Pearl - May 09, 2024


RELIGION shouldn't serve PERSONAL INTEREST ｜ THE SITDOWN ｜ @MohammedHijab


Episode Stats

Length

7 minutes

Words per Minute

199.14482

Word Count

1,568

Sentence Count

32

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I speak with a religious scholar from the University of St. Thomas Aquinas. We discuss the differences between Christianity and Islam, the evolution of Christian and Islamic beliefs, and the role of religion in the modern world.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 i think look religion is a way that you consider yourself when you die right you're going to have
00:00:08.240 some kind of a log that you hold on to uh when you die right so religion is like the log that
00:00:15.280 you hold on to in a sea or an ocean after you die and you want the right one to keep you afloat okay
00:00:21.440 you're not looking when you're looking at religion you shouldn't be looking at that which is going
00:00:25.680 going to serve your interests it's like religion is not a butler like is here to help you and serve
00:00:30.540 you uh in that way when someone is looking for religion effectively what they're trying to do
00:00:36.280 is look for truth and sometimes the truth can be something which people don't like um and so the
00:00:43.920 first thing i would not just for you but for anybody who's looking for truth it doesn't matter
00:00:49.500 how different or similar that truth looks or how weird or strange or it may appear if
00:00:57.540 the truth is coming from a particular direction and it is the truth then one if one is sincere
00:01:03.200 then they'll follow the truth now islam look i if you look at catholicism is christianity
00:01:09.640 obviously christianity is broken into different sects and catholicism and protestantism are the
00:01:15.060 two major sects. The third one being Orthodox Christianity.
00:01:20.640 Orthodox, like the only other one, I think really hasn't gone off the
00:01:24.180 rails.
00:01:24.620 It's probably more so than Catholicism, by the way.
00:01:26.920 Oh, yeah, I would agree. They're like a little bit more strict, I guess.
00:01:31.900 Well, I mean, once again, this is my observation as a Muslim. I think that
00:01:37.500 Orthodox Christians, whether they're Orientalist or Oriental Orthodox, like
00:01:41.000 in Egypt, where I'm originally from, they have Oriental Orthodox Church,
00:01:44.340 whether they're Greek Orthodox or whether they're Russian Orthodox or whatever kind of Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox or the above they focus heavily on basically how the church fathers done things and how so traditions are a big part of their religion, more so I would say than Catholicism, although Catholicism does obviously believe in that as well.
00:02:05.140 well we changed a bunch of stuff and i found this out the other day we changed a bunch of stuff in
00:02:09.300 the 70s yeah oh i figured you seem like the scholar sounds like you you probably know more
00:02:16.340 than me in the 70s i mean i don't know exactly what you're talking about catholicism yeah they
00:02:20.660 changed they used to not let women be altar servers oh sure that they changed i guess it
00:02:26.100 used to always be um latin mass and i guess they switched that i think i was way before but i mean
00:02:32.260 the thing is there's a few things like one of the major ones is the theory of evolution
00:02:36.660 now that's i mean you've had you've had different uh the opinions on that obviously what the pope
00:02:42.660 says is from god uh in catholicism but obviously he has to say in his magisterium he can't just say
00:02:48.980 walking around and so that's one thing you'll find that many things that catholics believe
00:02:53.300 in the past they don't no longer believe for example there was a big controversy in the fourth
00:02:57.540 century with augustine because he was he believed that a child that hadn't been baptized a baby
00:03:03.540 that hadn't been baptized would go to hell and this was the catholic belief up until quite
00:03:09.060 recently and then they changed that as well so there is good evidence of a change in verdicts
00:03:15.060 and pronouncements and stuff like that in catholic faith but more so i would say with the whole of
00:03:18.500 christianity the main thing that's been changed is the bible itself you know oh yeah yeah so this
00:03:23.300 is what we would say because you were saying you mentioned something key which is that you like
00:03:28.660 things staying the same all right or something a proof of something being true is that it stayed
00:03:33.380 the same now if you look at the beliefs of the christians from the first century to the third
00:03:38.980 century the fourth century that hasn't stayed the same there's a clear development in the
00:03:43.860 christology and the theology of the christian people so i have a question would the christian
00:03:48.420 because this is what happens to me sometimes people will come on my show and they'll say things
00:03:53.860 yeah and then no no no no no but i'm saying like then now obviously i i i would you say
00:04:00.260 you're a religious scholar or like you at least debated a lot i'm not comparative religion
00:04:04.740 um so i do comparative religion okay yeah i i could just state the position of islam if that
00:04:10.820 makes better sense for you guys so instead of speaking about christianity no no no you can
00:04:15.060 That's not what I was going to say.
00:04:16.020 I was going to say, what would, if I asked a Christian like scholar person,
00:04:20.340 would they agree with you on that?
00:04:21.780 Of course not.
00:04:22.740 Christian would say that this, the Trinity has always been the idea of the Father,
00:04:27.300 the Son and the Holy Spirit has always been what Christians have believed in
00:04:31.620 from the beginning or even what Abraham believed in, what the Jews believed in.
00:04:35.620 Don't forget.
00:04:36.100 I mean, the Bible is comprised of the Old Testament and the New Testament.
00:04:40.660 Yeah.
00:04:41.140 so the old testament you have characters like abraham noah moses etc they came before jesus
00:04:47.540 and so the question is what did they believe did they believe in three and one and one and three
00:04:52.180 a christian may say yes actually they did believe in that even though they didn't spell it out in
00:04:55.940 any elaborative detail in the old testament they'll say yes they did believe that we'll
00:04:59.300 say where's the evidence for this that's that's how the conversation would go where's the evidence
00:05:02.580 for this they'll say there's they'll bring some kind of evidence but there's nothing in the old
00:05:06.580 old testament that would indicate the hebrew bible for example that's what the jews call it
00:05:11.300 that would indicate three co-eternal co-equal persons and if it was if it was so clear then
00:05:17.140 why are the jews not believing that because remember the hebrew bible is something that
00:05:20.900 the jews and the christians both believe in there's not one sect of judaism that believes
00:05:25.540 in the trinity and they had the most access to this book for hundreds of for thousands of years
00:05:31.460 And so where Muslims and Jews would agree is on the idea of God,
00:05:36.420 that it's only one God.
00:05:38.420 And you go ask yourself, what makes more sense?
00:05:42.180 Do you believe in one God that is the creator of the heavens and the earth?
00:05:46.820 Or do you believe that Jesus himself is God, that he is unlimited,
00:05:51.940 is all powerful, all that kind of thing?
00:05:53.380 Which one makes more sense to you?
00:05:55.540 So I have a question.
00:05:56.500 Would you guys believe that Jesus was crazy then?
00:05:59.300 because then wouldn't that oh you're nodding so yeah no no we wouldn't because he would be crazy
00:06:05.300 then if he because he was going around saying he was god so that's the thing we would we wouldn't
00:06:08.740 agree that he was going around saying that he was god where we differ with the jews and agree with
00:06:13.540 the christians okay so we we agree with the jews muslims agree with the jews in so much as we say
00:06:18.260 that there's only one god worthy of worship and that's the creator of the heavens and the earth
00:06:22.020 it's not a man it's not a woman it's not a holy ghost it is the creator of the heavens and the
00:06:26.020 the earth and that God is all-powerful or knowledgeable etc etc where we would
00:06:30.820 agree with the Christians and disagree with the Jews is that actually there was
00:06:33.820 this man called Jesus Christ who we consider to be a prophet as the book of
00:06:38.620 Acts mentions it says that is a man amongst men that was sent with wonders
00:06:41.920 and miracles and signs that God did through him so we believe that God chose
00:06:46.360 Jesus in his time to deliver the message that there's only one God worthy of
00:06:51.220 worship. We don't believe that he ever said that I am God or worship me. Even if you look at the
00:06:57.460 New Testament, you won't find him really elaborating upon this. In fact, there are
00:07:00.980 verses to the opposite of this. For example, in the book of John chapter 17 verse 3,
00:07:06.660 it says that there's only one true God, which is the Father. And that Jesus was sent to him.
00:07:13.140 I by the finger of God cast out devils. I by the spirit of God, such as I by my own self can do
00:07:20.420 nothing. Jesus is saying this himself. I by my own self can do
00:07:23.220 nothing. It's a verse in the Bible in New Testament. So what
00:07:26.420 we're saying is that there isn't, it doesn't indicate that Jesus
00:07:31.720 himself was going around and saying he was God. We believe
00:07:33.620 that historically, what we can find about Jesus is that really
00:07:37.620 he was a prophet. He was a Messiah. He did miracles and all
00:07:40.420 this kind of thing, but he wasn't God. That was a Roman invention that was
00:07:50.420 You