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Did Muhammad exist?
#11
RE: Did Muhammad exist?
Is i possible a warlord profit named Muhammad lived yes . Is he the person described in Quran no .
Seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy -- myself.

Inuit Proverb

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#12
RE: Did Muhammad exist?
I have an easier time believing that Mo existed as portrayed than Jesus.

But then, I don't know Mo all that well. Was he a god also?
I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem.
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#13
RE: Did Muhammad exist?
(February 12, 2018 at 9:12 pm)mh.brewer Wrote: I have an easier time believing that Mo existed as portrayed than Jesus.

But then, I don't know Mo all that well. Was he a god also?
Nope only a profit . And yup with exceptions like flying up to heaven i to find him more grounded .
Seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy -- myself.

Inuit Proverb

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#14
RE: Did Muhammad exist?
(February 12, 2018 at 9:16 pm)Tizheruk Wrote:
(February 12, 2018 at 9:12 pm)mh.brewer Wrote: I have an easier time believing that Mo existed as portrayed than Jesus.

But then, I don't know Mo all that well. Was he a god also?
Nope only a profit . And yup with exceptions like flying up to heaven i to find him more grounded .

But they had those flying carpet thingies.
I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem.
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#15
RE: Did Muhammad exist?
(February 12, 2018 at 9:22 pm)mh.brewer Wrote:
(February 12, 2018 at 9:16 pm)Tizheruk Wrote: Nope only a profit . And yup with exceptions like flying up to heaven i to find him more grounded .

But they had those flying carpet thingies.

Apparently only Solomon had one .And of course there is the flying horses.
Seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy -- myself.

Inuit Proverb

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#16
RE: Did Muhammad exist?
(February 12, 2018 at 9:26 pm)Tizheruk Wrote:
(February 12, 2018 at 9:22 pm)mh.brewer Wrote: But they had those flying carpet thingies.

Apparently only Solomon had one .And of course there is the flying horses.

That's all greek to me.
I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem.
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#17
RE: Did Muhammad exist?
Y'know, I've never gotten why the debate among atheists gets intense over whether biblical/quranic figures actually existed. I'm not knocking it or anything. The debates are interesting. But why does this matter one iota to a nonbeliever?

As atheists, we know this much: A Nazarene carpenter did not actually raise the dead, walk on water, ascend into heaven, etc. Then the question becomes: but was there an actual guy who was just a preaching carpenter upon whom the stories are based? Who cares? Let the theists struggle with it; it's their problem.

Professor X was inspired by/based on Yul Brynner. Does Yul Brynner's actual existence make the professor any more or less fictitious? No. Neither would an actual preaching carpenter. Even the theists don't care about the question of a mundane, historical Jesus. If they were to go back in time and see that he was just some schmuck with no superpowers, I'm sure they'd be just as upset as finding out he never existed.
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#18
RE: Did Muhammad exist?
Quote:But why does this matter one iota to a nonbeliever?

Because believers come around and insist that all their horseshit is real and from then on it is just a fun academic exercise to shit on them and their gods.  Sometimes in life you just have to make your own fun!
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#19
RE: Did Muhammad exist?
(February 12, 2018 at 9:45 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: Y'know, I've never gotten why the debate among atheists gets intense over whether biblical/quranic figures actually existed. I'm not knocking it or anything. The debates are interesting. But why does this matter one iota to a nonbeliever?
The narratives themselves are historically important. Zues wasn't real either, but the stories tell us about the believers and the context of their lives as they saw it. It's essentially an exercise in comparative mythology. Even more broadly, the provenance of christian demi-god stories give us insight into the political realities of then-extant empires. More than a little bit of what people believe about jesus comes down to taxes and districting, or the need to unite a bunch of proles (or their owners) as a uniform block for some other more practical purpose, lol.

The song and dance about big mo, for it's part, is explicitly political, and the two major sects of islam are still pissy with each other about how it all went down. Each insisting that the other got something importantly wrong. The quran itself was commissioned as a consolidation of state power under patina of illegitimacy which would be used then and now to circumscribe the new orthodoxy. In this way, the quran differs from the new testament. The NT was a choose your own adventure sort of thing leveraged for an existent state, much ink and blood was spilled..for example, de-emphasizing the culpability of rome for deicide (fuckin jews did it! - and didn't that turn out to be a historically important decision.....nearly 2k years later). The quran was a fresh pass at a new establishment legend manufactured at the dawn of empire by the victors of the first (and certainly not last) internecine conflict in the ummah.

So, there's a -tiny- demonstration of why people uninterested in existent gods might want to understand the specifics of the stories we tell about gods (or their purported mouthpieces). It could be an interest in literature, or in history, or in the way that literature provides insight to psychology in history (or the present). More specifically..as to why the debate can be "heated" between atheists. Recall that many atheists here were once believers. Even if they were never believers..the historical legitimacy of these narratives in some form or another has been self-servingly drilled into our heads for centuries. Consider the Lycurgan Reform of Sparta. We know that this occurred. Now imagine being told that Lycurgus was not a real person. Surprise surprise, he wasn't...or..if he was, we have no reason to assume that the man bore any resemblance to the stories told about him. He's not entirely unlike Mo or Jesus, and it's just too much for some people to imagine that history can be retroactively re-imagined..or that people would enact broad reforms without some singular impetus....even when the reforms appear to have taken centuries and wildly fanciful and contradictory stories are handed down to us about the reformers. In truth, the only meaningful difference between overtly mythical characters and legendary ones is whether or not people believed they existed..not whether or not they actually did..and they never seem to end up having existed as described regardless.
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#20
RE: Did Muhammad exist?
You and I see eye to eye on finding comparative mythology interesting and worthwhile. I mean, if you go back far enough into Greece's history, you might find that there was some guy upon whom the god Zeus is based. From a comparative mythology standpoint this might interest us, but it would have no real bearing on how we interpret the stories. After all, at some point, the stories took on a life of their own, and "the real Zeus" is far less interesting than what poets from later generations had to say about him.

I'm going to make it a point to pick your brain about Christian history at some point, since you seem to know a thing or two about it. The stuff from early Roman Christianity up through Constantine interests me the most. Y'know, the interpretations of X, Y, and Z which was branded heresy in order to create "unity" among believers.

EDIT: LOL you edit-ninja'd me AGAIN... this response doesn't take your last paragraph into account.

Anyway, yeah I understand that some "legendary" figures from history don't have a real existence, or, if they did, the legends highly exaggerate or totally embellish aspects of their lives.
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