Why prophet married aisha.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

One would think in 2013 after police procedurals have been so popular and common on TV for some 15 years that people would cease asking that kind of question. One at least assumes they know the answer and are betting the other guy doesn't.

The Hadiths are amusing in light of the above as everyone should know memory is nearly worthless after even a few weeks, some say days. The Hadiths were collected how many years later? After his death is what I remember reading. So pick someone you knew who is dead and tell me what they said twenty years earlier.

Compared to today fast paced life and a lot of information transfer happened every hours, and how we began to slowly leave social interaction to wireless communication... It's nothing weird if we can't even remember what is being said by our close-relatives few days ago.

Secondly, maybe you want to venture about science of narration in the study of hadith. Know who is sahaba, tabi'in and tabi'ut.

Your response to my observation of the absence of evidence that oral transmission even exists much less is reliable over years appears to be a poorly formed argument that it really existed and was accurate in a time long, long ago in a land far, far away. Does that correctly reflect your intended statement or would you like to try again?

As to 'science of narration' never heard of such a thing and i am a scientist. Care to provide some references which explain and describe this "science?" Of course not.

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Why would you believe this oral transmission has anything to do with what really happened in history?

Oral transmission doesn't necessarily tell us what really happened, yes, but it is still reliable to a great extent, for many different things. It used to be one of the ways of preserving the past before writing was common. And especially regarding the existence of Muhammad and Jesus, peace be upon them, there are thousands of oral traditions about them and I think it would be very stupid to ignore that fact and then say that they never existed.

That is an interesting position. Would you care to produce physical evidence that it is in any way reliable? Of course not. There is none. There are many oral traditions about Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyon and Luke Skywalker. So? There are also many oral traditions about Presidents Washington and Lincoln which are entirely later inventions.

The issue however is physical evidence of existence of all the characters I named above and others like King Arthur.

Now it is obvious, I hope, that if someone tells you something that he heard from some unidentified person he met on the street you would not believe it solely because someone said it.

It is equally incredible that you would believe things that originated centuries ago from unknown persons of unknown character and honesty for unknown reasons. Why would you do that?

Can you produce evidence of it's existence and accurate recounting of any event in history?

As I just said, oral traditions are not necessarily accurate all the time. They might even be entirely fabricated. However, if there is an abundant amount of oral reports about the same person throughout history, and the reports match with each other, corroborate each other, and we have specific dates and information and so on, then it certainly increases the likelihood that the person existed although it doesn't 100% prove that.

And why do you believe it is impossible to create hundreds, even thousands, of "oral reports" that match? Do you believe it is impossible invent dates also? As to "throughout history" one presumes the reports referred only to his lifetime.

The fact that religious beliefs depend heavily upon mere faith in the existence and accuracy of oral tradition does not mean it is real nor does it change the way memory works nor the way memories are stored.

I agree. See my comments above.

Nor does it change you belief in the word of unknown persons of unknown character for unknown reasons collected by unknown people of unknown character working under unknown conditions. For example, perhaps the collectors were paid by the hadith. That would be a clear invitation to invent as many as possible.