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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: 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.

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  • (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.