Conversion to Islam: "the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian's journey"?

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  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    Golden Key wrote: »
    Russ wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    I have a cricket chum of Pakistani origin who is a muslim. We agree that we worship the same God. I do not wish to follow his faith but I don't say that he is wrong

    Nor he you. It's not polite is it?

    That tolerance seems wholly admirable, and I would not wish either of you to approach your religion in any other way.

    And yet I wonder whether this involves some implicit acceptance that the differences are cultural and non-essential. And thus optional.


    CS Lewis said that it's the people at the center of each faith who have the most to say to each other. IOW, however their religions might be different, they have things in common. People who are loosely, culturally part of a faith (per CSL) don't have that shared coherence. Or something like that.

    I think the Ship, just for example, might disprove CSL on that one. Because we have some fairly in-depth discussions between lapsed, non-believing erstwhile members of a given faith, and members-in-good-standing, about the faith itself.

    (Or does Lewis mean people who are not only lapsed, but basically indifferent to and even ignorant of the faith and its tenets? If so, I'd probably agree. There's nothing more painful than attempting theological discussion with someone whose knowledge of the arguments doesn't extend much beyond "Christians say God is good, but then why is there so much suffering in the world?")
  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate
    stetson:

    Probably more your second option. IIRC, he didn't specifically state, but AIUI "liberal" meant "didn't believe much of everything". FWIW: I don't think he was saying that liberals and more mainstream Christian don't have *anything* to say to each other. More that, say, strongly believing and practicing Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Orthodoxen, etc. have more to say to each other than to the folks who don't pay much attention to strongly believing and practicing.

    As to your painful theological discussion: IMHO, that question of theirs is one of the most important and basic ones there is. People have been wrangling about it forever. (Not just since Christianity started.) And many people avoid religious argument and discussion because a) they find it can be fraught; and b) it's simply neither how they work nor what they want.
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