just want to paste from websites by people who haven't even double checked their own claims..

I must say, I'm quite disappointed, I exspected a slightly more challenging and stimulating argument from you muso, this was definitely neither of those.

If you are claiming responsibility for that pathetic attempt to find contradictions yourself personally, then I'm even more disappointed.

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How on earth could you have misread this to mean the first believer?

Your lame attempt to compare this to someone using false cognates to prove a link between words doesn't cover up the fact that your so called contradictions are absolute nonsense. Nice try but.

Back to the drawing board Coyote.

I sincerely proclaim that I did not consult any other resource than the Qur'an itself when answering those ridiculous claims. Believe or not, it's no loss to me.