Wobbles,

The real lesson here is that you should not always believe opinions even when they are disguised as facts.

As for imaginary friends - it is your opinion - it can remain as fact in your mind until you - and only you - do your own research and discover the one true God that created what you see around you including 'you'.

There are no prizes for ignorance.

As long as you rely on the wisdom and knowledge of 'man' you are missing out on the bigger picture and the wider (infinite) knowledge of the supreme God.

Put your brain in gear and your prescious mind at work - do your own research - eternal blessings are there waiting for you.

RObert,

Hello old friend - the only one being discredited here is you.

Your bitterness against God is clearly making you sound like a fool.

Sad that this thread has disintegrated into a "my dad can whip your dad" exchange. Only to be expected, though, when there are so many talking and so few listening.

coach, your arguments are within a whisper of becoming ridiculous.

>>Atrocities carried out from the Christian’s side are not the norm. These people are not true Christians<<

By "atrocities", I assume you means sins - after all, there are some absolute rules at play here, aren't there? So you are saying that sinners cannot be Christians, by definition.

Now please correct me if I am wrong (if you don't, Boaz surely will), but isn't the concept of sinners fundamental to your faith? Or are you in a very special Christian space where no evil is ever perpetrated?

This wouldn't be particularly important, except that you go on to say:

>>So there are fundamental differences between the two revelations – which of course is proof that only one can be the true faith<<

Leaving aside the fact that this statement can be many things, but "proof" is not one of them, do you not see the ridiculousness of painting yourself in a corner that contains only "non-sinning" Christians?

It has always puzzled me how army regiments have taken clerics along, to bless the troops before battle. In your world (and of course in Boaz's world of absolutes) shoudn't he say:

"Best of luck with the battle tomorrow, chaps. Just remember, thou shalt not kill is probably the most important of the ten commandments. So off you go, and I don't want to see any of you employing postmodern rationalisation, and killing someone simply because in relative terms, he's the enemy."

And dobbadan, I know you never read anything anybody else writes, but do you actually read your own stuff?

>>Babies and mentally ill, etc ,will go to Heaven,because they can't make a decision and don't sin wilfully<<

Oh, please. That is cruel.

Pericles: You are a sad b's So Christians make mistakes, so Christians are not perfect, Put today's Christians against the death loving, suicide bombing, misogynist, brutal, lying [it's all in their pathetic koran]PAGAN moslems eh? What nations TOP the list of decent{well part way] democratic {democracy is anti-islam according to most "inteligent?" imams] nations. Who contribute money to humantitarian causes helping those of whatever religion - moslems or Christian nations? What nations have 'Care, CBMI, help -the -children, etc' Christian nations or bloody [as in gory] pagan islamic nations? Who do not PRAISE and encourage cowardly utterly stupid suicide bombers, especially among CHILDREN? Who when they sign a treaty keep to it unlike pagan moslems with their despicable 'al-taqiyya' Please Pericles look around this sad globe - it's not hard to pick the blood thirsty animals - and in the main they are not Christians. numbat

Pericles,

I will attempt to answer your misconceptions of “sin”

Firstly by atrocities I meant political, sociological and economical injustices and wars imposed on others by pseudo-Christian governments.

Atrocities are but the result of sin. Sin is man’s wilful separation from God.

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” simply means all humans are sinners and in dire need for redemption.

All Christians are sinners. Only one person that ever walked on this earth was sinless – Jesus. That is why He is the only one to qualify as the way, the truth and the life to reconcile us back to God The Father.

When a Christian is “born-again” he/she choses/decides to accept Jesus as the only redeemer.

God’s pardon (grace) is undeserved but is extended FREELY to all humans (sinners). It's one choice every individual must make.

As to: >>So there are fundamental differences between the two revelations – which of course is proof that only one can be the true faith<<

I was talking about God’s revelations versus Allah’s revelations and how they bluntly contradict themselves. So only one of the two “revelations” can be true.

Examples:
God says Jesus is my son. Allah says “God cannot have a son”.
God says Jesus is my last revelation. Mohammad says not so.
God saves humanity from sin. Allah says “save yourself”good luck.
God says we are all sinners. Allah will decide who is or is not at his discretion...
God says salvation is "on earth" now. Allah says "later" after you die (insha'allah)

As Christians we are commended to love our enemies – not kill them. Proving my point of view that atrocities in the name of Christ cannot be classified as Christian behaviour.

Jesus never advocates violence (unlike other false prophets).

Wars are part of life on earth. Jesus said:”My kingdom is in heaven” meaning that He had no interest in establishing a worldly empire. Yet another proof that Mohammad is not from God because islam is establishing itself as a global state: ‘Ummah’.

Mr.P.Pig,
Despite my later retraction, yes I do know a bit about mathematics.

The interesting concept of zero is that a symbol that has no value of itself, can have multiple uses.
The decimal system we use was not "invented" by Arabs but was introduced to Europe via Spain by Muslims.

The advances in geometry I mentioned came as a result of the application of algebra.
"Perhaps one of the most significant advances made by Arabic mathematics began at this time with the work of al-Khwarizmi, namely the beginnings of algebra. (The word algorithm derives from his name.)" and "Al-Khwarizmi's successors undertook a systematic application of arithmetic to algebra....... and geometry to algebra. This was how the creation of polynomial algebra, combinatorial analysis, numerical analysis, the numerical solution of equations, the new elementary theory of numbers, and the geometric construction of equations arose. "
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Indexes/Hist_Topics_alph.html

The claim about trigonometry was patently wrong and badly phrased. What I should have detailed was that based on the Greek and Indian traditions, they did "complete the sine and the five other functions and had discovered and proved several basic theorems of trigonometry for both plane and spherical triangles. They also produced the modern values of the trigonometric functions. All of these discoveries were applied both for astronomical purposes and as an aid in astronomical time-keeping and in finding the direction of Mecca for the five daily prayers required by Muslim law. Their tables of the sine and tangent, constructed for steps of 1/60 of a degree, were accurate for better than one part in 700 million. Finally, the great astronomer Nasir ad-Din at- Tusi wrote the Book of the Transversal Figure, which was the first treatment of plane and spherical trigonometry as independent mathematical Science. "

I also never claimed that the acquisition of this knowledge was based on any belief system - I meant exactly the opposite. For the record, I'm not a Muslim, I was born an Orthodox Christian but I'm not a churchgoer and I abhor all forms of intolerance, violence and prejudice.

Wobbles:

The decimal system we used no doubt derived from the fact that people have ten fingers. Barring notational differences Roman and Arabic script both count base ten. Thus “but was introduced to Europe via Spain by Muslims” falls flat.

The thing about zero is that it is the additive identity element and pops up all over the place in axioms and proofs. In terms of arithmetic the concept of zero is decidedly less interesting. It account for the gap in the number line seems as though it should be obvious. Hindsight no doubt.

“The advances in geometry I mentioned came as a result of the application of algebra.”

Neat trick that one. The screed you chose to cut and paste points out that these thing lead to the ... Freeloading on the later achievements by association.

These things are a fair bit more advanced than the computation of cosine to several decimal places. They occurred much later and to try and insinuate that they are an Islamic mathematical achievement (number theory, come on) is highly optimistic on your behalf. Just as plausible is the claim that they are a Greek invention that lead to the Arab/Islamic refinement and so on and so on. A matter of personal bias as to where you may choose to start paying attention to the timeline. Consider Ptolemy.

But the point I made that you seem to have studiously overlooked in your reply was that in terms of what is happening now, these things are well removed from what passes as modern mathematics. If you think it is an appropriate perspective to claim intellectual ownership over the science behind the space-shuttle for the individual that invented the paper glider then feel free. Qualitatively this is the sort of error you are making. I believe it is incorrect and implausible.

Your last paragraph is odd, I can only think that you interpreted the statements about libraries as me conferring some god botherer status on you. This is incorrect. I was referring to the libraries of books that were burned. Apologies if you interpreted it otherwise.