Did Muhammad exist?

[vulcanlogician]

Well see there? You can learn more from AF.org than wikipedia! And people say we only gather here to blaspheme the tribal god of the Israelites.

That certainly clarifies things, and it was an interesting read.

[The Grand Nudger]

He was an interesting guy.  His tie-in to heresies and early church history..in case it was overlooked in wiki or you didn't notice it..was that Eusebius of Nicomedia was the man employed to foist christianity upon him in his lonely and paranoiac upbringing.

Eusebius of Nicomedia, along with Eusebius of Ceasaria, are the prominent arian christians who presented doctrine that was declared heresy leading to the nicene creed.  E of C, nevertheless, was a counselor of Constantine and E of N the man who baptized him upon his deathbed. Constantine, for his part, thought that the whole nicene clusterfuck was an inanity. This was an opinion likely shared by Julian, his nephew....though Julian saw utility in christian division whereas Constantine saw it as an obstacle to his rule.

Some of the pushback to arianism is almost certainly to have been informed by it's dangerous proximity to the throne (dangerous to non-arian christians, that is). Declaring it heresy knocked out skilled political operators with familial and economic connections in wealthy suburbs.

(if I remember all of that right, lol..if not, I'm sure someone will be along shortly to correct me.)

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Y'know, I've never gotten why the debate among atheists gets intense over whether biblical/quranic figures actually existed. I'm not knocking it or anything. The debates are interesting. But why does this matter one iota to a nonbeliever?

As atheists, we know this much: A Nazarene carpenter did not actually raise the dead, walk on water, ascend into heaven, etc. Then the question becomes: but was there an actual guy who was just a preaching carpenter upon whom the stories are based? Who cares? Let the theists struggle with it; it's their problem.

Professor X was inspired by/based on Yul Brynner. Does Yul Brynner's actual existence make the professor any more or less fictitious? No. Neither would an actual preaching carpenter. Even the theists don't care about the question of a mundane, historical Jesus. If they were to go back in time and see that he was just some schmuck with no superpowers, I'm sure they'd be just as upset as finding out he never existed.

Do you know why Joseph and Yeshua (Jesus) were depicted as carpenters in the fairy tale?  According to several passengers in the Old Testament one side job of carpenters was to craft idols from scraps of wood.  So by giving Joseph and Yeshua the occupation of carpenters the story tellers cleverly accused them of making false gods.  And Yeshua ended up on a piece of wood and became an idol for hundreds of millions of people throughout the past 2,000 years.  

As I've said before, the committee that wrote the Bible in the 690s did it as an elaborate prank to fool the Pope and his gang.  They included all kinds of clues showing that it was a joke but they were hard to find without a computer like we have now.

[Minimalist]

Back to the subject of the OP.

Don't stand near any of our resident muslims.  Heads might explode.






I think Gibson is a bit too quick to credit early islamic mythology but it is hard to argue with his map-based determination of the facing of early mosques.

A more interesting possibility are the Ghassanids, a southern Arabian tribe which emigrated to the Levant - around Petra not so coincidentally - and which converted to xtianity. As far as the Byzantines were concerned they were heretics but they needed their military assistance against the Persians. Religion only goes so far!

[Pat Mustard]

blaspheme the tribal god of the Israelites.

We can do that to. We can multitask on this site.