The Capture of Christianity

Re: # 132
kaal, why does someone born in a muslim faimly or with a muslim name has to defend his believes?
there are piles of shit everywhere and you residing in one
why are you poking your finger in the other one?

Murad bhai, why don't you simply write a few articles establishing that Islam - the real, original, by itself, not how it is understood or practised - is a man-made religion, as you say, no more or less divine than Hinduism or any form of animism or any shaka-laka religion? May be, call them Islam Unwarnsished.

That will very much convince the skeptics that you believe what you say you believe (contrary to your work). Right now, Murad bhai, you will agree that all your work is indistinuishable from what any Muslim will write, and rightfully so. The difference is that Muslims claim to be believers, and you do not.

Seriously, write a few articles, or at least one, establishing, for instance, that Prophet Muhammad was no Prophet of Allah, or that Quran is a book written by some humans, or that Islam - the original, true form of it - is a man-made religion. It's a serious request, given that all your work is about questioning religious myths.

Re: # 130

... it is because of that 'sin' you can't be the one exposing the 'gobbledigook' for what it is!!

Re: # 129; murad sahib

the fact that your name 'sounds like' a 'muslim' one is sufficient for you to be 'classed' as such ... tell me something I don't know!

Re: # 128

I completely fail to understand anything remotely islamist about my work, life or thoughts.

I was never brought up as a muslim and do not like any religion. I believe in an undefinable cosmis creator and consider all religions as man made institutions that stand between man and god.

Yaar, Pinku, you provide too much inforamtion. It's hard to keep up with you. :)

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Murad Bhai, your general beliefs, as stated in #127, do not reflect your life's work (and vice versa). Your life's work is unabashedly Islamist, your claims secularist. It's like the work of those great sufis who spent their lives singing the praises of Prophet Muhammad, warning everyone about the problems in unislamic religions, and claimed to love and respect all people and all religions.

Re: # 117

Dear Sattar2.

I am very glad that the discussion is getting back to the subject of the article.

Neither I or anyone can do more than tease tiny bits of evidence from a 2000 year old `cold case'. I do not want to be an iconoclast but am personally very interested in the process of how mythology took command of the facts of history to make an inquiry into the possible facts of history heresy or even blasphemy.

All religious and spiritual ideas influence all the others and the influence of Buddhism on Jesus cannot be denied as a real possibility... but it is short of being a provable fact. He was even mocked and called a sophist who Alexander's Mcedonians described as the detatched believers in the Great Sophie from whom the word Sufi was also probably derived. There are no final words to history and many interesting possibilities.

I do not personally attribute blind respects for any prophet. What made a prophet sacred? Who decided that the dreams or experiences of any mortal human were divine? If the Old Testament is to be believed many prophets like Abraham had many human failings like passing off his beautiful wife Sarah as his sister and benefitting getting her married to the Pharaoe.

I believe that everyone has the right to explore this terrain and resist the efforts of the orthodox, of all schools of belief, who want us to blindly believe myths like the ressurrection, virgin birth, The Prophets night ride to Jerusalem, etc., as a matters of faith that cannot be examined.

Your faithful troll will give you some more info to think about, compare it against what you got from other stores..…

google Philostratus and Applonious and read about them from philosophical or historical resources (as per your taste and understanding of reliability), check how important or well known they are….


check following link and find reference to Brahminns and India, sample is given below
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/aot/laot/laot04.htm

CHAPTER XVIII
AFTER this he formed the scheme of an extensive voyage, and had in mind the Indian race and the sages there, who are called Brahmans and Hyrcanians;

Now troll speak..
While none of these things are guaranteed to be true, but not all of them are equally absurd.

Christians hate name of Philostratus as well as name of Applonious cause it hurts them by making Jesus less than divine and more close to Hinduism than they can believe, but both of them are historical people (much more than Jesus). Christians have tried to destroy books written by Philostratus and have tried hard to discredit him by writing materials on him and applonious and by creating lot of confusion (religious style logic, refute something, use the same thing that you refuted to prove something else:-)).


As you will see he was an important person during that time in Greece. He was born in 170CE, so close to Christ, never mentions anything like Christ and he belongs to the famous Pythagorean school of philosophy. It is almost impossible to assume that if Christ lived and was anywhere close to as important a person as is being told, in 100-200AD than this guy would not have known it. That is what gives credence to the story that Christ was based on life of Appolonious and Christianity is based on what Applonious said.

Here is a link from wikipdeia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonius_of_Tyana

Some copy paste from that link…
[[
[edit] Journey to India
Philostratus devoted two and a half of the eight books of his Life of Apollonius (1.19-3.58) to the description of a journey of his hero to India. According to Philostratus' Life, en route to the Far East, Apollonius reached Hierapolis Bambyce (Manbij) in Syria (not Nineveh, as some scholars believed), where he met Damis, a native of that city who became his lifelong companion. Pythagoras, whom the Neo-Pythagoreans regarded as an exemplary sage, was believed to have travelled to India. Hence such a feat made Apollonius look like a good Pythagorean who spared no pains in his efforts to discover the sources of oriental piety and wisdom. As some details in Philostratus’ account of the Indian adventure seem incompatible with known facts, modern scholars are inclined to dismiss the whole story as a fanciful fabrication, but not all of them rule out the possibility that the Tyanean actually did visit India.[15]

On the other hand, there seemed to be independent evidence showing that Apollonius was known in India. In two Sanskrit texts quoted by Sanskritist Vidhushekhara Bhattacharya in 1943[16] he appears as "Apalūnya", in one of them together with Damis (called "Damīśa"). There it is claimed that Apollonius and Damis were Western yogis who held wrong Buddhist views, but later on were converted to the correct Advaita philosophy.[17]
]]

DM,

... I glanced through it; will check back later. This is how I sum it up … moksha is the feeling right before %*^$#... ; nirvana, right after. Does this fly?

And don’t feel bad about inadequate knowledge of Abrahmic faith; I can’t make head and tail of Hinduism either. Btw, kaal bhai seems perpetually upset; it's always something or the other. What gives (scratching-head icon) ???

sattar:

I opened a thread on this topic on UP under "Hindus, please". You might find it interesting.

DM, may be so … but I try to avoid over-interpreting such terms (reincarnation and nirvana).

It is tricky figuring out what Buddha meant if/when he alluded to “reincarnation� and “nirvana�, how these terms were interpreted, and what meaning and connotation they have assumed over time. Instead of assigning precise, literal meaning to these terms, I’d much rather leave room for interpretation in an effort to better appreciate the underlying message.

sattar#120:

Thanks for that elaboration. Obviously, my knowledge of Abrahmic faiths is still quite inadequate. But I think that anyone who makes claim about the reincarnation of Buddha does not know the meaning of Nirvana.

Sattar bhai, there is a great deal of similarity between Buddhism and Christianity (of the New Testament). How and why, we don't know. But the rest of your post sounds perfectly silly. But you are a believer, and believers are at liberty to believe whatever they fancy. So there is no problem there.

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We should be more concerned about the Islamist rationalist and idol breaker brother Murad ji's efforts.

Murad ji, has your lifelong research shed any light on a couple of simple questions?:

(1) Was Muhammad really a prophet of any kind? Does your research prove or disprove that prophethood? If you have proven that prophethood, were you able to confirm that he was the last Prophet of Allah? If you disproved that prophethood, what sort of a man do you think he was for making such claims? Would it not be politically better for people to reject Islam and Muslim identity altogether, both being based on basic falsehoods?

(2) Was Mirza bhai of our Punjab really a reincarnation of Mr Jesus? What does your reasearch reveal about the basic charater of Mr. Mirza bhai of Punjab? About about the character of people who consider this individual their prophet?

There is so much more one could ask about the individual life histories of both, but your rationalist and idol-breaking opinions on these two simple issues would be most helpful to your admiring Indian audience.

DM (#118),

I left out the details to simplify things … following may explain more …


- Jesus claimed to be the awaited prophet for the Jews, but was vehemently opposed by the Jewish clergy. According to earlier Biblical accounts, execution of a person proves that he is an imposter and lacks divine support. This partly explains why the Jewish clergy was adamant in having Jesus crucified, since the painful and humiliating death would prove him false.

Jesus’ survival from crucifixion against all odds, supports his claim of prophethood. His Messianic claims would be further strengthened by accounts, if any, of him being accepted and held in esteem by other Tribes, people. All this would suggest that adherents of Jewish faith likely rejected the true Messiah … as they await his appearance to this day.


- Mainstream Muslims believe that as the hour of crucifixion drew near, Allah bodily lifted Jesus to the heavens. Ahadith about “return of Jesus� are hence interpreted to suggest physical descent of the same Jesus from the skies. This interpretation further supports the “last prophet� belief: Allah will resend an old prophet that He lifted and saved for latter days, since no new prophets can appear.

Accounts of Jesus NOT ascending to heavens pose a dilemma. If Jesus did not ascend and is dead and buried, how can he descend from skies in flesh and blood? Furthermore, could the ahadith about “return of Jesus� suggest Allah raising a new prophet who will bear spiritual resemblance to Jesus?


- Similarities, somewhat striking, are found between the teachings and accounts of Jesus (Gospels) and Buddha (Bashara?). One explanation is that Jesus in Kashmir was accepted as spiritual reappearance of Gautama Buddha, and later, as the followers recorded Buddhist teachings, biographical details of Gautama Buddha and Jesus inadvertently got mixed up.

This interpretation is in harmony with the findings of Nicholas Notovich and Holger Kirstin (European researchers who think that Jesus traveled to Kashmir). Furthermore, googling “Jesus and Buddha� brings up some interesting links. Each web-site has a different take on this issue. But if there is some truth to the content, it makes for an interesting viewpoint.

I don’t know about the temple paintings … but admittedly, there are points and counterpoints to every interpretation.

One can only say, "Jesus Christ!!" reading some of this stuff here.

And this is what Murad Bhai, our Islamic rationalist and self-appointed idol-breaker believes!!

Does Murad bhai exemplify the nature of "Islamic rationality" and "idol-breaking" in general, or only radiate his own uniquely Islamist issues?

I suspect it is the latter. I KNOW Muslims who are believers and infinitely more rational.

Sattar#117:

I have problems accepting your analysis even though I do not belong to any of the three (four if you count Ahmadis separately) religions.

First, how does Jesus surviving his crucifixion challenge Jewish claims of his being a false Messiah? Second, how does his dying a natural death invalidate the possibility of his descending from the Heavens sometimes in the future?

Thirdly, Buddha attained Nirvana which means that he freed himself from "avagavan", the cycle of life and death, so he could not reincarnate. Yes, the Buddhist temples do show paintings of his previous incarnations (Boddhisatta) but not any after he attained Nirvana.