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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-just-date-get-married dept.

Brian Booker writes at Digital Journal that carbon dating suggests that the Koran, or at least portions of it, may actually be older than the prophet Muhammad himself, a finding that if confirmed could rewrite early Islamic history and shed doubt on the "heavenly" origins of the holy text. Scholars believe that a copy Koran held by the Birmingham Library was actually written sometime between 545 AD and 568 [takyon: 568 and 645 AD, with 95.4% accuracy], while the Prophet Mohammad was believed to have been born in 570 AD and to have died in 632 AD. It should be noted, however, that the dating was only conducted on the parchment, rather than the ink, so it is possible that the quran was simply written on old paper. Some scholars believe, however, that Muhammad did not receive the Quran from heaven, as he claimed during his lifetime, but instead collected texts and scripts that fit his political agenda.

"This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Koran's genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven," says Keith Small, from the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library. "'It destabilises, to put it mildly, the idea that we can know anything with certainty about how the Koran emerged," says Historian Tom Holland. "and that in turn has implications for the history of Muhammad and the Companions."


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:50AM

    by frojack (1554) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:50AM (#230561) Journal

    Some scholars believe, however, that Muhammad did not receive the Quran from heaven, as he claimed

    Seriously? So there are other scholars that actually believe it was from heaven?
    We seem to be working from a very different definition of scholar.

    Since when did carbon dating get so precise that we could be bickering about 2 years?
    You could pick up that much carbon sitting in a room full of candles or by a fire.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:57AM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:57AM (#230563) Journal

    Setting aside whether the dating even means anything, and presuming for a moment that it does, when has evidence of anything led to the demise of a _faith_. Faiths are after all, inherently irrational, with many considering belief in the absence of evidence a great achievement.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:03AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:03AM (#230568)

      > Faiths are after all, inherently irrational,

      No. Faith is about choosing to believe something which you can neither prove nor disprove, something that is not falsifiable.

      Do some people set the bar for falsifiability too low? Absolutely. But that's not inherently irrational, that's just laziness. In the face of clear-cut proof one way or the other such faith eventually fades.

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:15AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:15AM (#230575)

        No. Faith is about choosing to believe something which you can neither prove nor disprove, something that is not falsifiable.

        Which is irrational.

        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:22AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:22AM (#230584)

          > Which is irrational.

          It is neither rational nor irrational, it is outside of rationality.

          Furthermore there are plenty of rational reasons to hold such beliefs - they help organize social structure, for one. If the foundations of your society can't be disproven then that's one less weakness in the social fabric. Build it on top of something that might change, like scarcity economics, and everything collapses if it does change.

          • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:07AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:07AM (#230601)

            It is neither rational nor irrational, it is outside of rationality.

            Yes, claiming that random nonsense is true when you have zero actual reason to believe so transcends rationality. Somehow.

            If you care about truth, it is quite irrational. If you're mostly concerned with what makes you feel good, maybe it's okay for you to believe in some nonsense, but keep away from me.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @05:05AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @05:05AM (#230661)

              > Yes, claiming that random nonsense is true

              Versus random sense? Or ordered nonsense?

              If you think believing in something you can't prove is the same thing as claiming it is true, then you are no better than the religious fundamentalist declaring that anyone who doesn't think like they do will go to hell.

              Faith and fact are orthogonal, not opposed.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @08:56AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @08:56AM (#230709)

                Of course you think it's true if you believe it, that's what it means to believe something. That there's no evidential or logical reason to think it's true is why it's irrational.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:58PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:58PM (#230774)

                  uhm...I think you are wrong though:

                  When I have an hypothesis I tend to believe its like that (otherwise I would not coin it). Then I test it.
                  Sometimes it turns to be false.

                  Religious beliefs are just stuck in the hypothetical phase for ever, as they are (mostly) not testable.

                  Its not irrational. Perhaps futile though in a scientific sense. But people may have valid and useful reasons to believe in something, independent of whether it is either falsifiable or true.

                  I think people here are to quick to think that irrational things have no worth. You might as well ban all music just because you cannot find a rational reason why I believe a certain song is good.

          • (Score: 4, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:13AM

            by hemocyanin (186) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:13AM (#230605) Journal

            It is neither rational nor irrational, it is outside of rationality.

            Invisible Pink unicorns then. Those are exactly as falsifiable as any god in that they have the same basic property, which is a lack of evidence in favor of existence. Which is easily explained away -- they have magical hiding capabilities that no sensors can defeat.

            We have developed a way of thinking on top of language that is imperfect in some way. For example, that sentence I just wrote is ambiguous -- is it language, thinking, or both which are imperfect? I could fix it to make it clearer, but as is it is, it's pretty malleable. There are harder things to fix though, and it is in these stings of words or thoughts or both, that we can find religion. We can stuff all kinds of garbage into the gaps we have in our ability to express things accurately, like pink unicorns -- that our language makes it possible to for such phantasms to spring into existence from a lack of evidence, seems rather rather strange to say the least. That such formulations should be the guiding light of billions seems even stranger still. I don't know how to fix language, or thought, or whatever it is that makes the ludicrous seem possible or even a certainty, but the fact that such insanity can be derived from our language systems suggests a fundamental flaw in our ability to communicate, maybe even think.

            • (Score: 3, Funny) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:27AM

              by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:27AM (#230609) Journal

              Invisible Pink unicorns then.

              Here you go! [deviantart.com]

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:12AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:12AM (#230648)

              > Invisible Pink unicorns then.

              Yes, and if it suits you, so what?

              > That such formulations should be the guiding light of billions seems even stranger still.

              That's reductive. It isn't the pink unicorns that are the guiding light, it is all the of the mythology built up around them that is the guiding light. The thing about all that mythology is that just like the pink unicorns it is all man made consensus and will be discarded if it is no longer useful.

              • (Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Tuesday September 01 2015, @05:44AM

                by hemocyanin (186) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @05:44AM (#230673) Journal

                The thing about all that mythology is that just like the pink unicorns it is all man made consensus and will be discarded if it is no longer useful.

                The problem with this premise is that is that it presupposes rational action by people who are willing to set rationality aside. The kind of people who would burn people alive if they don't adhere to one particular set of made up faiths. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2014/03/13/cosmos-giordano-bruno-response-steven-soter/ [discovermagazine.com] http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/israel-middle-east/isil-posts-horrifying-video-of-men-burned-alive-in-car-beheaded-with-explosive-cable-and-drowned-in-cage [nationalpost.com]

                How much more slowly has our knowledge advanced because of faith? How many resources spent on grand temples, could have been spent in ways that improved the human condition through knowledge? How many brilliant people squandered vast portions of their potential on numerology or alchemy as Newton did? What is the volume of our knowledge deficit today that can be squarely placed on the shoulders of "faith" and the unwise investments humankind has made in faith, the destructions it has wreaked in the name of it, and the early human history lost because it? I would suggest it is vast and that the "man made consensus", far from being a positive force in human history, has only served to retard our understanding of the world. Human progress has only been made in spite of faith, and always at a slower pace -- faith is a parasite sucking up resources and killing its hosts.

                • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @06:33AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @06:33AM (#230678)

                  > The problem with this premise is that is that it presupposes rational action by people who are willing to set rationality aside.

                  Again with the reductive analysis. Do you refuse to read fiction? Do you think there is nothing of value to be learned from fiction because its not fact?

                  > How much more slowly has our knowledge advanced because of faith?

                  All that presupposes that
                  (a) all that effort directed by the religious impulse didn't bring any benefits
                  (b) all that effort directed by the religious impulse would have been applied 'rationally'

                  > I would suggest it is vast and that the "man made consensus", far from being a positive force in human history, has only served to retard our understanding of the world.

                  Man made consensus is all that there is in the world. Well, at least as far as man is concerned. You are just deluding yourself by thinking everything is neatly separated between fact and faith. I was that way as a teenager once too, but then I asked myself - why is there such a universal human impulse towards religion, so much so that even atheists spend the majority of their lives taking things on faith? Why would a species evolve such a defining characteristic if it wasn't a useful survival trait? Come to grips with that question - don't even bother trying answer it here, I'm not asking for myself - and you will start to understand the human condition much better than you do now.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:56PM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:56PM (#230771)

                    Do you think there is nothing of value to be learned from fiction because its not fact?

                    What have you learned from fiction that you could not have learned from fact?

                    All that presupposes that
                    (a) all that effort directed by the religious impulse didn't bring any benefits
                    (b) all that effort directed by the religious impulse would have been applied 'rationally'

                    If any of that effort had been applied rationally we would be at a net positive compared to right now.

                    why is there such a universal human impulse towards religion, so much so that even atheists spend the majority of their lives taking things on faith? Why would a species evolve such a defining characteristic if it wasn't a useful survival trait?

                    Just because it is a useful survival trait does not mean it is necessary. Personally I believe that faith is a side effect of the human condition. Humans are inquisitive and seek to learn more about themselves and their surroundings, this leads us to ask questions and to do our best to answer them. Religion sprang from a time where there were many questions and very few answers. In short, I think we made up religions to make us feel better about questions we cannot answer.

                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:38PM

                      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:38PM (#230817)

                      > What have you learned from fiction that you could not have learned from fact?

                      A hell of lot about the nature of people. The kind of stuff that would have taken lifetimes of living to learn in person.

                      > If any of that effort had been applied rationally we would be at a net positive compared to right now.

                      Really? Any? Here we are having an argument about being rational and you are resorting to hyperbole. Funny that.

                      > Just because it is a useful survival trait does not mean it is necessary

                      Strawman. The stripes on a zebra are not necessary, blue eyes are not necessary.

                      What I am getting from your post is denial of your own irrationality.

                  • (Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday September 01 2015, @05:51PM

                    by fritsd (4586) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @05:51PM (#230908) Journal

                    I sense there's a lacuna in our modern culture, because children are no longer told the old-fashioned fairytales (not the modern sappy bowdlerized versions), nor the morality tales from the holy books e.g. the Bible. Instead, they get to position themselves in society, and find their own path in life, with Disney and a US$ 900 flamethrower, apparently. Goodluckwiththat...

                    I've inherited a "Reader's Digest" fairytale book from my grandfather, with translations fairly true to the original, and beautiful illustrations of beheadings, battles, children left to die from hunger etc.; somehow I think many modern *parents* would find it too scary to read aloud.

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:36AM

            by Nerdfest (80) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:36AM (#230610)

            How about something rational and good for the human race in the long term, like the straightforward "Don't be a Dick". Pretty much anything that just tends towards "Be nice to people" better than any organized religion.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:14AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:14AM (#230649)

              It is super appealing to the unsophisticated mind, but don't be a dick is insufficient whenever there is a conflict between two groups of people. Its great a as guideline, but it is woefully inadequate for dealing with real problems.

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:16AM

            by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:16AM (#230628) Journal

            It is neither rational nor irrational, it is outside of rationality.
             
            And yet, you just spent an entire post rationalizing it...

            • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:16AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:16AM (#230650)

              By that logic, anyone who studies religion must be religious.

              • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:24PM

                by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:24PM (#230874) Journal

                By that logic, anyone who studies religion must be religious.
                 
                Nope. Those people realize they are studying something irrational.

          • (Score: 2, Interesting) by kanweg on Tuesday September 01 2015, @05:11AM

            by kanweg (4737) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @05:11AM (#230663)

            "Furthermore there are plenty of rational reasons to hold such beliefs - they help organize social structure, for one. "

            Why not build a society on something that is true?

            Bert

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:13PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:13PM (#230785)

              Because those things which we can have evidence on are not sufficient to build a society on them?

          • (Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday September 01 2015, @09:01AM

            by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 01 2015, @09:01AM (#230711) Journal

            Man goes on to prove that black is white and promptly gets himself killed on the next level crossing. -- Adams.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:51PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:51PM (#230823) Journal

            It is neither rational nor irrational, it is outside of rationality.

            I have to agree with with the other guy. Any such choice is inherently quite irrational. After all, you could be using your brain cells instead for something that matters rather than something that doesn't.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:38AM

          by sjames (2882) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:38AM (#230592) Journal

          Believing literally in something that has been falsified is irrational.

          Otherwise, if a belief is helpful and hasn't been falsified, why not. Science does that as well (it's called a model).

          But if you really don't like change, believe in something that is helpful and cannot be falsified.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:14AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:14AM (#230606)

            Believing literally in something that has been falsified is irrational.

            So is believing something you have no actual reason to believe is true, if you care about truth and well-being. I think that most people would claim to care about both, would you not?

            Otherwise, if a belief is helpful and hasn't been falsified, why not.

            You assume that believing something that you don't know to be true can be helpful. Who is more likely to succeed in life (in terms of well-being, for instance): Someone who strives to believe in true things, or someone who is willing to believe false things if it makes them feel good? I value truth in and of itself, but I would still say that people who don't realize that drinking poison is a bad idea will likely meet their end quite quickly. Even if a false belief seems innocuous, it can affect your thinking in ways you might not even perceive, and make you willing to do harmful things you otherwise wouldn't.

            Where are all these religious people who claim to believe something merely because it benefits them in some secondary way? Almost all would claim to believe it because they think it is the truth, not because it makes them feel good or something such as that.

            Science does that as well (it's called a model).

            Science has no beliefs, as it is not a thinking being.

            • (Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:40AM

              by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:40AM (#230637) Journal

              Who is more likely to succeed in life (in terms of well-being, for instance): Someone who strives to believe in true things, or someone who is willing to believe false things if it makes them feel good?

              The ones that are able to believe false things which bring profit to them and make others happy.
              At least by some very current definitions of success.

              --
              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
            • (Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:01AM

              by sjames (2882) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:01AM (#230644) Journal

              Science has no beliefs, as it is not a thinking being.

              Naturally, I meant scientists in the course of practicing science, but you knew that, didn't you?

              So do you have iron clad proof for everything you believe? Do you believe that when you get to work in the morning that the building will still be there? It's a useful belief since it will keep you from being fired, but can you PROVE it?

              At the most fundamental level, you cannot prove that any of your sensory experiences are real. You cannot prove that your memories are real. In fact, the former are likely distorted and not exactly what others (if they exist) perceive and the latter is well known to distort over time. But you choose to act as if it's all true.

              In times of danger, many people have found that believing someone or some thing they can't see watching out for them has allowed them to calm down enough to think their way out of the situation. That seems pretty useful to me.

              There is evidence that believing or even just imagining that someone is watching helps people to act in accordance with their morals and ethics. That, in turn protects their self esteem and protects them from harmful consequences.

              Sincere belief in a placebo can cure real diseases, even ones we have no actual medication for.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:21AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:21AM (#230651)

              > Someone who strives to believe in true things, or someone who is willing to believe false things if it makes them feel good?

              Name one thing that you think is true that you can prove to be true.

              Think carefully. Because you will have to start with proving that you aren't just a brain in a jar being fed neural stimulus to simulate the world you think exists.

              More explicitly - we all operate on faith. Some people have just deluded themselves into thinking otherwise.

              PS - not falsified does not equal false.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:06PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:06PM (#230781)

                We all operate on assumption, not faith. We assume that what we see and hear is reality, we don't have faith that it is.

            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday September 01 2015, @05:23AM

              by q.kontinuum (532) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @05:23AM (#230669) Journal

              Believing literally in something that has been falsified is irrational.

              So is believing something you have no actual reason to believe is true, if you care about truth and well-being.

              There is a difference between believing and expecting others to believe, as well as there is a difference between defending religion as an efficient mechanism to strengthen societies by creating an internal bonding-effect while also generating a differentiator from other cultures. Imagine two societies, one with strong believes about paradise in afterlife, imagined rewards for sacrifices etc. and the other without those treats. Whose soldiers will fight more fiercely?

              I'm not saying this is the best concept in the long run. Critical thinking leads to better science and therefore to better weapons, thus to a stronger (in military terms) society, and for the non-believers (because of their rational approach and therefore better results) to a better position within the society.

              But consider that by evolution, for millions of years religious beliefs were rewarded (by stronger societies, better standings within the societies, etc.). Therefore, the potential and desire to beliefs is basically built in to all of us. (Well, most of us. There will be mutants where this trait was disabled.) So, imagine you are faced with the choice to believe (and get sheltered, pampered, live a purposeful life of hope) or not to believe (and lose one of the biggest [imagined] purposes in life, lose some of your hold in society, and some of your hope). There is no evidence against the existence of god, and there is no evidence in favour of gods existence. Now tell me, which cause of action is more rational?

              To me it looks as if the distinction of what is rational and what isn't is not always that clear; it's only a bit difficult accept from the outside.

              --
              Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
              • (Score: 1) by nekomata on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:00PM

                by nekomata (5432) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:00PM (#230805)

                Imagine two societies, one with strong believes about paradise in afterlife, imagined rewards for sacrifices etc. and the other without those treats. Whose soldiers will fight more fiercely?

                I would assume the ones that don't believe in an afterlife, since for them dying is more final. To quote Bender: "Afterlife? Pfft. If I'd thought I had to go through a whole 'nother life, I'd kill myself right now."

                • (Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:11PM

                  by q.kontinuum (532) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:11PM (#230808) Journal

                  I would assume the religious one, because for the non-believers there is less incentive to sacrifice themselves by jumping on the grenade or volunteering for an important suicide mission. Most people are somehow selfish, and sacreficing themselves without any hope for a great afterlife is not very self-serving.

                  --
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        • (Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:49AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:49AM (#230596)

          No more irrational than believing that if something can't be proven then it can't be true. Truth isn't found in theories and [inherently subjective] attempts at objectivity.

          Many (perhaps most) people have *faith* in the power of God to effect change in their lives without believing in a literal God who *exists* or is capable of any action whatsoever. If this faith subjectively enriches their lives it is irrational to abandon it.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:19AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:19AM (#230607)

            No more irrational than believing that if something can't be proven then it can't be true.

            Where did I say such a thing was rational?

            If this faith subjectively enriches their lives it is irrational to abandon it.

            Most of these theists would claim to believe it because it is the truth, not merely because it subjectively enriches their lives.

            And enriches their lives in what ways? Beliefs can affect your thinking in ways you cannot perceive. Sometimes the result is negative. False beliefs are more likely to result in negative outcomes. I see no reason to make an exception for theism.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:08PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:08PM (#230782)

          You cannot prove there is a world independent of you. So according to your logic, the only rational position would be solipsism.

      • (Score: 2) by Dunbal on Tuesday September 01 2015, @11:16AM

        by Dunbal (3515) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @11:16AM (#230748)

        Exactly. Which is why I worship the giant invisible space goat. The good thing about something you can't prove or disprove is that my claim is just as valid as anyone else's. By the way, the space goat tells me I must now chop off your head. Nothing personal you see, it's just religion.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:30AM

      by TheGratefulNet (659) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:30AM (#230590)

      Setting aside whether the dating even means anything

      this is a tech geek forum.

      we think we know that word, but are still waiting to confirm.

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by moondoctor on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:15AM

    by moondoctor (2963) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:15AM (#230576)

    Yeah, the whole tone/approach is really weird. Feels much more political/philosophical than scientifically motivated.

    Their date range of 545 to 568 just smells like manipulated numbers. Moreover, as you say - Claiming fact on 2 years margin of error over 1500 also seems super contrived.

    Part that's really fucked up is that this is presented effectively as the inverse of ISIS saying "Jesus is a liar and The Bible is just some old stories."

    I'm not saying that the research is wrong, or that we (by which I mean westerners, excuse the assumption) shouldn't say anything that might hurt ISIS' feelings. However, ignoring the almost literally earth-shattering potential of how this research is handled with the public and in the press is disturbing. Feels more like the opposite, as purposefully inflammatory.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:27AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:27AM (#230588)

      Part that's really fucked up is that this is presented effectively as the inverse of ISIS saying "Jesus is a liar and The Bible is just some old stories."

      What? Jesus is the #2 prophet in Islam. They call him Issa, which is a very popular name in the middle-east. The only thing muslims really disbelieve about Jesus is that he was divine rather than mortal. His mom, Mary, is super important too. Arguably more important than she is to Christians.

      • (Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:51AM

        by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:51AM (#230597) Journal

        Jesus is the #2 prophet in Islam.

        This has always been a WTF for me when reading Islamophobe writings. In discussions about spirituality, metaphysics, and the reason we're all here I've had with a friend who is spiritual but not in the conventional sense, we've recognized Gautama Buddha as the #1 prophet (in this kalpa [wikipedia.org]), Jesus as the #2 prophet, and Muhammed as having a wibbly-wobbly status as the #3 prophet while also recognizing that writings about their enlightenments and teachings may be skewed to fit the political whims of the MotU of the day. The evidence seems lacking for the journalistic capabilities of the time that Joseph Smith would be a #4 prophet. Instead we wonder when the Maitreya Buddha [wikipedia.org] will manifest, perhaps (and this may be the alcohol talking) reigning in a Silver Millennium [wikimoon.org], which aligns with certain predictions in the book of Revelation. (Don't hold your breath! It's probably a few hundred thousand years off at minimum. Make sure to balance your reincarnations with fates of poverty and indescribable wealth to find the middle way!)

        Arguably more important than she is to Christians

        As I understand it, you're referring to Protestants here. Catholicism seems to have a healthy tradition of exaltation of the Virgin Mary. My observation has been that Catholicism is more similar to Pagan traditions that worship a god and goddess in that respect. Protestantism greatly diminishes the role of the virgin mother and immaculate conception (almost leading me to lend some sympathy to Dianist rejections of Protestantism, but that's the pendulum swinging way too far in the other direction). I'm not familiar enough with Eastern Orthodox to comment on that faith, but if we have any Eastern Orthodox readers, I'm all ears!

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Whoever on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:35AM

        by Whoever (4524) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:35AM (#230635) Journal

        What? Jesus is the #2 prophet in Islam.

        Which is a denial of the first and central tenet of Christianity (or at least the Catholics). That's not some minor doctrinal issue.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:23AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:23AM (#230654)

          That is a problem for christians, but not for muslims or anyone else.

      • (Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday September 01 2015, @05:57PM

        by fritsd (4586) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @05:57PM (#230912) Journal

        His mom, Mary, is super important too. Arguably more important than she is to Christians.

        Hah, some Belgians are officially Catholics, so they're supposed to believe in the Trinity (God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, in case you didn't know this cultural ref). But instead, in their sorrows they pray to Mary full of Mercy, because she's a bit more "down-to-earth" and "approachable", so to speak. Not as abstract and aloof as God. They wouldn't dare to pray to God directly.

        Bunch of Gaia-worshippers ;-)

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @10:00PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @10:00PM (#231005)

    See, there's this university in Egypt. But we can't be politically incorrect.

  • (Score: 2) by VortexCortex on Wednesday September 02 2015, @01:58AM

    by VortexCortex (4067) on Wednesday September 02 2015, @01:58AM (#231091)

    You could pick up that much carbon sitting in a room full of candles or by a fire.

    Inter-carbon dating?! Burn the heretic!

    wait...