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Did the founder of Islam really sleep with a 9 year old?
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ManintheMiddle

Joined: 20 Oct 2008

Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2009 7:30 pm Post subject:

Big Bird: Even if Mohammad is shown not to have been a pedophile, he was nonetheless a warrior who pillaged if not raped and he was a womanizer, oh, o.k. he had a harem instead. One doesn't need to be an Islamaphobe to disapprove of the conduct of its founder, or the obviously spreading corruption of the mullahs among the madrassahs which foment a climate of hate toward the infidel and thereby encourage terrorism. But as an apologist, I doubt you'll ever admit as much. Islam is in a very bad way and until the mainstream followers do much more to clean up its act, I and millions of other reasonable people will continue to hold its leaders in great disdain.

CyberGuy

Joined: 27 Dec 2007
Location: Daejeon, Korea

Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2009 8:23 pm Post subject:

ManintheMiddle wrote:

Even if Mohammad is shown not to have been a pedophile, he was nonetheless a warrior who pillaged if not raped and he was a womanizer, oh, o.k. he had a harem instead.

One doesn't need to be an Islamaphobe to disapprove of the conduct of its founder, or the obviously spreading corruption of the mullahs among the madrassahs which foment a climate of hate toward the infidel and thereby encourage terrorism.

But as an apologist, I doubt you'll ever admit as much.

Islam is in a very bad way and until the mainstream followers do much more to clean up its act, I and millions of other reasonable people will continue to hold its leaders in great disdain.

Your answers here:
http://www.smearcasting.com/

Note: This website is not owned or associated with Muslims. It is the part of fair.org (An international organization similar to Amnesty International, which works for fair reporting in journalism).

A snippet about your god Bill O'Rielly:

After the September 11 attacks, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly (9/17/01; FAIR Action Alert, 9/21/01) had a whole list of predominantly Muslim countries that he proposed to attack if they did not submit to the U.S.--starting with Afghanistan:

The U.S. should bomb the Afghan infrastructure to rubble-- the airport, the power plants, their water facilities and the roads.... This is a very primitive country. And taking out their ability to exist day to day will not be hard.... If they don't rise up against this criminal government, they starve, period.

Also on his list were Iraq ("Their infrastructure must be destroyed and the population made to endure yet another round of intense pain") and Libya ("Nothing goes in, nothing goes out.... Let them eat sand").

This enthusiasm he has expressed for attacking countries with Muslim populations is an O'Reilly trademark (e.g,. Radio Factor, 6/18/04, 3/8/06, 7/26/06). In fairness, he's also expressed similar interest in decimating non-Muslim countries. (See Extra!, 7-8/99.) But his disregard for Muslim civilians is matched by the anti-Muslim sentiments he frequently expresses on both his nationally syndicated radio show, the Radio Factor, which has a reach of 3.5 million listeners (Talkers Magazine, Spring/08) and cable TV show.

O'Reilly has bemoaned (O'Reilly Factor, 7/8/05) the fact that areas of London are "just packed with just dense Muslim neighborhoods, which breed this kind of contempt for Western society. Why do they let them in?" He defended airport security profiling of Muslims (O'Reilly Factor, 8/16/06), saying: "We're not at war with Granny Frickin. We're at war with Muslim fanatics. So all young Muslims should be subjected to more scrutiny than Granny"--a move that he said would not be "racial profiling" but rather "criminal profiling."

O'Reilly compared a University of South Carolina assignment asking incoming freshmen to read a book called Approaching the Quran: The Early Revelations to teaching Hitler's Mein Kampf in 1941 (O'Reilly Factor, 7/10/02). O'Reilly also told Stuff magazine (11/02; Extra! Update, 6/03) that "the most unattractive women in the world are probably in the Muslim countries." On his syndicated radio program (Radio Factor, 11/29/06), O'Reilly blamed killings in Iraq on the religion of its people: "They're all Muslims, and they're doing what they do. They're killing each other. And they're killing Americans."

Like fellow cable hosts Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, O'Reilly offers a national platform to some of the most egregious Islamophobes. His O'Reilly Factor, which consistently leads ratings in the world of cable news with an audience of over 2 million prime time viewers (New York Times, 8/22/08) has hosted such noted Dirty Dozen members as Robert Spencer (11/20/06) and Pat Robertson, who declared on the O'Reilly Factor (2/27/02) that "out of a billion-plus people there are probably 150 million really fire-breathing Muslims."

CyberGuy

Joined: 27 Dec 2007
Location: Daejeon, Korea

Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2009 8:31 pm Post subject:

Yu_Bum_suk wrote:

I think that most stories about Jesus are fictional, but if one of them involved him sleeping with a nine-year-old would you still want to follow him and base a religion on him?

What's so scary about fundamentalists - people who take a literal interpretaion of ancient texts - is that they do believe that things that were downright evil were justified because it was the will of their God. One religion can thereby justify paedophilia, another genocide. The key point should be teaching that fiction is fiction. Then details like this wouldn't matter.

Hey Yu Bum Suk,

I have already answered most of the questions which poeple might have not gone through in detail. Here you raised a point about "scripture", I feel appropriate to reply.

The age of the wife of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is NOT mentioned in Qur'an (the holy scripture of Muslims) but only in some books of traditions, called Hadith. Scholars/Researchers conduct great amount of scientific,rational and logical scrutiny over the content of "Hadith" (which as I described are traditions/reports about the events in the life of Prophet). In such scrutiny, scholars disagree with each other too , though they take Qur'an as the final and absolute Word of God , there is no mentioning of age of marriage as 9 years in Qur'an.

Please also find this interesting reading:
http://www.answering-christianity.com/aishahage.htm

So, all the haters have nothing to criticize about Qur'an but to cherry pick and isolate some content from the books of Hadith, manipulate for their own ill-will, and throw them on some websites; hence distorting the highly subjective issues related to the history of Islam.

Consequently, many of the good nonmuslims out there also start to believe such crappy accusations about Islam. Why? cuz there are 100 times more antiIslamic websites than Islamic websites. You just have to search for certain keywords in Google and you get nothing but mostly the websites owned by antiIslamists talking on the behalf of Islam.

So, let me put again:

1- No Muslim scholar is preaching the people to marry their children at the age of 9, since every Muslim understand the historical context.

2- Islam is the fastest spreading way of life on earth (even channels like CNN etc. have to admit that there are 20,000 conversions to Islam each year in USA alone). So, all these people who choose Islam even knowing about issues related to the age of wife of Prophet, they still choose Islam as their way. That shows you they have more clearer picture of Islam and about the propaganda/misconceptions being spread about Islam.

3- People often find some absurd content in Bible, and if they are Christians then many times they leave Christianity to become Atheists, Bhuddists etc. Unfortunately, they generalize about Qur'an from their views of Bible. They think Qur'an has same fantasy stories as Bible; but the truth is far far beyond that. Qur'an does have some narrations of the stories of the Prophets who came before Muhammad, and Muslims do believe that the Gospels brought by earlier Prophets were true but they got corrupted with the passage of time; but it does not automatically mean that Qur'an is same "fairy tale" book like Bible.
Most of the people find Qur'an less entertaining than Bible; Why? cuz Qur'an is a serious word of God and not the book of fairy tales to read and get amused about.

There is some content in Quran which approves what Bible says, but that does not mean you totally ignore where Qur'an has HUGE disagreements with Bible, including but not limited to: The most fundamental question about God. i.e. Qur'an teaches that there is NO GOD but ONE GOD and there are no partners with him. God is unlike His creation. Every person is responsible for his good and bad deeds and he will be judged in accordance. Every child born is totally clean of any sins, and nobody died of our sins. Jesus (PBUH) was not god but just a human and Prophet of God.

On the other hand, Bible tells you that God came in the form of a human called Jesus who ate, slept, wept and moaned like humans and he died for the sins of all humans; also Bible teaches that every child born is full of sins and has to be cleaned.

Please listen to this and you'll find it good enough:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zATtBLSOpec

Yu_Bum_suk

Joined: 25 Dec 2004

Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2009 10:51 pm Post subject:

CyberGuy wrote:

Yu_Bum_suk wrote:

So you would agree that Hadith in general is not a trustworthy source to base things on? Would devout Muslims?

Quote:

So, all the haters have nothing to criticize about Qur'an

Well there's that one little passage about 'If your wife is refractory, take her into private chambers and beat her...'

Then again, most Christian fundamentalists would probably approve of corporal punishment for nine-year-olds, so perhaps Mohammed isn't being that unreasonable.

Quote:

but to cherry pick and isolate some content from the books of Hadith, manipulate for their own ill-will, and throw them on some websites; hence distorting the highly subjective issues related to the history of Islam.

Because it's not like Christians, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and orthodox Jews have their same tall tales, legends, myths, and idiotic beliefs of ancient societies that they still try to validate put under public scrutiny, either, is it?

Quote:

Consequently, many of the good nonmuslims out there also start to believe such crappy accusations about Islam. Why? cuz there are 100 times more antiIslamic websites than Islamic websites. You just have to search for certain keywords in Google and you get nothing but mostly the websites owned by antiIslamists talking on the behalf of Islam.

So, let me put again:

1- No Muslim scholar is preaching the people to marry their children at the age of 9, since every Muslim understand the historical context.

2- Islam is the fastest spreading way of life on earth (even channels like CNN etc. have to admit that there are 20,000 conversions to Islam each year in USA alone). So, all these people who choose Islam even knowing about issues related to the age of wife of Prophet, they still choose Islam as their way. That shows you they have more clearer picture of Islam and about the propaganda/misconceptions being spread about Islam.

So by this measure Pentecostalism would be somewhat validated by its rapid spread?

Quote:

3- People often find some absurd content in Bible, and if they are Christians then many times they leave Christianity to become Atheists, Bhuddists etc. Unfortunately, they generalize about Qur'an from their views of Bible. They think Qur'an has same fantasy stories as Bible; but the truth is far far beyond that. Qur'an does have some narrations of the stories of the Prophets who came before Muhammad, and Muslims do believe that the Gospels brought by earlier Prophets were true but they got corrupted with the passage of time; but it does not automatically mean that Qur'an is same "fairy tale" book like Bible.
Most of the people find Qur'an less entertaining than Bible; Why? cuz Qur'an is a serious word of God and not the book of fairy tales to read and get amused about.

There is some content in Quran which approves what Bible says, but that does not mean you totally ignore where Qur'an has HUGE disagreements with Bible, including but not limited to: The most fundamental question about God. i.e. Qur'an teaches that there is NO GOD but ONE GOD and there are no partners with him. God is unlike His creation. Every person is responsible for his good and bad deeds and he will be judged in accordance. Every child born is totally clean of any sins, and nobody died of our sins. Jesus (PBUH) was not god but just a human and Prophet of God.

On the other hand, Bible tells you that God came in the form of a human called Jesus who ate, slept, wept and moaned like humans and he died for the sins of all humans; also Bible teaches that every child born is full of sins and has to be cleaned.

Please listen to this and you'll find it good enough:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zATtBLSOpec

That's OK - being a lapsed Christian gives me much less to get angry about in the world. But hey, aren't you ever glad we're free to debate this in Korea without fear of getting stoned or beheaded by a pack of mental cowards?

CyberGuy

Joined: 27 Dec 2007
Location: Daejeon, Korea

Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2009 11:20 pm Post subject:

Yu_Bum_suk wrote:

So you would agree that Hadith in general is not a trustworthy source to base things on? Would devout Muslims?

It IS trustworthy if it is analyzed under the science of Hadith (the rules to analyze it are called "Usool -ul - Hadith" or principle of hadith). Having difference of opinion over something does not essentially mean it is not trustworthy. However, in any case, Qur'an is the unchanged word of God for Muslims. In case of Christianity, there is no such thing near to as profound as "science of Hadith", AND Christian DO NOT have unchanged word of God to use as the benchmark; hence dozens of versions of Bible are out there but there is only ONE Qur'an to date.

Yu_Bum_suk wrote:

Well there's that one little passage about 'If your wife is refractory, take her into private chambers and beat her...'

Ok,, dont put words into Muslims' mouth. I thought you never tried to know this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riMFUfHinGY

Yu_Bum_suk wrote:

Then again, most Christian fundamentalists would probably approve of corporal punishment for nine-year-olds, so perhaps Mohammed isn't being that unreasonable.

OK, where is "age" being mentioned as "9 years" to penalize anybody in Islam?? You are funny !!

Yu_Bum_suk wrote:

Depends upon the type of scrutiny and your personal wishful thinking to twist the logics. Scrutiny under rationality is good. If there is something wrong with Christian or Hindu doctrine then how does it automatically speak on the behalf of Islam? Only an idiot must generalize about Islam.

Yu_Bum_suk wrote:

So by this measure Pentecostalism would be somewhat validated by its rapid spread?

Pentecostalism is a renewalist religious movement within Christianity.

Yu_Bum_suk wrote:

Strength of faith, practice in accordance to faith etc. might be alien in your dictionary. So, if a person does not feel strongly bound with something then why would he feel angry or get provocative over that? Insult is a thing to "feel"; if you cant feel insulted that means you don't have any respect about the things you are being insulted about; and hence nobody can insult you.

The have seen very big debates about comparative religions where thousands of people were present, and guess what? there was nobody being beheaded or stoned. However, mocking and insulting for the sake of mocking and insulting will not end so peaceful, and hence wont be a surprise, but even in that case too, the act of an individual does not imply that his religion also preaches what he is doing.

CG.

OneWayTraffic

Joined: 14 Mar 2005

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 5:26 am Post subject:

Quote:

But of course we have just your word for that. To really believe, we'd need to take a leap of faith. But even that's a misnomer as the leap of faith needs to be taken again and again with diminising returns.

If the Qur'an is unchanged, then why wasn't it written down sooner? Were they afraid that it was changing in the years after the 'prophets' death? But if that wasn't the case then why bother to write it down at all?

And if there's only one Qur'an then there must be only one way to read it right? No schisms in your church or anything?

It should be noted here that one of the greatest moments in the evolution of western thought away from blind dogma was the translation of the bible from it's original motley collection of latin and hebrew into English. The Catholic church rewarded this by hunting down and killing the person responsible. (The job security of the middleman was at stake.) His documents formed the basis of the original "King James" translation.

I'm sure that the Qur'an is more enlightened in this way and authorised authentic translations exist in other languages than the original Arabic- which I understand is rather difficult to learn.

Or maybe not.

If your Qur'an was really from God then it would be as obvious as the sky being blue. Noone's ever schismed over the color of the sky. In fact I can think of a dozen more effective ways to get my message across than dictating it to an illiterate nobody.

bigverne

Joined: 12 May 2004

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 5:44 am Post subject:

Quote:

The age of the wife of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is NOT mentioned in Qur'an (the holy scripture of Muslims) but only in some books of traditions, called Hadith. Scholars/Researchers conduct great amount of scientific,rational and logical scrutiny over the content of "Hadith" (which as I described are traditions/reports about the events in the life of Prophet). In such scrutiny, scholars disagree with each other too , though they take Qur'an as the final and absolute Word of God , there is no mentioning of age of marriage as 9 years in Qur'an.

You really need to make your mind up. On another thread you were saying that there was nothing wrong with a 50 year old man having sex with a 9 year old girl, since girls went through puberty earlier and since she had gone through puberty she was an adult, yet now you are saying there is great disagreement (when you know full well there is not). Could it be that you are actually ashamed of your prophet's behaviour and would just love to find evidence that Ayesha wasn't a child still playing with her toys when she was violated by Mohammed?

Quote:

1- No Muslim scholar is preaching the people to marry their children at the age of 9, since every Muslim understand the historical context.

Why then did Khomenei lower the age of marriage for girls to 9 when he came into office? And what historical context? If it was ok for the 'Perfect Man' to have sex with a child some 1,300 years ago, why is it not ok now? Please explain. You seem to be quite confused over this issue.

Quote:

2- Islam is the fastest spreading way of life on earth (even channels like CNN etc. have to admit that there are 20,000 conversions to Islam each year in USA alone). So, all these people who choose Islam even knowing about issues related to the age of wife of Prophet, they still choose Islam as their way.

Nazism and Communism were both popular once too. That says nothing about the morality of the ideology in question of course. By the way, many people who do convert to Islam, know nothing about the rape, genocide, violent hatred and sexual deviance of Mohammed. This is not something that Muslims want to tell would be converts.

Anyway, save your pitiful Dawa attempts and stick to answering the charges (from Islamic sources) made against Mohammed.

OneWayTraffic

Joined: 14 Mar 2005

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 5:59 am Post subject:

Quote:

Not quite true but close. It's not sufficient to prove the bible wrong in order to prove the Qur'an correct. You'd need to actually show that the Qur'an is true. A difficult task.

Along my path to atheism (verging on antithesim at times) I realized that a sufficent reason to disbelieve in all Gods is a lack of evidence. Where are the testable and falsifiable predictions? No evidence=no belief. It's as simple as that.

To give an example from Carl Sagan. To understand Quantum physics, really understand it, you'd need to master in turn arithmetic, high school algebra, differential and integral calculus, ordinary and partial differential equations, vector calculus, matrix algebra, group theory and some special functions of mathematical physics. This is about 15 years of study- at least 4 at university level. No physics in this, it's just the mathematical tools required. Even worse quantum theory is completely counter intuitive. It's impossible to understand with common sense.

It would be very easy to just shrug and say 'why bother'. But we can verify that quantum theory works. The tests of it are in the spectra of stars, in our computers and LEDs, our nuclear power plants and our chemical element spectra, the formation of molecules from atoms, the behaviour of superconductors and liquid helium. Anyone can verify that it works, without having to go through the required background.

So where's the evidence for religion? I see no evidence at all that the Qur'an works, as the states that follow it most closely are among the states that I'd least like to find myself born in. The bible is no better, as most western progress came after the church loosened it's grip, not before. Religious (or idelogical) states pay a high price. Stagnating economies (especially if one subtracts oil dollars), an unhappy and oppressed people and generally being a pretty unpleasant place to be.

CyberGuy

Joined: 27 Dec 2007
Location: Daejeon, Korea

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 6:53 am Post subject:

OneWayTraffic wrote:

Of course the Hadith is for Muslim scholars to analyze and ponder about and not for nonmuslims to cherry pick the tidbits of their choice out of context and throw at the face of Muslims.

OneWayTraffic wrote:

If the Qur'an is unchanged, then why wasn't it written down sooner? Were they afraid that it was changing in the years after the 'prophets' death? But if that wasn't the case then why bother to write it down at all?

Qur'an was written as soon as its verses were revealed time to time (took almost 23 years to complete the revelation of Qur'an. Each revelation came in accordance to the events in their due time).
I think you are referring to the collection of the stones, leaves and leather sheets on which Qur'an was written. At the time of Prophet Muhammad and after him, there were numerous companions of the Prophet who memorized the whole Qur'an (as it can be witnessed that even a 6 or 7 years old child can memorize the whole qur'an without any error; and it is very well known among Muslims, but maybe it is something new for you).

Your answer takes 3 or 4 minutes reading here and you'll know it:
http://www.islamicity.com/dialogue/Q108.HTM
It is just that I do not find it good to copy paste big amount of text and make my post a huge essay.

OneWayTraffic wrote:

And if there's only one Qur'an then there must be only one way to read it right? No schisms in your church or anything?

Sure there is only one Qur'an,, but reading it has different styles. That is, no difference in its text or its meaning but difference in styles of recitation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmfWweO-RbQ

OneWayTraffic wrote:

It should be noted here that one of the greatest moments in the evolution of western thought away from blind dogma was the translation of the bible from it's original motley collection of latin and hebrew into English. The Catholic church rewarded this by hunting down and killing the person responsible. (The job security of the middleman was at stake.) His documents formed the basis of the original "King James" translation.

I'm sure that the Qur'an is more enlightened in this way and authorised authentic translations exist in other languages than the original Arabic- which I understand is rather difficult to learn.

Or maybe not.

Latin and Hebrew? Yes, but original language of Jesus (PBUH) was Aramaic.
Talking about Qur'an. There are translations of Qur'an which are considered good. You may find some good translations here:
http://islam.thetruecall.com/modules.php?name=Quran

However, the script in Arabic is the purest and original, and the translations may be limited by:
1- the understanding/interpretation of the translator.
2- Arabic ability of the translator.
3- Background knowledge of the translator
etc.

Some good commentary over Qur'an along with translation can be found at:

http://islamicstudies.info/maarif/

OneWayTraffic wrote:

If your Qur'an was really from God then it would be as obvious as the sky being blue. Noone's ever schismed over the color of the sky. In fact I can think of a dozen more effective ways to get my message across than dictating it to an illiterate nobody.

There are many verses of Qur'an repeated at different places explaining again and again. Every person has his own level of understanding and literacy etc. , so he/she will be judged according to that.

The theory that Muhummad (pbuh) authored the Qur�an or copied from other sources can be disproved by the single historical fact that he was illiterate. So, there was wisdom behind revealing Qur'an to illiterate "somebody". Prophet Muhammad was not a "nobody" but was the most respected person in whole Arab Peninsula. Now this is not my claim but he was respected by the pagans. He was called "Saadiq" (True) and "Ameen" (Trustworthy) by all the people around him.

Once he was appointed as Prophet, people started to oppose the "change". People were worshiping idols and making money out of its business while Muhammad was telling them to get rid of idol worshiping and to only submit to ONE God without any partners.

Some questions answered in a brief manner:

http://islam.thetruecall.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=205&mode=&order=0&thold=0

CG.

CyberGuy

Joined: 27 Dec 2007
Location: Daejeon, Korea

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 7:32 am Post subject:

OneWayTraffic wrote:

Not quite true but close. It's not sufficient to prove the bible wrong in order to prove the Qur'an correct. You'd need to actually show that the Qur'an is true. A difficult task.

Sure, I have not posted any threads solely to disprove or attack Bible. So my goal here was not to prove Qur'an true by disproving Bible. Qur'an simply does not have those scientific and logical errors which you find in Bible, whats more is: Qur'an does not have ANY scientific or logical errors. Furthermore, you might like to listen to this 10 minutes video which summarized many things for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkZm2CxbdI0

OneWayTraffic wrote:

Along my path to atheism (verging on antithesim at times) I realized that a sufficent reason to disbelieve in all Gods is a lack of evidence. Where are the testable and falsifiable predictions? No evidence=no belief. It's as simple as that.

Sorry to disagree but this is not as simple as that. No belief does not automatically become same as DISBELIEF. There are millions of people out there who are agnostics, i.e. they simply "dont know" or do not find enough evidence to believe in God, BUT they do not disbelieve that there might be a Creator out there but they do not comprehend/find enough convincing reasons to reach at the stage of "belief". However, I do agree that many of such agnostics loosely call themselves "atheists". Furthermore, there are people who do not believe in any organized religion but still believe there is a supreme being who created all this universe, again the are not some hardcore fact provers but they simply believe and consider the existence of this universe and intelligent design an enough evidence to believe in the Creator; yet they do not study, or agree to organized religions.

OneWayTraffic wrote:

To give an example from Carl Sagan. To understand Quantum physics, really understand it, you'd need to master in turn arithmetic, high school algebra, differential and integral calculus, ordinary and partial differential equations, vector calculus, matrix algebra, group theory and some special functions of mathematical physics. This is about 15 years of study- at least 4 at university level. No physics in this, it's just the mathematical tools required. Even worse quantum theory is completely counter intuitive. It's impossible to understand with common sense.

Till then, it does not take rocket-science to conclude that the huge unexplainable complexities in the universe did not come out of NADA, i.e. NOTHING, i.e. NONE ......

In fact, if you keep aside the point-making for what you believe and be a bit generous in accepting fair point of view then you might agree that [ It takes much greater amount of blind faith in order to believe that this complex universe came out of nothing THAN to believe there was an initiator/IntelligentBeing/Creator who created it ]

OneWayTraffic wrote:

It would be very easy to just shrug and say 'why bother'. But we can verify that quantum theory works. The tests of it are in the spectra of stars, in our computers and LEDs, our nuclear power plants and our chemical element spectra, the formation of molecules from atoms, the behaviour of superconductors and liquid helium. Anyone can verify that it works, without having to go through the required background.

Math, science blaa blaa are the talks of Today. Do you think that quantum mechanics, laws of universe etc. started to exist since humans started to discover them? All these complexities, all this unfathomable phenomenon was ALREADY there when humans did not even exist, yet you are talking about when they started to use math and stuff.

OneWayTraffic wrote:

Anyone can verify that it works, without having to go through the required background.

I get what you mean there. Discovering the creation of universe is encouraged by Qur'an itself too. Why? in order so to understand the sings of creation of this universe and hence to appreciate it. The more you know, the more you get fascinated and stronger becomes your belief (given that you have any sort of belief).

You might find these pages interesting:
http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/sciencehistory.htm
http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/Introl2.html

On the other hand, it does not always take rocket-science to understand different things. An example is: kite flying. You don't have to know the mathematics, aeronautics and Physics in order to fly a kite.

OneWayTraffic wrote:

So where's the evidence for religion? I see no evidence at all that the Qur'an works, as the states that follow it most closely are among the states that I'd least like to find myself born in. The bible is no better, as most western progress came after the church loosened it's grip, not before. Religious (or idelogical) states pay a high price. Stagnating economies (especially if one subtracts oil dollars), an unhappy and oppressed people and generally being a pretty unpleasant place to be.

Some perspective here:
http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/Introl1.html
http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/ghazi1.html

CG.

OneWayTraffic

Joined: 14 Mar 2005

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 6:41 pm Post subject:

Well I wouldn't consider myself anything near an expert in the Qur'an so I'm not going to claim that there are logical or scientific errors. One thing I am sure of though. There is nothing there, in a scientific fashion, that was beyond the ken of a average man or even an exceptional man of the times. So in that sense if there were no scientific errors, then there can be no clear scientific claims. No calculus, no equivalence between light and electricity, no nonstandard analysis, no particle/wave duality of light. Nothing of the order of a James Clerk Maxwell or an Ernest Rutherford or a Charles Darwin.

In other words, nothing that wasn't accessible to the methods and knowledge of the time.

Care to prove me wrong?

Quote:

This is a common mistake. The common usage of the words agnostic and atheist are different from the original meaning that I prefer.

A=without; theism=belief in a personal god; gnostic=knowledge.

Atheism=Without Belief in a (personal) god.
Agnostic=Without knowledge of a god.

I like to say that I'm weakly atheistic with respect to a hypothetical god without any clearly defined traits. There may be some kind of god, but I certainly don't believe in one, and I find this rather unlikely.

I'm agnostic in the sense that I can accept that there is no way to be certain of the above either for or against.

I'm strongly atheistic with respect to any past, present or probable future religion. The more you claim to know about God, the more certain you are that you have his word, the more certain I am that you are somehow mistaken. Without proper evidence, and so many religions to choose from, picking one essentially due to an accident of birth or place seems silly to me.

If you want to clarify my position, and that of many atheists answer this:

Are you agnostic or atheistic with respect to the existence of an invisible dragon that is incorporeal and breathes heatless flame, and is moreover immune to any conceivable experiement to determine its existence?

Axl Rose

Joined: 16 Feb 2006

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 7:27 pm Post subject:

OneWayTraffic wrote:

The more you claim to know about God, the more certain you are that you have his word, the more certain I am that you are somehow mentally ill.

Fixed that one right up for you, bro

Yu_Bum_suk

Joined: 25 Dec 2004

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 8:01 pm Post subject:

CyberGuy wrote:

Yu_Bum_suk wrote:

So you would agree that Hadith in general is not a trustworthy source to base things on? Would devout Muslims?

Yu_Bum_suk wrote:

Well there's that one little passage about 'If your wife is refractory, take her into private chambers and beat her...'

Ok,, dont put words into Muslims' mouth. I thought you never tried to know this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riMFUfHinGY

Yu_Bum_suk wrote:

Then again, most Christian fundamentalists would probably approve of corporal punishment for nine-year-olds, so perhaps Mohammed isn't being that unreasonable.

OK, where is "age" being mentioned as "9 years" to penalize anybody in Islam?? You are funny !!

Yu_Bum_suk wrote:

So by this measure Pentecostalism would be somewhat validated by its rapid spread?

Pentecostalism is a renewalist religious movement within Christianity.

Yu_Bum_suk wrote:

I could have this same argument (and I have) with a Christian who go to great lengths to explain why his book and his religion is special. At the end of the day you believe that an angel came down and told Mohammed what to write in a book. You both believe in and base your religions on fairy tales.

One key difference, however, is that in the past few centuries Christians have become remarkably more tolerant of those who have different lifestyle choices from them. While many, perhaps a majority, of Muslims are tolerant of others, the millions who aren't make it a way of life I can quite happily do without.

Troll_Bait

Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Location: [T]eaching experience doesn't matter much. -Lee Young-chan (pictured)

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 2:18 am Post subject:

CyberGuy wrote:

Yu_Bum_suk wrote:

So you would agree that Hadith in general is not a trustworthy source to base things on? Would devout Muslims?

You can call this method "science," but that doesn't make it so, anymore than me calling myself "the world's most awesome poster" doesn't make it true. The scientific method involves: (1) having a hypothesis (2) testing the hypothesis (3) seeing if the hypothesis is supported by data (4) if the hypothesis is not supported, making a new hypothesis. Disregarding beliefs that fail to be supported by evidence is what makes science different from most religions.

Regarding your claim that there has always been only one, unchanged Qur'an ... in the same way that Biblical scholars have concluded that there was only one original Gospel (and that the other three used it as source material), most Qur'anic scholars believe:

Quote:

Independent scholars studying the Qur'an and Hadith, have concluded that the Islamic scripture was not revealed to just one man, but was a compilation of later redactions and editions formulated by a group of men, over the course of a few hundred years. The Qur'an which we read today is not that which was in existence in the mid-seventh century, but is a product of the eighth and ninth centuries. It was not conceived in Mecca or Medina, but in Baghdad. It was then and there that Islam took on its identity and became a religion. Consequently, the formative stage of Islam was not within the lifetime of Muhammad but evolved over a period of 300 years.

CyberGuy

Joined: 27 Dec 2007
Location: Daejeon, Korea

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 4:52 am Post subject:

Troll_Bait wrote:

Regarding your claim that there has always been only one, unchanged Qur'an ... in the same way that Biblical scholars have concluded that there was only one original Gospel (and that the other three used it as source material), most Qur'anic scholars believe:

Quote:

I wonder why do people ALWAYS have to visit some anti-islam websites to learn about Islam? Aren't there some fair articles about Islam than jihadwatch and wiki?

The quote you have referred is from wiki.answer.com which is a public toilette where any Tom Dick and Harry can do his doo and get away; and at the moment there are more Toms, Dicks and Harrys than Muslims on the internet.

Whenever you people copy some content opposing the Islamic point of view, then why do you ALWAYS have to take it from the articles titled "Islam Exposed" , "Prophet of Doom" etc.? Are all the encyclopedias and nonmuslim world historians dead that you cant refer to'em?

So, lets see what the text at wiki says:

Quote:

wiki.answer.com:
The most correct answer to this claim is no. Most Quranic experts attribute the Qur'an in its form today to post-7th Century alterations. The consensus is, "independent scholars studying the Qur'an and Hadith, have concluded that the Islamic scripture was not revealed to just one man, but was a compilation of later redactions and editions formulated by a group of men, over the course of a few hundred years. The Qur'an which we read today is not that which was in existence in the mid-seventh century, but is a product of the eighth and ninth centuries. It was not conceived in Mecca or Medina, but in Baghdad."

FYI, there are historical manuscripts of Qur'an available throughout the wold in meuseums; as old as from the time of Prophet and from right after his death.

The UNESCO, an arm of the United Nations, had compiled a CD containing some of the dated Ṣanā manuscripts as a part of "Memory of the World" programme. In this CD there are more than 40 Qur'anic manuscripts which are dated from 1st century of hijra, one of them belonging to early 1st century. More than 45 manuscripts have been dated from the period 1st / 2nd century of hijra. [ http://www.unesco.org/webworld/mdm/visite/sommaire.html ]

Dated Texts Containing The Qur�an From 1-100 AH / 622-719 CE :
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/earlyquran.html

The "Qur'ān Of ʿUthmān" At The Topkapi Museum, Istanbul, Turkey, From 1st / 2nd Century Hijra:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/topkapi.html

The "Qur'ān Of ʿUthmān" At St. Petersburg (Russia), Katta Langar, Bukhārā And Tashkent (Uzbekistan), From 2nd Century Hijra ( from the time of Caliph Usman in Arabia ,not Baghdad):
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/peters.html

History of Quranic manuscripts:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/

After going through these details, historical manuscripts in museums, and watching their pictorial scans, I don't know how could a fair person say Qur'an is not the same which was revealed to Prophet Muhammad in Arab peninsula but was obtained from Baghdad etc.
However, bigoted people with some agenda would still use their venom on the sites like jihadwatch and wiki etc. for the sake of their agenda.

Next time, better come back with some neutral source talking about Islam than some bull articles titled "Islam exposed", "Muslims are terrorists" etc. Because I am sure a scholastic historical research does not use cheap starters like that (even if researched by a nonmuslim historian)

CG.

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