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Wasn't this about biblical wisdom, rather than knowledge amongst educated medieval people? According to the bible, the earth is still flat. It also has four corners, "ends", and more.

Because it can quickly lead to massive numbers of people acting like total buffoons, damaging themselves and their surroundings (going from driving animals to extinction during a winter flu epidemic because some guru said 500 years ago that it's balls are good against sneezing, all the way up to destroying an entire state's economy because clearly Krishna has ordained it so - just look at the stars !).

Idiocy in large groups isn't funny when it has real consequences for everyone else, and it quickly does : in Afghanistan a few dozen doctors were executed for refusing to treat infections with camel urine*. here's some western muslim defending this. This would be a good laugh, except they kill people for this. Stating that camel urine does not cure diseases apparently is intolerant in the extreme "to muslim feelings". After all - stating that is stating that allah lies.

* the advantage of using urine to clean wounds is that when you're totally cut off from civilization and fresh water, urine is about the only relatively sterile liquid you're going to find. It is probably better to wash open wounds with urine than with water from a pond in the jungle or oasis, or using seawater. Using water from a flowing river, however, is *much* better (since urine is poisonous in large quantities). And yes, in the middle east 1500 years ago you weren't very likely to find flowing water, and of course "somehow" allah was not actually able to see that outside of his little desert conditions were different. (I wonder how that is possible, unless of course, allah did not exist outside of the imagination of the paedophile prophet, and thus didn't know anything said paedophile never knew about ...)

Seems related to the Paul being the anti-christ theory that some are fond of. Definitely an interesting line of thought you can continuing adding on other points to (there's plenty out there, going several directions).

Isaiah 40:22 "He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in."

This says the Earth is a circle, not round. This passage suggests the earth is a flat circle, not a round sphere. Next example please.

http://answering-christianity.com/earth_flat.htm

You know there is a reason those muslims you know live in the west.

Some do. They came here for the same reason Catholics from Mexico or Buddhists from China did: economic opportunity.

Some of the Muslims I know are from South Africa and still live there; my karate school has several branches there. Islam in South Africa is rapidly growing; it is seen as an alternative to Christian churches that supported apartheid. (Does that mean that all Christians supported apartheid? Of course not.)

Why don't you seek out the truth ?

Why don't you? I'm sure it saves on mental exertion to assume all Muslims think and feel the same way, but bigotry is no way to get to know the world.

Google "asma bint marwan" for an introduction, but she's hardly alone.

Whether true or false - at least some contemporary Muslims say the story is an outright fabrication - the story is utterly uninformative of the attitudes of any given contemporary Muslim.

I suggest you go read some Rumi and relax.

quran 5:51 any muslim who is friends with any infidel is himself an infidel, unless this is for deception...this rule implies that "true" friendship between a muslim and any non-muslim carries the death penalty in islam

Exodus 22:18: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

Does this mean all Christians and Jews want to kill Wiccans? Thankfully, no.

Some Hindu use "cow protection" as an excuse to murder non-Hindus who eat beef, and Hindu fundamentalists have managed to get "anti-conversion" laws passed.

During WWII, Japanese Zen monasteries raised money to build fighter planes.

Name a religion, and you can find incidents of violence in it. That does not mean that all followers of that religion support those teachings; to think otherwise is nothing more than bigotry.

That's an interesting reply, and different from what I expected. I wonder how inaccuracies in the scripture will convince you that the whole god thing is a scam, but you said it so let's roll with that. (Then again, Paul the Apostle wrote to his friends in Corinth that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, their faith was in vain, so you follow him in that.)

I'm by far not a bible expert, so I'll pick one where I happen to be a little familiar with the topic: The gospels.

It's very common knowledge that the four gospels included in the NT were hand-picked from a much larger number. Several of the non-canonical gospels include versions of Jesus' life story that differ considerably. The total number of gospels is quite impressive.

The rediscovery of the gospel of Judas sheds considerable doubt on the objectivity of the canonical gospels. It makes it clear that they are witness reports, and from witnesses with limited information.
Also, remember that there are no non-christian sources from the time who document the resurrection, which - if it happened - was certainly newsworthy. A list of authors who we would expect to mention this event can be found at the end of this article, which also gives evidence near the start that at least the earliest gospel was altered after the fact.

There's also a longer discussion about the resurrection thing, and I'll leave the topic with that because I wanted to write about the gospels.

Regarding altering of the gospels, christians don't call it that way, the proper term appears to be "harmonizing". It's been going on for a long time, too. this article puts it nicely:

"To
bring the different stories into agreement, the church often modified
or even rewrote the scriptures. Tatian, a disciple of Justin, tried to
solve the problem by writing the "Diatessaron", a composite of the
stories of matthew, mark, luke and john. "

It also contains the following claim, unfortunately without mentioning the source:

""the most radical alterations", writes Kronos, "date from the
nicene Council and were motivated by the understanding between
Pope Damasus I and Emperor Constantine. It was on this occasion
that the oldest Gospels, Notably the Gospel of the Hebrews(the
original Gospel of Mathew) were declared to be hidden (apokruphos
== Apocryphal). Furthermore additions, ommissions, and alterations
were made in the four remaining Gospels. St Jerome, who had been
commissioned to translate them into latin, was surprised by this."

So let's move away from the sceptics, here is the Catholic Encyclopedia, and it says:

"Another factor which contributed to the alleged distortion of the Gospel story was the necessity imposed on primitive Christianity of altering, if it were to last, the conception of the Kingdom of God preached by Jesus in person. On His lips, it is said, the Gospel was merely a cry of "Sauve qui peut" addressed to the world which He believed to be about to end. Such was also the persuasion of the first Christian generation. But soon it was perceived that they had to do with a world which was to last, and the teaching of the Master had to be adapted to the new condition of things. This adaptation was not achieved without much violence, done, unconsciously, it is true, to historical reality, for the need was felt of deriving from the Gospel all the ecclesiastical institutions of a more recent date. Such is the eschatological explanation propagated particularly by J. Weiss, Schweitzer, Loisy; and favorably received by Pragmatis

At least the Quran has the scientific facts straight. Google for "Quran and Science" and read the rebutals for and against. Most comprehensive http://www.answering-islam.de/Main/Quran/Science/i ndex.htm and http://www.answering-christianity.com/sci_quran.ht m. Both links are interesting and you'll spend allot of time reading them, if you like science and like to understand different perspectives.

Is that enough of a Genesis of Christianity for you?

Actually, it's a bit much.

I was talking about this part, which hasn't even been corroborated by any works not produced by christians: A guy named Jeshua, a follower of [the majority of] the beliefs of the Essenes, preached that people should love and forgive one another, and that rabbinical law was overly, unnecessarily strict. He was nailed to a cross for his trouble because his teachings were a threat to the established social order.

I was also talking about this part, whose effects we can see all around us: After his death, Jesus' message was twisted and warped and many things which he did not say were attributed to him. A book about his message was constructed from the hebrew bible and from the writings of four principal authors. Three of them more or less have consensus, while the fourth and most prolific author, in whose works are all of the "mystical" or unexplainable acts of Jesus, wrote very differently about basically everything, causing many biblical scholars to believe that this fourth author - Paul/Saul of Tarsus - effectively railroaded christianity for his own ends or the ends of another who convinced him to or coerced him into doing so.

Gladly. Please provide me with some links and I'll look into it. http://www.answering-christianity.com/ -- there's a whole section dedicated to the whole issue of slavery here, proofs included.

Do you have any proof? I watch/listen to Let the Quran Speak regularly. The presenter, who probably has a firmer grasp of the Quran than you stated (and backed up using surahs) that Islam does not condemn slavery.

look at the link above under the slavery section for plenty of proof. islam abolished slavery in stages. the site will give you more detail with proofs from the quran and sunnah. why did it abolish it in stages as opposed to just outright saying, "don't own slaves?" -- because look back to the US and prohibition for example -- miserable failure. people broke the law, people smuggled alcohol, etc. Islam handles many of these things in a step by step basis, in stages. the issue of slavery was one of them, the issue of alcohol was another. the mere fact that the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) would make the one who gives athan, a very honorable task, to be Bilal (RA) (who would also be the one to climb the holiest house of Allah, the ka'bah) is a huge indication in and of itself of islam's position on slavery. there are many examples in hadiths about the high state that Bilal (RA) was placed into, i can provide these to you if you wish.

Do a google search for slavery Saudi Arabia and you will find nothing but support for my argument, including from renowned organizations such as Human Rights Watch.

do a google search on terrorism, or women's rights and islam, or polygamy, etc - you'll find millions of sites that tell you "islam orders people to kill non muslims. islam degrades women. islam says this and that and the other." look into those sites and who wrote them - you'll find that they are people who have no knowledge about islam, no knowledge about the intricate details of the prophet muhammad (saw)'s life, and no knowledge of the arabic language. this is the unfortunate part - many people just want to make blind assumptions without actually looking and studying. those who do research unfortunately often get their answers from a wrong place and thus are lead to an incorrect understanding of things.

true muslims who know their religion, true muslim scholars, etc know these matters that people who don't like islam use to try to give islam a bad picture.

also, one last thing - you should note that saudi arabia does not mean islam. islam is not a religion for arabs, it is not a religion for the arabian penninsula, and it is not a religion for saudi arabia. islam is a religion for all of mankind. it may have come down to the Prophet while he was in arabia at the time. it may have come down to an arabic speaking nation in arabic tongue. but its a religion that was meant for all of mankind and all of humanity, and does not single out or put one person above another except by their level of piety and devotion to God.

If I was hiring coders, designers or marketers I think that piercings and outrageous tats would be s sign of 'out of the box' thinking (well, more of a indicator if the possibility that the modified one was an original thinker, they might just be a following sheep, but at least they are following something besides Bschool clonishness.)

Actually it's the Bible that says so - and the Bible was written by man, not by God. (admittingly, this was taken from an Islam site, but this same evidence can be found elsewhere.) The old testament was passed via oral tradition many many times before being recorded. Most of the new testament (with the exception of Matthew, Mark, Luke, etc) was recorded in the same manner.

Let's see about homosexuality... Hmmm, nothing in the bible says it's wrong. In fact here is a site that addresses it:

McChurch.org

And another:

In-my-opinion.org

Then let's take a look at what else the Bible tells us:

Numbers 31:17 "Now kill all the boys [innocent kids]. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."

Revelation 2:22-23 "So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.

Psalm 137:8-9 "O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us- he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."

Isaiah 13:16 "Whoever is captured will be thrust through; all who are caught will fall by the sword. Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives ravished."

Please open your bible to 2 Kings, 2:23-24

23: And he (Elisha) went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
24: And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them." Damn children, making fun of a bald guy!

Now turn your books to Exodus:
12:29 And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.
12:30 And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead.

It sounds to me like God really hated kids!

See http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/int/long.htm l for more light reading!

the last I heard, polygamy was not part of the established Christian denominations

Hmmm, maybe they need to review their Old Testament?

(Not a Mormon or Christian, but I identify as polyamorous.