Evidence and Clear Examples of Factual errors & historical inaccuracies in the Quran.

[beanfarmer]

When I was in high school I was crusing 1st av with my friend. We would go about 15 miles from Marion to William's bolivard. I remember feeling empty. But we were doing something everybody thought was fun, so I concluded I was having fun. Fun was boring. Fun was empty. Fun was not fun.

My first motorcycle came home in a basket. I paid $150 because that was the price he asked. I was unfamiliar with the concept of haggling. He saw me coming. It was a 150 cc. 8 horse power 1956 Triumph Tiger Cub. My mom let me get it because she didn't think I could get it running. I had visions of me flying down the highway, hair in the wind, bugs in my teeth, pulling up to the high school where everybody would stare with envy. When I finally got it running I discovered the 8 horses were shetland ponies.

The next bike I got was a Harley. Before you get impressed, it was a 65 cc. 2 stroke spaghetti burner. (Harley owner's call japanese bikes "Rice Burners" but the small Harleys were made in Italy.) If it quit running you could put it in your pocket and walk home. Unfortunately my care and maintenance of motorcycles did not improve with my first bike and it was soon in need of an overhaul.

I sold it and went looking with a friend for a new mechanical device to torment. He had a 350 honda. I thought it was fast. I knew they built faster bikes, I just couldn't conceive how anything could be faster. We found a used 1969 305 cc. Suzuki. They let my friend ride it and he came back with a big grin. He said that it might be faster than his bike. I had to have it! They were asking $400 for it and being the most naive person on God's green earth, I paid it.

Most motorcycles can accelerate faster than a car. It's a matter of power to weight ratio. My Suzuki would beat a corvette of the same year in a quarter mile race though 100 mph was as fast as it would go. I was ecstatic! It was the bike of my dreams. I rode it everywhere that summer and well into the winter which in Iowa means you love to ride a bit too much.

I often borrowed my brother's 175 Honda. I used it to go back to Newton Iowa where I worked at Maytag. I often would screw the throttle ajustment all the way out so I could ride without hands. When that got boring I tried standing up on the seat. On my Suzuki I would pass people on the road standing up.

My friend had a chopped Harly that he often could not start so I would go start it for him. It had the tank at such an angle because of the extended forks that it had about a half gallon of useable gas. It was all for show. It worked because he always had hot chicks hanging about. I don't know if it was jelliscy or not but I used to pass him standing on my bike.

When I graduated highschool I was in perminant party mode. Didn't drink much, but when I did it was only to get drunk but I prefered pot

My friend rode my Suzuki and crashed so that when you rode it was always leaning sideways. I was at a party, reasonablely stoned, when they decided to move the party elsewhere. My friend of course had a hot chick with him. I don't know if my judgement was impaired or I wanted to impress the hot chick but I decided to pass him standing. I hopped up on the seat and held my arms out, then the bike started to lean. I jumped off and raised my head so I would not get road rash on my face. When I stopped sliding I was on my back so I really was grinding my head into the pavement. I did not have a helmet. I stayed stoned so I would not feel pain. My friend had a supply of pain drugs that kept me out of it for a few days. Thank God I did not have a brain hemorrhage. I guess God had plans for me that required me alive.

The worst accident I had on my 305 was when I was really angry so I was driving way to fast on a gravel road and came around a corner at about 70 mph hugging the inside and met a car that was doing the same thing. I had 2 choices. Continue on the line where I was and hit the car or take the ditch. I chose ditch. The pain was maxed out in that it reached a point that I could not feel anymore pain. I was sliding on my stomach smashing my face up and down. Thank God I was not wearing a helmet or I might have broke my neck from the added weight of the helmet. When I stopped sliding I was next to a tree that I could have hit if I had slid any further. Another thank God situation. There were a group of people in a park that had seen me crash and when I realized that I could not start my bike I yelled for help. They looked at me and went back to what they were doing. I started to walk home but did not make it very far before I passed out. I came to and passed out in the middle of the road. Thank God someone did not run over me. I woke to someone shaking me and asking me if I was alright. I was not with it enough to say I always take naps in the middle of a gravel road because the rocks are really comfortable. It was the guy who had run me off the road. He went home ate lunch and was heading back to work.

When I was in the ER a cop was asking me questions about the accident. I was often hasselled by the cops and figured that they were trying to get me on something because they often pulled me over when I had done nothing wrong. I have been accused of having drugs and of burglarly for having a screwdriver in the glove box and stealing the beat up VW I was driving that no car theif would want to take and of being a homosexual rapist. So I told him I did not remember. They did not charge me with damaging the ditch with my face.

As I got used to it I realized it was not as fast as I had first thought. By the next summer, having crashed several times, it didn't look so shiny as it did when I bought it. It began to bore me. I began to look for something faster.

The next bike I got was a1960 r69 BMW. It was much slower in accelration than the Suzuki but was much more dependable. It had a driveshaft and the differental leaked oil on the brakes so I drove it with no rear brakes. The front were not much better than throwing out an anchor which led to some interesting thank God situations. I guess God had something for me to do like preventing folks going to jail and hell. He must have something more for me to do so I guess I will hang around a few more years but like Paul said "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not. For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:" 50 points if you know where that was from.

I ended up with a new 73 BMW 750 which was the best bike I ever owned. There were hondas, a norton and yamahas and a kawsaki 500 in there somewhere. I went 120 on my bmw with a 40mph tailwind. I took the BMW off road on many occasions. I took it over mosquito pass.

I have had a billion motorcycles. OK, maybe that was hyperbole or a lie, but you should be used to that with all the political action commities and elections. The bikes all got boring after a time. Maybe because, as Ecclesiastes put it God has "put eternity into man's mind" so that we keep searching for the faster, better, shinier thing. So that eventually we will find him.

My first acid trip was not a good one. I asked Jesus into my heart when I was a kid. I always felt guilty when I was stoned. I felt guilty then. My guilt made me feel bad but then I was distracted by noticing someone looked like a chicken or by the moving patterns on the wall and that made me realize how stoned I was and that made me guilty. Then I would think that my thought was circular and forget the guilt because I was thinking I was chemically dissecting my brain and gaining insight into how the brain worked. Then I would look at my watch and find what I had thought was an hour was only 10 minutes and realize how stoned I was and the guilt came back. I don't know if this cycle repeated 100 times or 1000. At some point in that very long night I realized that if I decided there was no God, there would be no guilt and the bad trip would be over. That made me really scared because I believed I was on the verge of doing just that. My drugged mind happened on a plan. I would pray that if the only way God could speak to me, given the choices I was making, was guilt, that he would please not give up on me. If there was a God, eventually my guilt would drive me to repentance. If there was not, I would never feel guilty again. What followed were the two most miserable years of my life.

I would not suggest this strategy to anyone. There is biblical evidence God could have hardened my heart that night like he did Pharaoh or King Saul.

Ex. "When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles which I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go."

Prov. "Blessed is the man who always fears the Lord, but he who hardens his heart falls into trouble"

Heb. "Today, when you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, 'They always go astray in their hearts; they have not known my ways.' As I swore in my wrath, 'They shall never enter my rest.'"

Then I couldn't have repented because I would not want to. God made us to have free will. Eventually he will accept our answer as final. It might be at death. It could be sooner. Calvinist or Armenian arguments aside, it is a terrible risk to take.

I roomed one semester of college with Russ. Russ was a back slidden christian like me, only not so far back slidden. Russ quit doing drugs that semester. I had every excuse why I could not. The semester ended and I went back to my mom's and Russ went to an uncles farm. I was using drugs daily.

When I was at my worst in drug use I would ride my BMW to parties every night. When one party ended I would go to the next, smoking dope at all of them, until there were no parties left. Then I would begin my trip home. I would "get into" shifting gears and cornering and suddenly realize I didn't know where I was going. The problem was simple. I was tired, had been to a party, several of them, there were no parties left to go to, so I must be going home. But I didn't know where I was (in a town I had been in for 20 years.) I would start by looking for street signs. When I had figured where I was I would plot a corse for home. Soon I was listening to the motor and shifting gears and cornering and I realized that I didn't know where I was or where I was going. The process would start all over again. Thus I would zig zag my way home. Looking back on it I suppose I took a more direct route than my stoned mind at the time recalled.

Years later I related the story to someone who told me that he could find God better when stoned. He laughed and nodded as if he had similar experiences. I then said "Do you really think that state of mind, where a person can't find his way home, where he doesn't know where he is, that he can find God more easily?"

My guilt was increasing all the time. I admit it could have been left over up bringing or that my acid prayer messing with with my mind, but I'd bet my life it was The Holy Spirit. (In fact, I did bet my life. It was a bet I could not loose. If I was wrong, and there was no God, life was a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." I would lose nothing. If there was a God, and I didn't believe, I would lose everything. If I did believe I would gain meaning, eternal significance, and eternal life. It don't take a statistician to figure them odds.) I began vomiting when I would get really stoned. I would rather have a broken arm than puke. But I kept smoking dope and blowing chunks.

About that time Russ paid me a visit. He asked me how I was doing and I told him not so good. I told him that I couldn't quit being drugs because everybody I knew used them. He said that was no excuse and he would introduce me to some christians that didn't use drugs. He took me to a girl named Deb. She took me to a christian commune and I had instant christian friends. I recommitted my life to Christ. They were all raging charismatics and I had a Baptist background. I would read 10 chapters of the Bible in the morning before I did anything. I would put a dove in the margin by every verse that mentioned The Holy Spirit.

About that time someone hired me to take a load of furniture to a city about 130 miles away. I stopped to see a friend I had smoked dope with years before. I knew I shouldn't go there but I figured I would not smoke if they offered. What harm was there in a friendly visit? I bragged about some killer weed we had in my home town. What harm was in talking about it? I was not going to smoke any. When I got back home I noticed his wife's purse in my truck. I would have to go back.

I couldn't go back with out bringing some of the dope I had been bragging about. I told God this would be the last time. I drove to the dealer's house. He had moved. I called a friend, John and he gave me the phone number. I called and they said they had some. I went there. They were not there. I didn't have any quarters left so I went to a place that was selling Christmas trees to get change. They did not have any change. So I went somewhere else to get change to call the dealer. I called him and he said I was on the wrong side of town. (In Cedar Rapids there can be identical addresses on different sides of town.)

I got back in my truck and started to drive away but my truck wouldn't shift out of first gear. I didn't have money to fix it so I told God if He was doing it, I would not get the weed if he didn't break my truck. It popped into neutral and I could shift to all of the gears.

I later learned that truck was prone to such problems but I usually had to get out and move the linkage by hand to get it to shift. I don't know if that was an incredible string of circumstances or if it was God preventing me from doing something I was too weak to not do. I didn't get the dope. When I got there they were not home so I left the purse where they could find it.

I spent most of my free time at Deb's. It didn't hurt that she was not that bad to look at. I had no chance with her but she let me hang about. I had been out of work for some time when I got a good job at a meat packing plant. About a month later I got a call from an old dope smoking buddy. He asked me if I wanted a job building cooling towers with his dad 1000 miles away. If I did I had to get to Surfside Texas by Monday. I didn't know what to do. I had just met Christian friends and found a good job. I think it was a Friday night. My shift started in about 4 hours. I drove to the commune and told them my dilemma. They stood around me laying hands on me and asking God to tell me what to do.

I was praying that God would make me do the right thing because I didn't know if he told me what to do, if I would do it. Slowly peace came over me. I felt that even if I messed up and picked the wrong one, God would be with me. My friends would have none of that idea. They insisted that God would give me a clear answer. I thought He had given me an answer. He would be with me where ever I went. I called the place where I worked and told them I was quitting.

I packed everything I thought I would need on my BMW and headed south. Drove 27 hours the last day and arrived just in time to go to work. It was me and the forman and the superintendent, we would go to various places where they needed a tower built or repaired and hire a crew out of the local union hall when we got there. My boss was really good, probably the best I ever had. I was afraid of heights. Not a good thing when you work on a tower. But my boss would not ask me anything that he would not do himself and I figured if he could do it, I could do it.

There was a chapel run by a baptist church in a nearby town that they operated as a beach ministry. I attended there. My forman, the father of my druggy friend, kept asking me if I liked my job when I would would go to church. I told him yes, and he would say something like "Well you better be careful." I always told him where I was going.

Once when he saw me getting ready he asked me where I was going and I said Wednesday night church. I asked him if he he would like to come. He later told me that he had believed I had been lying when I said I was going to church and that I was really going somewhere to use drugs. I can't blame him. I had used drugs countless times in his basement.

Surfside Chapel was the perfect place for someone in my stage of the christian pilgrimage. They had a rock band. They took me to Mardi Gras to do street witnessing. The pastor always had time for me.

The next stop was Colorado. I fellowshipped with I think Lutherans or Methodists there. While there I was bothered by something John, an old dope smoking buddy had said. My brother was in the hospital. He had a very bad motorcycle accident. We didn't know if he would live or not. My mom was working days and sitting late at night with him and praying for him. She was running herself ragged and I was getting stoned. When I expressed guilt about it John said that people who are prayed for have a higher recovery rate.

I later thought that had to come from somewhere. Perhaps he was just like me. Feeling guilty every time he got stoned. I started a letter to him but it seemed bunk so I never sent it.

It turned out we were starting another job and we had time for a layover at home, so I called him when we got there. He was not home. Though I didn't know it, John was out getting wasted. He was on Tetra hydro cannabinol, the active ingredient in marijuana. He was at a bar shooting pool. He said he felt the devil was telling him if he forgot about God he would give him anything. Just to prove it he would make him good at pool. Every ball seemed to go where he wanted it to go. He had not "peaked" yet, he was still getting higher. When it should have been leveling off, he was getting much higher. He started to get scared and went home. In bed he started to ask God to forgive him getting stoned, something (unknown to me) he did every night. Then he he thought that was no good because he did that every time and would go out and do the same thing the next day. Meanwhile he was still getting more and more wasted. He thought he felt his heart stop. He prayed that if he woke up in the morning that he would "get right with God."

I don't know if he was really getting higher all that time or if his heart really stopped or the drugs were playing tricks on him. I don't know if a demon was helping him at pool or if it was some combination of being relaxed and dumb luck. Most of all I don't know if it was God intervening in his life or an incredible string of circumstance.

John woke up to a ringing phone. It was me. I beat around the bush afraid that I would embarrass my self. He stopped me and said it was time to "get right with God."

I went I to his house where he told me the whole story. I took him to Deb. We spent the day together. I was afraid that, leaving him with raving Pentecostals, they would screw up his doctrine. My worries were for naught. I didn't figure on the Holy Spirit to guide him. John is married and is still serving Jesus. I left for the next job. Memphis.

This part falls under the category of kind of interesting. It has nothing to do with my testimony. I first met him when my boss called for laborers in Memphis. He was very tall, toothless and looked to be over 60. He was dressed in bib overalls and was working a big chew of Brown's Mule plug tobacco in his mouth. My boss looked up at him and asked his name. "Baby Wilson" he replied. My boss explained that he needed a real name. He said that he was the youngest so they called him Baby, to prove it he produced a drivers license.

The car he he drove to work he called "my tique." It was early 50's vintage. The driver's side had a racing stripe on it. It was made of tobacco stains starting from the front window and fading to the rear. I'm guessing if he ever had a passenger in the back seat, they kept the windows up. He said he was walking down a street and he saw a for sale sign on it. While he was looking it a man asked was he interested in it. Baby said "I can't afford it." "How much you got?" "$7." "Sold!"

He was frugal. When he came in for lunch he would take the gum out of his mouth and put it under the flap of the top pocket of his bibs. When he finished eating he would take the gum from where he had secreted it and commence to gumming it. I was afraid to look under that pocket flap. I didn't know if he had been chewing that gum for days or years.

I got a run down apartment that was very depressing to be in. Maybe that was a contributing factor. Or more likely it was just me being weak. There was a young man about my age living next door that I spent time with. He drank and smoked herb. I figured I was firm enough to resist temptation. He would smoke weed and I would watch. He always asked if I would join his debauchery and I always refused. At least I did refuse till he took me to an old guy that lived next door to him. He lit a joint and passed it to the old man. He took a hit. I had never seen someone over 30 smoke dope, maybe it was the idea that this was something special, that someone old enough to be my dad was handing me a joint but I took it. I don't remember if I only got stoned that time or multiple times.

He worked at a gas station for I suppose minimum wage. I saw myself 50 years hence smoking dope, working a dead end job and living in a run down depressing place like him. With out hope. Devoid of meaning. Bound for hell in a basket. I didn't see anyway out of it.

Shortly after that we went home for the weekend. I went to see Deb. Deb would always let me hang out with her but she never wanted to do anything I suggested. I asked her to come to Memphis with me and she said yes. I don't know if it was because she had time to kill before going to the army or if it was divine intervention on behalf of someone who was too weak to keep from falling. When she got there she thought it unseemly to stay with me and got a room at the Y I think . As was her wont, she didn't stay there long before she found a christian commune to fellowship at. She took me there and I started spending all my spare time there. Deb left Memphis shortly after that. I guess Jesus had something else for her to do somewhere else.

The commune went out street witnessing and passing out tracts. On one trip I handed a tract to a guy and he responded that if the tract was about marijuana that I could forget it. He said "God has given every green herb for man to use." I flippantly replied "Maybe he gave it to us to make rope." He looked stunned for a moment then blurted out "Satan has been deceiving me all these years." He told me that he was a drug dealer. He joined the commune later.

I don't remember the town I went to next but I think it was methodists that I fellowshipped with there. We did bible studies and drank too much coffee for a guy who had to get up in the morning and climb a tower.

In Pensacola I went to Brownsville Assembly of God. (They were very biblical then, long before they got into holy laughter or the Toronto blessing. In their services they would have at most 2 people speak in tongues and then someone would interpret just as Paul prescribed.) I hung out at Gulf Coast Teen Challenge. It was a group home for delinquent boys. The staff were all in their 20's like me and had worked their way from being troubled kids to staff. They and some folks from Brownsville Assembly would go to the beach and hand out tracts. They would spend sometimes 30 minutes asking God to tell them where to go when there were only 2 places they went usually. I thought that time would be better spent telling people about Jesus.

One of the junior staff in particular kept trying to get me to speak in tongues. I told him 1 Corinthians 12 and 13 says not everyone speaks in tongues and the better way was love, so that was what I was working on. (I am still working on it.) If God wanted me to have a spiritual gift He would give it to me and if not, He knew better than me what was good for me. I had read a book by Pat Boon where he said to make sounds and by faith believe they were coming from The Holy Ghost, but I thought that too risky. I had been fooled before and didn't to say something I had produced was of God.

I don't know if it was random or not, but I think God was exposing me to different types of christians to show me that the body of Christ, the church universal, was made up of many diverse parts, very different, each useful in different ways. As Paul says "Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are inspired by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single organ, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body."

There were many others places, but eventually I ended up in Lafayette Louisiana. I went to a really big Southern Baptist Church. I went on a Wednesday night and there were about 100 or more people there, if I remember correctly. I assumed that the head pastor of such a large church could not possibly pick me out as a visitor but he did. I also hung out at the Baptist Student Union at the university where I took a night class. They had a swamp on campus with alligators. At the student union I would throw chips off the deck and they they would eat them. The guy that ran the Baptist Student Union was also my sunday school teacher. It was my first introduction to scholarly christianity. We went through Revelations. It was the first time I had heard it taught that didn't involve what tomorrows headlines were going to be. And the first time I got the point of the book of Revelations. It was good preparation for my trail by fire that I would later go through at the U of I.

I went from there to Baton Rouge, where I was separated from my good boss and worked for the superintendent for that area. That taught me how good my first boss had been. Like Forest Gump that's all I am going to say about that. My old boss told me that if I ever met a girl that could make choked off biscuits I should marry her. There was a girl in my apartment complex that could so I did. We have 3 children and have been married about 40 years.

I moved back to Iowa to finish up my degree. We went to a Baptist church in Iowa City. It was very biblical, had excellent preaching, outstanding fellowship, and an excellent music program. Bill Schatcher went there. He was a jewish mentally handicapped old man that also went to synagog. They made a movie about him called "Bill" with Mickey Roony playing Bill. They didn't mention he was a christian. Big surprise.

I had a professor (Forrel) who was a liberal lutheran but a very committed christian. He once said that he could not fully understand christianity. Yet Bill with the IQ of a 4 year old could apprehend enough to be saved. What a far cry from a religion like Buddhism where it takes years of esoteric pursuit to achieve Nirvana. Somehow Christianity just seems right.

Dr. Forrel believed the Bible contained errors. Yet he believed in the virgin birth because the Bible said so. He believed in salvation by grace through faith because it was in the Bible. I could not come up with anything in the Bible that he did not believe. Yet he insisted that the Bible had errors. I think what was going on was, who was he to decide where they were. Indeed, who was anybody to decide? So you might as well take everything as true.

One time he was explaining salvation in class. He said it was like being on the 5th floor of a burning building. The firemen are holding a tarp and they tell you to jump. You jump but when you land you realize that you were pushed. A graduate student in the class said that God had done it, so the man had no choice. Forrel responded that he had jumped. The student said so the man did it, Forrel replied "He was pushed." The student didn't understand, but it made perfect sense to me. Forrel was willing to live with the not knowing because that was what the Bible said. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." "All that the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out."

My faith was challenged in most of my religion classes. One prof in classical and biblical literature claimed that you could not tell what the Old Testament said because it was written with no vowels. That would make reading a newspaper in Israel impossible because most of them are written that way. He also said some biblical authors used hallucinogens to see visions. When I asked another prof where that idea came from he said some guy was eating shrooms and said, "I bet this is how the prophets did it." That class was more frustrating than faith shaking because I saw students sucking it up like piglets on tits of a sow, without questioning a bit of it.

Other classes were a bit more of a challenge to my faith. I knew I was not as smart or educated as those that were challenging my faith, yet I could deal with much of their objections. I figured those I could not dispatch would fall as I gained understanding. All their nay-saying did was to build my faith because I knew that there were far smarter christians than I and they could demolish anything I heard in class. I had dealt with the best skeptics around, and an under-grad had debunked most of their arguments.

I graduated, cramming 4 years of study into 10, in 1980, and went to Denver Seminary. Seminary was more like really hard high school than college. At U of I they let you pick what you wanted to write a paper on. At seminary they gave 3 pages of instructions telling you exactly what was to be in a 5 page paper. It was culture shock. I was feeling very down one day. I was in a bathroom washing my hands when an old man asked how was it going. I don't know if the question was prompted by my demeanor or if he was just being friendly but it had not been going well and I told him so. He put his hand on my shoulder and told me to come see him if I couldn't handle it, and then walked out. I didn't know who he was. When I told a fellow student about it he said it could only be one man, Vernon Grounds. Dr. Grounds was semi-retired then and he is still semi-retired now. When they tried to kick me out of seminary for being a rebel I went to Dr. Grounds. He said the seminary needed rebels. He was a very busy man so sometimes I would have to join him for breakfast at 6 AM to talk to him but he always made time for me. He always made time for everybody.

I dropped out when I found out that seminaries were cranking out 20 people for every 1 that would eventually end up in full-time ministry. My friend Rob gave up being the head of a multi-million dollar medical supply company that his father wanted him to run. No church would have him. They could have had him for 10k a year. But instead churches wanted someone who had played football, a superstar that would preach what they wanted to hear rather than what they needed to hear. The church seems to believe that a pulpit comity is infallible. They are not. The apostle Paul would never get a job in an evangelical church today. He couldn't remember who he baptized, (1 Cor 1: 16) his preaching was not wise or eloquent, (1 Cor 2: 1) and he was in weakness and in much fear and trembling. (1 Cor 2: 3)

I think God knew what he was doing to call them all, but the churches would not stand up to their responsibility. We would have a massive revival if the church hired for a pittance all God has called instead of spending millions on impressive churches and making millionaire telivangelists.

I candidated at 1 church and preached a few times. I was a good preacher. But every seminary student thinks that and most of them are not. But I would not have made a good pastor. Didn't know it it at the time but I was too socially maladroit, very good at offending people without knowing why or how I had offended them. I had lousy judgement. Probably would have used dynamite as a sermon illustration eventually.

I ended up back in Iowa depressed and working maintenance at just over minimum wage. I went through a very dark period. They told me I had depression. But really I was terrified. I was horrified of sleep. I had been through that when I was about 7. I had horrible nightmares that a wolf or tiger was stalking me. I knew it was a dream, but I could not wake up. I was stuck there for 8 hours. Nothing to do but endure it. My mom would try to make me forget it by pantomiming a horse walking up the stairs. She meant well but it had the opposite effect. It let me know that nobody understood. I was in it alone. I would just have to endure it. As an adult it was worse. I knew I was trapped in my body for 8 hours of dreaming. The worst dreams were the mind numbingly boring ones. I had to go somewhere and I didn't have a car, or I was back in high school after graduating from college because I had missed credits. I would discover that I had been missing a class I was supposed to be going to. I was afraid of taking a bath and afraid of not taking one. Most of all, I was afraid of being afraid. I was actually hoping I had a brain tumor because that would mean I was not going nuts. I toyed with jumping in front of a train but knew it was up to God to determine when I was to come to him.

I called Dr. Grounds and he suggested some books. I had one by him that I read for the first time. In it he quoted an old hymn that was about the was about the peace of God. It said to pray for the peace that Peter had and then it said he was crucified. Grounds said God never promised a rose garden free of thorns. I took much comfort in Psalm 139 where it says "If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there." I indeed felt like I had made my bed in hell. God seemed to be telling me that though I would have to go through suffering, He would go through it with me.

I started taking long walks before I would go to bed. I would pray as I walked. The first part of the walk was dark in more ways than one. At first it felt like my prayers were not getting anywhere. But I kept praying out of desperation more than anything else. By the the midpoint of my walk I started feeling better. By the end I was singing. I sang......
"Just as I am though tossed about,
with many a conflict many a doubt,
fears within and fightings without,
oh lamb of God I come, I come."
and
"Lord of the mind when Legion brings insanity,
you're the Word that restores me once again."

I never felt closer to God as I did at the ends of those walks. They never failed to give me peace. When I got home I went straight to bed. I know that depression has mood swings. But you can't control them by doing something. God knew how much I could take and what I could not. I also learned how much my wife loved me. I could see the pain that my suffering was causing her.

I eventually became a foster parent and have been doing it till they stopped sending us kids. There are foster kid stories in my book as well as the testamony of one of my foster kids.

[Dan Zebiri]

The quran's lexicographical, documentary and historical origins in terms of verifiable facts are discussed openly and unapologetically by Dr.Christoph Luxenburg in his book:

'The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran'

and discussed here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Syr...g_of_the_Koran

and here:

http://books.google.com.my/books/abo...4C&redir_esc=y

http://www.amazon.com/The-Syro-Arama.../dp/3899300882

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk40dR8UpaU

Read, learn, enjoy and be enlightened, by an opened mind! Dan.

islam is inherently hateful BY ITSELF, due to its own, many commands to violence, supremacism and totalitarianism.

8:65 "O apostle! Rouse the believers to the fight. If there are twenty amongst you, patient and persevering, they will vanquish two hundred. If a hundred they will vanquish a thousand of the unbelievers, for these are a people without understanding."

9:5 "... fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war) ..."

9:14 "Fight them, and God will punish them by your hands, cover them with shame ..."

9:29 "Fight those who believe not in God nor the Last Day nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by God and his apostle nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth (even if they are) of the people of the Book, until they pay the Jizya [religious tax] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

47:4 "Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers, smite at their necks, at length when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly (on them) ... but if it had been God's will, he could certainly have exacted retribution from them (himself), but (he lets you fight) in order to test you, some with others. But those who are slain in the way of God, he will never let their deeds be lost."

61:4 "Truly God loves those who fight in His cause in battle array, as if they were a solid cemented structure."

Sura 9/29 - in RED above, has no violent provocation whatsoever against muslims. The only reason for wiping out the rights of these People of the Book here - IS THEY ARE NOT BELIEVERS OF MUHAMAD'S PROPOGANDA & teachings, the Jews and Christians, here, were not fighting muhammad or muslims physically in ANY WAY!

They were Just REFUSING TO BELIEVE in his teachngs and lies.

That alone, is a MEASURE OF THE INTOLERANCE, TYRANNY AND BIGOTRY of muhammad, islam and the quran,

The koran, on making true and false friendships:

'O you who believe (ie.muslims)! Take not My enemies and your enemies (i.e. disbelievers and polytheists) as friends, showing affection towards them, while they have disbelieved in what has come to you of the truth (i.e. Islam, the qur'an, and Muhammad), and have driven out the Messenger (muhammad) and yourselves, because you believe in Allah your Lord! If you have come forth to strive in My Cause and to seek My Good Pleasure - then take not these disbelievers and polytheists (as your friends). You show friendship to them in secret, while I am All-Aware of what you conceal and what you reveal. And whosoever of you (Muslims) does that, then indeed he has gone far astray, away from the Straight Path (islam).'

sura 60:1

In the verse above (60/1), both the opponents of islam who strive physically (in warfare) against muslims AND those who do not - BUT are only DISBELIEVERS in islam, are equally Allah's ENEMIES. So even secret friendship between the non-muslim unbelievers and the muslims are banned by islam.

The following verse tells muslims the same - NOT to be friends with non-muslims under any circumstance, but encourages false friendships with unbelievers (non-muslims) out of sheer necessity, if needed as a last resort:

'Let not the believers take the disbelievers as Auliya (supporters, helpers,friends) instead of the believers, and whoever does that will never be helped by Allah in any way, except if you indeed fear a danger from them.'

So Allah clearly says through the quran that non-muslims are unworthy of true or real friendships with muslims.

Khalifa makes this quite explicit:

'The believers (ie.muslims) never ally themselves with the disbelievers (ie.the non-muslims), instead of the believers. Whoever does this is exiled from GOD. Exempted are those who are forced to do this to avoid persecution..'

With such commands from the koran, and these are not mis-interpretations, the koran does indeed preach intolerance, explicit violence and supremacism.

Only IF you expunge / delete such verses OUT from the koran, then maybe, it can be said to be a non-violent book...

So, your insinuation against me is rather baseless too, barnasha.

[smaneck]

The quran's lexicographical, documentary and historical origins in terms of verifiable facts are discussed openly and unapologetically by Dr.Christoph Luxenburg in his book:.

Sorry, but someone writing under a pseudonym is hardly being open. We have no reason think this guy even has a doctorate.

[Dan Zebiri]

Well, if you think you have any theory that may even slightly approximate a rebuttal to Dr.Luxenburg's factual presentation in his book, try and present that, then.

Don't just try to attack his credentials by casting baseless doubts about them, which is one of your favorite tactics.

Address the points in his Book 'The Syro-Aramaic reading of the quran' systematically and thoughtfully, rather than just spouting more senseless attacks on his person , to try & smokescreen the issue of the quran's questionability and lack of originality.

Something which I doubt you can do convincingly!

Sorry, but someone writing under a pseudonym is hardly being open. We have no reason think this guy even has a doctorate.

[smaneck]

Don't just try to attack his credentials

He has no credentials to attack.

[Dan Zebiri]

So say you without any factual proof to back up yr bald claim.

Just try to refute the POINTS in Luxenburg's Book, IF you can, which you obviously cannot, much to your shame and de-merits....LOL!

[smaneck]

So say you without any factual proof to back up yr bald claim.

Just try to refute the POINTS in Luxenburg's Book, IF you can, which you obviously cannot, much to your shame and de-merits....LOL!

I don't know Syriac so I'm not really in a position to compare it to the Arabic but academics who are familiar with both languages insist that Luxemburg's own knowledge of Syriac appears to be limited to dictionaries and that he seems to be more familiar with modern Arabic than classical Arabic judging by the grammatical errors he makes. François de Blois, in the Journal of Qur'anic Studies calls this work "not a work of scholarship but of dilettantism." Even Patricia Crone who is infamous for writing the most popular alternate history of Islam called his work amateurish and full of mistakes. You can read her critique here:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/faith-e...ammed_3866.jsp

I don't particularly like Patricia Crone's work, but unlike Luxemburg, she is at least a recognized academic.

Angelika Neuwirth, a German scholar of Islam, describes Luxenberg's thesis - "The general thesis underlying his entire book thus is that the Qur'an is a corpus of translations and paraphrases of original Syriac texts recited in church services as elements of a lectionary." She considers it as "an extremely pretentious hypothesis which is unfortunately relying on rather modest foundations." Neuwirth points out that Luxenberg doesn't consider the previous work in Qur'an studies, but "limits himself to a very mechanistic, positivist linguistic method without caring for theoretical considerations developed in modern linguistics."

I could go on and on. I challenge you to find a single linguist in Syriac or Arabic who takes Luxemburg's work seriously.

[Dan Zebiri]

Yeah, you don't like Patricia Crone's and Luxemburg's works because obviously they debunk the authenticity, originality and historicity of your precious quran. Likewise, professor Gerd Puin's defining work on the Yemeni quran texts also, as they expose the dubious sources and faulty transmission of islam's text.

The more these scholarly researches come to light and are read & studied by thinking Muslims and Baha'is, more and more of them are abandoning Islam and bahaism for the real light of the truth. Alhamdulillah!



QUOTE=smaneck;3415792]I don't know Syriac so I'm not really in a position to compare it to the Arabic but academics who are familiar with both languages insist that Luxemburg's own knowledge of Syriac appears to be limited to dictionaries and that he seems to be more familiar with modern Arabic than classical Arabic judging by the grammatical errors he makes. François de Blois, in the Journal of Qur'anic Studies calls this work "not a work of scholarship but of dilettantism." Even Patricia Crone who is infamous for writing the most popular alternate history of Islam called his work amateurish and full of mistakes. You can read her critique here:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/faith-e...ammed_3866.jsp

I don't particularly like Patricia Crone's work, but unlike Luxemburg, she is at least a recognized academic.

Angelika Neuwirth, a German scholar of Islam, describes Luxenberg's thesis - "The general thesis underlying his entire book thus is that the Qur'an is a corpus of translations and paraphrases of original Syriac texts recited in church services as elements of a lectionary." She considers it as "an extremely pretentious hypothesis which is unfortunately relying on rather modest foundations." Neuwirth points out that Luxenberg doesn't consider the previous work in Qur'an studies, but "limits himself to a very mechanistic, positivist linguistic method without caring for theoretical considerations developed in modern linguistics."

I could go on and on. I challenge you to find a single linguist in Syriac or Arabic who takes Luxemburg's work seriously.[/QUOTE]

[Dan Zebiri]

Renowned islamicist scholar Dr.Gerd Puin's research into the Yemeni quran manuscripts are found here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...he-koran/4024/

featured in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/...on.theguardian

and his interview displayed on Youtube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNdvsLh128Q

All genuine truth-lovers should objectively peruse the above, be enlightened and learn of the true nature of the quran and islam.

wassalaam, Dan.

[smaneck]

Renowned islamicist scholar Dr.Gerd Puin's research into the Yemeni quran manuscripts are found here:

And where exactly does he suggest that Luxemburg's work should be taken seriously? Or have you conveniently changed the subject?

[Dan Zebiri]

Their works all concur that the quran's claims to divine originality are in fact dubious and it's historical authenticity can't be established with any measure of certainty.

[smaneck]

Their works all concur that the quran's claims to divine originality are in fact dubious and it's historical authenticity can't be established with any measure of certainty.

Hmmm. Sounds more like the Bible.

[Dan Zebiri]

Fat chance Susan. Except that all three studies and researchers above weren't talking about the Bible but all point to the dubious nature and questionable character of the quran and it's history.

Your bubble just burst again..hmmmm.

Hmmm. Sounds more like the Bible.

[smaneck]

Fat chance Susan. Except that all three studies and researchers above weren't talking about the Bible but all point to the dubious nature and questionable character of the quran and it's history.

Your bubble just burst again..hmmmm.

Correct. If we had been talking about the Bible there would have been 3000 scholars talking along those lines instead of just three, only one of whom has decent credentials.

[Dan Zebiri]

We aren't talking about the Bible here, but scholarly research that debunks your quran so deal with that, and dont try to sneakily change the subject again. Also I doubt your numbers. The Quran and Muslims do not tolerate dissent and criticism of it. The Muslim scholars and thinkers who critiqued it, paid with their lives or fled to the West for safety.

Western scholars have taken up the critical study of the quran and they are not scared to publish such research. Their numbers are much large and growing.