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Islamic Origins
#1

Islamic Origins
Inspired by a question from Bucky in another thread I thought I'd start the ball rolling on this.  It would probably help to have a couple of jihadists around to lose their minds over it but this is roughly the islamic bullshit story that they tell themselves.  I doubt that there are any atheists who would accept such nonsense but it seems like the logical place to begin.

Quote:According to traditional Islamic beliefs, the Quran was revealed to mohammed during ramadan in 610 AD when he was forty, and received the first revelation from the angel Gabriel.
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Muslims believe that Gabriel brought the word of God to Muhammad verbatim, without any alteration or change. The koran claims that Mo was required only to receive the text but couldn't change it. [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Quran#cite_note-9]
For mohammed this was all quite real and he believed it.  Oh, and Mo was an illiterate merchant so all he could do was recite this stuff back to people who could write.  No chance of mistakes there!

Supposedly, the movement grew in spite of the opposition of the powers-that-be and eventually took over Arabia and conquered an empire.

That's their story.

The actual evidence for it is amazingly weak.  About as weak as it is for all the other angry desert god religions.
Robert G. Ingersoll : “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”
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#2

Islamic Origins
The hallucinogens in this region must have been alarmingly marvelous!
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#3

Islamic Origins
Adult onset schizophrenia?  It's more common than people think.

Although I lean towards Mo being a later literary creation - like Moses and Jesus - to explain things to the commons.
Robert G. Ingersoll : “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”
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#4

Islamic Origins
Thanks for that link... it's a nice, concise farrago of mythical bullshit, delusion, and fairy stories.
And we still have (apparently) fully-functioning people here in Australia that accept this fantasy.
But those same people will vehemently dismiss the classic Beowulf story as mere fiction (which,
like the Quran, it is).  Most Muslims seem not to know the difference between their arseholes and
a hole in the ground—or fact and fiction.
I'm a creationist;   I believe that man created God.
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#5

Islamic Origins
Yair, I've always wondered, especially about the flying horse.

I've read the Quran. One thing which strikes the reader coming from a Christian tradition is how much of the Quran has been lifted from the Torah, sometime with a minor change. EG from memory ,the Quran says God asked Abraham to sacrifice Ishmael, not Isaac. An important change; Isaac is seen as father of the Jews, Ishmael as father of the Arabs.

My approach to such a huge question question is a combination of cultural relativism and structural functionalism . One begins by looking at the culture from which the prophet came. Then a look at what happened with the introduction of that religion.

I retain my basic position about religion: religion always meets human needs. If it did not there would be no religion , or very little. Without exception, every religion reflects the culture which invenst it.

Religions invariably change with time ,to reflect societal changes . All three Abrahamic religions have done so, each with relatively small pockets of resistant conservatives remaining.

Religion are essentially reactive, not proactive .The more successful religions attach themselves to the status quo.

It is my position that The Old Testament, New Testament and Quran are not easily understood by a single reading . If any were clear and unambiguous , there would not have been the amount of factionalism and so many different sects over the centuries. I am not convinced that any of these books contain "a great truth" or that such a thing exists . Holy books are all things to all (believing) men. All believer cherry pick to some degree.

These books are so complicated that I am presently reading four books on Biblical history.

Last night I watched an interesting documentary on The Dead Sea Scrolls . Very pertinent to my post., especially in what it has to say about Jewish factionalism.



The above is only my opinion, albeit formed over many years and in part by formal study. I am not claiming for a second that my perspective is 'true' or ' the answer',it is only one of many possible views. . I am quite happy to hear differing ideas. At best, I will change my views, at worst, I agree to differ.
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#6

Islamic Origins
I have read the Quran. More than once. One thing that always struck me was the numerous infantile folk tales found in the Quran.
The tales of the Rip Van Winkle "sleepers in the cave" (an old Christian tall tale). Comets were created to chase eaves dropping djinn away from Allah's throne. Alexander the Great seeing the sun arise from a mud puddle at the end of the world, and at the other end, the sun setting in a mud puddle. Alexander building an iron fence to keep the two giants Gog and Magog at bay. Birds killing an elephant by dropping pebbles on it. Naughty Jew being transformed into monkeys and pigs. Prisoners in hell having to eat fruits shaped like devil's heads. The seven heavens of Allah (an old Greek folly). And more.

So Allah, had nothing better to relate to his "prophet" than these infantile bits of nonsense? When one reads the damned Quran with an eye for looking out for crap like this, it gives you a whole new perspective on Islam and the Quran and Allah's lack of basic intelligence. Read properly, the Quran is a laugh riot.

The Quran is not a grand and great fount of other worldly wisdom. One of these days, I am just going to have to download a good copy of the Quran and dig all these stupidities out so everybody can gawk at them dumb founded at what this dumb ass book really passes off as revelation from what is supposedly the wisest being in the universe. Derp! Derp! Derp!
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#7

Islamic Origins
There is a scholar who goes by the name of Christoph Luxenberg.  That is not his real name.  He is an Arabic scholar and for obvious reasons has to hide his identity so the adherents of the religion of peace do not kill him.  The reason for that will become apparent in a moment.

He has written a book called The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran.  In essence, he argues that trying to read the koran in Arabic is like trying to read Don Quixote as if it were written in Italian.  Spanish and Italian have many similarities but they also have many differences.  Luxenberg asserts that the koran began as a Syriac language Christian lectionary.  One of his examples is the famed 72 virgins for martyrs shit.  He says that if you read it in Syriac the phrase refers to 72 grapes.  Robert Spencer, in his book "Did Mohammed Exist" says that Luxenberg asserts that 20% of the koran doesn't make sense because they are trying to read it in the wrong language.

You can imagine how that goes over with the jihadi types!

Big Grin
Robert G. Ingersoll : “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”
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#8

Islamic Origins
It's low-hanging fruit. "Hey, guys, I've got a religion too!" bs that just happened to justify expropriating and sometimes exterminating neighbors.

Where have I heard this before?
On hiatus.
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#9

Islamic Origins
(10-06-2019, 10:01 PM)Cheerful Charlie Wrote: I have read the Quran.  More than once.  One thing that always struck me was the numerous infantile folk tales found in the Quran.
The tales of the Rip Van Winkle "sleepers in the cave" (an old Christian tall tale).  Comets were created to chase eaves dropping djinn away from Allah's throne.  Alexander the Great seeing the sun arise from a mud puddle at the end of the world, and at the other end, the sun setting in a mud puddle.  Alexander building an iron fence to keep the two giants Gog and Magog at bay.  Birds killing an elephant by dropping pebbles on it.  Naughty Jew being transformed into monkeys and pigs.  Prisoners in hell having to eat fruits shaped like devil's heads.  The seven heavens of Allah (an old Greek folly). And more.

So Allah, had nothing better to relate to his "prophet" than these infantile bits of nonsense?  When one reads the damned Quran with an eye for looking out for crap like this, it gives you a whole new perspective on Islam and the Quran and Allah's lack of basic intelligence.  Read properly, the Quran is a laugh riot.

The Quran is not a grand and great fount of other worldly wisdom.  One of these days, I am just going to have to download a good copy of the Quran and dig all these stupidities out so everybody can gawk at them dumb founded at what this dumb ass book really passes off as revelation from what is supposedly the wisest being in the universe.   Derp! Derp! Derp!

I have a long paper I posted once in response to a Mullah on TTA ... I will paste parts of it as it becomes relevant. 
As you say, the borrowed tales are interesting and numerous. So are their known origins. 
1. Moses and the Fish, (came from Babylon/Ugarit/the El myths), 
2. Solomon listening to the ants, common fairy tales, existing all over the Ancient Near East,
3. Jinns, (genies) working for Solomon, both common fairy tales, existing all over the Ancient Near East, 
4. Mary in the temple, (stolen from one of the proto gospels), 
5. Jesus talking in the crib, (from the known Proto Gospel after Jacob)
6. The Egyptian child stories, (from the Arab Child Gospel, and The Thomas' Child Gospel), both just made up fairy stories. 
7. Jesus making birds from clay, (known source, .."The Child Gospel after Thomas vs 1-4), 
8. Mary and the Palm, was taken from the Proto Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 20. 
9. Mo's Night Journey to Heaven, taken from either the Hebrew Merebah, or the well known Gnostic "Enoc's Journey to Heaven", which is identical to to Ibn Ishaq’s story after Abu Said al-Chudri)
10. The Sleepers in the Cave, straight from the fairy story from Ephesus, (Mo got the dates wrong, but the story is right), 
11. Alexander the Great, (Surah 18), (straight plagiarism), AND there was NO place in the world with enough iron blocks to close off a whole valley in 330 BC. 
12. The myth about Ad. Straight from Arab folk tales. 
13. Thamud – same as 12. 
14. Median – copied from Arab folk tales.
Test
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#10

Islamic Origins
(10-07-2019, 12:37 AM)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: It's low-hanging fruit. "Hey, guys, I've got a religion too!" bs that just happened to justify expropriating and sometimes exterminating neighbors.

Where have I heard this before?


Conditions at the time before the invention of islam are a bit more complex than that.  This map, of pre-islamic Arabia, shows the problem.

[Image: 400px-Map_of_Arabia_600_AD.svg.png]

If you note at the top there are two small kingdoms:  The Lahkmids and the Ghassanids.  The Sassanian Dynasty (Persia) shows on the map but the Byzantine Empire does not.  Nonetheless, I am sure you know where it is.

As fate would have it the Lahkmids were allied with Persia and the Ghassanids were allied with the Byzantines.  Now what is interesting is that the Persians were Zoroastrians but the other 3 were christians of one type or another.  The Lahkmids were Nestorians.  The Ghassanids were Monohysites and the Byzantines were Chalcedonian by this point in time (451 AD and onward.)  
The differences between the 3 are utterly incomprehensible to an atheist like me who thinks that jesus is a fairy tale invented by humans with nothing better to do with their time but they were willing to slaughter each other over it. 

Accounts of the final Sassanian-Byzantine War do not mention the Lahkmids or Ghassanids taking any significant part.  When that war broke out in 602 it was the Persians and Byzantines tearing each others throats out.  That war raged for 26 years and when it ended in 628 they were essentially back to status quo ante except that both empires were exhausted and easy pickings for any organized force that cared to kick their doors in.  So the question which arises from Luxenberg and Spencer is was this attacking force primarily motivated by some new religion.... or was it just a perfect storm which presented them with an opportunity that was too good to pass up. 

Again, like jesusism, we have no indication of contemporary evidence that any of their bullshit was true but we do have a whole tale which emerged later.  The earliest koran was supposedly compiled by the Caliph Uthman... but, much as Constantine, he was a man with a problem.  He had an empire made up of many different peoples/religions/languages and desperately needed a means of unifying them.  The Byzantines were still around.  It isn't as if he wouldn't have known how the 4th century Roman emperors went about it.

Food for thought.
Robert G. Ingersoll : “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”
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#11

Islamic Origins
From Book 5, 16 of the Doctrina Jacobi:  (Henceforth, the "DJ")

The DJ is a Greek document written in Carthage sometime between 634 and 640.  It is dated by historical events mentioned in the text which is quite long.  The death of Sergius happened in 633 at the start of the fighting in Palestine.  The forcible baptism of Jews was ordered by Heraclitus in 632 and the DJ was written by an unwilling participant who later came around to the xtians way of thinking. 

It is notable for its use of the term that "a prophet had appeared among the Saracens."  Now one might think that muslims would seize upon that but they are not that dumb.  Muslim tradition is that Mo died in 632 and therefore could not be leading armies in 634 so it is rare that you will find any muslim making use of this document.  If you read the section even further you will see why:

Quote:"For at the time when (Sergius) the Candidatus was slaughtered by the Saracens I was in Caesarea"— Abraham says—"and I went out by boat to Sykamina. And they said: the Candidatus was slaughtered. And we Jews rejoiced greatly. And they said that a prophet appeared, coming with the Saracens and he is proclaiming the arrival of the coming Anointed One and Christ. And when I went out into Sykamina I communicated it to a certain very scriptural old man and I said to him: 'What do you say to me about this prophet who is appearing with the Saracens?' And with a great groan he said: 'He is a deceiver. Do prophets come with swords and chariots? Really these are works of disorder set in motion today, and I fear that the Christ who came earlier, whom the Christians worship, was the one sent by God and instead of him we shall accept Hermolaos. For Isaiah said that we Jews have a mistaken and hardened heart, until all the land is made a desert. But go forth, [211] Mr. Abraham, and learn about this prophet who is appearing.' And I, Abraham, thoroughly investigating, heard from those who met him that you find nothing true in this so-called prophet, except shedding human blood. For he says that he has keys of Paradise which is unbelievable."

This is as early as it gets in the so-called "islamic age" and the jews of Palestine are writing that the "prophet of the Saracens" ( a more or less generic Roman term for Arabs) who was proclaiming the arrival of the "coming Anointed One and Christ."  That sure as shit does not play into the islamic story line but it does play into the hands of Luxenberg, Spencer, J. P. Jenkins, and others that Byzantine holy warfare against what they perceived as "heretics" had forced such heretics out of the Roman empire and into the region of Arabia which was outside Zororastrian or Byzantine control.

Chalcedon was in 451.  That leaves almost two full centuries for such displaced - and probably pissed-off - groups to gain their strength.  There could well have been Ghassanid or Lahkmid elements involved.  Who knows?  They were certainly located in the right place.
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