We have been asking this question about Jesus Christ on this Board a lot, probably because many Mormons, once they leave the faith, convert to Protestant Christianity, the dominant religion in the U.S. And while I'm one of the many who questions the existance of Jesus Christ (I am an atheist after all), there is some room for legitimate debate.

I think the same holds true for the supposed founder of Islam. While many school history textbooks state that Muhummad (or Mohammed) was a real person, I can't find any specific birth and death dates for him nor any information about his life outside of his religious writings (which borrow very heavily from Judaism and Christianity, though neither of these two preceeding faiths likes to acknowledge it).

So my question remains. Was Muhummad (or Mohammed), the supposed founder of Islam, an actual person. And, is there any proof, other than his religious writings, that this person actually existed. A curious, atheistic mind wants to know.

I don’t think that many Mormons formally covert to any religion after being born in the faith.

I’d go so far to say that people who are brought up formally in a religion ( formally like participate in sacraments, are baptized, weekly church attendance, church affiliated schooling etc) and then decide to forgo attendance or even forsake their membership, these people rarely convert to another religion.

I’m not citing any statistics or anything. And I know it has nothing to do with your main post but I felt compelled to say something. I can’t think of one former mormon I know personally who attends another church. Maybe 1 or 2 in Utah from when I was teenager.

My guess is you're associating with an ex-Mo population abundant in irreligious, atheist, default secularists, and atheists--such as those who frequent this board. Thus, your generalization that "these people rarely convert to another religion." I know an ex-Mo in Utah who attends a conservative church with lots of ex-Mos, and his observations, and thus generalizations, would be quite different. Some people leave tJoJCoLdS but do not forsake God and Christ.

I am one of three siblings who grew up in Christian Science. Of us, one is an atheist, another is a devout CS'ist, and I'm a conservative Baptist. So you never know!

In my conversion to Judaism class (about 100 people, divided into three, classroom-sized, groups), we had one person--a woman who sat near me--who had been raised Mormon.

In our first class, the rabbi who was teaching our sub-group had all of us introduce ourselves, briefly and one by one, to the others in our group, and tell the class something about their background and/or their reason(s) for wanting to become a Jew.

This woman started out by saying she was from an established Mormon family, that she had been raised Mormon, and then she broke down crying, telling us that she was going to "lose all of her family" when our conversions became final (in a few months). (There are tears in my eyes right now, as I remember her obvious distress at "losing" relatives she obviously genuinely and deeply loved.)

She did become a Jew, and during the years I have been on RfM I have often thought of her, and wondered if she had ever been able to repair her most valued family-of-birth relationships.

I think your argument is legitimate. However, I think it should be pointed out that all of us (including yours truly) tend to hang out with like-minded people, which gives us a "tunnel vision", if you will, of what is actually around us.

There are quite a few places online where you can find ex-Mormons who converted to Christianity. One of my favorites is the Black Sheep Roster found at

http://www.salamandersociety.com

the nonreligious site run by Cricket. While that roster hasn't been updated in a while (a few years, perhaps?), it is clear from reading it that while there are many ex-Mormons who leave religion altogether, there is also a sizable number of ex-Mormons who join protestant Christian churches, particularly those of the evangelical variety.

Edit to correct subject line change



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/26/2022 03:57PM by blindguy.

midwestanon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I don’t think that many Mormons formally covert
> to any religion after being born in the faith.
>
> I’d go so far to say that people who are brought
> up formally in a religion ( formally like
> participate in sacraments, are baptized, weekly
> church attendance, church affiliated schooling
> etc) and then decide to forgo attendance or even
> forsake their membership, these people rarely
> convert to another religion.


Well, actually, a lot of people switch religion before becoming atheist.

Some go from mormonism to atheism, some are catholic, jewish or muslim inbetween.
Same with other faiths: most christian converts to islam don't last more than 5-7 years and then become atheist.
Others go straight from christianity to atheism and still others are JWs or mormons inbetween.

midwestanon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I don’t think that many Mormons formally covert
> to any religion after being born in the faith.

True. I think I am the only one I ever heard of who was born into the church and converted to Islam.
As a young man I went to study African culture and art as a student. I ended up in North Africa, which is Muslim and integrated into their culture, learned the language and religion and was initiated into Islam in a Mosque in an Oasis in the Sahara desert that reminded me of a Garden of Eden. It was a beautiful, deeply spiritual experience I’ll always remember fondly. I have many memories of happy, creative, loving, people living fulfilling lives. Having said that, I really knew next to nothing about Mohammed, except that he was a prophet of God and I had to swear to never turn my back on that truth or my Muslim Brothers would be obligated to kill me. The Imam made the same exact throat slitting gesture Mormons make in the temple, when he told me this in my initiation.
When I returned home to America I decided to take my own culture and the religion I’d inherited, MORmONism, seriously, for once. My Sister was getting married in the Mormon Temple and I wanted to attend. By the time Her wedding rolled around I had spoken to our Bishop and he asked if I believed Jesus Christ was the only begotten Son of God. I told him I had no idea what ‘begotten’ meant.
He asked if I believed Joseph Smith was a prophet. I told him I had no idea if he was or not.
He told me that until I could answer those questions honestly, I wouldn’t be allowed to enter a temple.
That just seemed like a challenge to me, so within a year I was headed to the temple and a mission.
FFwd 20yrs and I’ve got a whole Mormon family and my oldest is asking me serious questions about Mormon racist myths I can’t support and never did.
At the same time 9-11 came around and my faith in any kind of a loving God came crashing down with the twin towers.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2022 08:06PM by schrodingerscat.

... and now you know how it came to pass that an additional question was added to the already existing questions that are asked by a bishop when he's interviewing you as part of the mission application process:

"Besides the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have you, in the last five years, professed membership in any other religion(s)?"

Yes it’s an extortion measure. They figure you will keep paying the $$$ and giving your devotion to their cause if they hold your family hostage and restrict you from being with the other ‘chosen ones’ in their sacred place.

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> True. I think I am the only one I ever heard of
> who was born into the church and converted to
> Islam.
> As a young man I went to study African culture and
> art as a student.

How ironic for someone to be interested in African cultures to convert to Islam. If there is one religion that did its utmost best to exterminate the native cultures, languages and religions on that continent, and spread slavery in the process, it's definitely Islam. Christianity is only second.

Im associating with people I know, and to a lesser extent, Ex -Mormons I met in Utah. So you’re guess is wrong. This board is nothing I refer to in the context of ‘knowing’ someone because I’ve never met any of you. I might repeat a fact or story I’ve heard hear but I usually make it clear it came from the internet or an Internet forum.

It also sounds like your making a critical and unfair generalization of the people who frequent this board. I’ve come and gone from here for years and yes there is a tendency for ex Mormons to abandon religion entirely on this board, it doesn’t make it more likely that the ones who have are more likely to come to exmormon.org and talk about it. In other words, I’m sure there are plenty of nonreligious exmormons who go about their business without posting about here

Although I’ve never gotten the impression that people here or any more or less likely to be liars or untrustworthy than any other corner of the internet.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/26/2022 11:39AM by midwestanon.

Evidence for him is much better than for Jesus, but I think that neither of them had any communication with a heavenly deity. And I think that much of what is presented as "commandments from God" from both religions is not what is supposedly directly from either of those fellows, but rather stuff assembled or commentary put together after they both died. i.e. writings of Paul, or oral recitations of the Quran written down years later.

Hell, we don't even have a Shakespeare play in his own hand--the plays we have are reconstructed from the people who worked with him and basically wrote down what they remembered when the plays were performed.

"Muhammad was born approximately 570 CE in Mecca. He was the son of Abdullah ibn Abd al-Muttalib and Amina bint Wahb. His father Abdullah was the son of Quraysh tribal leader Abd al-Muttalib ibn Hashim, and he died a few months before Muhammad's birth. His mother Amina died when he was six, leaving Muhammad an orphan.
He was raised under the care of his grandfather, Abd al-Muttalib, and paternal uncle, Abu Talib. In later years, he would periodically seclude himself in a mountain cave named Hira for several nights of prayer. When he was 40, Muhammad reported being visited by Gabriel in the cave and receiving his first revelation from God. In 613, Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that "God is One", that complete "submission" (islām) to God is the right way of life (dīn), and that he was a prophet and messenger of God, similar to the other prophets in Islam."

Wiki provides citations so there are plenty of sources to consider.

HH =)

At least there aren't a dozen different versions of that story.

Well, there are a bunch. Or at least a lot of doubts.

If we are talking Wikipedia, I'd go beyond the article on the man and look also at this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Muhammad

Unsurprisingly, things are a lot "clearer" now than they were at the time when he (is thought to have) lived.

The specific dates of birth and death are 570-632, according to tradition.
But there is no evidence whatsoever that proves this, as Islam, the Koran and the character of Muhammad ibn Abdallah don't appear/aren't mentioned until over 100 years later (800-1000 CE).

So there are two possibilities, according to neutral (non-religious) scholars:
1. Muhammad is historical, but was active roughly a century later than suggested by Islamic tradition.
2. The Islamic tradition on the life of Muhammad is entirely legendary and the dates were chosen to give a new religion a backstory.

Yes, Mohammed was a real person and was a real slimeball like Joe Smith.
Next question.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, Mohammed was a real person and was a real
> slimeball like Joe Smith.

Serious question: How do you know this?

How do we know either? We know what JS did, both good and bad. Whether the good outweighs the bad is a judgment call.

"Bailiff, whack his pee-pee!"

Cheech and Chong jokes not allowed here.

Is Alan Smithee a real person?

I've seen several of his films.

He isn't, but only because we know he's a pseudonym.

What about William Shakespeare, William Tell, King Arthur or Robin Hood?

People accept the possibility that they may not be real.


This only comes up when supernatural claims are involved.

It's actually not easy to totally fabricate someone, and there's usually a grain of truth behind a legend --claims of divinity or theophanic manifestation notwithstanding.

Virgin births and miracles are elements of mythological figures older than Christ. Unless you believe in reincarnation and they are all the same guy, they would have to be made-up.

The possibility that Jesus is real is intriguing. Maybe he comes every few thousand years just to stir things up.

bradley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Virgin births and miracles are elements of
> mythological figures older than Christ. Unless you
> believe in reincarnation and they are all the same
> guy, they would have to be made-up.
>
> The possibility that Jesus is real is intriguing.
> Maybe he comes every few thousand years just to
> stir things up

Yes, but...

Suppose I say that I have divine powers. I also claim to be from another planet and took human form. What if other people said I did? How would you know?


Mohammed might have been just a guy who had heard a lot of things on caravans who had epilepsy. Jesus of Nazareth could have been just another anti-Roman Jewish teacher and philosopher. Jesus never said himself he was born in a manger on 25th December like Mithra. Same goes for the Buddha. Living people can have legends grow about them. Abraham Lincoln never said a lot of things he supposedly said. Same goes for George Washington and the cherry tree story.


Society in Western Europe collapsed after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. From AD 500 to 800, we know very little. Was there a Romanized British soldier who became a warlord and the basis for the legendary King Arthur? Was Romulus, the eponymous founder of Rome, a real person, or just one of the distantly remembered Proto Indo European Divine Twins? Were Dekanawida and Hiawatha real people? Imhotep was an actual person who had scientific and medical knowledge who was later worshipped as a god in ancient Egypt.

The point is that people create legends about other people, living or dead, and there is no way to verify supernatural claims.

It's up to you to believe — or not.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/27/2022 07:24AM by anybody.

Excellent writing. I would add another possibility, a Jungian one.

What do almost all people fear most? Death. It's a universal problem, a universal anxiety. What is the "solution" to death? Reincarnation or resurrection, which is a subspecies of reincarnation.

We see evidence of the hope of rebirth among hominins almost everywhere burials occur. In many cases Neanderthals, for instance, buried their dead in red ocher, a reddish pigment. Why would hominins cover their deceased loved ones in red if not to symbolize their impending rebirth sometime or somewhere else? The same is true of burial goods, which are almost as universal, at least among the social elite, and make no sense if the dead are not going to rise again.

Consider also the Mystery Cults of the Roman East. What do they have in common? A god who dies and is reborn, and frequently a human who descends into the underworld and then returns. But any god who is immortal has more than enough power to perform lesser miracles, surely, and to enable her (because all of this was at least as prevalent among matriarchal peoples as patriarchal ones) followers to perform them. So the surprise would not be a cult of rebirth with miracles but one without them.

The pattern takes somewhat different forms in different parts of the world, but the importance of rebirth always seems to manifest. Consider the Indian cluster of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism: all of them have versions of Samsara, or reincarnation, and they all attribute miracles to the enlightened. Moreover the ultimate liberation is nirvana, which is the individual's union with the universal and endless spirit of God.

Recall that the Book of Mark originally had no resurrection. The last three chapters were tacked on later, presumably because in the land of Mystery Cults nobody would buy a god who didn't return to life. Perhaps that's when Jesus went from being a prophet to a deity.

But the fact that peoples all over the world believe there is life after death, their god is eternal and models the human cycle of life-death-rebirth, and the religious live among miracles, reflects the reality that all humans have similar anxieties and needs. There is no need for the Golden Thread--that's what Mormons used to call bradley's proposition--to explain why religions are at this level very similar.

Yo, Eurydice, you still back there?

You just know how much I love music!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbrAMjVVodA

As the OP, my question was raised more as an intellectual curiosity--I had wondered if there was more proof that Mahummad actually existed than if Jesus did. However, whether the proof exists or not, both of these "legendary" figures have had long fingers of influence over the centuries, especially on how people thought of themselves and their relationships with others. I'll place my remaining comments among yours.

anybody Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Is Alan Smithee a real person?
>
> I've seen several of his films.
>
> He isn't, but only because we know he's a
> pseudonym.
>
> What about William Shakespeare, William Tell, King
> Arthur or Robin Hood?
>
> People accept the possibility that they may not be
> real.
>
>
> This only comes up when supernatural claims are
> involved.

Not only supernatural claims but also followers of the philosophies supposedly developed by Mahummad who continue to pass down the stories from generation to generation.
>
> It's actually not easy to totally fabricate
> someone, and there's usually a grain of truth
> behind a legend --claims of divinity or theophanic
> manifestation notwithstanding.

Ah, so then there may be a grain of truth behind the Jesus story if I follow your logic correctly.

blindguy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Ah, so then there may be a grain of truth behind
> the Jesus story if I follow your logic correctly.

My feeling is that yes, Jesus Of Nazareth was a real person -- as were Mohammad and Gautama Siddhartha, later known as the Buddha (a title meaning "the Enlightened/Awakened One" like "the Christ").

But Jesus was one of many itinerant teachers and preachers in the Eastern Mediterranean area. The Romans (not the Jews) executed him along with a lot of other people they felt were threats. There weren't any cameras back then. Crucifixion was a slow death reserved for criminals and slaves, meant to make an example -- "Don't Do This!" There was nothing "holy" about it at all.


As LW said, there were a lot of mystery religions in Rome from the East. I would add that the "traditional" gods went in and out of favour, cults came and went, and so on. The East was also the terminus of the Silk Road and other ideas from Asia and India came in, so I'd add Buddhism in the mix too. Remember, there was a hotbed of dissent and rebellion in Judea that would eventually break out in revolt a couple of generations after Jesus's time.


Here's my take on this. There was no CNN or video back then. Things spread by word of mouth, and stories get inflated over time. Years later, some people want a new form of Judaism and remembered this Jesus guy who, by this time, has all kinds of miraculous stories attached to him. There were also people claiming to be the reborn Nero in the East (who, although nuts, was apparently very popular with the common people) so the idea of "resurrection" was out there. I see the *lack* of contemporaneous Roman information on Jesus as an indication that he wasn't important, wasn't special, and all of this "legend building" and myth-making was going amidst people that weren't talking to Romans or that the Romans didn't care about.


It's Saul of Tarsus /a/k/a Paul that kicks the whole thing off and starts Christianity. There's no mention of Jesus until Pliny's letter that mentions followers of one "Christus" years later -- after the Christian movement was known.


The point of all this is that people like Jesus, Mohammad, the Buddha, et al., weren't rare but common, and they are just the ones that we remember or know about today, and divine stories can be attached to real people. It's up to you to decide if a religion is real or not.

We know who Joseph Smith and his family were, where they lived and died, and what they were like.

All the people who knew the Smiths said they were very poor and were liars and grifters. My favourite example is the mummy exhibit when they set up a carnival style exhibition to get people to buy "The Book Of Mormon. My other favourite example is the hotel prophecy. It's no different from Oral Roberts or Jimmy Swaggert saying they need cash for a new building or jet or "God's gonna send them home."


Joseph Smith, his family, and his co-conspirators were scammers according to the historical record. It's up to you to decide if whatever force out in the Universe would use someone like that to create a new religion, and it's up to you to decide if there's any truth in it not -- and whatever mental gymnastics you have to go through to reconcile reality with belief are also on you.

Not only would your addition apply in Joseph Smith's case, it would also apply to Mary Baker Eddy (who started Christian Science), L. Ron Hubbard (who started Scientology) and any number of other people who tried, and sometimes succeeded, in creating new religions in the United States. By the time these people came around, there were a lot more, and better, records kept about births and deaths in this country than in other countries in earlier times. The fact that earlier humans didn't think to keep the kinds of records that we keep now helps explain why so much doubt exists about whether jesus Christ, Mohammed, the Budah, and other founders of world religions that are still believed in today were real people.

I had just that discussion with a Muslim friend last week: the older a religion is, the harder it is to disprove and hence the more persuasive its claims can be. Conversely, the more recent the faith. the easier it is to disprove.

anybody Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As LW said, there were a lot of mystery religions
> in Rome from the East. I would add that the
> "traditional" gods went in and out of favour,
> cults came and went, and so on. The East was also
> the terminus of the Silk Road and other ideas from
> Asia and India came in, so I'd add Buddhism in the
> mix too.

Sort of off-topic, but you bring something interesting to mind with your comment about Buddhism's possible influence in the eastern Roman Empire..

There definitely were a lot of Indian-ish ideas floating around the Greek world in particular at Jesus's time in part due to Alexander's achievements (The Silk Road is generally dated to about 100 BCE, which is later than both Alexander and the appearance of the aforementioned Indian-ish ideas). But there is another reason for the similarity between Hindu-Buddhist-Jainist religion and the religions of the eastern Roman Empire.

That reason is based in Indo-European thought. Some of the best historians of comparative religion and comparative mythology think the germs of such ideas as monotheism were present in proto-IE culture. Look what happened when those people dispersed: within several centuries of each other, Zoroastrianism develops the idea of a single God, India evolves a sense of a single cosmic unity to which all ultimately will merge, and among elite Greeks the gods start to be subsumed within a single overarching God. Xenophanes is a salient example of that, and he was in his prime around 500 BCE--long before Alexander connected India and Greece and even further before the Silk Road became significant. In all three areas you have the the idea of a singular divine reality emerging from cultures whose primary commonality was their Indo-European origins.

A subset of those scholars think the Indo-European web may even have extended to China. I have read draft chapters written by a highly esteemed professor of Chinese and Central Asian history who died before finishing a book arguing that the notion of "Tien," or the unitary "heaven" that dictates all cosmic and human affairs, first appears in China at roughly the same time that Zoroastrianism did in Iran. That coincided with the time when, according to Chinese histories, art, and archaeology, red-headed horse-riding warriors and chariots first encroached on China's northwestern regions--including what would become known as Tocharia.

The point is that nomadic pastoralists tend everywhere--Africa, the Near East, Central Asia--towards monotheism. We know a lot about the Indo-European pantheon, and you have noted the increasing pre-eminence of the "God Father" or "Father God" who left his mark on almost all of the later I-E civilizations. Perhaps the kernel of monotheism was already present when the Yamnaya dispersed; perhaps the one-God of Iran and the West and the one-Cosmos/Heaven of India and China all stemmed from the seminal role of those early mounted migrants.

What I'm saying in a long-winded way that Nightingale hopefully appreciates is that you don't need a precise historical connection to explain the more or less concurrent emergence of related religious ideas in different places. Sometimes ideas planted long ago bloom in different areas at roughly the same time not because they share the same root system but because they germinate from the same seeds.

Oh yeah, Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Northern India are full of that stuff. There are even influences on Chinese art.

All of those postdate by many centuries the rise of monotheism among the Greek aristocracy. Of course, a single generally male God isn't as emotionally rewarding as a nurturing mother, so that mother deity keeps popping up in popular religion: Asherah in Palestine/Israel, the plethora of goddesses in the Mystery Cults, Mother Mary's appearance as someone you can pray to in Christianity. . .

I agree with Anybody. If you look at early history, there are quite a few others - Mani, founder of manichaeanism, and Zoroaster come to mind. And all the people gravitating around early Christianity before being cast off... Some have stuck, others not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraism


Mithraism, also known as the Mithraic mysteries, was a Roman mystery religion centered on the god Mithras. Although inspired by Iranian worship of the Zoroastrian divinity (yazata) Mithra, the Roman Mithras is linked to a new and distinctive imagery, with the level of continuity between Persian and Greco-Roman practice debated.[a] The mysteries were popular among the Imperial Roman army from about the 1st to the 4th century CE.[2]

Worshippers of Mithras had a complex system of seven grades of initiation and communal ritual meals. Initiates called themselves syndexioi, those "united by the handshake".[b] They met in underground temples, now called mithraea (singular mithraeum), which survive in large numbers. The cult appears to have had its centre in Rome,[3] and was popular throughout the western half of the empire, as far south as Roman Africa and Numidia, as far north as Roman Britain,[4]:  26–27  and to a lesser extent in Roman Syria in the east.[3]

Mithraism is viewed as a rival of early Christianity.[5]: 147  In the 4th century, Mithraists faced persecution from Christians and the religion was subsequently suppressed and eliminated in the Roman empire by the end of the century.[6]

Numerous archaeological finds, including meeting places, monuments and artifacts, have contributed to modern knowledge about Mithraism throughout the Roman Empire.[7] The iconic scenes of Mithras show him being born from a rock, slaughtering a bull, and sharing a banquet with the god Sol (the Sun). About 420 sites have yielded materials related to the cult. Among the items found are about 1000 inscriptions, 700 examples of the bull-killing scene (tauroctony), and about 400 other monuments.[4]:  xxi  It has been estimated that there would have been at least 680 mithraea in the city of Rome.[8][full citation needed] No written narratives or theology from the religion survive; limited information can be derived from the inscriptions and brief or passing references in Greek and Latin literature. Interpretation of the physical evidence remains problematic and contested.[c]



https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2014/12/24/december-25th-birthday-mithras-sun/10670611007/

Why is Christmas celebrated on December 25th each year?

"Both Mithras and Christ were described variously as 'the Way,' 'the Truth,' 'the Light,' 'the Life,' 'the Word,' 'the Son of God,' 'the Good Shepherd.' The Christian litany to Jesus could easily be an allegorical litany to the sun-god. Mithras is often represented as carrying a lamb on his shoulders, just as Jesus is. Midnight services were found in both religions. The virgin mother...was easily merged with the virgin mother Mary. Petra, the sacred rock of Mithraism, became Peter, the foundation of the Christian Church."

..........

"Mithra or Mitra is...worshipped as Itu (Mitra-Mitu-Itu) in every house of the Hindus in India. Itu (derivative of Mitu or Mitra) is considered as the Vegetation-deity. This Mithra or Mitra (Sun-God) is believed to be a Mediator between God and man, between the Sky and the Earth. It is said that Mithra or [the] Sun took birth in the Cave on December 25th. It is also the belief of the Christian world that Mithra or the Sun-God was born of [a] Virgin. He travelled far and wide. He has twelve satellites, which are taken as the Sun's disciples.... [The Sun's] great festivals are observed in the Winter Solstice and the Vernal Equinox—Christmas and Easter. His symbol is the Lamb...."


What humankind have celebrated for....forever.....is the seasonal return of the sun. The winter solstice of 2014 began at 6:03 EST on December 21. From that moment, the northern hemisphere begins experiencing longer days of sunlight. I think you might agree that THAT is something worthy of celebration.

We're all enlightened now and no longer worship some invisible sun-god-king construct. But we still cling to amalgamated myths that have been superimposed over early mankind's superstition concerning the sun.

There's that mystical number "seven" again. It existed in ancient Babylon, reportedly because that was the number of the visible planets, but seems to have been adopted by the Yamnaya peoples some 5,000 years ago and then spread wherever they went.

The transfer of that idea from Zoroastrianism to proto-Judaism is well established, but it goes much farther as well--including China, with its seven sage kings and other motifs. Of course the sacred number could have arisen independently because star gazers would have seen the same heavenly bodies, but there does seem to be a strong correlation with the In-E migrations.

Twelve is also a mystical number.

Not only is the mysticism of 7 widely spread in Eurasia, but it is entirely missing in the Americas. That was one of my first aha! thoughts about why Native Americans could not have a Hebrew origin. How on earth could they lose the concept of a seven day week in just a few thousand years?

Decimal counting systems were also widespread in Eurasia, and not in the Americas. As I recall, Inca quipus were basically binary, and Mayan was a modified base twenty. If Lehi and his gang actually existed, there ought to be obvious traces of their seven day week, lunar calendar, and decimal system of counting.

But was the concept of "A Day of Rest" lost?

Maybe instead of a set 'day of rest', they went with a more flexible model, like I have?

blindguy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As the OP, my question was raised more as an
> intellectual curiosity--I had wondered if there
> was more proof that Mahummad actually existed than
> if Jesus did.

As somebody already pointed out, Jesus is most likely a composite of many real people: wannabe Messiahs were a dime a dozen for almost a century, and many of them were crucified, particularly around Passover, when there were often several crucified simultaneously. That is why 'our' Jesus is remembered as crucified between two 'common criminals' who, in all likelyhood, were simply two rival Messiahs, each with their own little band of weeping followers at their feet.

With Muhammad it was a little different. There are no sources outside Islam that mention him until about a century later than the supposed dates, which is why many scholars believe that he was invented to give a new cult a backstory. But even if he existed, he existed a century later than claimed.

Even if he was a real person, he wasn't a real mensch.

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Even if he was a real person, he wasn't a real
> mensch.

:)

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Even if he was a real person, he wasn't a real
> mensch.

I like this movie is because it is one of the few films in English that show the rise in Islam from a Islamic point of view — and Mohammed himself is never seen or heard.

https://youtu.be/gh6FMgv1oyY

Is he a man, a myth, or a legend?

Do you need to have a real person to create a religion?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/30/2022 03:41PM by anybody.

> Do you need to have a real person to create a
> religion?

There are few compliments greater than saying you raise the best questions. The answer, surely, is that a real person gets in the way.

Religions do best when they emerge from the mists of time and hence are beyond factual analysis. Second best are religions stemming from legendary figures although there the keepers of the flame can still get in trouble because--witness Abraham--the lack of any confirming independent evidence casts doubt upon the legends. Jesus does a little better on this score because his life and circumstances were so humble that the lack of evidence can be excused. But the most unfortunate religions are those based on real prophets whose lives are amenable to factual investigation, Joseph Smith being a great example.

Religions are supposed to be superior to human fallibility. Tying a faith to a founding personality is therefore asking for trouble.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > Do you need to have a real person to create a
> > religion?
>
> There are few compliments greater than saying you
> raise the best questions. The answer, surely, is
> that a real person gets in the way.

Here's a clip from "The Orville" when Kelly, the executive officer and also ex-wife of the captain, gives a child medical treatment and winds up accidentally starting a new religion on another planet...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI2h1oVbDs8

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/callista-ring/2017/12/08/orville-religion-just-growing-pains-every-cultures-evolution

He is real. I watched him beat Sonny Liston and later lost to Joe Frazier.

He is his own religion.

I was more a fan of that incarnation than his 7th-century precursor, but it got to him in the end, poor guy.

I looked up some exact dates:

The first time the Koran is mentioned in a non-muslim source is not until the 740s
while the oldest known Korans appeared in the early 800s
and the latter are full of variations from each other
and from the canonical version that is now used.

And that is 200 years after the alleged events...