Salvation in Your Religion

[Muffled]

The most important thing in Islam, is to believe in Almighty God, and that He has no partners in Sovereignty.
Secondly, it is to believe in His messengers.

Do I think that a person can "go to heaven" if they don't believe in Muhammad, peace be with him?
Yes I do .. but it is complex.
Whatever one labels themselves, including Muslim, it is possible that a person might go to hell ,, for a time..

..hell and heaven being more of a spiritual condition, rather than a place, as such.

I believe the Bible reports Heaven and Hell as places,

I believe it is very easy and simple in Christianity.

 

[Muffled]

Yes, in Humanism it involves beer and chocolate

I believe both are off my heart healthy diet. The beer because it thins the blood and I am on a blood thinner. The chocolate because it is high in fat which could help clog my arteries.

 

[InChrist]

..so, in the case you describe, the parents have paid for their son's "sins", but the son still has to repent, otherwise it makes no difference.
Hmm .. are you sure it is not just a concept to divert people away from the fact that it is the individual who is responsible for their sins? To divert people away from Jewish law?
That's what it looks like to me.

At the end of the day, we alone are responsible for our own sins, nobody else.

I am sure it is not a diversion away from the Law, which as I previously said, is still in effect for anyone outside of Christ; Jews or Gentiles. According to the biblical scriptures, the reality is that those in Christ have repented and have their sins paid for by Christ. Jesus Christ, who fulfilled the entire Law, paid the full penalty for sin by His shed blood and death on the cross, then conquered death through His resurrection. Those in Christ have received the gift of forgiveness of their sins procured by Jesus, His righteousness, and eternal life.

I can agree with you to the extent to say that those outside of Christ, those who refuse His payment for their sins, will be held accountable for their sins.

I believe the fact is that no finite person can pay the eternal cost of sin against an Eternal Creator. We are not capable of doing so, therefore our need of a Savior.

 

[muhammad_isa]

I believe the Bible reports Heaven and Hell as places,

I think you might find that you are "between a rock and a hard place" !

 

[muhammad_isa]

According to the biblical scriptures, the reality is that those in Christ have repented and have their sins paid for by Christ. Jesus Christ, who fulfilled the entire Law, paid the full penalty for sin by His shed blood and death on the cross, then conquered death through His resurrection. Those in Christ have received the gift of forgiveness of their sins procured by Jesus, His righteousness, and eternal life..

No ! Orthodox Christian theology says that Christians can go to hell, albeit not for eternity.
If a Christian does not repent from their sins, they do not automatically go to heaven.

This contradicts your "dying for sins" concept.

I can agree with you to the extent to say that those outside of Christ, those who refuse His payment for their sins, will be held accountable for their sins..

What do you mean by "outside of Christ"?
Somebody who doesn't believe as you do, you mean?

I believe the fact is that no finite person can pay the eternal cost of sin against an Eternal Creator. We are not capable of doing so, therefore our need of a Savior.

I agree with you that we are in need of faith.
..but I don't agree with you that one must believe that Jesus is God to be saved on the day of judgement..

Only Almighty God knows who is sincere and who is not, in their faith.
If somebody disbelieves in ANY prophet, then that is not a good position to hold.
..other than that..

 

[InChrist]

No ! Orthodox Christian theology says that Christians can go to hell, albeit not for eternity.
If a Christian does not repent from their sins, they do not automatically go to heaven.

This contradicts your "dying for sins" concept.


What do you mean by "outside of Christ"?
Somebody who doesn't believe as you do, you mean?


I agree with you that we are in need of faith.
..but I don't agree with you that one must believe that Jesus is God to be saved on the day of judgement..

Only Almighty God knows who is sincere and who is not, in their faith.
If somebody disbelieves in ANY prophet, then that is not a good position to hold.
..other than that..

I agree only Almighty God knows a person’s heart, whether their faith is sincere, and they have trusted the Savior...( John 3:10-17).

What do you mean by “ Orthodox” Christianity? Catholicism or something similar? I was raised in Catholicism and now understand how far it’s teachings depart from the Bible. A born again believer, saved by Jesus Christ will never go to hell and there is no such thing as purgatory.
Jesus stated that those He saves and gives eternal life to will never be snatched out of His hands...

And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.
John 10:28

Those “in Christ” are those who have trusted Jesus as their Savior and are born again to new life in Him. They may grieve the Holy Spirit when they sin, but they are sealed for eternity. A born again Christian cannot be “unborn” or “unsealed”...

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
Ephesians 4:30

My perspective is that faith doesn’t save anyone, only the Savior saves. So faith must have an object; the ONE who can save. According to the scriptures, God is the only Savior and God is the only One capable of saving the human race. Jesus is the Savior prophesied and born into the world to save humanity, therefore Jesus is God.

Tell and bring forth your case; Yes, let them take counsel together. Who has declared this from ancient time? Whohas told it from that time? Have not I, the Lord? And there is no other God besides Me, A just God and a Savior; There is none besides Me.
Isaiah 45:21

As I share my perspective, I would like to add that these are my sincere beliefs which I think are supported by the biblical scriptures and my own spiritual experiences with God. I am not trying to be argumentative or even necessarily convince you of anything. I believe it is God who ultimately does the convincing in someone’s life with His love and abiding peace.

 

[DNB]

First, when you base a belief on evidence that is knowledge.
What you are calling "faith" is also used by billions in Islam. And by billions in Hinduism. And by millions of Jewish people who have faith the messiah has not yet come.
To you all those billions of people are wrong. Therefore that type of faith is not reliable. Christianity is 1/3 of all religious believers. 2/3 of all religious believers have faith in something different.
Yet they all think they are correct. This includes the vast differences between sects in Christianity.

What a mess. Clearly faith is a nonsense position. Your example is also flawed. Even if you were correct, if you had a room full of religious people from all different religions in equal amounts, 2/3 of the faiths would be unjustified. 66% wrong. Yet your faith has no better evidence so it's much worse?

Faith = Wisdom. Faith anticipates what will occur - therefore, it's not knowledge - its perception and insight. Again, the wisest and most insightful will gain the correct answer, whatever one's religion or faith may be. Faith does not necessitate truth, but it demands that it is derived from knowledge, it's a type of a priori deduction/induction.
You're complicated things, and you have an extremely myopic understanding of the difference between knowledge, faith and credulity. Faith is as simple as leaving your kids alone for the first time, or not - the mother says no, the father says yes. Each parent is exercising their faith in their children, good or bad, wrong or right - their belief is based on past circumstances coupled with their respective ability to perceive the truth.

 

[DNB]

Yes I am familiar with people getting flustered and going straight to some type of ad-hom on my person or knowledge. But it''s a pretty clear indicator that you are not being honest with your comments or with yourself. Call me superficial if it makes you feel better. I'm going to work with facts.

At least demonstrate how I have a superficial understanding of religion, human nature, sin, salvation and a creator. Your claims are becoming wilder and more baseless as this goes on?
Sin is a con told to people in the OT.
Human nature isn't really relevant except for cognative bias.
I touched on the OT version of the creator as a warrior and Aquinas version taken from Platonic Philosophy. Here is a Pastor giving a lecture on that if you doubt that:

Personal Salvation to get to an afterlife is a Greek invention, as I pointed out. There are many sources to show this is true. So are all ancient Greeks
"superficial" with their knowledge on salvation?
The religion is just a syncretic blend of theology. If I said it without sources you would deny it. If I give sources you will complain about that.
Again, you do realize you are on a "debate" forum? Not a "everyone affirm my personal beliefs" forum?



And because I like to source something at least a little if I'm making a claim:

The Relationship between Hellenistic Mystery Religions and Early Christianity:

A Case Study using Baptism and Eucharist

Jennifer Uzzell


It is beyond doubt that substantial similarities exist between the rituals of baptism and Eucharist and the various sacral meals and initiations practised within the Mystery religions. These similarities extend beyond the forms of the rituals themselves into the purpose, symbolism and function of the rituals.

Eucharist.
-Perhaps the clearest point of contact between the Mysteries and Christian Eucharist, and one of which the Church Fathers were painfully conscious, lay in a sacramental meal of bread or cakes and wine mixed with water in which initiates to the cult of Mithras participated.

They seek salvation from the debased material world through a spiritual ascent through the spheres. Mithras was expected to return to earth to lead his followers in a final cataclysmic battle between good and evil.

-The Mithraic sacramental meal almost certainly predates Christianity and cannot, therefore, be contingent upon it.

Dying/rising demigods

In Pagan Hellenistic and Near Eastern thought, the motif of a “Dying and Rising God” existed for millennia before Christ and there had been stories of divine beings questing into the underworld and returning transformed in some way.

Baptism has been widely compared with initiation into the Mystery cults. In many of the Mysteries purification through ritual bathing was required as a prerequisite for initiation.
It is interesting to note that the early Christian writer Tertullian (c. 160-225CE) would not have agreed with this appraisal. Not only did he believe that certain of the Mysteries practiced baptism, but also that they did so in hope of attaining forgiveness of sins and a new birth. This was so striking a similarity that it clearly demanded some form of explanation. Not surprisingly, demonic imitation was the culprit.

Early apologists admited similarities and blamed them on Satan.

Even allowing for these caveats, it is clear that substantial ideological and ritual similarities did exist. In fact they were sufficiently obvious to the early Christian apologists that they felt obliged to offer some explanation for them, particularly since, to their embarrassment, it was clear that the Mystery rituals predated their own. The most common explanation, offered by many Christian apologists including Firmicus Maternus, Tertullian and Justin Martyr, was that demons had deliberately prefigured Christian sacraments in order to lead people astray. This explanation has sufficed for Christians over countless centuries, and indeed scholastic bias towards the assumed uniqueness, primacy and superiority of Christianity is one of the major methodological pitfalls encountered by those engaged in the comparative study of Christianity and the Mysteries. Many Christian scholars have been so certain that Christianity alone, of all the world’s religions, is an original and unique revelation that at times it seems that they might almost prefer the “demonic intervention” explanation to the unthinkable possibility that Christianity was influenced by its philosophical and theological environs. This paper, however, will seek to explore and quantify the similarities and differences and to offer a more prosaic explanation for them as far as it is possible to do so at such a remove and in the light of the methodological difficulties discussed above.

you don't believe that there's a devil?

 

[joelr]

You mention "apologists" many times in your post.
Your post appears to me to be nothing but "apologetics"
I haven't learnt anything new.

It was in response to a comment about scholars getting paid which is a ridiculous criticism. Of course scholars should get paid? If you are claiming they have chosen a field of study and only do it for money you have to prove that is true. Even if they are motivated by money you have to show the information is untrue. Thinking a scholar would spend so much time getting a PhD just to pander false information to make money is absurd. There is more money in selling books to the masses about all the fiction they believe. These scholars are dedicated to adding to their fields. As well as having to pass peer-review and complete a scholarly monograph. Not a popular style of book for making money.

At any rate the apologetics in Islam are debunkable and were completely debunked when they were presented in the last discussion about that.



[/QUOTE]
All I seem to see from you is long essays about how historians can categorically prove that the Bible and Qur'an is fiction.

It can't be done. Not unless you have a time machine or something. [/QUOTE]


"categorically prove" is your words. Historians can demonstrate that much of the theology and myths/legends are indeed taken from older cultures. Cultures who interacted or occupied the nation in question. what it does is show it's reasonable to believe this is not an original story or historical or dictated from a deity but written by humans using older stories.
It makes that a strong possibility. The more you have the more it becomes reasonable. Since there is also zero evidence any of the stories are true it's even more likely that this is just another of the thousands of religions made up by people. That's it.
Some people will have been involved with the religion for so long and are so emotionally invested in their beliefs they can never ever look at the evidence in a rational way. Some people are also like that with the Roswell ufo crash. They bought the original narrative in the 1980's books by Moore and another by Friedman and then saw all the "documentaries" made they can never accept that it was all made up. Who cares? Some people will be able to see the full narrative and realize that they were simply not told in the original narratives that the rancher didn't just find "mysterious foil" but he found balsa wood, rubber, scotch tape, strings and knew it was attached to big balloons. And they accept Roswell was a big hoax by book writers Stanton Friedman and Moore and the retired army men were making up lies about alien bodies.

People actually thought that the OT was the oldest book and all the wisdom and theology came from Jewish people or God. When the Mesopotamian sites were dug up and decoded it was th e first time people realized there were very similar stories in older cultures and the way supreme deities were spoken about was exactly the same in all the fictional religions. This gives evidence that the OT is just another of the same. This has been expanding throughout the last century and many people are unaware.

Now apologists have been scrambling trying to explain...."oh, uh.....well the Mesopotamians knew the truth but they got the details wrong..."
So other nations had like a bad God wi-fi? Funny that just nations bordering Israel had similar stories? No one in the Americas, East Asia or anywhere else? They had no God wi-fi?

 

[joelr]

Faith = Wisdom. Faith anticipates what will occur - therefore, it's not knowledge - its perception and insight. Again, the wisest and most insightful will gain the correct answer, whatever one's religion or faith may be. Faith does not necessitate truth, but it demands that it is derived from knowledge, it's a type of a priori deduction/induction.

First this is biblical faith - "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

There is no deduction or induction in faith. For induction you have no past to go on except each religion uses stories and assumes they are true, despite all sorts of clear empirical reasons why they are probably not. Wishful thinking is not inductive logic. I'm not even going to comment on deduction because that is ridiculous.
There is no past activity were you can show any supernatural involvement and you can always show the event was in line with probabilities.
For example one is cured a cancer with a 95% mortality rate after praying to Krishna. If you look at 100 people who recently had that same disease you may see ~95 who did die and ~4 others who survived. The actual probabilities predicted.

Again, race supremacists have faith they are superior. They believe this is backed up by facts and will use confirmation bias to find examples of why they are a "better" race and others are not.
The facts do not support Islam and the Quran as the holy true word of God. Yet their faith tells them it is and they believe they also have facts backing them up. You probably don't think so. No different in Christianity.

It's already incorrect that "the wisest and most insightful will gain the correct answer," in a religious sense. Every generation millions of Christians believe the end times are coming in their lifetime. For 2000 years? Several congregations felt Jesus had their backs during Covid and continued to go to church and ended up with an outbreak and several deaths.

You're complicated things, and you have an extremely myopic understanding of the difference between knowledge, faith and credulity.

Yeah you keep making claims about me and can NEVER seem to back them up with evidence.

Faith is as simple as leaving your kids alone for the first time, or not - the mother says no, the father says yes. Each parent is exercising their faith in their children, good or bad, wrong or right - their belief is based on past circumstances coupled with their respective ability to perceive the truth.

Yes, you just used an ACTUAL EVENT IN REAL LIFE where one can employ inductive logic - things based on the (real) past.

The kids are REAL. They have behaviors that can be studied and observed in real life.

AND you even mentioned truth and an ability to perceive it. You cannot perceive Krishna or Jesus, angels, Yahweh, and people use feelings, subconscious thoughts, things that some people know are just internal and some think it's a message from Krishna, or Allah, or Jesus, but there is no evidence of that.
Faith in ancient myths is none of the things you are talking about here.
This sounds like you have gone to some type of schooling for this. One of the tricks apologists use is to associate mythology with real life events to blur the boundaries and diminish critical thinking

 

[joelr]

you don't believe that there's a devil?

That must be a joke. How could Jesus, Yahweh and such be a mythology and the devil is real? Like I don't believe in Norse myths about Thor and Odin but the underworld ruler of Hel, Hela, she's real?

Actually Judaism doesn't really either. Satan is the angel of Yahweh in the OT. He sends him to deliver a plague and repeats the story in Chronicles and finally calls him Satan.
He is also one of the sons of Yahweh in Job and Yahweh and satan speak and Yahweh allows him to do errands, torture Job and so on.

Again, the Persian occupation, most of their mythology ends up in Christianity and late Judaism. Their devil Angra Mainyu was at war with the supreme God and lived in a fireland -

"During the Second Temple Period, when Jews were living in the Achaemenid Empire, Judaism was heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Achaemenids.[26][8][27] Jewish conceptions of Satan were impacted by Angra Mainyu, the Zoroastrian god of evil, darkness, and ignorance.

Modern ideas of Hell and of course the Revelation end times myth was used from the Persians:

Hell

The concept of hell, a place of torment presided over by Angra Mainyu, seems to be Zoroaster's own, shaped by his deep sense of the need for justice. • Those few souls 'whose false (things) and what are just balance' (Y 33. I) go to the 'Place of the Mixed Ones', Misvan Gatu, where, as in . the old underworld kingdom of the dead, they lead a grey existence, lacking both joy and sorrow.

Zoroaster was thus the first to teach the doctrines of an individual judgment, Heaven and Hell, the future resurrection of the body, the general Last Judgment, and life everlasting for the reunited soul and body. These doctrines were to become familiar articles of faith to much of mankind, through borrowings by Judaism, Christianity and Islam; yet it is in Zoroastrianism itself that they have their fullest logical coherence, since Zoroaster insisted both on the goodness of the material creation, and hence of the physical body, and on the unwavering impartiality of divine justice. According to him, - salvation for the individual depended on the sum of his thoughts, words and deeds, and there could be no intervention, whether compassionate or capricious, by any divine Being to alter this. With such a doctrine, belief in the Day of Judgment had its full awful significance, with each man having to bear the responsibility for the fate of his own soul, as well as sharing in responsibility for the fate of the world. Zoroaster's gospel was thus a noble and strenuous one, which called for both courage and resolution on the part of those willing to receive n.


The craze with Satan influencing humans all the tie is a modern invention, not a thing in early Christainity.
-During the Early Modern Period, Christians gradually began to regard Satan as increasingly powerful[145] and the fear of Satan's power became a dominant aspect of the worldview of Christians across Europe-

as you see the early modern era and modern era are really when evangelical puritan groups went Satan-crazy and blamed him for everything and all bad influences
Satan - Wikipedia


But no, all ancient religions had some kind of underworld, especially the Greek/Roman religions, with a dark ruler. The Pope and catholicism has been trying to move away from a literal interpretation of hell and wants a metaphorical understanding as hell is a "separation from God" type thing. But they get a lot of push back from fundamentalists who want a literal hell and a literal devil.

 

[muhammad_isa]

What do you mean by “ Orthodox” Christianity? Catholicism or something similar? I was raised in Catholicism and now understand how far it’s teachings depart from the Bible. A born again believer, saved by Jesus Christ will never go to hell and there is no such thing as purgatory..

..then you think that you have "a free ride".
You can do anything you like, and then die, and there will be no consequences..
Is that just? No.

Almighty God is the Fairest of All Judges.
Everybody has to answer for their deeds, regardless of their faith.
..just like in this life, being a Christian does not absolve you from responsibility.

Jesus stated that those He saves and gives eternal life to will never be snatched out of His hands...

And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.
John 10:28

Yes .. those with faith will eventually enter the kingdom of God forever.

Those “in Christ” are those who have trusted Jesus as their Savior and are born again to new life in Him. They may grieve the Holy Spirit when they sin, but they are sealed for eternity. A born again Christian cannot be “unborn” or “unsealed”...

No. A person who continually commits major sins is in danger of losing their faith entirely, and die in that state.
..while it is also possible that a person might be "born again" in the latter portion of their life, and die in that state.

According to the scriptures, God is the only Savior and God is the only One capable of saving the human race..

Yes, only Almighty God can save us.
We cannot be "saved" by our own merit.
We are all sinners.

Jesus is the Savior prophesied and born into the world to save humanity, therefore Jesus is God.

That is merely an uninformed opinion.

I am not trying to be argumentative or even necessarily convince you of anything. I believe it is God who ultimately does the convincing in someone’s life with His love and abiding peace.

I agree with that.
..and me.

 

[muhammad_isa]

"categorically prove" is your words..

That's right.

Historians can demonstrate that much of the theology and myths/legends are indeed taken from older cultures. Cultures who interacted or occupied the nation in question. what it does is show it's reasonable to believe this is not an original story or historical or dictated from a deity but written by humans using older stories.
It makes that a strong possibility.

Indeed. I do believe that the OT has been written from "older myths".
That does not prove that the myths aren't based on truth.

 

[InChrist]

..then you think that you have "a free ride".
You can do anything you like, and then die, and there will be no consequences..
Is that just? No.

Almighty God is the Fairest of All Judges.
Everybody has to answer for their deeds, regardless of their faith.
..just like in this life, being a Christian does not absolve you from responsibility.


Yes .. those with faith will eventually enter the kingdom of God forever.


No. A person who continually commits major sins is in danger of losing their faith entirely, and die in that state.
..while it is also possible that a person might be "born again" in the latter portion of their life, and die in that state.


Yes, only Almighty God can save us.
We cannot be "saved" by our own merit.
We are all sinners.


That is merely an uninformed opinion.


I agree with that.
..and me.

No, I do not consider being a Christian a free ride, although salvation in Christ is a free gift. From the scriptures I see and understand that a truly saved, born again Christian has a change of direction, attitudes, and desires. One who has given their life to Jesus desires to please Him, rather than living for self or indulging in sin. Christians still sin, but when submitted to Christ should repent when convicted of their sinful behavior by the Holy Spirit. Salvation and God’s grace is not a license to sin...

“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? 3 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Romans 6:1-4

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9


I am just wondering about something. In Islam, how does a person know when or if they have lived a life good enough to enter the kingdom of God? Do you know or do you think you will know before you die?

 

[DNB]

First this is biblical faith - "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

There is no deduction or induction in faith. For induction you have no past to go on except each religion uses stories and assumes they are true, despite all sorts of clear empirical reasons why they are probably not. Wishful thinking is not inductive logic. I'm not even going to comment on deduction because that is ridiculous.
There is no past activity were you can show any supernatural involvement and you can always show the event was in line with probabilities.
For example one is cured a cancer with a 95% mortality rate after praying to Krishna. If you look at 100 people who recently had that same disease you may see ~95 who did die and ~4 others who survived. The actual probabilities predicted.

Again, race supremacists have faith they are superior. They believe this is backed up by facts and will use confirmation bias to find examples of why they are a "better" race and others are not.
The facts do not support Islam and the Quran as the holy true word of God. Yet their faith tells them it is and they believe they also have facts backing them up. You probably don't think so. No different in Christianity.

It's already incorrect that "the wisest and most insightful will gain the correct answer," in a religious sense. Every generation millions of Christians believe the end times are coming in their lifetime. For 2000 years? Several congregations felt Jesus had their backs during Covid and continued to go to church and ended up with an outbreak and several deaths.


Yeah you keep making claims about me and can NEVER seem to back them up with evidence.

Yes, you just used an ACTUAL EVENT IN REAL LIFE where one can employ inductive logic - things based on the (real) past.

The kids are REAL. They have behaviors that can be studied and observed in real life.

AND you even mentioned truth and an ability to perceive it. You cannot perceive Krishna or Jesus, angels, Yahweh, and people use feelings, subconscious thoughts, things that some people know are just internal and some think it's a message from Krishna, or Allah, or Jesus, but there is no evidence of that.
Faith in ancient myths is none of the things you are talking about here.
This sounds like you have gone to some type of schooling for this. One of the tricks apologists use is to associate mythology with real life events to blur the boundaries and diminish critical thinking

The universe, empirically speaking, is a miracle, as is life itself, especially life engendering life. Man, empirically speaking, is patently and innately a spiritual being. From the beginning of time, throughout every corner of the world, and on every street corner , there is a religious edifice, thousands/millions of worshippers, theological schools, debates, dissertations, scholarships, liturgies, polemics, homilies, pilgrimages, sacrifices, idols, amulets, altars, shrines, temples, etc...

Faith is not blind, obviously.

 

[DNB]

That must be a joke. How could Jesus, Yahweh and such be a mythology and the devil is real? Like I don't believe in Norse myths about Thor and Odin but the underworld ruler of Hel, Hela, she's real?

Actually Judaism doesn't really either. Satan is the angel of Yahweh in the OT. He sends him to deliver a plague and repeats the story in Chronicles and finally calls him Satan.
He is also one of the sons of Yahweh in Job and Yahweh and satan speak and Yahweh allows him to do errands, torture Job and so on.

Again, the Persian occupation, most of their mythology ends up in Christianity and late Judaism. Their devil Angra Mainyu was at war with the supreme God and lived in a fireland -

"During the Second Temple Period, when Jews were living in the Achaemenid Empire, Judaism was heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Achaemenids.[26][8][27] Jewish conceptions of Satan were impacted by Angra Mainyu, the Zoroastrian god of evil, darkness, and ignorance.

Modern ideas of Hell and of course the Revelation end times myth was used from the Persians:

Hell

The concept of hell, a place of torment presided over by Angra Mainyu, seems to be Zoroaster's own, shaped by his deep sense of the need for justice. • Those few souls 'whose false (things) and what are just balance' (Y 33. I) go to the 'Place of the Mixed Ones', Misvan Gatu, where, as in . the old underworld kingdom of the dead, they lead a grey existence, lacking both joy and sorrow.

Zoroaster was thus the first to teach the doctrines of an individual judgment, Heaven and Hell, the future resurrection of the body, the general Last Judgment, and life everlasting for the reunited soul and body. These doctrines were to become familiar articles of faith to much of mankind, through borrowings by Judaism, Christianity and Islam; yet it is in Zoroastrianism itself that they have their fullest logical coherence, since Zoroaster insisted both on the goodness of the material creation, and hence of the physical body, and on the unwavering impartiality of divine justice. According to him, - salvation for the individual depended on the sum of his thoughts, words and deeds, and there could be no intervention, whether compassionate or capricious, by any divine Being to alter this. With such a doctrine, belief in the Day of Judgment had its full awful significance, with each man having to bear the responsibility for the fate of his own soul, as well as sharing in responsibility for the fate of the world. Zoroaster's gospel was thus a noble and strenuous one, which called for both courage and resolution on the part of those willing to receive n.


The craze with Satan influencing humans all the tie is a modern invention, not a thing in early Christainity.
-During the Early Modern Period, Christians gradually began to regard Satan as increasingly powerful[145] and the fear of Satan's power became a dominant aspect of the worldview of Christians across Europe-

as you see the early modern era and modern era are really when evangelical puritan groups went Satan-crazy and blamed him for everything and all bad influences
Satan - Wikipedia


But no, all ancient religions had some kind of underworld, especially the Greek/Roman religions, with a dark ruler. The Pope and catholicism has been trying to move away from a literal interpretation of hell and wants a metaphorical understanding as hell is a "separation from God" type thing. But they get a lot of push back from fundamentalists who want a literal hell and a literal devil.

FOR CRYIN' OUT FLIPPIN' LOUD, would you quite appealing to mythology and other extraneous or unrelated evidence - open up your flippin' eyes - is there a devil in the world or not, is the downfall of man not directly correlated to his own selfish and evil desires. Have you ever heard of racism, child or spousal abuse, kidnapping or rape, extortion, exploitation, manipulation, theft and murder? Who came up with those ideas, as a means to better one's life? Who thought that racism was a competent manner in order to asses another man's worth, who was the intellectual genius behind that? Where do you think that Vladimir Putin gets his inspiration from?

We're talking about real life here, no one is making these senseless atrocities up, committed by the most intelligent being on the planet - do you see the paradox or conflict?

 

[joelr]

That's right.


Indeed. I do believe that the OT has been written from "older myths".
That does not prove that the myths aren't based on truth.

Actually it does. The stories are written to be historical accounts of events that happened, like Noah's flood. Turns out the flood story was a re-working of the Epic of Gilamesh which is fiction.
The stories about the life of Moses are supposed to be actually about the life of Moses. But they are taken from Egyptian stories about Egyptian prophets.
We all know Egyptian, Mesopotamian and other mythologies are fiction. As is the thousands of other myths from all nations. Every religion is also syncretic, it takes theology and stories from older religions and re-works them to be new stories in the new religion. This is the case with every mythology ever.
The idea that because your religion borrowed from a few cultures those borrowed stories can also be true is just bad apologetics. For one the Gods are completely different as are the names of the characters. There is no evidence for Mesopotamian deities either. It doesn't help your case.
All this demonstrates is that the stories are not even original which is what they are SUPPOSED TO BE. They are supposed to be historical events. If they are taken from older stories than they are not the events they are supposed to be.
Inana is not real. Yahweh is also not real. To prove ANY myth might be true you need evidence. We have stories. We also know people made up stories about Gods (unless you are going to say every single story about Gods is also true?) And we know people re-used theology and mythology. Nowhere in there is any reason to believe any of it is true.

 

[joelr]

The universe, empirically speaking, is a miracle, as is life itself, especially life engendering life.

It is not. A miracle - "event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws ", we don't know where spacetime and the 4 fundamental forces come from (well, one unified law at high energies) but that doesn't make it a miracle. The origins of life are also not a miracle. Reproduction is completely understood and is no more than a complex process originally starting with cells dividing themselves into 2 copies and needing a way to make slightly different copies so one may have a better chance of survival. This is done by having two cells contribute to the division so the new cell has a mix and is slightly different than both parents. That is all sex is. Deities would not have a problem with this. Humans who write stories about deities acting strangely human are why they sometimes care.

Abiogenesis is not fully understood yet but many pieces are coming together with self replicating compounds and natural substances in nature like amino acids. When you buy into apologetics about life then you never bother to notice the progress in science. Recently it was demonstrated how an amino acid and a nucleobase became a 1D nucleobase stack which is then possible for exponential growth:
"The conditions that led to the formation of the first organisms and the ways that life originates from a lifeless chemical soup are poorly understood. The recent hypothesis of “RNA-peptide coevolution” suggests that the current close relationship between amino acids and nucleobases may well have extended to the origin of life. We now show how the interplay between these compound classes can give rise to new self-replicating molecules using a dynamic combinatorial approach."
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.9b10796

How the basic RNA was formed will be understood. So no miracle needed there.

Man, empirically speaking, is patently and innately a spiritual being. From the beginning of time, throughout every corner of the world, and on every street corner , there is a religious edifice, thousands/millions of worshippers, theological schools, debates, dissertations, scholarships, liturgies, polemics, homilies, pilgrimages, sacrifices, idols, amulets, altars, shrines, temples, etc...

Faith is not blind, obviously.

First, no. You are lumping all this into your modern version of spiritual. For many cultures Gods were beings who may do favors for humans like make rain. But there was no afterlife or soul.
The Romans did not have an afterlife, a common gravestone writing was:
Non Fui, Fui, Non Sum, Non Curo

N.F.F.N.S.N.C.

I was not, I was, I am not, I care not.

While there truly is zero evidence for a soul even granting that for a moment, there are billions of believers who believe in a completely different theology than you do. Millions who believe the same but a different version where you still go to hell for not being a J Witness or Mormon.
Sounds pretty blind.

Next spirituality has no standard definition. It ranges from secular atheist - living one's best life from the highest ideals and ethics to all sorts of strange ideas about reincarnation and afterlife existences. None having evidence. It's a lot of wishful thinking.

Man was patently and innately a spiritual being because we didn't know that Gods, demigods and supernatural things didn't exist. People assumed lightning was from Zeus, illness was a punishment, drought was an angry deity. The sun was a celestial being. What man actually is is a psychological being. Cognitive bias, confirmation bias, pattern seeking, anthropomorphizing and so on. That accounts for all the stories and feelings.


None of this material is reason to choose a mythology and take it literal.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Salvation and God’s grace is not a license to sin...

No, it's not.
I think the Catholic / Orthodox position is more accurate on this one.
All sins are forgiven when you are "born again", but sins committed after that are not automatically forgiven.
We are accountable.

I am just wondering about something. In Islam, how does a person know when or if they have lived a life good enough to enter the kingdom of God? Do you know or do you think you will know before you die?

No.
If it wasn't for God's Mercy, not one person would enter "the kingdom of God". We are all sinners.

Faith is in 2 parts. The fear of God's displeasure, and the hope in His infinite Mercy.

As in orthodox Christianity, anybody with faith in God, even if it is only the size of "a mustard seed", will eventually enter paradise.

 

[muhammad_isa]

All this demonstrates is that the stories are not even original which is what they are SUPPOSED TO BE. They are supposed to be historical events. If they are taken from older stories than they are not the events they are supposed to be.

The accounts may not be accurate, but you can't prove they are not based on true stories.
You just can't !