(January 23, 2015 at 5:42 pm)Rayaan Wrote:

(January 23, 2015 at 6:50 am)pocaracas Wrote: Really?
Right off the bat, the extraordinary claim that some allah made people have extraordinary memory so they could remember things from the far past without any contamination?
And, in spite of that, lots of similar sayings, but later deemed false, crept up...

Yes, the hadiths are not 100% reliable because it depended mainly on the memory of people, so falsehoods can creep up despite people having a good memory.

(January 23, 2015 at 6:50 am)pocaracas Wrote: And it seems the main vessel for authenticity is the header of the hadith which contains the chain of people who remembered the thing, am I right?

Yes.

I'm getting the hang of this!

(January 23, 2015 at 5:42 pm)Rayaan Wrote:

(January 23, 2015 at 6:50 am)pocaracas Wrote: What kept people from attributing whatever they made up to some supposedly known person from the past? And how to discern who's truthful and who isn't?

Like your own Bayesian reasoning, if there were so many people attributing the same thing (i.e. Prophethood) to a single person named Muhammad, and if there is a high level of consistency between them regarding the issue, then most likely they are being truthful.

Depends on what their interest was when they made such claims...
I can't even begin to guess at it...
It also depends on when these claims were made. If they were made tens of years after Abd-Al-Malik's introduction of the madrassas and spreading of the religion, then... yeah... it is expected that many people will have the same basis, the same belief.
On that PDF, I saw many mentions of people getting information from a teacher... who also got his information from some other teacher... who got it from another... and it goes on and on... Teachers, I guess, imply a madrassa. So, we're talking about generations of teachers... too long for the claims to be reliable, no matter who is claimed to have uttered it before it came to the "committee" that was in charge of recording them all for posterity.

And about the rules this committee used, the way I see it, it seems that, at most, they would get internal consistency of all the hadiths...

(January 23, 2015 at 5:42 pm)Rayaan Wrote: Just like you have no hard evidence, I have no hard evidence either.

And don't you forget it!

(January 23, 2015 at 5:42 pm)Rayaan Wrote:

(January 23, 2015 at 6:50 am)pocaracas Wrote: So my lack of belief doesn't prevent me from accepting the possibility that some tribal leader attained, somehow (brilliant battle strategy, iron fist ruler, etc), a legendary status.

And what do you think that such a legendary leader was fighting for? Was it for the sake of political supremacy, religious, or both?

Errr... territory, land. That's the main usual suspect.
I'll just go ahead and take one more guess: maybe the land where his tribe was established became very poor and lacking in fauna and flora, perhaps the desert was creeping in... I don't know, I'd have to look it up. And they decided to take land from some other people who had decent land, decent food, decent animals.

Once you're the ruler of a good patch of land, good enough to give out some bits to your fellow fighters, you have to establish a political rule, in order to keep the newly conquered people in order...
Although, it seems that they mostly killed off all the men and kept the women and children(?), which would make it easier to keep people content.
Only a few years later would actual politics be required...

(January 23, 2015 at 5:42 pm)Rayaan Wrote:

(January 23, 2015 at 6:50 am)pocaracas Wrote: I'm trying to tell you that the prophetic role was probably added to the person by someone in between the legendary leader and Abd-Al-Malik.

So you accept one of the 3 possibilities:
1. Muhammad himself claimed to be a Prophet of God and he really is a Prophet of God (as all Muslims believe)
2. Muhammad himself claimed to be a Prophet of God but the claim is untrue.
3. Someone else added the Prophetic role to Muhammad.

I know you don't accept number 1 because you already said that you don't believe in the supernatural bits.

That leaves you now with either number 2 or 3 as a possible answer. But you said that you accept number 3 only. So, now you have to explain why number 3 is more likely to be true than number 2.
Why is it more likely that someone else attached the Prophetic role to Muhammad as opposed Muhammad himself attaching Prophethood to himself?

I'm not asking for evidence. Just asking for a Bayesian explanation to that, which you so love to use.

Well, yes, number 1 is too much to accept on mere say so... extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence... I'm sure you've heard that, before.

Number 2 is possible, but the lack of contemporary writings and other evidence for it kind of lends little credence to it.

Why do I think number 3 is more likely? Because, the earliest evidence of such a claim comes many years... decades, even... after his "agreed upon date of" death. Also, remember that need for political ruling after having conquered the land... that seems to have come after his death, as well, with the caliphate.
In a way, it's a bit like the Teacher of Righteousness may have been the real person to whom the christ prophethood was later attached... some even go as far as claiming there were several such teachers of righteousness.

(January 23, 2015 at 6:35 pm)pocaracas Wrote: It also depends on when these claims were made. If they were made tens of years after Abd-Al-Malik's introduction of the madrassas and spreading of the religion, then... yeah... it is expected that many people will have the same basis, the same belief.

The claims were made both during and after Muhammad's death. These claims (about his Prophethood) were preserved in peoples' memories at first, and then were eventually written down about a hundred years later, starting from Ibn Ishaq's biographies. Many other corroborating information about Muhammad are recorded in Bukhari's hadiths which were compiled another hundred years later.

Nevertheless, the claims about it are abundant and they all unanimously refer to one and the same thing: the Prophetic role of Muhammad.

(January 23, 2015 at 6:35 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Errr... territory, land. That's the main usual suspect.
I'll just go ahead and take one more guess: maybe the land where his tribe was established became very poor and lacking in fauna and flora, perhaps the desert was creeping in... I don't know, I'd have to look it up. And they decided to take land from some other people who had decent land, decent food, decent animals.

Yeah, good job, keep the guesses coming. I find them absolutely enthralling.

(January 23, 2015 at 6:35 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Why do I think number 3 is more likely? Because, the earliest evidence of such a claim comes many years... decades, even... after his "agreed upon date of" death.

But at least the earliest evidences did arrive many years later. Better late than never, right? The evidence for your claim, on the other hand, that someone else attached Prophethood to Muhammad, doesn't came later, earlier, nor ever. You have no problem accepting that someone (totally unknown to you) falsely added a Prophetic role to Muhammad, while there are no writings at all to support that, let alone contemporary writings. And yet you have a problem believing that Muhammad claimed himself to be a Prophet, even though there are writings about such a claim being made, albeit many years later. I strongly find that to be more of an intellectual dishonesty than mere fallacious reasoning.

I highlighted the two parts of your quote for a reason. Why?

Because if you're going to judge what is more likely by the availability of evidence, then you have automatically refuted your own argument, since you, admittedly, have no evidence at all.

Way to be consistent.

(January 23, 2015 at 9:26 pm)Rayaan Wrote:

(January 23, 2015 at 6:35 pm)pocaracas Wrote: It also depends on when these claims were made. If they were made tens of years after Abd-Al-Malik's introduction of the madrassas and spreading of the religion, then... yeah... it is expected that many people will have the same basis, the same belief.

The claims were made both during and after Muhammad's death. These claims (about his Prophethood) were preserved in peoples' memories at first, and then were eventually written down about a hundred years later, starting from Ibn Ishaq's biographies. Many other corroborating information about Muhammad are recorded in Bukhari's hadiths which were compiled another hundred years later.

Nevertheless, the claims about it are abundant and they all unanimously refer to one and the same thing: the Prophetic role of Muhammad.

Indeed, there are abundant equal claims well after the implementation of the madrassas...
The "when" is not lending any credence to those claims. But if the claims are not credible, than why would they be made?
Develop the religion further? increase the basis for the belief? incorporate local notions into the religion?...
I keep having to guess these things, because nothing could be written about them, or the claims would be immediately debunked... as they weren't...

(January 23, 2015 at 9:26 pm)Rayaan Wrote:

(January 23, 2015 at 6:35 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Errr... territory, land. That's the main usual suspect.
I'll just go ahead and take one more guess: maybe the land where his tribe was established became very poor and lacking in fauna and flora, perhaps the desert was creeping in... I don't know, I'd have to look it up. And they decided to take land from some other people who had decent land, decent food, decent animals.

Yeah, good job, keep the guesses coming. I find them absolutely enthralling.

I try, I try!

Here's something interesting, albeit permeated by muslim bias: http://www.al-islam.org/restatement-hist...abia-islam

Quote:Since Arabia did not have a government, and since the Arabs were anarchists by instinct, they were locked up in ceaseless warfare. War was a permanent institution of the Arabian society. The desert could support only a limited number of people, and the state of inter-tribal war maintained a rigid control over the growth of population. But the Arabs themselves did not see war in this light.

To them, war was a pastime or rather a dangerous sport, or a species of tribal drama, waged by professionals, according to old and gallant codes, while the “audience” cheered. Eternal peace held no appeal for them, and war provided an escape from drudgery and from the monotony of life in the desert.

They, therefore, courted the excitement of the clash of arms. War gave them an opportunity to display their skills at archery, fencing and horsemanship, and also, in war, they could distinguish themselves by their heroism and at the same time win glory and honor for their tribes. In many cases, the Arabs fought for the sake of fighting, whether or not there was a cause belli.
[...]
All Arabs were notorious for certain characteristics such as arrogance, conceit, boastfulness, vindictiveness and excessive love of plunder. Their arrogance was partly responsible for their failure to establish a state of their own. They lacked political discipline, and until the rise of Islam, never acknowledged any authority as paramount in Arabia.

So, you (muslims) expect the rest of the world to accept that a people filled with such righteous characteristics as " arrogance, conceit, boastfulness, vindictiveness and excessive love of plunder" to bring up unbiased perfect memories of what someone long-dead said, and we should accept those memories as trustworthy...

My new guess is that many of the muslim sayings (qur'an, hadiths) were initially fabricated for the purpose of bringing all these people into some form of lawfulness. Around the time of Abd-Al-Malik... remember, the when is important.
Later on, other hadiths surfaced... not quite fabricated with a purpose, but rather, like today's believers in their personal relationship with their favorite divinity, they were convinced of their own delusions, probably fed by their parents and other tribesfolk.
It is for these hadiths that the science of the hadith seems to become important, in discerning the ones compatible with the initial fabrication, from the rest... even so, it seems some inconsistencies crept up: http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Contra/...weird

(January 23, 2015 at 9:26 pm)Rayaan Wrote:

(January 23, 2015 at 6:35 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Why do I think number 3 is more likely? Because, the earliest evidence of such a claim comes many years... decades, even... after his "agreed upon date of" death.

But at least the earliest evidences did arrive many years later. Better late than never, right? The evidence for your claim, on the other hand, that someone else attached Prophethood to Muhammad, doesn't came later, earlier, nor ever. You have no problem accepting that someone (totally unknown to you) falsely added a Prophetic role to Muhammad, while there are no writings at all to support that, let alone contemporary writings. And yet you have a problem believing that Muhammad claimed himself to be a Prophet, even though there are writings about such a claim being made, albeit many years later. I strongly find that to be more of an intellectual dishonesty than mere fallacious reasoning.

I highlighted the two parts of your quote for a reason. Why?

Because if you're going to judge what is more likely by the availability of evidence, then you have automatically refuted your own argument, since you, admittedly, have no evidence at all.

Way to be consistent.

I see your point.
And you're right... I guess... There is no evidence for my guess that prophethood was a later addition. And there are claims that the man himself was a prophet and claimed to be so.
Trouble is, the earliest mentions of Muhamad present him solely as a tribal or army leader, no prophethood whatsoever is present there... and this is from the link you gave earlier.
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.

Arabs seem to have had a history of untrustworthiness... do you think it's expectable that they became trustworthy within a hundred years of Mo's appearance in the scene?
Or is it more likely that they remained equally untrustworthy and, in particular, these new leaders with their own agendas, took it to a new height by copying part of what the romans did with christianity in their empire?

(January 25, 2015 at 7:37 am)pocaracas Wrote: 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.

(January 24, 2015 at 8:17 am)pocaracas Wrote: 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.

Quote: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

Quote: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/

Quote: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.

You're using the claims of the quran and the hadiths to prove the claims of the quran and hadiths Rayaan. Does that logic seem clear, simple, and undeniable to you? "Oral tradition" is simply an inflation of the quran and hadiths, as you say thats where the quran and haiths come from(there's your evidence of something from nothing btw, you're welcome..lol). "Posthumous writings" sounds, to me, like fan-fic - they exist..... but I find them to be as unreliable and uncompelling as the posthumous writings regarding christ (and as uncomplleing as you do..likely for the same reason, eh)? They also beg the larger question by even being called "post-humous writings" - worthless. Additionally, a "negative argument" is not an argument from ignorance by default......wtf? In short, you seem to have temporarily forgotten how this was done and you don't have a "positive argument", you have a reassertion of the articles of your faith.....but I don't believe your claims (almost as a rule, sadly...I used to give you more credit, but that's been squandered), or in your faith...so how useful is that going to be? I know, I know, not all of this is immediatel;y relevant to the discussion you're having with Poca...but, imo, Poca gave you far too much liberty and you still failed to deliver......

"If the stories about Mo were true, then the stories about Mo would be true". meh. Sure, sure, but since the question is "are the stories about Mo true?".......you might see the impasse?