[EatingPie]

Originally Posted by carld

Ahh okay, that wasn't the part I was questioning, it was the idea that a digital copy was equally sacred to Muslims. That's the part I was doubtful about.

I, for one, am still doubtful and don't think the question has been settled.

In Christianity, the Bible is considered the word of God as well. Deleting from it (or adding to it) is a bad thing -- I interpret this as equivalent to Islam's "it's sacred and shouldn't be deleted or changed" -- and people who do so are generally considered cults.

The previous citation from Revelation is the Biblical admonition, but that is about changing the actual text of the book. That was about that book, but you can expand it, for example, to someone deleting Genesis and saying that they still have a complete Bible: suddenly the whole Free Will/Sin/Fall thing doesn't matter. Or to someone completely changing the John 1 from "And the Word was God" to "And the Word was like God."

However, there is nothing wrong with deleting your Bible wholesale (or destroying your own paper copy). It's changing parts and selling it as the real thing that's bad. Dan Brown sold a lot of books making claims that this is exactly what the Catholic Church did c. 300AD; it's so wrong, it actually provided a hook to draw a huge audience and make Brown a millionaire (regardless of the fact that there are Bible manuscripts prior to 300AD still in existence which completely refute these claims in Brown's stories.).

Again, I don't know Islam. But we need to be precise here. Saying the text is sacred doesn't necessarily mean the actual printed / digital text: the medium. In the case of the Bible, it means the words themselves: the message. It's still very possible it's the same for Islam and the Koran. Go ahead and add/delete your copy of the text, but don't change what the text says.

-Pie