The problem I have with Christian thought is the concept of 'original sin'. By this doctrine, a child is born sinful (& therefore punishable?). I cannot accept this. All children are born innocent. Does a 3-year-old go to hell? They may be mischievous at times but their intentions are nothing more than to experiment to find out the rules.

Without original sin there is no need for any idea of a great event to remove this burden from human beings. The idea that Jesus (peace be upon him) was crucified to take away the sin of man looses its meaning when sin enters and leaves life in the same way it has always done - through the actions of individuals; there is no need for 'salvation' except through repentance and forgiveness of God (as Adam did, as Abraham did and as all believers until the beginnings of Christianity did and they were not Christians.); there is then no reason to accept the divinity of Christ or that his mission was profoundly & essentially different from that of previous prophets.

Original sin makes the whole concept of sin confused in Christianity. How do I know if I did something wrong? I didn't someone else did and I get the blame for it! Another thing I find confused is the idea of sacrifice. The Christian idea seems to be that "the innocent (such as a lamb) must die to save the sinful. (I.e. Christ must die to save man). This seems to miss the point that sacrifice is where people give up something they value highly. I might sacrifice my time, money etc. Who sacrificed what in the story of Christ's crucifixion? Certainly no human being. And how can God sacrifice something. - He owns everything & has absolute power over everything.

How can he give up anything?! This is just one aspect of what to me seems the basic problem with Christianity: If Christ died to atone for our sins then this great act must have changed something about the way to salvation, i.e. that before the act people had a certain route to salvation and that after the act the route to salvation is profoundly different. Indeed this seems to be the claim at the heart of Christianity. But if God fundamentally changes the way he judges people in different times from being harsh to being easier, then this can hardly be justice! On the other hand, if there is no fundamental change in the route to salvation, then why all the fuss? - It doesn't really matter whether Jesus died on the cross or not.

Besides, what evidence do we have that Jesus actually died on the cross? We have no physical evidence, we have no accounts of eyewitnesses, and all we have is the hearsay evidence of 1 person. This sort of evidence would be inadmissible, even if the event happened yesterday, in a court case to prosecute someone for any minor offence. Yet it is acceptance of this event which determines whether or not Christianity condemns 80% of the worlds population and which guarantees the remaining 20% salvation! - For the (sinful?) disbelief in such a barely credible event there seems a huge price to pay.

There are several places where the Qur'aan describes aspects of the creation. The Bible describes the creation as having taken place in six days followed by a day of rest. In the Bible a 'day' is explicitly the interval between two successive sunrises or sunsets. There can be no question that this story is wrong. The very mechanism of the Earth rotating around its axis was not fixed in the earliest stages of creation described in the Bible.

In contrast to this the Qur'aan while also describing creation as taking place in 6 'days' never connects this word with a set period. In fact, in the Qur'aan a day in the sight of Allaah (in this instance judgement day) is described as 50,000 human years. (Surah 70: Verse 4) The use of the word yawm in Arabic can equally well 'mean period of time' as it can mean 'day'.

A significant passage of the Qur'aan is Surah 41, Verses 9 to 12: (Muhammad Asad translation)

"Say: Would you indeed deny Him who has created the earth in two aeons? And do you claim that there is any
 power that could rival Him, The sustainer of all the worlds?" For He [it is who after creating the earth,] placed firm Mountains on it [towering] above its surface, and bestowed [so many] blessings on it, and equitably apportioned its means of subsistence to all who would seek it: [and all this He created] in four aeons.

And He [it is who] applied His design to the skies, which were [yet but] smoke; and He [it is who] said to them and
to the earth, "come willingly or unwillingly!" - to which both responded, We do come in obedience."

There are a few points I would like to highlight in these verses. First the use of the phrase "The sustainer of the worlds". Note that this uses the plural rather than the singular 'world'. This points to the strong possibility of other worlds like our own. This idea would have been well outside conventional thinking 1400 years ago, but these days it seems not just possible but very highly likely. A more speculative interpretation is that this refers to the many worlds of the 'many worlds cosmology' favored by some physicists at the moment.

Another point is trying to understand what makes up the two aeons (periods). To me this is obviously a reference to the fact that we are in the second cycle of solar evolution. The earth is made up of material that resulted from the first life cycle of a sun and our sun is a 'second generation' sun- two periods. The last of the verses quoted above confirms this point by referring to the what the sky and earth was made from - smoke. A simple but absolutely accurate description of the remains of the burnt out first generation sun!