It wasn't Mohammed who founded Islam.

[pocaracas]

AHAHA, I thought you said you weren't going to argue this!

Kiding!

Disagree with me?
So then tell me where they got their info from?

From oral tradition and early Muslim historians.

Can we agree that these can, and most likely do become, skewed?

There are also written records of Muhammad coming from both Muslims and non-Muslims, though they may be posthumous.

Posthumous... lends credence to posterior insertion, instead of actual existence.... at least, existence as claimed.
I'm perfectly ok with there being a Mohammed that was the leader of the tribe and rallied them to take over several adjoining provinces.
It's the supernatural bits that get me riled up.

You still haven't told me where you got your info from about Abd-Al-Malik being the official founder of Islam.

No... all I, or anyone else, have is a "most likely"... oh and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus:

Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians.[1][2] He lived in what has been called the Silver Age of Latin literature. He is known for the brevity and compactness of his Latin prose, as well as for his penetrating insights into the psychology of power politics.

So, the thing was already very well established before Abd-Al-Malik... wouldn't be difficult to implement, given a few guidelines...

Anyway, biased does not mean wrong. You should know that. It just means some flourishes must have been added to the tale (and some nasties were removed) in the recounting that eventually settled in the written form.

Well, even if we take bias to mean that some things were added to or omitted from the final written form, that still doesn't the justify the claim (let alone prove) that Abd-Al-Malik and his scribes were behind all of this.

When you say "claim", it sounds like I affirmed it really happened that way... I remember taking a bit of care in there and using a "most likely", directly telling you that there's no hard evidence for it.... just conjecture and a guess.
Conjecture from human psychology, from human power hunger, from human leadership history (remember Napoleon's [or was it Marx?] opium of the masses).
Guess from the result and efficacy of the implemented religion in places that had no contact whatsoever with any Mohammad.
Paraphrasing the Pirahã who "have no concept of a supreme spirit or god,[8] and they lost interest in Jesus when they discovered that Everett had never seen him. They require evidence based on personal experience for every claim made."

Can you honestly say that all the information regarding Mohammad and his descendants is recorded exactly as it happened for real?

Of course not all the information is accurate, but I believe that a vast majority of it is true.

How can you tell which is factual, and which is fictional?
And, since we're at it, what parts of muslim tradition and religion do you personally consider to be fiction?

sigh... religion is different from cult.

How is that helping your argument though? Are you trying to tell me that the first Muslims were members of a cult and not of a religion? If so, then please do explain your answer.

More to the point, exactly how do you differentiate between what is religion and what is cult?

Standard definition, I guess.... number of adherents...
Let's look at the dictionary and see if I get some agreement:

Cult:
1. a particular system of religious worship, especially with reference to its rites and ceremonies.
2. an instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, especially as manifested by a body of admirers: the physical fitness cult.
3. the object of such devotion.
4. a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.
5. Sociology. a group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols.
6. a religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist, with members often living outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader.
7. the members of such a religion or sect.

Well, there's room in the definition of cult for religion itself... I was going for 4. and 5. kind of interpretation of "cult".

How about a Religion:
1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.
3. the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices:
a world council of religions.
4. the life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion.
5. the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith.
6. something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience: to make a religion of fighting prejudice.


Number 1., containing a moral code.
Curiously, for me, no mention of number of adherents is made, nor geographical reach... so I guess my previous usage of those words was incorrect.
But you got my drift.

The tribal cult that sprung up after Mohammad's death, became a basis to the religion he instated throughout the empire.

"Religion" is the wrong word. The same Wiki article (which you first linked to) states that Abd-Al-Malik consolidated and extended the Muslim rule, in that particular empire, not the religion.

"Extending the Muslim rule" and "instating/establishing a religion" are not the same thing and you know that.

Depends... if you live in a place that doesn't adhere to that belief, a ruler establishing a religion in there is in the definition of the extension of muslim rule.
But let's speak in general...

Yes, you're right... but it is likely that this guy, Abd-Al-Malik, in order to extend the reach of that limited religion, had to include extra bits of wonderment, and rules for the cases of failure to accept this new religion.
He had to convince a lot of people that what they believed, prior to his establishment, was wrong and this new prophet was the one true prophet.
He had to do this leg work. And he used very real and human tricks to accomplish it.
Is any of that recorded? I doubt it. He'd be shooting himself in the foot, if he'd recorded any of the techniques used to subdue the people and impose a new belief system onto them.
In light of this, I can only say that I have no evidence whatsoever that this happened. I shouldn't expect any... and none surfaces.... which makes sense.

And, following the best roman practices, he must have incorporated a few elements from each area of the empire, so that all would feel like they belong to this new religion.

Which is, once again, pure conjecture. You haven't yet provided any historical material to support that claim.

Like I said, none should exist.
Even if any of it surfaces, the local population would snuff it out of existence.
How dare Abd-Al-Malik to write such preposterous things about their religion?!

And Mo getting godlike intel from an angel, memorizing all of it, recounting it all to this tribe, having those people go on recounting it to their descendents and those to their descendents, all the while they're in an ongoing war for territory, until someone remembers to gather all of them and write it down for posterity.... and what was written was verbatim what the angel told Mo... that makes sense and is in accordance with everything we know of human nature...
Talk about grasping at straws... -.-'

I'm not saying that you have to believe any of this. But the debate here is particularly about which is the most historically consistent account of the origin of Islam as acknowledged in scholarly literature.

You wrote in the previous reply (emphasis mine):

As I said way up there... Abd Al-Malik was the guy who made it the "state religion"... the guy who made arabic the "state language"... the guy, most likely, had his scribes write the qur'an as a political tool, following the best practices of the romans when they took on the bible.

So again, what scholarly materials - or even oral traditions - can you show me which substantiate your claim that Abd-Al-Malik is the guy who ("most likely") had his scribes write the Quran?

Mere guesses and "most likely" do not constitute a historical account, in case you were thinking of using that again.

In the course of my PhD, I got used to applying Bayesian methods... they work far better than you'd expect when actual information is terribly difficult to access.

Why don't you tell me what is the scholarly consensus on the most likely origin of the Qur'an and the muslim traditions?
Is it this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran#Compilation

Based on earlier transmitted reports, in the year 632 CE, after Muhammad died and a number of his companions who knew the Quran by heart were killed in a battle by Musaylimah, the first caliph Abu Bakr (d. 634CE) decided to collect the book in one volume so that it could be preserved. Zayd ibn Thabit (d. 655CE) was the person to collect the Quran since "he used to write the Divine Inspiration for Allah's Apostle". Thus, a group of scribes, most importantly Zayd, collected the verses and produced a hand-written manuscript of the complete book. The manuscript according to Zayd remained with Abu Bakr until he died. Zayd's reaction to the task and the difficulties in collecting the Quranic material from parchments, palm-leaf stalks, thin stones and from men who knew it by heart is recorded in earlier narratives. After Abu Bakr, Hafsa bint Umar, Muhammad's widow, was entrusted with the manuscript. In about 650 CE, the third Caliph Uthman ibn Affan (d. 656CE) began noticing slight differences in pronunciation of the Quran as Islam expanded beyond the Arabian peninsula into Persia, the Levant, and North Africa. In order to preserve the sanctity of the text, he ordered a committee headed by Zayd to use Abu Bakr's copy and prepare a standard copy of the Quran.[28][38] Thus, within 20 years of Muhammad's death, the Quran was committed to written form. That text became the model from which copies were made and promulgated throughout the urban centers of the Muslim world, and other versions are believed to have been destroyed.[28][39][40][41] The present form of the Quran text is accepted by Muslim scholars to be the original version compiled by Abu Bakr.[29][30][42]

It's remarkable, the lack of scitations on the first 3 quarters of this text... and the rest... "Muslim scholars" says it all.


Oh, but look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_...l_scholars:

Other secular scholars, such as John Wansbrough, Michael Cook, and Patricia Crone, are less willing to attribute the entire Quran to Muhammad (or Uthman), arguing that there "is no hard evidence for the existence of the Quran in any form before the last decade of the 7th century...[and that]...the tradition which places this rather opaque revelation in its historical context is not attested before the middle of the eighth." "There is no proof that the text of the Quran was collected under Uthman, since the earliest surviving copies of the complete Quran are centuries later than Uthman. (The oldest existing copy of the full text is from the 9th century.[45]) They contend that Islam was formed gradually over a number of centuries after the Muslim conquests, as the Islamic conquerors elaborated their beliefs in response to Jewish and Christian challenges.[46]
[...]
Patricia Crone, studying the origins of the Quran, has focused on the examination of the vast body of the Greek, Armenian, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and Coptic accounts of non-Muslim neighbors of the 7th and 8th centuries which in many cases contradict the traditional Islamic narratives. She argues that the consistency of the non-Muslim sources spread over a large geographic area would tend to rule out a non-Muslim anti-Islamic motive to these sources.[53]

The skeptic approach has been further expanded by Christoph Luxenberg, who supports claims for a late composition of the Quran, and traces much of it to sources other than Muhammad. Luxenberg is known for his thesis that the Quran is merely a re-working of an earlier Christian text, a Syriac lectionary.[54]

Hmmm.... evidence, such a feeble mistress...

[Rayaan]

I thought I wouldn't argue but I couldn't resist.

Can we agree that these can, and most likely do become, skewed?

Some of them can be skewed, yes, but I believe that most of them are reliable, especially when the traditions or hadiths have many different narrators to corroborate and if they are mentioned in the Quran as well.

But I want to just point out some of your contradictions here because I'm really finding it hilarious.

Posthumous... lends credence to posterior insertion, instead of actual existence.... at least, existence as claimed.

But later in the post you said that Bayesian methods "work far better than you'd expect when actual information is terribly difficult to access."

So, your preposterous double standard lies in the fact that whenever you're trying to discredit Muhammad's actual existence, you point to the lack of contemporary writings about him (as if the posthumous writings are all unreliable). But when you're asked to provide evidence or some historical documents about Abd-Al-Malik being the founder of Islam, you conveniently start tossing in Bayesian arguments ("most likely" blah blah blah) because you admitted that none of this stuff is actually recorded in history - none whatsoever.

Here:

When you say "claim", it sounds like I affirmed it really happened that way... I remember taking a bit of care in there and using a "most likely", directly telling you that there's no hard evidence for it.... just conjecture and a guess.
Conjecture from human psychology, from human power hunger, from human leadership history (remember Napoleon's [or was it Marx?] opium of the masses).

And here:

Is any of that recorded? I doubt it. He'd be shooting himself in the foot, if he'd recorded any of the techniques used to subdue the people and impose a new belief system onto them.
In light of this, I can only say that I have no evidence whatsoever that this happened. I shouldn't expect any... and none surfaces.... which makes sense.

Even though:

He had to convince a lot of people that what they believed, prior to his establishment, was wrong and this new prophet was the one true prophet.

So, per your Bayesian assumption, Abd-Al-Malik had to convince a lot of people throughout the empire that he was the one true prophet (meaning he received revelations from God) and yet none of this is recorded in history? Sounds highly, highly non-Bayesian to me.

Also, earlier, you wrote about Muhammad (with an emphasis added):

If he was as leader as islam likes to claim, then some contemporary, as in while he was alive, writings about him would be likely...
I mean, we're talking about a guy who's the leader of all arabia... and expanding!... how could he accomplish that without writing orders and dealing with local tribal leaders and other stuff.... you know, like what the romans were doing 600 years earlier!!

So using the same argument, if Abd-Al-Malik as a leader had to the same thing in order to call people to this new religion, isn't it more likely that at least some of those events would have been recorded? Yes, and yet there is none.

Oh, but look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_...l_scholars:

They've been all debunked as well.

"Reviewing these recent studies on the Qur'an mainly published during the last decade, it is clear that, despite the clamor in the press, no major breakthrough in constructing the Qur'an has been achieved. The ambitious projects of Lüling and Luxenberg lack decisive evidence and can reach no further than the realm of possibility and plausibility." (Gerhard Bowering, The Quran in its Historical Context, p. 81))

"To this day no-one has put forward a defensible explanation of how an unlettered caravan merchant of the early seventh century might have been able, by his own devices, to produce a text of such inimitable beauty, of such capacity to stir emotion, and which contained knowledge and wisdom which stood so far above the ideas current among mankind at that time. The studies carried out in the West which try to determine the 'sources used by Muhammad', or to bring to light the psychological phenomenon which enabled him to draw the inspiration from his 'subconscious', have demonstrated only one thing: the anti-Muslim prejudice of their authors." (Roger DuPasquier, Unveiling Islam, p. 53)


I've already discussed the history of the Quranic transmission and compilation in greater detail in the following posts:

https://atheistforums.org/thread-21997-p...#pid543636

https://atheistforums.org/thread-5678-po...#pid111522

[pocaracas]

I thought I wouldn't argue but I couldn't resist.

Do go on...
I wonder why you didn't answer my very direct question...

Of course not all the information is accurate, but I believe that a vast majority of it is true.

How can you tell which is factual, and which is fictional?
And, since we're at it, what parts of muslim tradition and religion do you personally consider to be fiction?

Anyway... let's see what we have here...

Can we agree that these can, and most likely do become, skewed?

Some of them can be skewed, yes, but I believe that most of them are reliable, especially when the traditions or hadiths have many different narrators to corroborate and if they are mentioned in the Quran as well.

But I want to just point out some of your contradictions here because I'm really finding it hilarious.

Posthumous... lends credence to posterior insertion, instead of actual existence.... at least, existence as claimed.

But later in the post you said that Bayesian methods "work far better than you'd expect when actual information is terribly difficult to access."

So, your preposterous double standard lies in the fact that whenever you're trying to discredit Muhammad's actual existence, you point to the lack of contemporary writings about him (as if the posthumous writings are all unreliable). But when you're asked to provide evidence or some historical documents about Abd-Al-Malik being the founder of Islam, you conveniently start tossing in Bayesian arguments ("most likely" blah blah blah) because you admitted that none of this stuff is actually recorded in history - none whatsoever.

Had you been paying attention, you'd seen that I've gone from what the videos that Min posted, suggesting that no Mohammad ever existed, to a middle position where this Mo, or whatever his name was, did exist, but solely as a tribal leader, with all the perks that come along with the job:
- Military leader
- Ruler

Here:

When you say "claim", it sounds like I affirmed it really happened that way... I remember taking a bit of care in there and using a "most likely", directly telling you that there's no hard evidence for it.... just conjecture and a guess.
Conjecture from human psychology, from human power hunger, from human leadership history (remember Napoleon's [or was it Marx?] opium of the masses).

And here:

Is any of that recorded? I doubt it. He'd be shooting himself in the foot, if he'd recorded any of the techniques used to subdue the people and impose a new belief system onto them.
In light of this, I can only say that I have no evidence whatsoever that this happened. I shouldn't expect any... and none surfaces.... which makes sense.

Even though:

He had to convince a lot of people that what they believed, prior to his establishment, was wrong and this new prophet was the one true prophet.

So, per your Bayesian assumption, Abd-Al-Malik had to convince a lot of people throughout the empire that he was the one true prophet (meaning he received revelations from God) and yet none of this is recorded in history? Sounds highly, highly non-Bayesian to me.

huh?
Aren't you mixing two "he"s?
I don't recall saying that "Abd-Al-Malik had to convince a lot of people throughout the empire that he was the one true prophet"... I fail to even see how I could have hinted that.

Also, earlier, you wrote about Muhammad (with an emphasis added):

If he was as leader as islam likes to claim, then some contemporary, as in while he was alive, writings about him would be likely...
I mean, we're talking about a guy who's the leader of all arabia... and expanding!... how could he accomplish that without writing orders and dealing with local tribal leaders and other stuff.... you know, like what the romans were doing 600 years earlier!!

So using the same argument, if Abd-Al-Malik as a leader had to the same thing in order to call people to this new religion, isn't it more likely that at least some of those events would have been recorded? Yes, and yet there is none.

I seem to recall providing a rational and natural explanation for such absence...
Did you miss it?

Oh, but look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_...l_scholars:

They've been all debunked as well.

"Reviewing these recent studies on the Qur'an mainly published during the last decade, it is clear that, despite the clamor in the press, no major breakthrough in constructing the Qur'an has been achieved. The ambitious projects of Lüling and Luxenberg lack decisive evidence and can reach no further than the realm of possibility and plausibility." (Gerhard Bowering, The Quran in its Historical Context, p. 81))

"To this day no-one has put forward a defensible explanation of how an unlettered caravan merchant of the early seventh century might have been able, by his own devices, to produce a text of such inimitable beauty, of such capacity to stir emotion, and which contained knowledge and wisdom which stood so far above the ideas current among mankind at that time. The studies carried out in the West which try to determine the 'sources used by Muhammad', or to bring to light the psychological phenomenon which enabled him to draw the inspiration from his 'subconscious', have demonstrated only one thing: the anti-Muslim prejudice of their authors." (Roger DuPasquier, Unveiling Islam, p. 53)

ERrr..... so the criticism is debunked just because there's no evidence of how things really happened?
Doesn't that sort of debunks any other account, including the traditional muslim one?

I've already discussed the history of the Quranic transmission and compilation in greater detail in the following posts:

https://atheistforums.org/thread-21997-p...#pid543636

https://atheistforums.org/thread-5678-po...#pid111522

I'm going Drich on this one:



Your argument:
- Oral tradition
- Qur'an
- Hadiths

FFS!!!

1. Oral tradition - have you ever played the broken telephone game? don't know about it? Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers... oh, you guys call it something different... oh well. That's a small scale representation of what happens to oral tradition...
   
2. Qur'an - weren't we discussing about its origin? not valid as a source of information about itself, I guess.... Sort of the same we do with the Bible for the Christians. Claims after claims and none of it has any evidence to back it up, although it does reference some real locations and rulers to try to establish some credibility... doesn't work for the christians, doesn't work for the muslims either. Memorization of the Qur'an after it's been compiled and taught in madrassas established by Abd-Al-Malik? So, who made the textbook?
   
3. Hadiths - Didn't these come well after the fact? let's look at what our biased friend the wiki says:
   "Traditions of the life of Muhammad and the early history of Islam were passed down mostly orally for more than a hundred years after Muhammad's death in AD 632. (pocaracas: Remember how oral transmission can easily lead to a story very different from the original?) Muslim historians say that Caliph Uthman ibn Affan (the third khalifa (caliph) of the Rashidun Empire, or third successor of Muhammad, who had formerly been Muhammad's secretary), is generally believed to urge Muslims to record the hadith just as Muhammad suggested to some of his followers to write down his words and actions.[16][17]
   Uthman's labours were cut short by his assassination, at the hands of aggrieved soldiers, in 656. No sources survive directly from this period so we are dependent on what later writers tell us about this period.[18] (pocaracas: biased later writers, I'd add.. no evidence either way)
   By the 9th century the number of hadiths had grown exponentially (pocaracas: hu-ho, oral tradition seems to be troublesome). Islamic scholars of the Abbasid period were faced with a huge corpus of miscellaneous traditions, some of them flatly contradicting each other. (pocaracas: buhahahaha, told you!) Many of these traditions supported differing views on a variety of controversial matters. Scholars had to decide which hadith were to be trusted as authentic and which had been invented for political or theological purposes. To do this, they used a number of techniques which Muslims now call the science of hadith.[19]"
   
   Yep... science of hadith... sounds a lot like what the christians did when they had to decide which gospels to turn into canon... in the 300's.
   Why is it that, the more I dig, the more islam looks exactly like christianity, with a 600 year delay?
   

You ask me for evidence of my guess that Abd-Al-Malik was the real implementer of Islam... I have none, but present a few arguments from human psychology as prior inputs to a Bayesian approach.
I could factor in other prior inputs, like history of religion, connection of religion and politics and control of the populace, and cite examples from the ancient Egyptians to the Mayas.

You, on the other hand, in order to establish the veracity of the qur'an, present me with pre-written-qur'an oral tradition from a long lost arabian tribe.

None of us have actual hard evidence, either way. I'm aware of that. Are you?

[robvalue]

Oral tradition is a crock of shit when it comes to accuracy. Source: almost every message ever relayed orally from one person to another.

[JesusHChrist]

Oral tradition is a crock of shit when it comes to accuracy. Source: almost every message ever relayed orally from one person to another.

Yes, the Catholics pull the same crap with their "according to tradition" nonsense. As if we are supposed to accept these traditions without scrutiny...
The problem for Mohamed's historicity is the same as it is for Jesus - nothing contemporary.

In Pastafarianism, according to tradition, He created the world, a midget and pirates with a touch of His Noodly appendage. According to our traditions, there will be a beer volcano and a stripper factory in Heaven.

[Rayaan]

Do go on...
I wonder why you didn't answer my very direct question...

Well, I didn't quote that part of the post but the answer to that is already contained in my response to your first question, which is the part in bold:

Some of them can be skewed, yes, but I believe that most of them are reliable, especially when the traditions or hadiths have many different narrators to corroborate and if they are mentioned in the Quran as well.

Does that answer your question or no?

Had you been paying attention, you'd seen that I've gone from what the videos that Min posted, suggesting that no Mohammad ever existed, to a middle position where this Mo, or whatever his name was, did exist, but solely as a tribal leader, with all the perks that come along with the job:
- Military leader
- Ruler

So then you believe that the oral traditions and posthumous writings are at least somewhat reliable since it is exactly those things which inform us about who Muhammad was, right?

huh?
Aren't you mixing two "he"s?
I don't recall saying that "Abd-Al-Malik had to convince a lot of people throughout the empire that he was the one true prophet"... I fail to even see how I could have hinted that.

Let's see if some adding a little color to the font helps everyone to see this. You wrote the following:

Yes, you're right... but it is likely that this guy, Abd-Al-Malik, in order to extend the reach of that limited religion, had to include extra bits of wonderment, and rules for the cases of failure to accept this new religion.
He had to convince a lot of people that what they believed, prior to his establishment, was wrong and this new prophet was the one true prophet.
He had to do this leg work. And he used very real and human tricks to accomplish it.
Is any of that recorded? I doubt it. He'd be shooting himself in the foot, if he'd recorded any of the techniques used to subdue the people and impose a new belief system onto them.
In light of this, I can only say that I have no evidence whatsoever that this happened. I shouldn't expect any... and none surfaces.... which makes sense.

So, two questions, just to clarify:
1. Who is the "he" right below the first sentence? Abd-Al-Malik or Muhammad?
2. Who is this "new prophet"? Abd-Al-Malik or Muhammad?

I seem to recall providing a rational and natural explanation for such absence...
Did you miss it?

That was a really poor explanation. You just mentioned a few people in history who had a lot of power hunger, but that has nothing to do with Abd-Al-Malik let alone the assumption that the he is the one who established Islam.

ERrr..... so the criticism is debunked just because there's no evidence of how things really happened?
Doesn't that sort of debunks any other account, including the traditional muslim one?

The traditional Muslims accounts have actual eyewitnesses behind them. So those accounts are generally reliable since I don't think that most of them would be lying about what they saw or heard. The skeptical scholars, on the other hand, who are desperately searching for rational theories of the origin of the Quran are simply using their own heads to figure things out, and their arguments put forth also do not conform with the earliest Muslim traditions about the Quran, so yes their arguments are pretty much debunked.

I don't have time to give a lecture on the science of hadith and all the many technical issues at the moment. Maybe I'll get into that later.

[pocaracas]

Do go on...
I wonder why you didn't answer my very direct question...

Well, I didn't quote that part of the post but the answer to that is already contained in my response to your first question, which is the part in bold:

Some of them can be skewed, yes, but I believe that most of them are reliable, especially when the traditions or hadiths have many different narrators to corroborate and if they are mentioned in the Quran as well.

Does that answer your question or no?

I was hoping for something a bit more concrete... like which are unreliable and what do they claim that makes them unreliable, to you.
Remember that I'm mostly ignorant of Islam, so that would be a great opportunity to instruct me further.

Had you been paying attention, you'd seen that I've gone from what the videos that Min posted, suggesting that no Mohammad ever existed, to a middle position where this Mo, or whatever his name was, did exist, but solely as a tribal leader, with all the perks that come along with the job:
- Military leader
- Ruler

So then you believe that the oral traditions and posthumous writings are at least somewhat reliable since it is exactly those things which inform us about who Muhammad was, right?

There is evidence of tribal societies in that area.
There is evidence that all the tribes became united under the rule of someone towards the end of the 1st millennium.
Something happened in there, more or less at that time. Call it what you will, I don't care much.
Starting with Abd-Al-Malik, there should be far more evidence of everything... isn't there?

huh?
Aren't you mixing two "he"s?
I don't recall saying that "Abd-Al-Malik had to convince a lot of people throughout the empire that he was the one true prophet"... I fail to even see how I could have hinted that.

Let's see if some adding a little color to the font helps everyone to see this. You wrote the following:

Yes, you're right... but it is likely that this guy, Abd-Al-Malik, in order to extend the reach of that limited religion, had to include extra bits of wonderment, and rules for the cases of failure to accept this new religion.
He had to convince a lot of people that what they believed, prior to his establishment, was wrong and this new prophet was the one true prophet.
He had to do this leg work. And he used very real and human tricks to accomplish it.
Is any of that recorded? I doubt it. He'd be shooting himself in the foot, if he'd recorded any of the techniques used to subdue the people and impose a new belief system onto them.
In light of this, I can only say that I have no evidence whatsoever that this happened. I shouldn't expect any... and none surfaces.... which makes sense.

So, two questions, just to clarify:
1. Who is the "he" right below the first sentence? Abd-Al-Malik or Muhammad?
2. Who is this "new prophet"? Abd-Al-Malik or Muhammad?

O.o....
How many prophets are you considering?
I always thought there was only one prophet, Mo. And that's the one I meant.
The first "he" is Abd-Al-Malik, the guy who spread the religion on the peninsula.

I seem to recall providing a rational and natural explanation for such absence...
Did you miss it?

That was a really poor explanation. You just mentioned a few people in history who had a lot of power hunger, but that has nothing to do with Abd-Al-Malik let alone the assumption that the he is the one who established Islam.

Like I also said, no hard evidence is available...
And that works both ways.

ERrr..... so the criticism is debunked just because there's no evidence of how things really happened?
Doesn't that sort of debunks any other account, including the traditional muslim one?

The traditional Muslims accounts have actual eyewitnesses behind them.

Oh, do they?
"actual eyewitnesses"... amazing!!
Actual eyewitnesses "recorded" through the amazingly accurate medium of oral storytelling!
Come on, Ray... I've told you how unreliable that is.

So those accounts are generally reliable since I don't think that most of them would be lying about what they saw or heard.

Whaaaatt?? Who saw or heard what?

The skeptical scholars, on the other hand, who are desperately searching for rational theories of the origin of the Quran are simply using their own heads to figure things out, and their arguments put forth also do not conform with the earliest Muslim traditions about the Quran, so yes their arguments are pretty much debunked.

These scholars seem to be ignoring those amazingly accurate and reliable eyewitness accounts... I wonder why?....

I don't have time to give a lecture on the science of hadith and all the many technical issues at the moment. Maybe I'll get into that later.

A lecture! I'm actually looking forward to it.

[Rayaan]

I was hoping for something a bit more concrete... like which are unreliable and what do they claim that makes them unreliable, to you.
Remember that I'm mostly ignorant of Islam, so that would be a great opportunity to instruct me further.

They are unreliable when:
1. They contradict with a certain verse in the Quran.
2. If the hadiths have been classified as having a low grade of authenticity.

The authenticity of hadiths are strengthened by a sound chain of narration and by numerous, corroborating reports. The hadiths are an important part of preserving the teachings of Islam (in addition to the Quran).

Hadiths as a whole are accepted as true by mainstream Muslims, but not all of them are accepted as 100% true because there are varying degrees of authenticity depending on the number of narrators, the isnad, meaning, translation, logical consistency, and other aspects of the hadiths. Therefore, the early scholars of Islam developed a way of classifying the hadiths according to their level of authenticity. And there are a vast amount of literature and Islamic books on the scholarly science of hadith classification. Here are some links to get you started:

https://asimiqbal2nd.files.wordpress.com...hassan.pdf

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Hadith/...ences.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahih_al-Bu...thenticity

There is evidence of tribal societies in that area.
There is evidence that all the tribes became united under the rule of someone towards the end of the 1st millennium.
Something happened in there, more or less at that time. Call it what you will, I don't care much.
Starting with Abd-Al-Malik, there should be far more evidence of everything... isn't there?

You completely (and I believe intentionally) evaded the question which has nothing to do with evidence of tribal societies nor what Abd-Al-Malik did. Again, I'll re-phrase the same question, which is:

Do you believe that the oral traditions and posthumous writings - which refer to Muhammad - are at least somewhat reliable since now you believe that he did exist?

I always thought there was only one prophet, Mo. And that's the one I meant.
The first "he" is Abd-Al-Malik, the guy who spread the religion on the peninsula.

So then your final opinion is this:

Muhammad was the only one Prophet at that time (per the oral traditions, at least) and Abd-Al-Malik only spread the religion, meaning that the religion itself was already established (elsewhere), by Prophet Muhammad. He did that by, according to your own words:
"He had to convince a lot of people that what they believed, prior to his establishment, was wrong and this new prophet [Muhammad] was the one true prophet."

Agree or not?

If you do agree, then you're basically saying the same thing as the oral traditions regarding the historical origin of Islam. So, what's new that you're trying to tell me?

[pocaracas]

I was hoping for something a bit more concrete... like which are unreliable and what do they claim that makes them unreliable, to you.
Remember that I'm mostly ignorant of Islam, so that would be a great opportunity to instruct me further.

They are unreliable when:
1. They contradict with a certain verse in the Quran.
2. If the hadiths have been classified as having a low grade of authenticity.

The authenticity of hadiths are strengthened by a sound chain of narration and by numerous, corroborating reports. The hadiths are an important part of preserving the teachings of Islam (in addition to the Quran).

Hadiths as a whole are accepted as true by mainstream Muslims, but not all of them are accepted as 100% true because there are varying degrees of authenticity depending on the number of narrators, the isnad, meaning, translation, logical consistency, and other aspects of the hadiths. Therefore, the early scholars of Islam developed a way of classifying the hadiths according to their level of authenticity. And there are a vast amount of literature and Islamic books on the scholarly science of hadith classification. Here are some links to get you started:

https://asimiqbal2nd.files.wordpress.com...hassan.pdf

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Hadith/...ences.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahih_al-Bu...thenticity

Awesome! Thanks!!

I haven't read the whole thing yet, namely, the PDF... but I sense trouble in the water at page 3:

Allah preserved the Qur'aan from being initially lost by the martyrdom of its memorizers, by guiding the Khulafaa Raashidoon and the other Companions to compile the ayat (verses) of the Qur'aan into one volume, since before they had been scattered in writing on various materials and in memory amongst many faithful hearts. Allah safeguarded it from corruption by its enemies: disbelievers, heretics and false prophets, by enabling millions of believers to commit it to memory with ease. He preserved its teachings by causing thousands of people of Knowledge to learn from its deep treasures and convey them to the masses, and by sending revivers of his Deen at the beginning of every century.
Similarly, Allah preserved the Sunnah by enabling the Companions and those after them (may Allah be pleased with them all) to memorize, write down and pass on the statements of the Messenger and descriptions of his Way, as well as to continue the blessings of practicing the Sunnah, as the Prophet said to his Companions, “You hear from me, and others will hear from you; and people will hear from them, who heard from you.” Sunan Abu Dawood (english trans.) vol.3, no.3651 and authenticated by al-Albaanee in Saheeh Sunan Abu Dawood no. 3107

-.-'
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...

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?
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?
Maybe that's further down in the text... gotta keep reading...

There is evidence of tribal societies in that area.
There is evidence that all the tribes became united under the rule of someone towards the end of the 1st millennium.
Something happened in there, more or less at that time. Call it what you will, I don't care much.
Starting with Abd-Al-Malik, there should be far more evidence of everything... isn't there?

You completely (and I believe intentionally) evaded the question which has nothing to do with evidence of tribal societies nor what Abd-Al-Malik did. Again, I'll re-phrase the same question, which is:

Do you believe that the oral traditions and posthumous writings - which refer to Muhammad - are at least somewhat reliable since now you believe that he did exist?

I'm sorry you feel I evaded the question.
No, I do not believe that. But something did happen in there.
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 that leader may have been named Muhammad... I don't care, I'll give you that as possible.
What I don't give you as possible is the direct channel from a god to that guy who became legendary.
I'd sooner accept that someone attached that story to the legendary leader, in order to provide credence, weight, status, etc. And then someone took advantage of that idea and expanded it [cue to Abd Al Malik].

I always thought there was only one prophet, Mo. And that's the one I meant.
The first "he" is Abd-Al-Malik, the guy who spread the religion on the peninsula.

So then your final opinion is this:

Muhammad was the only one Prophet at that time (per the oral traditions, at least) and Abd-Al-Malik only spread the religion, meaning that the religion itself was already established (elsewhere), by Prophet Muhammad. He did that by, according to your own words:
"He had to convince a lot of people that what they believed, prior to his establishment, was wrong and this new prophet [Muhammad] was the one true prophet."

Agree or not?

If you do agree, then you're basically saying the same thing as the oral traditions regarding the historical origin of Islam. So, what's new that you're trying to tell me?

Almost agree.
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. And this guy (Abd-Al-Malik) saw that as perfect figurehead to establish control of the people on the large territory he now had dominion over.
It was perfect, because it took on cues from previous abrahamic religions, already well spread in the region; brought a new prophet, something the people had been claiming for a while, after that JC "I'll come back before a generation is past" fiasco; and it implemented a series of almost self-regulating laws on the populace.
The requirement for memorization of the rules must have come by due to the expense in copying a large book as the qur'an.... but that must have come after the madrassas were in place.

[Rayaan]

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.

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.

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.

Just like you have no hard evidence, I have no hard evidence either.

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?

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.