Benevolent Creator God?

[vulcanlogician]

[R00tKiT]

[LadyForCamus]

[R00tKiT]

I’m confused. You think that a story about someone claiming divinity is evidence that he was divine? How is that not circular?

You asked for an example of something in the Qur'an that Muhammad couldn't have gotten from local knowledge, the Paraoh's claim of divinity is a detail that is not in the Bible or even the apocrypha. You could of course claim Muhammad could travel to Egypt and decipher hieroglyphs...

[LadyForCamus]

I’m confused. You think that a story about someone claiming divinity is evidence that he was divine? How is that not circular?

You asked for an example of something in the Qur'an that Muhammad couldn't have gotten from local knowledge, the Paraoh's claim of divinity is a detail that is not in the Bible or even the apocrypha. You could of course claim Muhammad could travel to Egypt and decipher hieroglyphs...

The Quran was written after Muhammad’s death, correct? How have you ruled out all possible ways that information could have made its way into your book?

[R00tKiT]

You asked for an example of something in the Qur'an that Muhammad couldn't have gotten from local knowledge, the Paraoh's claim of divinity is a detail that is not in the Bible or even the apocrypha. You could of course claim Muhammad could travel to Egypt and decipher hieroglyphs...

The Quran was written after Muhammad’s death, correct? How have you ruled out all possible ways that information could have made its way into your book?

The entirety of the Qur'an is an oral transmission, its later compilation came from the same oral heritage that prevailed during Muhammad's lifetime and it didn't alter its content, most orientalist scholars have no problem accepting the preservation of the Qur'an. And actually this is irrelevant, the decipherment of hieroglyphs is a very recent event, sometime around 1800.

[LadyForCamus]

@Klorophyll

Let me ask you this: how did traditional biblical figures, or authors of those figures, know anything about Egypt and Egyptian Pharaohs?

[R00tKiT]

The entirety of the Qur'an is an oral transmission, its later compilation came from the same oral heritage that prevailed during Muhammad's lifetime and it didn't alter its content.

Sure. Telephone. I know this game. People wrote down what Muhammad allegedly said. Of course, we have no way of actually confirming it’s accuracy, and if I understand correctly, those alleged translations of oral tradition passed through several pairs of hands after Muhammad’s death. I’ll ask again: how did you rule out other ways that information could have ended up in your book?

It's not a game really... Oral traditions of crowds of people about the verses of the Qur'an is a very accurate way to preserve information. Can you imagine people not remembering well something like Luther King's utterance "I have a dream" ? The Qur'an is a collection of arabic verses who are just as easy to memorize on average. Meccans in Muhammad's time were far more fluent in Classical Arabic than any Arab alive today, it's even easier for them to memorize chunks of the qur'an and recite them verbatim. Many companions of Muhammad recited the Qur'an in front of him to make sure it's preserved accurately. 

In what other way Muhammad could know what an ancient pharaoh said ? Muhammad agrees with the bible on many points, which means that, if he was really copying stuff around him, he wouldn't have put the divinity claim made by the pharaoh.

Let's even say that such information was available somewhere in his time, how does he exactly pick the correct details from a myriad of claims and myths about ancient pharaohs ??

[LadyForCamus]

Sure. Telephone. I know this game. People wrote down what Muhammad allegedly said. Of course, we have no way of actually confirming it’s accuracy, and if I understand correctly, those alleged translations of oral tradition passed through several pairs of hands after Muhammad’s death. I’ll ask again: how did you rule out other ways that information could have ended up in your book?

It's not a game really... Oral traditions of crowds of people about the verses of the Qur'an is a very accurate way to preserve information. Can you imagine people not remembering well something like Luther King's utterance "I have a dream" ? The Qur'an is a collection of arabic verses who are just as easy to memorize on average. Meccans in Muhammad's time were far more fluent in Classical Arabic than any Arab alive today, it's even easier for them to memorize chunks of the qur'an and recite them verbatim. Many companions of Muhammad recited the Qur'an in front of him to make sure it's preserved accurately. 

In what other way Muhammad could know what an ancient pharaoh said ? Muhammad agrees with the bible on many points, which means that, if he was really copying stuff around him, he wouldn't have put the divinity claim made by the pharaoh.

Let's even say that such information was available somewhere in his time, how does he exactly pick the correct details from a myriad of claims and myths about ancient pharaohs ??

Does the Bible contain any accurate information about Egypt?

[LadyForCamus]

@Klorophyll

I’ll come to my point. If the Bible contains at least some historically accurate information about Egypt and Egyptian Pharaohs; and from what I’ve read, it does; then there’s no reason to think with such incredulity that some pieces of accurate Egyptian history could have made its way into the Quran. How did it get there? The same way it likely got into the Bible. The Bible got some stuff right. The Quran got some stuff right. Not necessarily the same stuff, but so what? That’s expected under the circumstances. If anything, the fact that both books contain accurate content regarding Egypt refutes your argument that the only way anyone alive at the time could have gleaned that specific information was via divine revelation.

Btw, I’m not well-versed on the historicity of either text, so if I’m missing something here, someone please educate me. Or is this really as silly as it seems?