When did you accept God in your life, or realize you did not believe in him?

what do you mean by "valid"?

 

My point exactly, by valid, I mean the content written in it is fact, as most Christians believe. How do we know the Koran isn’t the real bible? It's fairly similar.

 

How do you define "solid proof", as it would be found in any text? Did any non-mathematical book you ever used in school ever offer "solid proof", or was it written assuming the reader would accept its contents at face value? What makes a textbook any more valid than any other book?

 

The Qur'an was written about 500 years after the last book in the New Testament, and it reads almost like a Cliff's Notes version of the Old Testament (from what I've read so far). It makes constant reference to it, yes, but the Qur'an is one man's revelation with no corroborating witnesses whatsoever, as I recall. Not a favorable comparison, really.

 

According to the Koran, the angel Gabriel gave the Koran to Muhammed because the bible had been incorrectly translated over the years, that's the reason for the almost complete plagirising of the Bible. Couldnt Muhammed's version be correct, and Christians have been studying an incorrectly translated bible for the past 2000 years?

 

Maybe, but as Muhammad could neither read nor write, I doubt he wrote it. He dictated it to his scribes. He probably used stories he heard from Jewish and Christian travelers. These writings circulated all over the Islamic world. In 650 CE Uthman ibn Affan formed a committee and pretty much did what the the Council of Nicea and King James did for the Christian bible. He put together the basic Quran.

 

It's possible, but highly unlikely. There are a couple of things to remember here -- one, it's basically Mohammad's word against every prophet in Israel's history, plus every one of Jesus' disciples, not to mention all the evidence (cultural, archeological, psychological, historical) in support of Christianity. Two, Mohammad's audience was the decendants of Esau, who got screwed out of his rightful inheritance by his brother and consequently banished (more or less) to a nomadic existence in the desert, while Jacob's line (Israel) lived it up in "the land of milk and honey". The bitterness of that history is still evident today. What I'm saying is, Mohammad had a serious motive to write a new holy book that painted Israel in a particularly poor light, and at the same time made the descendants of Esau look like the chosen ones they should've been from the beginning.

 

The difference is negligible. Some of the New Testament (including the gospels of Mark and Luke) were dictated. That doesn't take that much away from its integrity, although having corroborating evidence (i.e. the New Testament Gospels) would help.

 

Yes, I do accept text books at face value, but my math books never told me that the Pythagorean Theorem created the universe. Or that the Pythagorean Theorem performed miracles like pulling the sun closer to the earth (I think that was Elijah?) or that it would rapture those who believed in it and execute a 7-year tribulation for those who didn’t. There's a big difference between a book full or formulas developed by mathematicians, and a book full of incredible stories written by people 2000 years ago with nothing to back it up. By proof, I want evidence of some of those stories. Where's Noah's ark? Or like I said, if Moses goes into such detail to describe how God created the universe, and the Earth, and all the people and animals in it, why not go further and talk about things like atoms and cells and subjects Moses couldn't possibly have been able to even fathom back then unless God told him to put them in there.

 

That's why I excluded math books from the comparison. Math deals mostly in absolutes that can be proven easily enough. But when we start getting into history, politics, philosophy, social studies, etc., the "proof" doesn't come so easily, does it? I acknowledge that where, exactly, George Washington led his troops across the Delaware is all but irrelevant compared to the claims of the Bible -- I'll give you that. But just as there is historical evidence to back up the claims of any history book, there is evidence in support of not only the context, but the claims of the Bible.

The remains of Noah's ark rest on a mountain in Turkey. The Discovery channel and the History channel have both aired numerous documentaries featuring testimonies from archeologists and locals who have made the journey up the slopes, as well as old KH-11 satellite photos that show a structure buried under the snow cap that has no earthly business being up there.

As far as things God revealed to Moses about creation, there weren't even words in that ancient culture for physics and/or microbiology. To reveal such a thing would be pointless. But how about the order of creation, which has since been supported by modern science? For example, the sun is likely older than anything else in our solar system; marine life is older than land based life; animals have existed longer than mankind. Are these things a nomadic shepherd would even be able to figure out on his own? Highly doubtful, wouldn't you agree?