No worries, Ill try to leave some of the topics and narrow it down a bit, so the posts don't get to long .
Thanks, I am going to also try to hone in on your main points and keep my responses shorter.
However the Quran is filled with stories taken from the bible, there are variations, but there is no doubt that these are related and that the Quran depends on the Bible, which make sense since its written later.
Obviously you know more about what is in the Qur’an than I do. I do not know what you mean by “depends upon the Bible.” My point was that the Qur’an was a revelation to Muhammad, so the Qur’an was not plagiarism of the Bible.
Which also makes sense why the Bible keep referring back to the OT, because these are connected, now one of the reasons for this, is because without the OT there wouldn't be creation story in bible. So it is needed for the Bible to make sense and is one of the reasons all these texts are connected. And obviously because a lot of what is written in the NT refer to something or someone in the OT. No the reason, I refer to the bible is because that is the one I have read and studied the most and also because, as mention above the Quran gets a lot of stories from it.
Obviously to me, the OT is necessary for the NT to make sense because the OT refers to Jesus and predicts His coming. But also the OT is the necessary foundation for everything that comes after it, because it starts at the beginning of creation.
It could be that Moses and Jesus are mentioned more than Muhammad because they were key players in history and also because Muhammad was not going to talk Himself up and glorify Himself. When you say the Qur’an “gets stories from the Bible” I do not know if you mean it was plagiarized.
"I do not need to read the Bible or the Qur’an in order to validate Baha’u’llah. Baha’ullah did not “get” anything He wrote from those scriptures; He got it from God."
But the God you are talking about is (partly) based on these writings. The moment Baha'u'llah refer to verses about Jesus, Moses, Muhammad or anyone else that is considered a prophet, they come from these texts that you think for the most part is irrelevant.
You are talking about scriptures as if they are man-made stories of fiction. From my perspective as a Baha’i and a believer, God is not based upon any scriptures; rather, the scriptures reveal God through what is revealed by God to the Manifestation of God (Messengers/prophets). So, from my perspective, the moment Baha'u'llah refer to verses about Jesus, Moses, Muhammad or anyone else that is considered a prophet, Baha’u’llah is not referring to texts they are coming from, but rather to revelations Jesus, Moses, and Muhammad received from God. Baha’u’llah did not have to read previous scriptures in order to know what happened in the past because Baha’u’llah had the knowledge from God revealed to Him through the Holy Spirit.
No, according to Islam, there is not going to be anything after the Quran, it is considered the final revelation from God. Which is most likely also one of the reasons muslims have a hard time with Baha'u'llah and the Bahai faith I could imagine.
So what? That is what the adherents to all religions believe, that their Prophet and their religion is the last and final one, and they twist the meaning of their scriptures to say that, because no scriptures say that.
The Truth is the Truth and it cannot be contradictory. All the older religions cannot be that last and final religion unless the religions that came after theirs are false; so that is what they all believe. Jews believe Christianity is false and Christians believe that Islam is false. They HAVE TO believe this in order to preserve their position as the Only Way to God.
At least Islam recognizes Judaism and Christianity but Muslims also incorrectly believe theirs is the final religion. Seal of the Prophets only means Muhammad was the last Prophet in the Prophetic Cycle that began with Adam (Adamic Cycle); it did not mean no more Prophets would come after Muhammad. Moreover, Muslims believe in the return of Jesus or in the Mahdi, depending on whether they are Sunni or Shia, so they DO believe that anther holy man will come after Muhammad; so why not call Him a Prophet, that is just a label meaning He was sent by God.
Obviously all the older religions cannot be the last and final one unless only one of them is a true religion. That means that they all have a false belief. Baha’i solves that problem by saying they are all true religions but the Baha’i Faith is the most recent religion from God. But we do not claim to be the last and final religion, just the current religion.
So you wrote earlier if I recall correctly, that you found the Quran to be more trustworthy than the Bible, but does that also apply to the Quran being the final revelation? I assume that they got that part wrong?
I find the Qur’an more trustworthy because of how it came to be recorded, by scribes who were dictated to by Muhammad; by contrast, nobody knows the authors of most of the Bible. No, as I said above, I do not believe that the Qur’an is the final revelation. The Revelation of Baha’u’llah is the last revelation from God but not the final one.
But we are not talking about a human being here, which is why I say that there is no way to compare it. Because the claim is that this God is all good, all knowing and all powerful. The only way for such being to hurt some is because:
1. The claims all wrong about it.
2. God doesn't exists
3. The hurting was done on purpose.
4. God doesn't care about humans when it comes to good and evil, as we define them.
If you want to keep all these claims or attribute for God, you have to choose either 1,3 or 4. I don't see any other options. Do you?
I am not sure what you mean by “hurt” but
IF God did some hurtful things in the OT, I have another possibility:
5. 4000 years ago humans and the world they lived in were a lot different so punishment was necessary to keep humans in line. Customs were also different so laws were different, as we discussed before.
It could also be 1, but I can tell you it is not 2, 3, or 4.
If those that wrote the OT just made up all these things, remember God is extremely chatty in it, nothing like in the NT where he hardly speak. So pretty much the whole OT is just wrong as we would have to disregard all verses where God talks as these would have to be considered wrong or made up as well. There would be no commandments in creation etc. The OT would be reduced to a pixi book where nothing made sense. An alternative is to believe that God allowed the writers of the OT to just write whatever none sense about him as they wanted, of how he slaughters people. Which leaves everyone reading it at a later point completely clueless of who God is and that he simply didn't care for approximately 2000 years, until he decided that Baha'u'llah should come and reveal more stuff, that hardly convinces anyone taking the amount of followers into account. I sorry to say it, but how stupid would an all knowing God have to be to do something like that?
I understand your point, but why can’t there be a middle ground? Why can’t some of the OT commandments be from God and other ones parts of the OT be what people wrote, maybe to suit their purposes? Also, God did not wait till Baha’u’llah came, He sent Jesus in the interim to teach love and forgiveness. There is not hate or killing in the NT is there, Mr. Expert Bible scholar?
Here is more on the Baha’i perspective of the OT from an authoritative source:
Know ye that the Torah is that which was revealed in the Tablets to Moses, may peace be upon Him, or that to which He was bidden.
But the stories are historical narratives and were written after Moses, may peace be upon Him.
(From a previously untranslated Tablet)
...The Bible is not wholly authentic, and in this respect is not to be compared with the Qur'an, and should be wholly subordinated to the authentic writings of Bahá'u'lláh
. (28 July 1936 to a National Spiritual Assembly)
In studying the Bible Bahá'ís must bear two principles in mind. The first is that many passages in Sacred Scriptures are intended to be taken
metaphorically, not literally, and some of the paradoxes and apparent contradictions which appear are intended to indicate this.
The second is the fact that the text of the early Scriptures, such as the Bible, is not wholly authentic.
(28 May 1984 to an individual believer)
The Bible
Mírza Abú'l-Fadl was praised and recommended by 'Abdu'l-Bahá and has been justifiably called the most learned and erudite Bahá'í scholar.
Regarding the Old Testament, Fadl said that it contained
two types of teaching: a) revelation from God, such as the 10 commandments of Moses, the Psalms of David and the books of the Prophets, and b) historical information, such as the books Joshua, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles "...which contain no statement, sign or hint of being divine speech and therefore should not be considered as revelation."[17]
A Bahá'í View of the Bible
And even if we assume that Baha'u'llah is correct, we still know nothing about God, absolutely nothing. How did he create the world? Did Baha'u'llah write exactly how the creation happened and is it that of the Bible or the Quran?
Baha’u’llah wrote that God and His Creation
have always existed. I can post the passages to you later if you want, because I don’t want this post to exceed the 12,000 character limit.
So God did not create Creation because Creation has always existed, but it in incongruent with science to say that life on Earth has always existed so I think the Baha’i position would be that it evolved slowly over time, although humans have always been a separate species than the animals, since we have a rational soul and they do not, they have an animal spirit.
You might think its beating a dead horse, but if you look at it closely, it does make rather good sense. So these are symptoms of brain hypoxia:
During recovery from brain hypoxia, people may experience several challenges. These typically resolve over time. They include:
· amnesia
· hallucinations
· insomnia
· memory loss
· mood changes
· muscle spasms and twitches
· personality changes
· seizures
· vision problems
Just looking at the list, it should be pretty obvious that the brain is not going to react well to this. And there is probably a whole lot of other things that can cause problems for the brain if the body suddenly shut down.
But even if that is true, logically speaking, that does not mean that brain hypoxia is responsible for all NDEs. There are things about NDEs that cannot be explained by it.
It depends how you read and understand the bible. Personally, I would believe Jesus and God over Paul, if I believed any of it. So I would assume that one would have to follow the laws of God as that according to God and Jesus is the only way to get saved.
Do you mean saved from original sin so you won’t go to hell?