It wasn't Mohammed who founded Islam.

[pocaracas]

What can I add to what Rythm already said?...

Just hiding all to keep it there!

Are there any roman or christian or jewish or persian writings from before Abd al-Malik mentioning Muhammad and his prophethood? Those would be nice.

No, I didn't find any.

But, shamefully, what you fail to understand - which is the main error you've been making over and over again - is that the absence of evidence by itself is not an indication of an absence of his prophethood. As you wrote earlier.

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Absence of evidence hinting to absence of prophethood soon after Mo's death. That's why I'm leaning towards the later addition of prophethood to the legendary hero/leader.

And that, right there, falls under the convenient and oft-repeated argument from ignorance.

An appeal to ignorance is an argument for or against a proposition on the basis of a lack of evidence against or for it. If there is positive evidence for the conclusion, then of course we have other reasons for accepting it, but a lack of evidence by itself is no evidence.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ignorant.html

If you move in the same circles that I do then you’ve probably heard the following phrase many times, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” In and of itself this is totally true. In fact, it is just a special case of a well-known logical fallacy called an argument from ignorance.

https://hilbertthm90.wordpress.com/2013/...l-edition/

One kind of argument from ignorance is based on negative evidence. It assumes that if the hypothesis of interest were true, then experiments made to test it would show positive results. If a drug were toxic, tests of toxicity of reveal this. Whether or not this argument is valid depends on whether the tests would indeed show positive results, and with what probability.

[...]

2. The more evidence found that is compatible with the conclusions of these arguments, the more acceptable they seem to be.

C) Acme Flu Medicine is not toxic because no toxic effects were observed in 50 tests.
D) Acme Flu Medicine is not toxic because no toxic effects were observed in 1 test.

C seems more compelling than D.

3. Negative arguments are acceptable, but they are generally less acceptable than positive arguments.

E) Acme Flu Medicine is toxic because a toxic effect was observed (positive argument)
F) Acme Flu Medicine is not toxic because no toxic effect was observed (negative argument, the argument from ignorance)

Argument E seems more convincing than argument F, but F is somewhat convincing as well.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/aq2/fallacies_as..._evidence/


Positive evidence for Muhammad claiming himself to be a Prophet = oral traditions, posthumous writings, Quran, and hadiths <- (fits with numbers 2 and 3 in the quote above).
Positive evidence that Muhammad never claimed to be a Prophet = Nothing <- (no match with numbers 2 and 3)

So at least I do have a positive argument for Muhammad's prophethood, and yours is a negative argument (argument from ignorance), which makes my position more convincing and more likely to be true than yours. Thus, Bayesian probability is on my side, not yours.

That pretty much settles the debate for me. The logic presented is clear, simple, and undeniable.

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You may not remember, but here's my very first reply to minimalist's video of Robert Spencer:

Min... that's a lot of "absence of evidence"...

So... I guess I've always been thoroughly aware that this is an argument from absence of evidence.
And, as we've often said in our posts since, there is no hard evidence for either position.
I can't prove that Mohammad's prophethood was attached to him posthumously, much less can I tell you who did that.
What we can say is that no evidence of claims of prophethood have ever surfaced which date to before Abd al-Malik.
Although, the way they appear, immediately on coins, suggests that prophethood was attached to Mo sometime before Abd al-Malik, and the people in Abd al-Malik's region would already be somewhat aware of this tradition.
Hence the possibility that the man was a legendary hero/leader, to whom it would be easy to attach such an extra qualifier and gather popular consensus.

Of course, it is also possible that Mo himself claimed to be a prophet of god. It is possible that all claims of prophethood and all stories of his interaction with god or the archangel are true.
But this then forces the question: WHY is there no mention of such prophethood for such a long time?
You answer it with an oral tradition in the tribe and are done with it...
And then the wiki shows me, inconsistently, some guy, who later became caliph, being one of Mo's scribes. Doesn't add up, does it?
And the desert climate is perfect for preserving ancient things... so, if many things were written at the time, at least a scrap should still exist...
Maybe it's still hidden... maybe it has surfaced, but the things in it would throw Mo's prophethood in question by the people at large, and it conveniently "disappeared".... maybe there just isn't anything to find.... and we'd be back to the question of why is there nothing when such an extraordinary occasion, such a divine intervention, should be made easily available to all mankind, not just the standard "god's chosen people". Once more hinting at man-made myth to justify (perhaps even post-hoc) the conquest of new territory, the slaying of entire towns, the acquisition of a ton of slaves and "wives"....

So, to wrap up: you have no evidence for your positive claim. I have no evidence for my alternative explanation of the available evidence.
My version has the benefit of being entirely naturalistic and leaves lots of leeway for any new evidence that surfaces, while yours requires magic in a Universe where no magic is observable.
By this logic, then, I'd say that my version has a higher likelihood than yours of being close to reality. (cue back to Bayesian probability )