Dear Pericles... an interesting encounter.

I will grant you one point though, -however I will use different and more precise terminology to express it.
That point is:

//you cannot see, for example, that a decision on whether the injunction "If your eye sins, gouge it out" is commandment or metaphor, remains absolutely and entirely in the eye of the beholder.
Only those who are already steeped in the mythology will automatically squeak "metaphor, metaphor".//

Now.. I agree that one needs at least a basic knowledge of how people communicated ideas in the time of Jesus in order to comprehend the meaning of such sayings.

Fortunately, that single saying of Jesus is not 'The Gospel' and when the Gospel is proclaimed, it is accompanied by education, teaching, discipling. During such, the meaning of those sayings is passed on, by those who have had the training and education to know about them.

Now this is where you come unstuck. It seems to me that your own lack of theological training, causes you to seek refuge in simply mocking or ridiculing that which you don't understand.

Now in my case, I can apply the 3 yrs of formal training and the years of personal experience and interaction with 100s of Muslims to the matter of 'understanding holy writ'. You should bear in mind that my own training was not a case of "sit there, shutup and THIS is how it is". No....much much better than that. We studied extreme liberals and extreme conservatives and how to identify flaws in arguments...oh.. we also studied 'the facts' :)

So..when I single out a 'verse or 2' such as say.. Surah 23:5-6 which is giving the express permission for a Muslim male to use his captive women as sex slaves (literally) you can bet that I have it right.

Muslim apologists in the west naturally take issue with that, but for understandable political reasons.

Danielle

Your uncle has a point. The real world that science is slowly uncovering is so much more weird and wonderful and AWE INSPIRING than the FAKE world in which religious fundamentalists IMPRISON themselves that I actually PITY them. Their religion SHRIVELS THEIR SOULS.

Look at grateful.

Relativity reveals amazing and unexpected insights into the nature of the world we inhabit; insights that are truly stranger than fiction. Humans cannot make this sort of stuff up.

Is relativity the last word? Probably not. Like all major scientific theories it is most likely one more STEPPING STONE on the path to a more perfect understanding. But it is the best we can do for now and what it reveals about the nature of space and time is astonishing.

Does grateful try to grasp these completely unexpected insights relativity reveals?

He does not.

Instead he purports to try and relate it to seventh century claptrap.

POOR GRATEFUL.

But it is not only in the field of physics that we make extraordinary discoveries. The more we learn about the functioning of a SINGLE CELL the more bizarre life appears. Danielle, every cell in your body is mind-blowing both in its complexity and in the precision of its operation.

And what does the probably non-existent “prophet” of Islam say?

>>Bukhari Book 026, Number 5562:

'Amir b. Sa'd reported on the authority of his father that Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) commanded the killing of geckos, and he called them little noxious creatures.>>

But geckos have the ability to regenerate lost tails. If we could understand how they do it we may be able to regenerate lost limbs.

Would someone who really understood the intricacies of gecko physiology say something this inane? Are these the words of a “prophet” with a direct line to the creator of the universe? Can you imagine the “most perfect of God’s creations” saying anything of the sort.

Danielle,
Poor grateful. Poor fundamentalists.

Pity the poor fundamentalists and their DAMAGED SOULS but NEVER try to appease them.

I suspect we've travelled this road many times before, Boaz.

>>Fortunately, that single saying of Jesus is not 'The Gospel'<<

And my question, as always, is "so why do you not have the common courtesy to apply the same rules to other scriptures?"

>>when the Gospel is proclaimed, it is accompanied by education, teaching, discipling. During such, the meaning of those sayings is passed on, by those who have had the training and education to know about them<<

Naturally.

Without this constant, internal, closed-loop reinforcement, the writings themselves would quickly become just another historical document, among many. The specific selection of the current Gospels was for precisely this purpose, as you know, and any documents that provided unsanctioned observations and commentary were summarily suppressed.

>>...your own lack of theological training, causes you to seek refuge in simply mocking or ridiculing that which you don't understand<<

I see it differently.

My own lack of theological training leaves me free to decide upon these matters with an open, unindoctrinated mind.

And for the record, I don't mock the documents themselves, only those people who have been trained to see them from a very narrow, highly constrained viewpoint.

>>I can apply the 3 yrs of formal training and the years of personal experience and interaction with 100s of Muslims to the matter of 'understanding holy writ'.<<

Of course you can.

The only thing that you clearly cannot do, is to view them without the massive preconceptions that your own propaganda machine has created over the centuries.

You may think that this leads to 'understanding holy writ', but I suspect that this may just be yet another of the illusions that you live under.