RE: What are the consequences of being spiritualist
Good point, and that's what i meant whwn i said most people are comfortable with their religions cause it's tested as far as they are concerned.
Now about the holy books, you know what i believe in? If you read the bible in its originial text you wont find contradictions, i watched some debates for guy called Ahmad Deedat with pastors and ministers, and he shows them many verses and what they say in english, and how they're realy written in their original text.
As for quran, i believe that quran shouldnt be translated to any language, because in the process of translation the meaning of the word slip away because it depends on the perception of the translator who get the meaning from shiekhs, and those shiekhs just absorbed what came to them through history. In quran, what caused this huge issue with the mainstream understanding are two things:
1- synonymous thinking
2- giving priority for the prophet mohammad's sayings over quran.
Those two points made the disasters that you see now are being commited in the name of islam.
I can give you tens of examples on both, but im curious to know, what things that you say they're moral in wuran but you find immoral, can you give me an axample?
I have researched this and I have access to people who speak the original languages of the Bible fluently and what I've found is that the contradictions are plentiful and abundant. Very often they are so clear and blatant that even the vagues translation cannot be the culprit, like verses saying "Do X" while others saying "Don't do X".
I haven't read the whole Quran even in translation and I haven't gone into much depth with it.
Examples of things that I think are in the Quran that I find immoral are rules like punishing apostasy with death and stoning homosexuals.
Wonderful, well..first with apostasy, it's what mainstream shiekhs have concluded, while in many verses in quran allah give you the to believe in him or not, he even addresses prophet mohammad saying do you think you can force people to be believers? , he says also in many verses addressing the prophet that you are only a messanger who delivers a message and that's it, the messenger wasnt asked to make sure of applying sharia or islam upon other, alalh gave him his role which was only delivering the message of allah.
As for stonning, well..to start with; mainstrwam shiekhs say that adultry are punished also by stoning to death if he or she was married, and wipped if they're not, and this they brought from stories that were told about the prophet that many suspect they happen, while allah in quran says the punishment is wipping no matter who if they were married or not.
Now for homosexuals, who told you that their punishment is stonning to dearh, they concluded this from the punishment of people of the prophet Loot, who were all committing this sin among many other sins, they used to assult on conveys passing by their lands and they abused each other in many ways, so they concluded this from the story of those people. While allah different punishment in case both were males ( the punishment is to harm them by talk only) and females ( the punishment is to hold them in homes). Why he assigned punishment? He assigned punishment not for homoshexuals, but alos people who commits adultry.
While the punishments might have been made more severe than what might be written in the Quran specifically, there are still punishments and trying to punish either of the two behaviors/states of being (leaving a religion or being homosexual) is an immoral act. Just saying that either is a sin is enough to put the teaching in the immoral category for me.
bro leaving islam has no punishment, scan quran line by line you wont find a punishment for converting from islam to any religion.
as for the sexual relationships, there is more to discuss more than the nature of someone who suddenly felt attraction to same sex, or even born with it. note that quran didn't judge homosexuals with any kind of label, quran acknowledged the act itself as sin, exactly as adultery. ofcourse i cannot convince you that it is a sin, some consider it natural thing. some consider it a sin. what matters to me is that we accept people from all backgrounds and religions no matter what they did or do. i.e., i stopped hating anyone just because they sin differently.
As I said above, that is enough for me as it is an immoral act to do so.
That's good, but calling their actions sin not because of reason, but because of a book is still problematic.