CJ Morgan is correct. If our culture was run on strictly Biblical (the so called "holy" book) terms, most of us would have been executed by now.

CJ if you really cared to understand Biblical revelation you would read how to interpret it from those who have spent their lives explicating, preserving and living it. If you’re not prepared to do that why should you, or the skeptical sites be given the benefit of the doubt in your assessment of it?

With limited space I can only be brief, but one important point:

Life was very different nearly four thousand years ago. Religion was inextricably linked with social cohesion, they were not able to sustain a pluralistic society like our own, religion couldn't be seperated from law, order and political leadership. The whole existence of the tribe was at stake. Tolerance of foreign religions would be tantamount to tolerating the intolerable and putting women children and family under a death sentence. A person who tried it on was putting everyone at risk.

The Roman legions had the death penalty for any centurion caught asleep at their post for obvious reasons.

The difference between the Koran and the Bible is this: There are no more Hebrews, no more Canaanites, Jewish Religious Law has been fulfilled in Jesus. Our understanding of the bible improves as our understanding and holiness improves. But for Islam, there is no historical context in the Koran, the surah have the quality of absolute unchanging decrees.

Muslims believe the Koran is uncreated/ eternal, that an exact copy exists in Heaven, that it was dictated word for word by the angel Gabriel. The Koran has the same status as Jesus in Christianity. This is utterly different revelation as the Pope explains.

A Pakistani Muslim scholar [named] Rashan, who was at the University of Chicago for many years, gave a lecture at the Vatican. Rashan's position was Islam can enter into dialogue with modernity, but only if it radically reinterprets the Koran, and takes the specific legislation of the Koran, like cutting off your hand if you're a thief, or being able to have four wives, or whatever, and takes the principles behind those specific pieces of legislation for the 7th century of Arabia, and now applies them, and modifies them, for a new society [in] which women are now respected for their full dignity, where democracy's important, religious freedom's important, and so on. And if Islam does that, then it will be able to enter into real dialogue and live together with other religions and other kinds of cultures.

And immediately the holy father, in his beautiful calm but clear way, said,

“well, there's a fundamental problem with that because, he said, in the Islamic tradition, God has given His word to Mohammed, but it's an eternal word. It's not Mohammed's word. It's there for eternity the way it is. There's no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it, whereas in Christianity, and Judaism, the dynamism's completely different, that God has worked through his creatures [emphasis added]. And so it is not just the word of God, it's the word of Isaiah, not just the word of God, but the word of Mark. He's used his human creatures, and inspired them to speak his word to the world, and therefore by establishing a church in which he gives authority to his followers to carry on the tradition and interpret it, there's an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted and applied to new situations.”

Reading the Bible as an entire document means you have to read the Old Testament IN THE LIGHT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. This is why if you trust skeptical websites the way you do it only serves to support prejudice, you shouldn't let them insult your intelligence.

AT school I was taught about both the OT and the NT. I also studied the sciences; biology, geology, botany, physics as well as pure maths.

I find philosophy and meditation fulfils me spiritually as well as teaching me how to think.

And science fuels my curiosity - what will we learn and discover next?

I fear that belief in religion impairs rational constructive reasoning. Its influence impedes scientific research, women’s equality, acceptance of diversity. It causes war and terrorism.

And ultimately and ironically it fosters the one thing it claims to be in opposition to: HATE.

Time and time again sceptics are exhorted to study religious texts, yet when we do and still find it contradictory and implausible we are told we have studied it wrong.

If we quote from the OT we are told to read the NT, if we quote from the NT we are told we have not read it properly or are cherry picking.

Belief in religion requires suspending intelligence and reason. I prefer to remain in a rational world - not one full of retribution and superstition.

I wish that those who study the bible so fervently would make the same attempt with science and philosophy; some claim they do, but given they still believe in a god and raptures, I have to wonder if there isn't some kind of god-neuron in the religious person's brain that renders them incapable of understanding reason and evidence.

Maybe that is why two such similar religions as christianity and Islam are at such odds because the idea of simply accepting each other requires common sense.

Pericles,
I'll quite agree, "it is possible to admit that all religions are not equal", the basic premise I offered, however, is more concrete and can be argued from substantively. A mere possibility does not provide this. On reading "A common Word”, I can only say, the orthodox Islamic position on Christianity and Judaism is they are derivatives arising from Islam.  The Qur’an presents it as the duty of Muslims to call Christians and Jews back to their original faith. Here, an evolving theology (beyond their bibles) of both Judaism and Christianity is totally ignored. Rather than the basis for dialogue there is the intent to proselytise (which you're against) – yes, Fundamentalist Christianity and Judaism are similarly afflicted through suffering a similar error.

From the beginning Christianity has had an expressed diversity, from the Jewish-Ebionite to the later 'unorthodox' Pauline (where there was little concern for the historical facts of Jesus). It is the politicisation of religion which should be ‘kafir’ not its differing form - today's Christianity, along with all other religion, is generally unacceptable to the sine qua non of orthodox Islam.

 The basis used (ironically) for "A Common Word" is sola scriptura . There are no implied hermeneutics, as used, for example, by a Barth or a Bultmann . There is scant exegesis or historical context to be inferred from "The Common Word". If this represents mainline Islam, its scripture is devoid of literary criticism (let alone one that is 'higher'). A literal approach may arrive at a type of superlative but it is narrow - as with any narrative too literally interpreted. If a Christian simply says, "Our scriptures have perfect authority and yours don't", this presents a form of Islamic 'kafir'. Any expression of Christ’s ‘divinity’ or 'holiness' (a strong religious gospel theme) becomes demeaned of any significance.
 
An agreement to love each other with a resolution for peace, whilst charming, becomes merely symbolic if lost on those extremists who also consider Westerners, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jews etc. as kafir. Rather, Muslim leadership should seek a genuine dialogue with the Muslim fanatics.
 

Er, Martin - I put those quotes there precisely to demonstrate the fallaciousness of the common practice that Islamophobes deploy of 'cherry-picking' the most extreme verses of the Q'uran to discredit Islam. Of course there's context, and while I'm sure that the deep study of the complexities therein is an absorbing and meaningful pastime for some, for those who operate on a broader intellectual plane it's ultimately all variation on various mythic themes.

I'm with Fractelle, when she says

"Belief in religion requires suspending intelligence and reason. I prefer to remain in a rational world - not one full of retribution and superstition."