Muhammad the Greatest: A Comparative Study

[Al-Fatihah]

Apparently, you don't understand satire.

I don't understand why you lot insist on having "Muhammad" as your first-name/title and then get offended if any non-Muslim correctly calls you "Muhammad". How pointless. Don't get me started on people who call themselves "Muhammad Muhammad" and then get offended when addressed. That would be the asinine equivalent of every single Christian in North America having "Jesus" as their first-name/title.

Jesus Christ that would be really dumb. >.>

Response: I never got mad in whatever way you speak of so I don't have a clue what you are talking about.

[DeistPaladin]

Response: Nothing wrong with being bias, as long as it does not conflict with logic.

"Confirmation bias" is something specific. It's a logical fallacy that involves starting with the desired conclusion and then looking for reasons to believe it.

[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.

[Darth]

Response: I agree that the violent reaction to the drawing of cartoons is very much wrong and uncalled for. However, the reaction is not prescribed in the Qur'an or Sunnah, thus it has nothing to do with Muhammad's character.

He's actually in that it's not in the quran. Skeptic's annotated (which, you know, explicitly tries to find examples of nutjobgery in holy books) seems to say that it's not actually in the quran (no mention of the Sunnah/Hadiths) http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/...mages.html
That's not to say it's not a part of the religion as it actually exists...

No, lets get into the horrible stuff. How old was Aisha when she was married to Muhammad?
That's part of it. Though I wouldnt say that Muhammed is unique in being loved by his followers, yet seen by others as less that impressive (L. Ron Hubbard for example), many religions really...

[Al-Fatihah]

"Confirmation bias" is something specific. It's a logical fallacy that involves starting with the desired conclusion and then looking for reasons to believe it.

Response: But being bias to accepting the truth is not illogical.

---

He's actually right. Skeptic's annotated (which, you know, explicitly tries to find examples of nutjobgery in holy books) seems to say that it's not actually in the quran (no mention of the Sunnah/Hadiths) http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/...mages.html
That's not to say it's not a part of the religion as it actually exists...

No, lets get into the horrible stuff. How old was Aisha when she was married to Muhammad?
That's part of it. Though I wouldnt say that Muhammed is unique in being loved by his followers, yet seen by others as less that impressive (L. Ron Hubbard for example), many religions really...

Response: Muhammad wrote the marriage contract with Aisha when she was 6 years old and entered the marriage contract by living with her when she was 9.

Yet there is nothinhg horrific about it. Marriage is to love and protect someone, so it cannot possibly be horrible to do so.

[Dee Dee Ramone]

The truth is that Muhammed is just another wanker seen by others as a prophet, while there is not even a god at all.

[popeyespappy]

Confirmation bias anyone?

Response: Nothing wrong with being bias, as long as it does not conflict with logic.

Really? Let’s test your hypothesis shall we?

All adults that have sex with children are pedophiles.
Muhammad had sex with a child.
Muhammad was a pedophile.

[Al-Fatihah]

The truth is that Muhammed is just another wanker seen by others as a prophet, while there is not even a god at all.

Response: The Qur'an and sunnah shows evidence to the contrary.

[Darth]

Woah boy, this thread is about to become interesting, my work here is done.



Edit: happened before I could even get this response in.

[Minimalist]

My religion is islam.

Gee. How would we ever have guessed.

So let's see. You are a muslim and after careful study you have come to what you think is the blinding conclusion that your bullshit story was right all along.

Thanks for your insight.

Bye.