Muhammad the Greatest: A Comparative Study

[Al-Fatihah]

This sounds a bit like it's going in the direction of the "Trilemma" argument of the Christians. The argument is that Jesus was such a man of exceptional character that he could not be either a lair or a lunatic, so therefore he must be Lord.

There are many logical fallacies packed into this argument but mostly it underscores the pitfall of beginning with the desired conclusion in mind and then looking for reasons to believe it. In this case, the construction of this argument, contrived alternatives are then offered to the desired conclusion which are then over simplified and straw-manned.

The elimination of the alternatives relies heavily on an argument from incredulity, i.e. "I can't imagine anyone who's a liar or a lunatic uttering such words of wisdom" or "I can't imagine someone of such good character making up a false religion". Human nature is much more complex than this argument allows for and, in fact, examples of exceptions to this over-simplified thinking abound in religious and political leaders throughout history.

I'd cite Thomas Jefferson as a great example of this kind of complexity. He wrote inspiring words on the rights of humanity, the nature of liberty and ideals of what a democratic and egalitarian society should be like. And he owned slaves. How is this possible? Our incredulity that the author of such words of wisdom could also be a slave holder does not prevail against reality. It was so whether we can believe it or not. Great teachers can also be flawed human beings and just because someone wrote or taught some great things doesn't make them a perfect human being, never mind god-incarnate.

Fiction also provides us with believable characters that might lie to promote a false religion. Dreamwork's movie "The Road to El Dorado" features the story of two fast-talking thieves who, by twist of fate, wind up in the mythical city of gold being worshiped by the inhabitants. Miguel, one of the two thieves, plays along at first but his idealistic side takes over and he tries to shape what was a bloody, austere religion prior to his arrival into a faith more loving and compassionate.

Would Josh McDowell call Miguel a "demon"?

The movie helps our incredulity regarding how a man of compassion might be motivated to lie about being a god (or messenger of a god, etc.). It thereby also exposes the fallacy of "Muhammad/Jesus/Whoever was a good man = his religion must be true" as a non sequitur (the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise).

Discussions of the character of a founder of a religion are utterly irrelevant to whether or not a religion's claims are true.

While I'm on the subject, arguments like this are the perfect example of the pre-failure of apologetics. Religions have no magical artifacts that can be examined by scientists. It can produce no demonstrations like faith-healing which can be done as a repeatable experiment under medical peer-review. Neither angels nor gods ever make public appearances before crowds and recorded in broadcast media. Religion offers no hard evidence of any kind, which it certainly would if it could, to substantiate its extraordinary claims. Apologetics, whether for Christianity, Islam or any other religion, relies on philosophy. And when all the words uttered stop resonating, we're still left with no hard evidence.

I'm not suggesting philosophy, in conjunction with evidence, isn't useful to get to the truth of a matter. But given the extraordinary nature of the claims of religion, we need more than mental constructions to meet the burden of proof. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If all you have is philosophy without hard evidence, you have at best an untested hypothesis. This fails to meet the burden of proof.

Response: No argument was ever presented. Rather, a simple question as to why does Muhammad receive negative views, despite the Qur'an and sunnah showing differently.