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"'Father killed family for being too western'"

A father killed his wife and four daughters in their sleep because he could not bear them adopting a more westernised lifestyle, an inquest heard yesterday.

Mohammed Riaz, 49, found it abhorrent that his eldest daughter wanted to be a fashion designer, and that she and her sisters were likely to reject the Muslim tradition of arranged marriages.

On Hallowe'en last year he sprayed petrol throughout their terraced home in Accrington, Lancs, and set it alight.

... continued

Mohammed Riaz, dear oh dear, just shows how a one-dimensional belief in invisible truth can evilize the mind.

Evilize. Put it in the dictionary!

I can understand how from his perspective he perceived western culture to be saturated with Satan, but you know, murder is wrong, Mohammed. You're gonna burn baby.

XD

You are such a lemming.

The sermon in church today comes to mind when you said about humans possible making mistakes etc.

It was about Abraham and how he continually messed up and did things wrong even though he was a righteous man. God still made sure that thing went according to his divine plan even when Abraham did something stupid that would potentially ruin it.

When God has a plan, it will work out fine. I dont trust the people who wrote/translated/printed the bible as such. I trust God. I trust that God has allowed the bible to be translated accurately.

I doubt I would ever follow a religion unless someone could give me some proof that religion was 'right'... But even then, it would be me following it because I 'have' to (in that, if it was definitely the 'right' religion, I would have to follow it to avoid nastiness in the afterlife).

But I suppose when no-one can know (beyond their own faith) that they're religion is 'right', they want to be able to say they belong to x or y religion so they feel they are going to heaven, but at the same time if they are not able to accept parts of the faith (for example, someone coming back to life) they might 'interperet' religious texts in a different way. Again, it comes down to motivation...


When you say you trust the Bible and its accuracy... Well that means you must trust everyone who ever had a hand in translating it, compiling it, blahdeblah to not 'twist' it at all. It may not even be consciously, but if someone translating the Bible interprets something one way, that may lead to a slightly different translation than if it had been interpreted another way... If these small incremental changes build up, then you can end up with something different to the original... (rather like an 'evolution' of the Bible).


Kinda reminds me (however inapropriately) of a sex education talk. People saying, no matter how much you trust your partner, you can't necessarily trust the people they've slept with... So always use protection! All it takes is for one of their partners to have caught something and you could get it!

I guess it's like that. Believing and trusting in 'the word of God' is all well and good, but to believe the Bible in it's current form, you must also trust all those who had a hand in compiling/translating/yaddayadda. If you do, that's fair enough, and a decision for you to make, but isn't one of the main points of the Bible that all humans are fallible?


[EDIT] - Not saying Judy is 'right' in her interpretation, and I guess if you choose to accept that 'some' of the Bible is true you are accepting that no-one tampered (purposefully or not) with at least that section you believe to be true... So even if your justification for ignoring other parts is that they could have been edited/mis-translated/whatever, the choice as to what parts to believe and what not to is entirely arbitrary unless you have some sort of evidence to back up that one part has not been tampered with (or conversely, that another part HAS been tampered with). If no such evidence exists to either point to areas that are definitively true or possibly untrue, then I suppose to be consistent you either have to believe it all or none.

I can see your point of "can the bible be trusted?" but someone who doubts the authority of the bible would doubt the whole thing.

If you are going to use the arguments of translation difficulties and cultural differences etc. to rule out the bibles validity, then surely it has to be applied to the whole bible, not just a few select passages that someone has difficulty with.

(I obviously think that the bible is true and is Gods word and I believe that the Bible has been translated well from the original source text, but thats besides the point)

I can understand someone who doesnt believe in God at all and doesnt trust the bible. I disagree with their view point, but I can at least see where they are coming from.

Someone who, on the other hand, claims to believe in God and got their knowledge of God from the bible yet then dismisses key points of the bible, makes no sense to me. They are effectively undermining their own religion. I just cant understand why someone would do that.

Let me put it to you in a question. Would you half follow a religion that you were not completely faithful in?

But doesn't this hark back to earlier discussions about translation of the Bible and suchlike?

Surely the tone and exact wording of the Bible has changed as it's been translated? Not even intentionally (necessarily), but simply because different languages have words which don't have an exact equivilent in another language... So you end up going with words that are the 'best fit'. Similarly with tone.

So stuff that may have sounded more metaphorical in the 'original' may sound more concrete in a translation (or vice versa).


I'm not trying to discredit your example (as I've said before, my knowledge of the Bible is incredibly limited), but I just find it odd that people can (or believe they can) extract definitive truths from something so old, that has so much debate about it, and has so many different interpretations even within a 'single' faith.

Even if I believed in God and that the Bible was the true word of God, I doubt I could read it and then just go "yep, I know how to be a good person now"... I'd probably be confused as hell about what was/wasn't allowed, what did/didn't really happen, etc.

Again, Im talking about things that are clear and not open to different interpretations. I dont see the point believing half of the bible. How would you know which bits are right and which bits are wrong? You would essentially be making stuff up yourself.

A good example for you is this. Judy (from Richard & Judy) said a few months back on their show that she thought the resurrection of Jesus was just a metaphor. This to me is stupid because the bible explicitly states that he physically rose from the dead. There is no justification to say that that section is a metaphor. It isnt written in a different style or singled out in the bible in any way so claiming it to be a metaphor is strange to me.

For no real reason, she has decided not to believe that part of the bible. This makes no sense to me. Either the bible is Gods word and we should believe it or it isnt and has no great significance. If you are just going to actively ignore huge chunks of it then why bother taking note of any of it?

But how do you ever know someone's motivation for 'ignoring' part of their faith? One person may believe no sex before marriage is a pillar of the Christian faith, someone else may have read the Bible and interpreted it to mean no sex before marriage was simply desirable, not a strict rule... Whether they simply interpreted it that way, or were looking for that interpretation because that would impede their life less is entirely unclear to anyone but the individual... Unless you question them at length about it...


But obviously setting light to your family is gonna be breaking more religious rules than becoming a fashion designer or not having an arranged marriage. Yer, some people are strange.

I wasnt really talking about people who have different interpretations. I was meaning people who just decide to ignore something that is a fundamental part of the religion. Im not even talking about Christianity here, I'm talking about any religion. People decide not to believe certain parts of their religions to suit their own needs (this can also include your comment on different interpretations). If they are going to do that then why not just ignore the whole thing? These people are lying to themselves really. At least someone who doesnt believe in God or follow any kind of religion is consistent in their unbelief.

Ah how religion becomes another shambles in Mankinds development :P