RE: It wasn't Mohammed who founded Islam.
January 23, 2015 at 5:42 pm
(This post was last modified: January 23, 2015 at 5:55 pm by Rayaan.)
(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.
(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.
Just like you have no hard evidence, I have no hard evidence either.
(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?
(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.