The Life of Muhammad

Well he certainly convinced me.

OK, so maybe not. This thread is getting a little long what with all the 'give us a miracle', and 'I've already given you a miracle, I'm not doing it again' stuff, so for those playing along at home I thought I'd just trog through it all and find out exactly what has been written (assuming that this isn't a private party and we're all allowed to play).

Sooo, it turns out that Odai hasn't really mentioned any miracles in this thread per se, though he did link to a thread where he has, and he helpfully copypasta'd a little bit of it for us to be stunned by (hint - it's on page 2).

In the pasted section he mentions...

1) 'Man' and 'woman' both mentioned 23 times in the Quran, clearly a reference to our chromosomes. Except of course as any fule kno, playing numerology games is for mugs, since you can just look through your book for any coincidences that show up, and ignore all the other words that don't pan out. If the incidences of the word 'man' came to 12 people would say 'ooh, one for every sign of the zodiac, spooky'. You can do this stuff all day if you want to, and it would be a pretty poor book that didn't have some incidences of this kind of coincidence if you look hard enough - don't believe me? Look at the numerology work that's been done on that famously spiritual text, Moby Donk. In addition, 23 is a spectacularly poor choice of number to play this particular game with - it has been recognised as a mystical number by all sorts of people from the ancient Chinese and Egyptians to the Discordians, and is certainly believed to hold some sort of woo-significance in the Bible, so assuming that it's appearance int he Quran isn't just coincidence, it's likely to just be a holdover from other people's belief in the power of 23. Also additionally, have you actually counted the appearances of these words yourself? I'm not being funny, but for a book of this size I'd expect to see the word man appear more often.*

[*Oh, hey, guess what? I found a searchable Quran online, and in English I'm getting only 18 hits for the word 'woman', whereas 'man' turns up, wait for it, 128 times. Now, ok you might not like the translation, but I'd be amazed if a different translation can change that 128 into 23. Ask yourself this question (I won't ask you to reply out loud, I don't want you to feel embarassed, just to be honest with yourself regarding your belief) - "When I read that the words man and woman appeared 23 times each in the Quran and that this was a miracle, did I bother to count them myself, or did I just accept that such an amzing thing was true?" Now ask yourself the same question about all the other so called miracles.]

2) The appearances of the word Land and Sea are approximately in the right proportions of land and sea by surface area on the Earth. Now, again, this is number crunching rubbish, or as it's more properly called, 'confirmation bias'. That means that when you see something that fits with your view (eg some numbers that seem heaven-sent) you pay attention, but on all the other occasions where the numbers are non-significant you ignore them. If you happened upon a close approximation of the thickness of the atmosphere compared to the radius of the Earth, shown by the words 'air' and 'land' in the Quran, you'd shout Eureka! and add it to your list of miracles - but if the ratio of those words didn't match, you wouldn't say 'oh noes, the Quran is wrong about the atmosphere', you'd just assume that there was no message there and ignore it -in other words you're only watching for the hits, not the misses, and if you play number games with any book of this size you're going to get a few hits.

But of course, there's a deeper problem here. You give 'land' 13 times and 'sea' 32 times, giving 28.88% and 71.11% (no need for all the extra digits dude, they don't prove it's a miracle, just that you can use a calculator). Problem is, the actual percentage of land surface is 29.2%. Now, you might say that that's pretty close, but the honest truth is that if I were an almighty deity hiding miracles in my holy book, I'd know enough to use 'land' once more and 'sea' twice more so that I got the right bloody answer. Pretty slapdash stuff for an almighty being if you ask me.*

[I just checked the numbers in my searchable Quran and guess what? 'Land' comes up 114 times and 'sea' only 37 - looks like we need to reclaim about 46% of the Earth's surface, maybe that means the Dutch are god's chosen people? Use whatever translation you like, but good luck making those numbers work out]

3) "and verily, it is We Who are steadily expanding it." - good one, but of course, it all depends on your translation. Now, I know what you're going to say, that the one you quote is the right one, but it's worth being aware that the word 'expanding' only appeared in English translations in the 20th century - nobody had bothered to translate it this way before, so it's fair to question why they translate it this way now. It seems likely that it's to ride on the coat-tails of science. Previously the line talked about making the space vast or ample, rather than implying that it still expanded. It's also worth pointing out that the next verse suggests that the Earth is flat ("And the earth, We have made it a wide extent; how well have We then spread it out") and that other verses suggest that the universe will one day collapse, which of course we now know it won't.

4) "by heaven furnished with paths" - honestly? That's your argument? That somehow it's impossible that in the 600s someone could write about heavenly bodies having paths in the sky unless they were told by the Archangel Gabriel? This fact that was recognised by the earliest civilisations doesn't worry you? Not concerned that even the builders of Stonehenge about 3000BC, or the pueblo peoples about 1200BC, understood this well enough to build their monuments? Seems a bit deperate to mention this really.

5) "The Seven Heavens" - Really? The ancient idea of the seven heavens which was well known through jewish, christian, hindu and other traditions, you're claiming it as a divine revelation that nobody could have written down in the 600s without magical guidance? What's that? You're saying that only the Quran has it as a description of the layers of the sky rather than the heavens? Well, ok, but I'll have to get you to explain how Mohammed travelled through these seven layers of the sky and met, in order, Adam, Jesus and John the Baptist, Joseph, Idris, Aaron, Moses and Abraham. And of course this... "See you not how Allah has created the seven heavens one above another, and made the moon a light in their midst"... is going to take some explaining, unless you want to dismiss an inaccuracy of a quarter of a million miles.

Sorry about the massive text block, but seriously, anyone who can read this stuff and believe that it's miraculous, is someone who wanted to believe in miracles before they started reading.

I used to work with a nurse who was a devout christian, and had no fears about an open and honest discussion of her faith.

Had a similar experience myself.

Way back on the old forum, we had a mammoth debate that resulted in certain forum members behaving exactly as you describe. The result was that the topic was locked.

However, one particular individual PM’d me to express his disappointment that I had locked the topic. Turned out he was a theologian. Unlike the others, who had accused those with opposing views of “trashing their religion” and attempted to have such discussions banned from the forum, he was mightily disappointed that he could no longer continue the discussion.

I ended up having an email debate with him that lasted for weeks. We were two individuals with diametrically opposing views, but there was no nonsense at all, and we both learnt something from the experience.

As you say, pity more people aren't as nice.

Odai... SpamValiant has gone to the trouble of providing another superb post that pretty much destroys your argument... address it.

My patience for silliness is quite low, so I'll apologise if I don't show what you feel is due reverence for the more ridiculous bits.

No offense, but I find it somewhat hypocritical to post about how you find some people to be narrow minded about debating, and how you wish people would be more open when debating, only to then go and claim parts of my posts are "silly" or "ridiculous". How do you think I regard your posts? I don't have a problem at all with threads getting a bit heated, just found what you said to be a hypocritical.

The 23 Conundrum - actually I can just dismiss it as coincidence. As it happens I didn't (I gave you a perfectly good explanation of how these beliefs can take hold in any text, an example of a book famously used to prove exactly this point, an explanation of why, in the case of the number 23, we shouldn't be at all surprised by its appearance, and finally went on to show that in fact there is no conundrum, its been made up - for you to gloss over this with "you cannot just dismiss it as a coincidence" is a gross strawman), but I could have.

Errr.... Yes you did discount it as a coincidence. You say Muslims mistakenly attribute significance to it. And you gave a (faulty) explanation as to why you believe that is the case. Discounting the significance doesn't change the fact that man and woman are each mentioned 23 times (number of chromosomes). It simply means you are implying it is a coincidence. Indeed, throughout this thread, they've been regarded by others as coincidences. Do you disagree with their logic too?

And once again, the fact that, among other reasons, these repeat themselves leads one to the conclusion that the whole thing is not a coincidence at all.

As for your claim that this has been made up, I've never seen a worse argument. You failed to link the specific tool you used to make your claim, so I had to guess. You said "first or second" hit on Google, so I used this site, which was the second hit:

http://www.searchtruth.com/search.php?keyword=man&translator=5&search=1&start=0

As you can see, I indeed got hundreds of hits for the word "man". However, as I predicted, most of these are either spelling mistakes, or parts of other words like "MANkind", "MANy", "comMANd".

I've heard the word "man" used on it's own plenty of times in reference to "mankind" anyways. In English of course. Which is obviously a completely different meaning. So it's reasonable to assume the translation has done this too.

The actual arabic word for man ("rajul") does appear 23 times in the Qur'an. The only way you can prove otherwise is to go through the Qur'an, word by word (which would take many hours) and show that the number of occurences is not 23.

Using an online search engine to find how many hits you get for those three letters? That's laughable mate.

The evidence I offer that this is not made up I have already repeated again and again. And it has been conveniently ignored.

Firstly, those religious enough to go through the time and effort of spreading such messages are not going to be daft/hypocritical enough to then go and forge/falsify the Qur'an, the word of God. This would be a major sin.

Secondly, 1.6 Billion people around the world read the Qur'an on a regular basis (and memorize parts, or sometimes even the whole Qur'an, for recitation in the 5 daily prayers). How is it that these miracles can be falsified, spread widely (once again, it is common knowledge these "coincidences" are present in the Qur'an, it's not some singular dodgy site that claims it), and cited repeatedly only to not be noticed by the Muslim community, or non-Muslim Qur'anic experts? It's ridiculous!

Your example of the lottery is hugely flawed - the quran doesn't get 500 wins out of 1000 plays, it gets some hits from a vast number of possible tries.

Now we're getting to the crux of the problem.

Whether the Qur'an gets a relatively small or large number of "wins" is not something you're going to judge based on zero knowledge and experience, and a forum debate. You'll notice I've only linked to tens of examples of such "coincidences", as you regard them.

This whole thing started when Martin asked why Muslims believe in God as a result of the Qur'an.

Since then, I've had to content with some people's unbelievable attitude. I have answered people's questions continuously, in order to try and give them an idea of why Muslims believe. I never said once I will try and prove the existence of God. This would be an immense task. Repeating the message of Islam in it's entirety would be an immense task. And I have repeated these points again. And again. And again. Obviously, some people like to argue for the sake of arguing, and ignored these points, instead deciding to claim my arguments show that belief is irrational, illogical.

The only way you are ever going to understand properly is to get out there and do your own research. Start with actually reading the Qur'an. Maybe listen to its Arabic recitation.

I think I've done extremely well to explain why Muslims believe, or at least to give you an idea. It was never my intention to prove God exists. It would have been of great benefit to you to understand, but unfortunately the whole debate has been twisted by the usual people.

I think I've done even better to maintain my cool in the face of some of the most idiotic comments I've ever seen.

As it is, Muslims believe the Qur'an is divinely dictated. They believe it is not a coincidence at all, for the reasons I have explained.

Every Muslim will have his own unique way of wording/explaining it, but it's all the same thing in the end.

If you think for some reason I'm lying, then fine, I couldn't give a toss. That's how it is, take it or leave it.

If you disagree with our logic, then that's absolutely fine. If you judge the Qur'an is indeed a coincidence, then that's absolutely fine. If you think Muslims have read too much significance into these miracles, then that's absolutely fine. But I really don't reckon your opinion holds much weight at all when you clearly have so little knowledge/experience of the topic.

How on Earth can you criticise or respect or agree with or disagree with some message if you've never read it? How can you decide what is a lie and what is the truth if you know nothing about it?

Muhammad (pbuh) faced the same ignorance (and unfortunately as a result, persecution) from spreading the message. People felt their ignorant way of life was threatened by the message, and instead of agreeing to at least listen and then use their best judgement would follow their instincts and reject it outright. It's human nature to be scared by something so challenging to your beliefs.

When all you can do is argue point by point and seem to take the content of my own posts as the only factor in why Muslims believe, I think it speaks volumes. You'd understand a lot more about why Muslims believe if you were to take the time to do your own research, as opposed to posting useless arguments on an internet forum.

Also, the miracles of the Qur'an are only one part of a Muslim's faith. There can be many reasons for a Muslims faith. I have tried to go some way in explaining these, but unfortunately have been sidetracked by this sillyness.

As I explained in the 'parable of the ratio of appearances of the words land and air', when true believers don't get a match they don't put it as a tick in the 'miss' column, they just assume it isn't part of the game.

And how does that in any way effect the significance of the other instances?  It's a moot point. I know what the argument is, I acknowledged it before you even thought about posting. No need to try and explain in such detail.

The only way to increase the 'value' of these particular coincidences is if the numerology crud were to appear in a way pertinent to the text, for example if the 23 conundrum turned up in a book about human evolution, or the land:sea ratio were found in a geography book - that is clearly not the case here.

That's complete and utter rubbish. To claim this would imply that each of the instances are mentioned out of any meaningful context. No idea what you were thinking when you wrote this man.

Moreover, to argue that every time I deconstruct a miracle I should still respect it because of the sheer number of them is ridiculous - if none of them stand up to scrutiny (and none have so far) then the number of them is irrelevant.

To return to the 'parable of the miraculous lottery', even if you did have 500 wins with 1000 tickets, that wouldn't mean anything if upon scrutiny it turned out that the randomising machine was broken, or that you had cheated, that someone else had cheated for you, or that you had in fact just lied about having a winning ticket.

But that's obviously not the case here, unless the hypothetical forgerer of the Qur'an somehow managed to "cheat" their way into figuring out the ratio of land to sea, or the number of yet-to-be-realised tiny coloured helixes in our cells that dictate our every characteristic.

Did you, in fact, bother to check the facts on this extraordinary claim, as any rational person would, or did you just file it away as a true miracle without deeper examination? Have you, having had this point raised now, gone and checked in your own copy, or just decided that my version must have errors because it disagrees with the tale you've been told? This is exactly the point of my posts, that all these miracles are pretty easy to debunk, unless you want to believe in them.

There's a deeper point here - "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". I've been doing the legwork here, but actually you're the one making the extraordinary claim. In point of fact if you want to convince me it's your job to find a version of the text that supports your claim, and explain why this is the right version

I'm not disputing that 32/45=72.11%, I'm saying that that's not the actual ratio of land to sea on the earth. The real number is 29.2% land to 70.8% ocean (http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/8o.html)

But if I were a god with a penchant for hiding little riddles in my holy texts for the titillation of anal-retentive word counters, it would have been easy to use 14 lands and 34 seas, so that my 'miraculous' answer was bang on (actually I only did the maths to get to 29.16%, I'm sure you could get it closer than that if you were a conscientious deity but of course it would require more and more words to get more accurate, and I was trying to show how childishly easy it would have been to add 3 extra words to make the result more accurate, if I was a deity who already knew the right answer. Interestingly, the fact that you think that "28.8% (recurring) and 71.1% (recurring) are the correct ratios" is very telling - it's trivially easy to check this, as I did but clearly you didn't, and the idea that the actual land surface of the earth would be any number as consistent as 28.8 recurring is obviously silly. In truth it won't be 29.2% but rather something like 29.18245892414356etc% or(or whatever) because nothing in the real world is quite as pat as you seem to accept. These two facts clearly show that you are very happy to ignore obviously wrong and easily checked facts.

Does it matter?

At the end of the day, any of those ratios would give you a percentage corresponding to 32/45. However, you are trying your best to find the most tiny, tiny detail to try and disregard this instance, instead of considering the much more significant fact. That the actual ratio of land to sea corresponds to the number of times they are mentioned in the Qur'an. Only someone who would be desperate to avoid the truth of the Qur'an would focus on the small and ignore the big, as it were.

The maths you then show (0.292x45=13.14 and 0.288x45=12.96) misses the point - you've clearly shown that neither comes to exactly 13, so we must be able to make the 'miracle' more accurate by massaging the text slightly. The equation you're after is 0.292x48=14.01, a suitably accurate result for a mere mortal, though I'm sure a deity with a calaculator and 30 mins to spare could make it better - the question, again, is why didn't she? Why did the immortal creator of all decide to hide this miraculous ratio in her holy book, and then not take the time to get the numbers right? 14 lands and 34 seas clearly gives a much better answer. The rational answer is that your 13/32 ratio isn't mairaculous or holy, it's just a coincidence, or in fact it's been made up anyway as I showed by counting land 114 times and sea only 37 with 2 minutes of research. This is from the same quran as last time, again I see no reason for it to be wrong, but if you can link me to a quran with the 'right' numbers (or at least right with the margin of error you seem happy to allow in your perfect religion) I'll happily read it.

the explanding universe - the translation is pertinent, despite your protests. Different. translations of any text exist for one simple reason - no one language can be directly translated into another and carry over every nuance and variation of the phraseology. So the attempt to render meaning in English from an Arabic original requires the translator to walk a fine line. I'm no quran scholar (despite seeming happier to word check it than you do), but google gives multiple references to the fact that until the 20th century the phrase was translated as "With power and skill did We construct the Firmament: for it is We Who create the vastness of space" or "and We it is Who make the vast extent (thereof)" or "We raised it high with power, and most surely We are the makers of things ample". The expansion translation only appeared after the expansion of the universe had been posited in the 20th century. Whatever the phrase is in arabic, it obviously doesn't neatly translate into english, but for centuries it was rendered with no suggestion of ongoing expansion, an idea that only took hold after science had discovered it.

You can repeat as often as you like that 'that's what it says in arabic', but clearly that isn't what it says exactly, otherwise it would always have been translated as such.

And as you can see, you get a verb. The basic software doesn't recognise the verb itself (although it does a remarkably good phonetic spelling of it in English ), but obviously recognises it as a verb (to....).

Obviously the next verse doesn't explicitly state that the earth is flat, I mentioned that in a tongue in cheek way to point out that it's easy to read things into the text if you want to - imagine a world in which the earth had always been thought to be spherical, but was suddenly discovered to be flat; do you think for one moment that muslim 'scholars' wouldn't be shouting that verse from the rooftops as proof of the quran's perfection?

Yes I do, because that verse doesn't suggest in the slightest that the Earth is flat.  Which is why I asked specifically, how exactly are you reading that conclusion into the verse?

Unfortunately, in the late 90s astronomers turned up an unexpected result - the expansion of the universe was speeding up rather than slowing down - something was working against gravity to push space apart, meaning that it would never slow and then collapse. Now, fortunately this was discovered by scientists instead of theologians, so rather than burn their results as being heretical, they threw them out to other researchers who confirmed their findings. The best evidence we now have tells us that out universe will continue accelerating forever, faster and faster and faster. Bad luck. Your question - "Further, why do you think that "we now know" the universe will not collapse?" My answer - I can read.

4) it would have been no problem for someone in the 600s to conceive of heavenly bodies following paths - sure, they thought that planets and comets etc circled the earth rather than the sun, but they still followed predictable paths in the sky. The chinese, greeks, romans, egyptians, babylonians etc all had this covered, and to try to claim otherwise is utterly ridiculous. Adding in the "mostly independant of the Earth's" part is cheating - nothing I saw in the links you gave referred specifically to heliocentrism rather than geoocentrism. TBH even if they had it wouldn't be miraculous, since Aristarchus of samos posited a heliocentric univese in the 3rd century bc. oops.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but if the Qur'an was forged, wouldn't the forgerer want to write a text that coincided with the predominant scientific theory at the time, rather than one that remained disregarded for many centuries to come?

 

"Oops", as you would say.

 

Also, if you cannot see, from the detailed explanations I linked, how the verses I linked to counter a geocentric model, then there's not much more I can do to persuade you to be honest.

 

the 7 heavens - I did not suggest it was a coincidence, I said it was an idea held by cultures predating islam, and therefore its appearance in the quran is in no way miraculous.

 

Yes you did.

 

The Qur'an mentioned seven layers, each with their own purpose. This clearly corresponds to the seven layers of the atmosphere and how they each add a kind protection to life on Earth. You then went and suggested that it was a coincidence because the number seven happened to be common in religion. But that doesn't explain the latter part of the sentence anyway, about how God says each of the layers has it's own mandate.

 

I quite agree that the tale as told in the Miraj makes more sense spiritually, but you're the one trying to claim that the '7 heavens' refers not to mythical places but to the scientific layers of the atmosphere. Without that it's not a miracle, just a mystical tale. If you want to claim the 7 heavens as atmospheric layers, you need to explain how that relates to the people that mohammed met, how they were suspended there (balloons?) etc. If you're happy for it to be a spiritual tale that's fine, but don't claim it as evidence of scientific accuracy (and therefore miracles) at the same time.

 

Eh?

 

Your bizarre argument somehow suggests the tale of the Mir'aj (spiritual ascension) is somehow bound to the reference of seven layers. It's not.

 

Also, if my understanding of the tale is 'highly inaccurate', which I accept is possible, please explain or reference why, rather than just telling me I'm wrong.

 

I didn't point it out because it wasn't relevant to the debate.

 

Finally, if you can't see why 'the 7 scientifically accurate atmospheric layers' having 'the moon a light in their midst' is a bit of a screw up, I can't help you.

 

As you haven't elaborated as requested, I'm going to just assume (from your comment "an error of a quarter of a million miles" that you have understood that translation to mean that the moon is within the seven layers of the atmosphere. Not sure how you've come to that conclusion as you haven't answered my question, so I can't answer yours.  

 

I'll probably get shot if I try to address all your new miracles right now

 

Not sure what you meant by the getting shot part, but as it's been a while since you posted (and you immediately followed my previous post with a reply quite rapidly), I'm going to guess you simply don't want to respond to the other examples I posted. As others would say, "nice cop out".

 

Look, there are more christians than muslims, so by your reasoning you should abandon your beliefs and embrace theirs because there just has to be a reason they think that way, right? Obviously not.

 

Eh?

 

Where did I suggest that people should believe my arguments simply because there are so many Muslims? Or that one group having more followers than another means it is more likely to be genuine? That's a ridiculous claim!

 

The prophet (pbuh) certainly wouldn't have had much luck with that argument when he and his wife were the only people on the face of the planet at the time who accepted Islam as the message we now it as.  Yet the message he spread still attracted a vast number of people.

 

I'm just saying that there is a significance to the number of true Muslims and the number of converts. You clearly took my statements too strongly.

 

2.6 billion christians believe fervently in different things (and they do, don't try to pass off christianity as just 'part of the great tapestry of islam'

 

Errr.... Care to be specific? Of course not, that would ruin your argument then, wouldn't it?

 

The Christian message is largely the same as the Islamic and Jewish message. Not surprising, since Muslims believe both Moses and Jesus and all the prophets before them were the among the best examples of human beings and Muslims and that their message was the same that Muhammad (peace be upon them all) brought us. The only difference is that Muslims believe the examples followed by Jews and Christians today have been edited/corrupted/lost by people.

 

As for the question of indoctrination, you clearly overestimate the rate of conversions.

 

No I don't. It's a fair estimation considering the links I read. Do a search on the number of converts a year. Fair enough, using that method involves a fair bit of extrapolation, but there is just as much chance I underestimated the number.

 

Just for the UK:

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-islamification-of-britain-record-numbers-embrace-muslim-faith-2175178.html

 

More stuff:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claims_to_be_the_fastest-growing_religion

 

Wikipedia wrote: Islam According to Guinness Book of World Records,Islam is the world’s fastest-growing religion by number of conversions each year: Although the religion began in Arabia, by 2002 80% of all believers in Islam lived outside the Arab world. In the period 1990-2000, approximately 12.5 million more people converted to Islam than to Christianity”.[29][not in citation given] In 1990, 935 million people were Muslims and this figure had risen to around 1.2 billion by the year 2000, meaning that around this time one in five people were followers of Islam. According to the BBC, a comprehensive American study concluded in 2009 the number stood at 1 in 4 with 60% of Muslims spread all over the Asian continent: A report from an American think-tank has estimated 1.57 billion Muslims populate the world - with 60% in Asia.[30][31] The report was done by the Pew Forum Research Centre.[31] The forum also projected that in 2010 out of the total number of Muslims in the world 62.1% will live in Asia.[30] However the report also included a statement saying While the global Muslim population is expected to grow at a faster rate than the non-Muslim population, the Muslim population nevertheless is expected to grow at a slower pace in the next two decades than it did in the previous two decades. From 1990 to 2010, the global Muslim population increased at an average annual rate of 2.2%, compared with the projected rate of 1.5% for the period from 2010 to 2030.[30] The report also made reference to the fact that Muslims are estimated to make up 23.4% of the total global population in 2010 (out of a total of 6.9 billion people) and that by 2030 Muslims will represent about 26.4% of the global population (out of a total of 8.9 billion people).[30] According to the Christian Plain Truth Magazine (issue February 2nd 1984), and republished in a readers digest almanac, states that, between 1934 and 1984 Islam grew by 235%, with Christianity second with 46%.

 

SpamValiant wrote: The rapid conversions of large numbers of people to islam in the early days were due to it spreading by conquest, which is a totally different thing, just like the babylonians, greeks and romans spreading their gods with their empires, or the later decisions by roman emperors to just make the whole empire christian.

 

That's an absurd claim. Firstly, in the early days, any kind of military conflict would have ended in disaster for the Muslims. How did they get to the stage of being a large enough group to defend themselves against attack if they didn't have the capability to militarily conquer another group and enforce their religion on them to begin with?

 

Also, the rapid spread of the actual Islamic nation long after Muhammad (pbuh) first spread the message is not significant in terms of the increase of the number of muslims. One fundamental aspect of Islam is that there is no compulsion in religion, and that forcing Islam on another is a grave sin. As a result, your likening the Islamic nation to that of the Romans or Greeks in the context of the spread of their respective religions is utterly false and baseless.

 

If there were any "rogues" who tried to force Islam on others at the time, then it would have been a tiny minority and certainly not widespread at all, and therefore not significant in the slightest.

 

Indeed, religious minorities in Europe, such as the Jews, enjoyed far better religious freedom under Islamic rule than they did before (or after, if their persecution in Europe long after Islam was no longer a significant influence is anything to go by...).

 

These are different events, and to claim (as you seem to) that a modern muslim in algeria is a 'convert' because he can't claim direct descent from mohammed is ridiculous - his ancestors have probably been muslims for 1200 years.

 

What an interesting claim... What logic have you used to arrive at that bizarre conclusion?

 

Islam has spread (in terms of numbers) far too quickly for it to simply be a result of the natural expansion of the world's population (as in, more people being born than dying).

 

Besides, this is hardly relevant. If you decide to convert to Islam simply because lots of other people are doing it then you've not got a very strong basis for faith there...

 

Also, you've alluded a couple of times to a large number of scientists and scholars converting to islam

 

No I haven't.  You've misunderstood.

 

I simply said that Islam puts a special emphasis on seeking knowledge and understanding about the universe around us. Not only does it bring us closer to God, but it allows us to progress as a race. Islam is the reason scientific development peaked during the "golden age of Islam". I've given plenty of examples on how science, and indeed other kinds of scholarship, are an integral part of Islam. No need to repeat myself.

 

And like I said, now that the "traditionally Muslim" countries of the world have become so corrupt and lost the Muslim spirit, it's no surprise at all that scientific development has gone down the pan.

 

This whole "religion vs science" attitude that is so prevalent in the West now I think is deeply rooted in the ignorance of the dark ages. When considering Islam, it just seems like such a foreign idea to me. To the typical non-Muslim "westerner" however, it seems perfectly normal.

 

an obvious counter is that atheists and agnostics form a larger percentage of the scientific community that of the general population - if the learned and rational are converting anywhere, it's to us.

 

That's a rubbish claim. It's just another stereotype. Unless, again, you have numbers to back it up?

 

MartinW wrote: Rubbish! I went to great length to provide a separate post answering your points. A specific post for all to see. Post 15, page 4... If I got the wrong questions, point me in the right direction.

 

Yes you did, then I answered them. Then it was your turn to answer the new points. That's how a debate works.

 

I'll give you a hint. Look at the post where you supposedly answered my first points. Then scroll down, looking for the next post where my name is. That's where you'll have to look.

 

To claim it was a personal attack is merely an attempt to use emotional blackmail as a debating tool.

 

Emotional blackmail?

 

Have to say Martin, you really take this far, far, far too seriously.

 

And besides, since when was blackmail a debating tool? Interesting!

 

Really! How many people on this forum are convinced by your arguments? Shall we run a poll? ZERO actually!

 

You keep asking that, and I keep saying, how on Earth can you know the minds of the hundreds (fair guesstimate) of people who have read this thread?

 

And again, if your confidence depends so desperately on what other people think, go ahead and make a poll?

 

Utter nonsense, how can the multitude of posts I've made, dating back to 12th July be avoiding the debate?

 

Actually, it's only taken that long because I've taken long times to respond.  

 

Magic Man wrote: Really...? How does that 'proof' and the evidence for it stack up against any physics laws you have studied and take as fact given the amount of proof each of those required to be taken as such...?

 

Actually, the way I interpret the significance of these is the same way I have been taught about significance in Physics.

 

In Physics, a single anomaly in the data is just a blip, you ignore it. But if there are enough, then maybe their numbers are above a certain limit and the significance is enough to take the observation seriously. Same with this.

 

737Chris wrote: He wont. People of his religious nature don't. Fact.

 

Bravo, another fine example of popping up randomly to flame. But is there any chance you will be posting to actually contribute something relevant next time?

 

MartinW wrote: I've been desperately trying to find an image of tumbleweed to post. Can't find one anywhere.

 

What is it you people don't understand about the term "busy"???

 

I can see where this thread is going. And if arguing semantics and the same old sterotypes is about as deep as it's going to go, I think I'm going to make the call that this really isn't worth the vast amount of time needed to post. I won't be posting again in this thread, so if there's anything further you want to know just do as I've been saying from the beginning and start some of your own research.

 

Apologies if the formatting of the first half of the post is messed up,  I copy and pasted it from a notepad document.