Is it possible to Prove that the Qu'ran or any scripture is from God?

[naderM]

It is true theQuran is itseems largely copiedfrommothersources. For example, look at Q3:49 where Jesus is said to make a bird out of clay and bring it to life. This story cannot be found in the canonical Gospels anywhere. If the Quran is supposed to confirm the earlier scriptures how can it make such a glaring error. In fact the story comes from the apocryphal writings called the Infancy of Gospel of Thomas which is dated no earlier that 185AD so cannot have been written by an eyewitness and is at least 130 years after the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written and is not accepted by any Christian as the Word of God. That is the Quran is quoting a myth, a pure invention and as you might know there are dozens of similar examples in the Quran - so what exactly is being preserved here, who is perverting what?

John20:30"Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book"
John21:25"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written".

The bird from clay miracle for example is reported outside the canonical Gospels in the infancy Gospel of Thomas, although it connects this miracle to his childhood along with the ability to speak in the craddle, while the Quran only qualifies the ability to speak in the craddle as a childhood miracle (serving the purpose of clearing Mary of the slanders), and then proceeds to connect the bird from clay miracle to his ministry to the Israelites, coming to them and preaching and performing other miracles with Allah's permission like his healing powers and knowledge of the unseen 3:49-55,5:110. Obviously there would have been no reason to give Jesus such powers in his childhood, because he needed them in adulthood in support of his ministry to demonstrate certain points.

The Quran and your own Bible refute you on 2 counts:
- that the report of a miracle not found anywhere in the canonical Gospels or other canonized Books of the Bible (after much debate and uncertainty on their authenticity) somehow constitutes "a glaring error"
- that the Quran quotes dircetly from the infancy Gospel of Thomas while it has differences with it that are full of meaning

[usman13]

Infancy of Gospel of Thomas which is dated no earlier that 185AD so cannot have been written by an eyewitness and is at least 130 years after the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written and is not accepted by any Christian as the Word of God.

right , lets see. the 2 angels carrying your god out of the tomb is myth because it is late. jesus the kid, killing a young child is christian invention because it is too late
okay, if christians were good at inventing myth in second century , how can you argue with straigt face that they weren't good at inventing myth in the first century? what methodology do you have? how do you know that matthews claim about dead zombies roaming jerusalem is true? what came first? the oral tradition or the story and who verified oral tradition or story?
WHERE was matthew written?
there is location A AND B . between the 2 locations there is a 20 miles distance. matthew is writing in LOCATION B. the tomb was located in location A. in location B matthew heard jewish responses to marks gospel. matthew rebuts the jewish claims in LOCATION B. do you see the problem? we don't have location A OR B in the gospels and we DON'T know where the stories were being TOLD, so why are christians happy to swallow matthews claims? you must be fool to repeat your hogwash AGAIN AND again, even though it was demonstrated to you that YOUR GOSPELS TELL YOU that LIES AND BS were "widely known" about jesus and jesus and his DECIPLES couldn't do JACK sh it about it. they were GOVERned AND cornered.

i have another question for you, was everything in oral TRADITION in the first CENTURY put in writing?
is there a possibility that oral sayings can be preserved at a later date in a different language?
if christians were good at inventing bs, then read the gospels son, for apologetic purpose look at the amount of bs they invent.

you talk about eye witnesses. can you show me an idependant gospel of mary? can you show me any christian saint who claimed to have spoken to mary ? look at your eyewitnesses

mary mag is told that jesus has risen and is told the LOCATION he is going to, she runs off to peter and tells him that someone has stolen his body and she doesn't know where they have laid him.SHE ASKS THE SAME QUESTION TO THE ANGELS IN THE TOMB, SHE ASKS the GARDNER THE SAME QUESTION. this is your eyewitnesses? look at your eyewitnesses, they take oitments to annoint a dead body because they thought that it was not going to rise from the dead. look at marks portray of the deciples, according to mark, the deciples are dumb christians who not only have short memory but need constant explanations. these are your shoddy eyewitnesses?

130 years after the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written and is not accepted by any Christian as the Word of God.

So then why did they invent a miracle and attirbute it to jesus? why did matthew say that jesus was the DARLING of jerusalem and his fame known all over syria? why did christian says he turned water into wine? why did they say he was born of a virgin when know one had dreams about him being born of a virgin , only joseph had a dream that the holy ghost impregnanted mary. why is one piece trashed and gospel claims accepted? christians have been accepting many wacky and wild ideas in different centuries. even today they have books which your bible lacks. you must be an IDIOT. SERIOUSLY you really must be an IDIOT. marcion pulled out a claim that ot law is crap and your marcionite christians are very sympathetic to marcions IDEAS even though your god in flesh seems to have been a SLAVE of jewish law.

you know what is funny, i can imagine first century jewish readers say this to first century christians when they heard about the miracle stories in the nt.

"LOL, these are stolen from the torah and oral traditions attributed to our rabbis, look word for word plagiarism HERE and here"

haweye , weren't there jews in the first century who had your style of thinking , but 10* more advanced than you and make a case for thier claims?

pay ATTENTION TO WHAT IS HIGHLIGHTED

Think of it like this. If it were possible to make textual amendments in the third century when there were already highly evolved and sophisticated and sizable literate Christian communities with such intellectuals as Origen, Tertullian and others what is the likelihood of changes and amendments taking place in the first century when the Christianities were still fledgling communities with little to no literacy? Was it not easier to fudge things and even make things up undetected? Who would be the wiser when you are with the pen and the rest are dumb? Corruption even in the time of the intellectual Christians persisted which means that it must have been even more common place in the earliest epochs. The problem is compounded further by the fact that we don’t know who these authors were and what affiliations they had.

[patrick]

There are many many references in this board to proofs but they all seem to fail in many way so I wonder can we look at them again and to start this discussion off I will just say what proof usually means and then outline the many faults we find in proofs and evidences.

Proof - usually understood to mean that something is true for everyone, everywhere and for all time and implies that you cannot avoid it. For example, Archimedes principle is true because you get the same results everywhere and anyone can test it using any data they have and it will always be true.

Flaws and Faults
The ideas I give here are common in all kinds of research and can unquestionable be weaknesses of huge significance. Here I use the terms typical to the scientific community but they are of course not necessarily universal.

Cherry Picking - this occurs when you are selective or very selective about the data so you only choose examples that support your particular case or stance - in simple terms you did not do any research of your own, you took a short cut instead.

Torturing the Data - 'torture the data and it will confess to anything', as they say at Guantanamo Bay. That is you don't care at all what the data actually said you will make it say just what you want it to.

Methodology - often in a proof you cannot find a full description of the methodology, the research method, the research plan used to extract information from the data. Be honest, would you trust a research study outcome if the study owners refused to tell you how they got their results?

Authority - are you taken in by people who generate a claim because they say they are experts, well qualified so it must be right? Now of course we want to check on credentials but if we simply rely on those you will be making a big mistake. Sadly, the literature in almost every discipline it littered by well-qualified charlatans. By all means check our qualifications but don't fall into the trap of thinking that is enough for a result to be correct.

Journals and Review Sites - Often you cannot find a single reputable journals mentioned and that alone would lead me to consider rejection.

Interpretation - in research it is often said that getting the data is easy, precessing its is hard and interpreting is where we give up and lie down in a dark room and hope the problem will go away. Finding meaning is always going to be hard work because the results may not be all that clear, they may be far too clear which should always make you think you have made a mistake - some thing are just too good to be true, if you look at any set of data long enough you will find patterns, it is all to easy to be biased or lazy and look for what we want to see - so finding meaning means you need to be really knowledgeable in your area and you have to be absolutely honest. Be very wary of statistics and always get an expert to help you decide what stats you want and how to make sense of them - sadly this is often not done.

Richard Feynman, undoubtedly one of the finest brains in the world started a lecture with a very salutatory story. If you cannot understand the point he is making here with respect to this thread and more generally to research and proof then you really do need to do a lot of reading and thinking.

You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won't believe what happened. I saw a car with the licence plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of licence plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing....

Over or Inappropriate Generalizations - this is just another way of making sure you understand the notion of not arguing from the particular to the Universal. That is you get one result and conclude it now applies everywhere and sadly it usually occurs when you are desperate to prove your point at any cost. A good example was created in another thread by people I shall call Andy and Cap.

Andy - Certainly the magnitude of work from that time speaks volume, if historians can claim we have wiped out the quryza using Islamic primary sources, then by the same token, they can find the man or men who dictated the Quran to the prophet in such an unparalleled style!

Cap - So because there is historical evidence for one event, there must be historical evidence for all events. Is that what you're saying?

Now will anyone start us off by offering a proof of some kind that the Qu'ran (or any scripture) is from God?

Sorry this is so late in the discussion. I tried to posted this last week or so ago when I first joined up, but I do not see that it was posted.

You need eyewitnesses to the actual revelation/message, miracles and prophecies fufilled.

Acts 9 is a good example of the type of proof needed to show a messanger/message is from GOD.

You have a man that in just moments changed the whole direction of his life. Witnesses heard something voice/sound, witnessed the blindness of Paul.

What seals the deal that Paul was hand picked by Jesus to be a messanger is that Jesus goes to Ananias in a dream and tells him about Paul. Ananias then heals Paul.

[patrick]

....

Oral tradition yes but for a very short time within the generation of eyewitnesses. When the Books were written:
Matthew:
A.D. 60-65

Mark:
A.D. 55-65

Luke:
A.D. 60

John:
A.D. 85-90

Acts:
A.D. 63-70

Romans:
A.D. 57

1 Corinthians:
A.D. 55

2 Corinthians:
A.D. 55-57

Galatians:
A.D. 49

Ephesians:
A.D. 60

Philippians:
A.D. 61

Colossians:
A.D. 60

1 Thessalonians:
A.D. 51

2 Thessalonians:
A.D. 51-52

1 Timothy:
A.D. 64

2 Timothy:
A.D. 66/67

Titus:
A.D. 64

Philemon:
A.D. 60

Hebrews:
A.D. 70 (prior to Jerusalem's destruction in A.D. 70)

James:
A.D. 49 (prior to the Jerusalem council of A.D. 50)

1 Peter:
A.D. 62-64

2 Peter:
A.D. 67

1 John:
A.D. 85-90

2 John:
A.D. 90

3 John:
A.D. 90

Jude:
A.D. 65

Revelation:
A.D. 95

The lost or spurious gospels were simply never ever considered inspired by GOD. No matter how early why include them?

[patrick]

usman 13-

"textual amendments in the third century"

This is a non arguement.

Think-how do we know there were "textual amendments in the third century"?

We have knowledge of texts previous to the 3rd century.

Show us the rocks, leaves, stones where the companions wrote down the sayings of Mohammad before it was compiled into the Quran. Show us the various Qurans collected by Uthmann- you can't he burned them all.

[Hawkeye]

Confirmation/preservation of earlier scriptures does not mean copying them - it means it is from the same source (Divine Revelation) and will correct the errors that have crept in, in people's beliefs. Quran talks about many things, true historical accounts, myths believed in by people.. your views are judgmental.

You have a point but how can you correct an error in a myth - it does not make sense.

[Bowman]

you talk about eye witnesses. can you show me an idependant gospel of mary? can you show me any christian saint who claimed to have spoken to mary ? look at your eyewitnesses

Show us one eye-witness in the Koran, according to the Koran itself.

Fact is, the Koran is almost entirely written in the third-person....clearly not original, and clearly no eye-witnesses to the material written within it.

[shaad_lko]

Show us one eye-witness in the Koran, according to the Koran itself.

Fact is, the Koran is almost entirely written in the third-person....clearly not original, and clearly no eye-witnesses to the material written within it.

the simple fact that you do not consider the Quran spectacular proves that you know nothing of Arabic. Anyone acquainted with even a basic smattering of Arabic knows that the Quran is unlike anything that came before or after it..

[Bowman]

the simple fact that you do not consider the Quran spectacular proves that you know nothing of Arabic. Anyone acquainted with even a basic smattering of Arabic knows that the Quran is unlike anything that came before or after it..

How spectacular is copying Biblical scripture, re-arranging the order, and setting it to rhyme?

Not very.

[patrick]

Quran means recitation. Do you understand Arabic languages is root driven language. One root could have several different meanings. Honestly you would know that in the first class of any Arabic language. No where in Arabic/English lexicon does Quran mean collection of previous scripture.

The study of the root words is fascinating. Is it in this verse that the root word is actually throw- for bestow. GOD threw HIS Word to Mary?

004.171 O People of the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion: Nor say of Allah aught but the truth. Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) a messenger of Allah, and His Word, which He bestowed on Mary, and a spirit proceeding from Him: so believe in Allah and His messengers. Say not "Trinity" : desist: it will be better for you: for Allah is one Allah: Glory be to Him: (far exalted is He) above having a son. To Him belong all things in the heavens and on earth. And enough is Allah as a Disposer of affairs.

Also could you explain where the words in thew ( ) are from?

[hasena]

Asalam O Alaikum!
Quran is the last Book from ALLAH (SWT) to HIS beloved Prophet Hazrat Muhammad (pbuh), and ALLAH (SWT) says in quran :-

This is the Scripture whereof there is no doubt, a guidance unto those who ward off (evil). (2) Who believe in the Unseen, and establish worship, and spend of that We have bestowed upon them; (3) And who believe in that which is revealed unto thee (Muhammad) and that which was revealed before thee, and are certain of the Hereafter. (4) These depend on guidance from their Lord. These are the successful. (5)

[Surah Al-Baqara]

[patrick]

Asalam O Alaikum!
Quran is the last Book from ALLAH (SWT) to HIS beloved Prophet Hazrat Muhammad (pbuh), and ALLAH (SWT) says in quran :-



[Surah Al-Baqara]

That proves nothing. Mormons believe they have the last book.

Christians know no other Book is needed after the Holy Bible.

[Ron]

Patrick,

Arent you saying the same thing Muslims and Mormons are saying?

[patrick]

Patrick,

Arent you saying the same thing Muslims and Mormons are saying?

Yep.

Except our Book has proofs, prophecies fulfilled, eyewitnesses and miracles, signs from GOD.

[Ron]

Yep...same thing...