Was Prophet Mohammed a caravan thieve?

[R00tKiT]

That's all just academic, though. 

Details are actually what matters. As I said, to get a feeling of why the hadith methodology works, one simply has to delve into it. Being able to spot false quotes about your favorite writer is the best analogy I can think of.

Similarly, people who read every inch of what's reported of Muhammad, recite it, analyze its semantics and compare it to close variants, end up being really good at discerning what's genuine from fakes. It's really learning by doing, nothing to be spoon fed to the outsider.

The christians left alot out of their magic book as well.  Does that convince you that the christ bit is reliable?  Or are you with me on that, laughing at the mere conjecture that this was some indication of reliability?

In the case of christians, it's enough to know they treat the origin of their gospels as a problem. Lots of ink spilled about the synoptic problem obviously doesn't help reliability much. It's just not the same with the Qur'an, an audio book, verbatim, from mouth to ear. Many ears reporting the same version does increase reliability, especially when these ears happen to belong to astute military leaders and social reformers who surrounded Muhammad.

If crowds of people report Luther King saying  "I have a dream" - and suppose there are no cameras, would you doubt it said it? Or, at the very least, that the saying must have one true variant.?

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Boogeyman? Br'er Bear?  Old Man Crow?

Equating geopolitical realities with folklore is an impressive failure, even for a god botherer.

It's subtler than that, obviously. I also hear frequently that boogeyman, old man crow are fabricated myths, not so with Japan, which I never visited.