It is worse than that. There is a game that illustrates the weakness of passing a verbal story.
Please note that these are intelligent teens who are immediately passing along a verbal message, and they are diligently listening and attempting to pass along exactly what they are told. Now imagine that the listener is not so diligent, it may be years before they relay the message, and that message may pass through dozens of people before it is put to paper.
When young the short term memory is powerful. Just ask a five year old what they did in school that day, and they can rattle off a very detailed description, minute by minute on what happened. Yet their long term memory is weak, just ask a child what they did last month.
Aged people suffer short term memory loss. That is why I ask my wife where my keys are, despite I had them in my hands two minutes ago. But i distinctly recall what happened twenty years ago.
In fact. their biggest arguments isn’t what is inside the quran. but how it was revealed. they say that mohammed was an illiterate and that the quran was a too good poetry to being imagined by him. that if he was an impostor. he got no reason to treaten is life by creating this religion. and that even when is polytheist ennemies offer him the possibility to become the king of arabia. he refuses (and if he was an impostor he should have accepted).
as i have said. most of this information came from the hadith that i dont think are reliable. but the muslim believe in them and they even say that they have been collected with a method like what the historian do today … of course i dont believe that they have been collected with that much of a scientific manner … but it’s hard to argues with this assesements
Have you ever heard of the term “kingmaker”? These are people who live in the shadows, but exert tremendous influence over rulers and the history of their nation.
I suggest you discard the easily discarded notion that just because one refuses to sit on a throne, they do not have power.
And despite the fact that Muhammad declined to sit on a throne, he died with immense authority and power, and is one of the most influential people in the history of mankind.
I would say it’s more than that, people with good minds get ruined too. Something like 80% of the people will join and stay in the same religion as their parents. When people get indoctrinated or accept a religion, they are also unknowingly accepting a bad epistemology as well. This reinforces the religion that they believe in and prevents them from escaping. That’s why it’s pointless showing them contradictions or how the witnesses could not have remembered stuff after a long period of time. If you already believe something that is really improbable, like god existing, the idea that god can divinely impart something is trivial.
Go after how they claim to know their religion is true, go after faith.
I must disagree. One does not have to be weak-minded to believe in the supernatural. Very intelligent, caring, and wonderful people have fully accepted a religion. For the great majority, it is because they marinate in religion, being heavily indoctrinated from birth and never exposed to any other position.
This is one reason why such influences are strongly repressed within your own nation, because they undermine the religion that controls the government.
Worth keeping in mind that we atheists are in the vast majority, not believers.
Imo to dismiss all believers as weak minded, stupid or crazy is glib and intellectually lazy.–and by implication, to claim atheists are the opposite. Both notions are demonstrably false.
I take an anthropologist position; that widespread behaviours and beliefs exist because they meet human needs. Some form of religious beliefs are virtually universal, with rare exceptions among some isolated peoples.
It is my position that religious beliefs meet some important human needs. These may include; some relief and comfort in from the fear of death, the illusion of meaning in and control over one’s life,and a feeling of communitas***, which was crucial in Europe until about 500 year ago. It is still the case parts of Africa and among the ultra conservative Muslims, such as the Wahhabi of Saudi Arabia.
*** "Communitas*** is a Latinnoun commonly referring either to an unstructured community in which people are equal, or to the very spirit of community. It also has special significance as a loanword in cultural anthropology and the social sciences. Victor Turner, who defined the anthropological usage of communitas, was interested in the interplay between what he called social ‘structure’ and ‘antistructure’; Liminality and Communitas are both components of antistructure.[1]
Communitas refers to an unstructured state in which all members of a community are equal allowing them to share a common experience, usually through a rite of passage. Communitas is characteristic of people experiencing liminality together. This term is used to distinguish the modality of social relationship from an area of common living. There is more than one distinction between structure and communitas. The most familiar is the difference of secular and sacred. Every social position has something sacred about it. This sacred component is acquired during rites of passages, through the changing of positions. Part of this sacredness is achieved through the transient humility learned in these phases, this allows people to reach a higher position."
Yeah, the Chinese whisper is fascinating. Did it at school in class of 60 boys.
My favourite example is of course apocryphal .
Allegedly from WW1; Communications in company headquarters are down. It is decided to send a runner with a memorised message. The message is '“Send reinforcements we’re going to advance”----The message which finally reached the officer in charge; “Send three {shillings} and fourpence, we’re going to a dance”
That kind of thing seems to have happened a lot within the dozens of Xtian sects in the first three hundred years of The Way.
I agree with you, because I have a great mind since a kid and good at school, but I have failed when it comes to religion I have believed in whatever my family telling me about Islam for years and I obey them even though they violence me verbally & physically through my childhood and teenage, I have believed that god will revenge for me so my role as a Muslim woman with home violence should stay quite and pray for god to revenge for her and not ruin family name by complaining to police . I am glad that I open my eyes to see the truth before I die and stop believing in their bullshit about religion the oppression behind it.
I am so sorry to hear about the verbal and physical abuse you’ve suffered at home. No one should have to face that type of experience. My heart goes out to you, and I’m happy to hear you have found the strength to be yourself and overcome it…a continuing process, that I’m sure you will overcome.
You have my extreme sympathy for enduring such abuse. I can never feel what happened to or properly understand, but please understand my heart cries when I hear such stories.
‘They’ may be right for the wrong reason. The belief that an Angel dictated the Quran to Mohammed who then dictated it to scribes is just that, a claim. He may well have had visions for all l know. There is no actual proof of which I’m aware about who wrote/dictated all, most or some of the Quran.
In my opinion, to to essentially claim only the literate are intelligent, have imagination or any other human attribute is unfounded intellectual snobbery. It may be treated with the contempt it deserves. Such claims by anonymous others so far in my experience, lack any credible evidence.
----I’ll say, it was Cog not you.