DGS49
Diamond Member
For several months now, I have been watching videos published by an Islamic scholar named Jay Smith. His credentials are both unique and impressive, and he has made a lifetime campaign of challenging Islamic history, beliefs, and theology, often in direct debates with Islamic scholars.
In recent years it has come to light that the Mecca of the Quran simply did not exist; it came along much later, long after Mo-hammed had assumed room temperature. Not only is there no archaeological evidence to support its existence in the relevant time period (the Saudi government prohibits non-approved archaeologists snooping around Mecca), but no contemporaneous documents or evidence even mention its existence at the time of Mo-hammed. Further, the first biography of Mo-hammed himself doesn't appear until about 200 years after his traditional date of death, so it is sourced from exactly nobody who ever knew that personage, assuming that he actually did exist. Also, none of the early Islamic mosques is "pointed at" Mecca, as all later mosques are required to be, indicating that the first Muslims had no particular reverence for that city or location.
And as Smith always says, Islam is founded on a person, place, and time, and if any one of them falls apart, the whole thing falls apart (theologically).
In the U.S. we have a similar situation with the people who are commonly called the "Mormons." Their founder, Joe Smith, has been proven to be a self-aggrandizing fraud, who made up the Book of Mormon, filling it with a history that is proven false by both archaeology and DNA evidence. Many books have been written documenting the false and often preposterous teachings of Smith and his immediate successor, Brigham Young.
Judaism and Christianity are both largely based on FAITH, which by definition is unprovable, but they both have a lot of archaeological support, contemporaneous mentions in third party literature, and are mostly based on eye-witness accounts. Christianity and the basics of Judaism will never be disproven by science, unlike Islam and Mormonism.
So what do you do when your religion - the religion that you were brought up to believe - is disproven by science?
Can one say that few educated and intelligent Muslims and Mormons actually believe the shit that they hear in their religious services? Or would that be too cynical?
In recent years it has come to light that the Mecca of the Quran simply did not exist; it came along much later, long after Mo-hammed had assumed room temperature. Not only is there no archaeological evidence to support its existence in the relevant time period (the Saudi government prohibits non-approved archaeologists snooping around Mecca), but no contemporaneous documents or evidence even mention its existence at the time of Mo-hammed. Further, the first biography of Mo-hammed himself doesn't appear until about 200 years after his traditional date of death, so it is sourced from exactly nobody who ever knew that personage, assuming that he actually did exist. Also, none of the early Islamic mosques is "pointed at" Mecca, as all later mosques are required to be, indicating that the first Muslims had no particular reverence for that city or location.
And as Smith always says, Islam is founded on a person, place, and time, and if any one of them falls apart, the whole thing falls apart (theologically).
In the U.S. we have a similar situation with the people who are commonly called the "Mormons." Their founder, Joe Smith, has been proven to be a self-aggrandizing fraud, who made up the Book of Mormon, filling it with a history that is proven false by both archaeology and DNA evidence. Many books have been written documenting the false and often preposterous teachings of Smith and his immediate successor, Brigham Young.
Judaism and Christianity are both largely based on FAITH, which by definition is unprovable, but they both have a lot of archaeological support, contemporaneous mentions in third party literature, and are mostly based on eye-witness accounts. Christianity and the basics of Judaism will never be disproven by science, unlike Islam and Mormonism.
So what do you do when your religion - the religion that you were brought up to believe - is disproven by science?
Can one say that few educated and intelligent Muslims and Mormons actually believe the shit that they hear in their religious services? Or would that be too cynical?
