(October 14, 2020 at 1:43 pm)brewer Wrote: It's not about the so called prophet and what he is claimed to have done or not done.
It's about the assertion that a god exists as more than a concept of the human mind.
The existence of god is an entirely separate issue. What's compelling me to believe a personal god exists is simply the aspect of design and purpose around us, that is, the teleological arguments are the most compelling to me, and that includes our design, too, regardless of whether one accepts all aspects of evolution or not. In the end, evolution is a process. The existence of a process still warrants an explanation.
The smallest particles in the universe are governed by very precise and inescapable laws, it's somewhat insane to think that our lives don't have laws or some predetermined ideal path.
(October 14, 2020 at 2:05 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: I'm not convinced that we can so easily discount options 2 and 3 (and shame on you for co-opting it from C.S. Lewis).
I never said it's easy to discount anything, and we don't need C.S. Lewis to figure out these three possibilities ...
Muhammad did something that Joseph Smith didn't, he came up with six thousand verses bringing up extremely varied topics, and takes the risk of correcting all the mainstream beliefs of his time, including the christian and jewish doctrines. The qur'an also contains minutious details about Joseph's life (the son of Jacob), Mary's, Jesus's, any of which could've been challenged by contemporaneous christians or jews.
Joseph Smith, knowing that he is a liar, makes it easy for himself and invents internal characters. The Book of Mormon is then an obvious fake. The character Mormon is defined internally as far as I know. Golden plates? I mean come on.
Even Mormons acknoweldge mistakes in their book:
https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Quest...istakes%3F
Finding a clear cut mistake in the Qur'an is just a futile exercise. You can try.
