I had this conversation with some muslims over the internet.
Some hold that in one night, Muhammed visited Jerusalem from Mecca.
The problem is he would need to fly at 150 mph for 7 hours each way.
Al-Burāq is the animal that managed to do this.
1. Why have a visit like this at all. Why not take a couple of months for the trip?
2. A peregrine falcon when diving out of the sky can reach this speed, free fall, but not power flight
3. Why not just say this was a spiritual visit, rather than a physical visit.
Muhammed wanted to create authority for himself by such a trip and also probably was linked
to his hallucinations of seeing an angel that dictated to him the Koran.
We know it is a hallucination, because his wife Kalijah asked him if an angel was present,
and Muhammed said it was.
I do wander how a group would take seriously a guy who fell into trances, had fits and
saw angels that no one else did, unless ofcourse it was the death penalty to contradict anything
he said. What made me laugh more, was it was fine for Muhammed to contradict himself, because
the later was more authorative than the former and overrode it, so contradictions are the issue of
continuous revelation, changing "truth" on the fly, but that is ok.
And when Muhammed used his own invented words, which have no cultural or historical meaning
in the Koran, it makes the meaning of story line meaningless.
I was also struck, with the tendency to make a statement that seemed fine, and then to change its
meaning, overriding totally in the 2nd part of the sentence.
"if anyone slays a human being-unless it be [in punishment] for murder or for spreading corruption on earth-it shall be as though he had slain all mankind;"
Killing someone is wrong, except for murder, or spreading corruption.
Now spreading corruption is literally a totally subjective idea, which you can interpret any way
you want, making the whole statement meaningless, while appearing moral and caring.
Now for Muhammed, if someone from one tribe killed someone from another tribe, you could
wipe out the offending tribe or make them slaves, and take all their possessions, which is what
he did to a lot of groups in Medina and Mecca. A seriously corrupt and dangerous man.
Some hold that in one night, Muhammed visited Jerusalem from Mecca.
The problem is he would need to fly at 150 mph for 7 hours each way.
Al-Burāq is the animal that managed to do this.
1. Why have a visit like this at all. Why not take a couple of months for the trip?
2. A peregrine falcon when diving out of the sky can reach this speed, free fall, but not power flight
3. Why not just say this was a spiritual visit, rather than a physical visit.
Muhammed wanted to create authority for himself by such a trip and also probably was linked
to his hallucinations of seeing an angel that dictated to him the Koran.
We know it is a hallucination, because his wife Kalijah asked him if an angel was present,
and Muhammed said it was.
I do wander how a group would take seriously a guy who fell into trances, had fits and
saw angels that no one else did, unless ofcourse it was the death penalty to contradict anything
he said. What made me laugh more, was it was fine for Muhammed to contradict himself, because
the later was more authorative than the former and overrode it, so contradictions are the issue of
continuous revelation, changing "truth" on the fly, but that is ok.
And when Muhammed used his own invented words, which have no cultural or historical meaning
in the Koran, it makes the meaning of story line meaningless.
I was also struck, with the tendency to make a statement that seemed fine, and then to change its
meaning, overriding totally in the 2nd part of the sentence.
"if anyone slays a human being-unless it be [in punishment] for murder or for spreading corruption on earth-it shall be as though he had slain all mankind;"
Killing someone is wrong, except for murder, or spreading corruption.
Now spreading corruption is literally a totally subjective idea, which you can interpret any way
you want, making the whole statement meaningless, while appearing moral and caring.
Now for Muhammed, if someone from one tribe killed someone from another tribe, you could
wipe out the offending tribe or make them slaves, and take all their possessions, which is what
he did to a lot of groups in Medina and Mecca. A seriously corrupt and dangerous man.
