The "angel" that spoke to Muhammad in a cave, was not human...

Indeed. Back in the late 1980s as a poli sci grad student at Utah, I was asked to shepherd a visiting Egyptian journalist who was very secular around our campus and city. He asked to tour Temple Square in Salt Lake, so we went there and after the canned tour those were pretty much his exact words.

FIDO95 said:

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I'm supposed to trust someone doing "remote viewing" to establish facts? That's a hard pass for me.

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For sake of conversation, not because I give remote viewing any credibility. . . . . what do you find objectionable about trusting someone else's remote viewing to inform your reality? And how does it differ from how you might trust or not trust someone else's divine revelation?

I think the thing I dislike the most about these alien conspiracy theorists is the endless insistence that every single notable event in history had to be caused by aliens. It completely erases thousands upon thousands of years of human ingenuity and achievement mainly because they're too short sighted to realize that the humans of the past were just as intelligent and just as creative as we are today. Even in something like the building of the pyramids we can see from the physical record left behind was an iterative process as generations of builders learned what worked and what didn't, not alien intervention required.

And when it comes to the current topic, what good argument is there that Islam couldn't have developed completely naturally out of the existing cultural and religious beliefs? Why does it have to be aliens? It's just silly.

kurt vonnegut said:

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FIDO95 said:

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I'm supposed to trust someone doing "remote viewing" to establish facts? That's a hard pass for me.

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For sake of conversation, not because I give remote viewing any credibility. . . . . what do you find objectionable about trusting someone else's remote viewing to inform your reality? And how does it differ from how you might trust or not trust someone else's divine revelation?

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I'll still play. Your first question simply can't be a serious intellectual question. The historical and archeological evidence for Mohammed (and for Jesus Christ for that matter) is available for anyone to review without the need for remote viewing, crystals, or whatever other non-sensical method. The biggest problem is more often hinged on the confirmational bias of the person making that inquiry. IMO, that is the problem with the modern, secular view of the Middle Ages and ancient periods that views history through a lens of European colonialism and often white self-loathing. It's shocking the lack of historical context that the average person has. Case in point:



To your second question, I am completely unqualified to judge the validity of someone's "divine" revelation, and I leave that to the magisterium of the church. The magisterium determines if, let's say an apparition, is consistent with or in opposition to the Scriptures. That is the first question that must be answered in identifying what might be true or false, divine or evil.

Combining all that with the topic of the OP, it was that magisterium that declared Mohammed a heretic and a false prophet. Even the polytheistic tribes thought he was crazy and they exiled him from Mecca. As a result of that experience, he declared he would raise an army take Mecca from those that disgraced him. While he would die before that accomplishment, the Army that he raised and the ideology he established would spread, and continues to spread, by the sword to this day.

FIDO95 said:

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kurt vonnegut said:

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FIDO95 said:

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I'm supposed to trust someone doing "remote viewing" to establish facts? That's a hard pass for me.

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For sake of conversation, not because I give remote viewing any credibility. . . . . what do you find objectionable about trusting someone else's remote viewing to inform your reality? And how does it differ from how you might trust or not trust someone else's divine revelation?

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I'll still play. Your first question simply can't be a serious intellectual question. The historical and archeological evidence for Mohammed (and for Jesus Christ for that matter) is available for anyone to review without the need for remote viewing, crystals, or whatever other non-sensical method. The biggest problem is more often hinged on the confirmational bias of the person making that inquiry. IMO, that is the problem with the modern, secular view of the Middle Ages and ancient periods that views history through a lens of European colonialism and often white self-loathing. It's shocking the lack of historical context that the average person has. Case in point:


To your second question, I am completely unqualified to judge the validity of someone's "divine" revelation, and I leave that to the magisterium of the church. The magisterium determines if, let's say an apparition, is consistent with or in opposition to the Scriptures. That is the first question that must be answered in identifying what might be true or false, divine or evil.

Combining all that with the topic of the OP, it was that magisterium that declared Mohammed a heretic and a false prophet. Even the polytheistic tribes thought he was crazy and they exiled him from Mecca. As a result of that experience, he declared he would raise an army take Mecca from those that disgraced him. While he would die before that accomplishment, the Army that he raised and the ideology he established would spread, and continues to spread, by the sword to this day.

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If I wanted to set a trap, I wouldn't have added the last sentence of my previous post. I would have tried to use your response to draw parallels with 'established facts via revelation'. I think my question makes it clear that I'm looking to see if there is a double standard in how maybe remote viewing is dismissed while revelation is granted legitimacy even though similar arguments may exist against both.

The question about what is objectionable about remote viewing is a serious question. It is a pretty easy question. And it is a question that may have a variety of answers. The point is to understand what objections you have to using remote viewing and then see if there is a double standard whereby those objections do not get applied to truth revealed through revelation. And we may disagree, and that is fine.

For example, to me, one objection to remote viewing is that it doesn't offer a plausible mechanism for information to travel over distances and times. There is also a failure in replication of results. And of course the accuracy of the results themselves of remote viewing are hugely subjective. I think we could come up with a dozen legitimate arguments for why we don't trust remote viewing as a vehicle for understanding truth. Are these objections also relevant in how revelation is (or ought to be) used as a means for understanding truth? Does revelation offer a mechanism? Is it repeatable? Is it verifiable? Is our understanding of revelation objective or subjective?

I'm assuming that your objections to remote viewing and any credit given to revelation amounts to more than just pure presupposition that a church governing body is infallible.

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Historical and archeological evidence for the existence of Jesus of Mohammed isn't really in question. However, historical and archeological evidences for claims like "Jesus is the son of God" is in question. Christianity isn't the belief that a man named Jesus existed. Its the belief that there was something extra special about him. Those extra special things are . . . difficult . . . . to verify historically or scientifically.

"While he would die before that accomplishment, the Army that he raised and the ideology he established would spread, and continues to spread, by the sword to this day."

The rest of your argument is an appeal to an authority that I don't see as authoritative so that's not really productive. But I do think this idea is interesting. Is a religion that spread by swords or government decrees evidence it's false? And if we look at the totality of Christianities spread, does it really have that many stones to throw relative to Islam? I don't see that it does. Even in the early Islamic conquests Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians were allowed to keep their faith provided a tax. Overall I'd say both religions spread by the sword and missionary work depending on the era without a significant discrepancy overall.

"If I wanted to set a trap, I wouldn't have added the last sentence of my previous post. I would have tried to use your response to draw parallels with 'established facts via revelation'. I think my question makes it clear that I'm looking to see if there is a double standard in how maybe remote viewing is dismissed while revelation is granted legitimacy even though similar arguments may exist against both."

The reason I joked about you setting a trap is that you posed the question with a presumption that I believe to be in error. I don't want to derail this thread so I will try to explain my objection and give you whatever last word you want. The presumptive error is that somehow remote viewing falls in the same bucket as revelation. As such, they can and should be scrutinized in the same way. I don't think you meant to set a "trap". I suspect we simply have divergent views on the definition of said words base off our world view. I believe we are in agreement about the validity of remote viewing so there is no need to belabor that point. However, true revelation is something entirely different because I believe there to be a metaphysical reality that supports our physical reality. Revelation is that metaphysical reality revealing something to the physical world. While there have been many to claim having revelations, few remain when placed under scrutiny. Here is one example:

Aggrad08 said:

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"While he would die before that accomplishment, the Army that he raised and the ideology he established would spread, and continues to spread, by the sword to this day."

The rest of your argument is an appeal to an authority that I don't see as authoritative so that's not really productive. But I do think this idea is interesting. Is a religion that spread by swords or government decrees evidence it's false? And if we look at the totality of Christianities spread, does it really have that many stones to throw relative to Islam? I don't see that it does. Even in the early Islamic conquests Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians were allowed to keep their faith provided a tax. Overall I'd say both religions spread by the sword and missionary work depending on the era without a significant discrepancy overall.

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First sentence, fair enough.

I don't think the you can compare the broad mechanism of spread of Islam to the spread of Christianity. The original Christian church was a very passively spread by word and was quite pacifist. No army forced Constantine to convert the Roman Empire to Christianity. Additionally, the early Christians lived rather peacefully with Jews, Zoroastrians, and other pagans. Much of the bloodshed began when the Islamic armies marched from Medina to Mecca, continued northward up the peninsula, North into Turkey and West into Egypt. Their armies demanded conversion. Those that refused would be enslaved and/or had to pay tax (you seem to be minimizing what all that tax and existence was about). The manner of this spread was entirely different from the early Christian church. It was not until the fall of 4th of the 5 Christian Sees did the Pope initiate the first Crusade. The Crusades were not an attempt to spread Christian faith by the sword but rather to defend the faithful in Spain, modern day Turkey (Constantinople, Antioch), Egypt (Alexandria), and the middle East (Jerusalem). The modern idea that the Muslim rulers of those areas were benevolent to non-believes does not stand to historical reality (I would encourage you to watch the video I posted earlier on this thread).

I would be in agreement with you that crusaders and missionaries were not uniformly good or righteous. For example, I would agree that the Spanish conquistadors were some of the worst. But if you take into account what the people of Spain dealt with under Muslim rule, you could understand (not justify) their intolerance towards foreign faiths. Nonetheless, the scale of spread by peaceful conversion vs under threat of sword isn't even close. Just look at Africa today. In the areas where the Catholic church is thriving, how is it being spread? In the areas where Islam is expanding, how is it being spread? If your honest, you will come to the same conclusion I made in the sentence you quoted in your post.

Martin Q. Blank said:

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Muhammad and Joseph Smith have very similar stories.

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I wish Farsight would do a project involving Mr. Smith. I suspect those metal plates came from extraterrestrials.

FIDO95 said:

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"If I wanted to set a trap, I wouldn't have added the last sentence of my previous post. I would have tried to use your response to draw parallels with 'established facts via revelation'. I think my question makes it clear that I'm looking to see if there is a double standard in how maybe remote viewing is dismissed while revelation is granted legitimacy even though similar arguments may exist against both."

The reason I joked about you setting a trap is that you posed the question with a presumption that I believe to be in error. I don't want to derail this thread so I will try to explain my objection and give you whatever last word you want. The presumptive error is that somehow remote viewing falls in the same bucket as revelation. As such, they can and should be scrutinized in the same way. I don't think you meant to set a "trap". I suspect we simply have divergent views on the definition of said words base off our world view. I believe we are in agreement about the validity of remote viewing so there is no need to belabor that point. However, true revelation is something entirely different because I believe there to be a metaphysical reality that supports our physical reality. Revelation is that metaphysical reality revealing something to the physical world. While there have been many to claim having revelations, few remain when placed under scrutiny. Here is one example:

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I suspect this was a similar event ala Fatima. The lady was an alien being. All part of the faction of et that seek to manipulate and control humanity.

The person 'mohammed' didn't exist and is a combination of different people/narratives put together after 'his' wars/death many years later.

So, it's pretty tough to give any credence to this 'farsight.'

Where I think your argument goes too far is when it moves from that observation to the conclusion that Islam was broadly spread "under threat of the sword" while Christianity was not. The historical record is more complicated.

The early Muslim conquests were unquestionably military conquests. Muslim armies rapidly expanded political control over Syria, Egypt, Persia, and beyond. But conquering territory is not the same thing as immediately converting the population. In many of those regions, Christians remained the majority for centuries after the conquest. If conversion at sword point had been the norm, we wouldn't expect Christian communities to have survived in places like Egypt, Syria, or Iraq for hundreds of years.

The jizya tax was certainly a burden and created incentives to convert. It also reflected second-class legal status for many non-Muslims. Im not minimizing that. At the same time, the existence of jizya also demonstrates that rulers generally expected large non-Muslim populations to remain rather than forcing everyone to convert.

I also agree that the Crusades were not launched primarily to convert Muslims to Christianity. Their stated purpose was to reclaim or defend territories and aid Eastern Christians. However, that doesn't mean Christianity as a whole spread only peacefully after it became politically established. History includes forced baptisms under Charlemagne, coercive policies in parts of medieval Europe, and colonial-era conversions that occurred under varying degrees of pressure.

Regarding Africa today, I don't think it's accurate to suggest that Islam is primarily expanding there by the sword. Most demographic research points to higher birth rates, missionary work, education, migration, and voluntary conversion as the main drivers of both Christian and Muslim growth in sub-Saharan Africa. There are certainly regions where extremist groups use violence, but those conflicts shouldn't be taken as representative of how hundreds of millions of African Muslims came to Islam.

So I don't think the evidence supports either extremethat Christianity spread only peacefully or that Islam spread primarily by forced conversion.

nortex97 said:

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The person 'mohammed' didn't exist and is a combination of different people/narratives put together after 'his' wars/death many years later.

So, it's pretty tough to give any credence to this 'farsight.'

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They are a data-driven research group. We are all free to believe as we want.

Mohammed very much did exist. The "angel" who spoke to him in the cave and gave him his religion was an extraterrestrial.

Raymond Ibrahim's Sword and the Scimitar documents the Christian apologia/defenses against mohammedists well. But this thread's not a 'whataboutism' regarding Christianity, which so many want to make it whenever the brutality consistent in islam comes up.

A dogmatic insistence that mohammed existed historically relies imho on ignorance, plain and simple. Or, if one prefers, 'faith' in the quran.
https://www.youtube.com/live/2K9GWCrnCGE
Pfander Films (Jay Smith) and Robert Spencer have written/discussed this topic at length, dispositively imho.

But as stated, folks are free to believe what they wish, including that he did exist and was inspired by a visit from an alien.

FIDO95 said:

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The reason I joked about you setting a trap is that you posed the question with a presumption that I believe to be in error. I don't want to derail this thread so I will try to explain my objection and give you whatever last word you want. The presumptive error is that somehow remote viewing falls in the same bucket as revelation. As such, they can and should be scrutinized in the same way. I don't think you meant to set a "trap". I suspect we simply have divergent views on the definition of said words base off our world view. I believe we are in agreement about the validity of remote viewing so there is no need to belabor that point. However, true revelation is something entirely different because I believe there to be a metaphysical reality that supports our physical reality. Revelation is that metaphysical reality revealing something to the physical world. While there have been many to claim having revelations, few remain when placed under scrutiny. Here is one example:

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A quick Google search and it looks like metaphysical theory exists for remote viewing as well. I don't see why your conviction in a specific metaphysical reality allows you to pull revelation into a different bucket. To be fair, I think remote viewing stands on far, far shakier ground. . . but, the point of comparing remote viewing and revelation isn't to say they are identical, it is simply to say that there are similarities.

I wonder if the lady of Zeitoun works a good example of the double standard I'm hinting at. Sifting through all of the doctored images and only looking at the original photos, I can see the light phenomenon. And I can see why people likened it to a vague shape of a human figure. Where I get lost is in the assertions of specific translations from the image to revelatory meaning. Even if I grant an existence of a supernatural blur of light, I am cautious about leaping from this toward fundamental truth about reality. I mean, in a reality where supernatural angels and demons can interact with the physical, how do we know this wasn't a demon? I'm not saying it is Mary nor am I saying its a demon. . . . I'm just saying, I don't think we can make a determination without an emotional bias.

That guy is super weird and annoying. Couldn't watch it.

Did I hear "remote viewing" before I turned that off?

FIDO95 said:

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I'm supposed to trust someone doing "remote viewing" to establish facts? That's a hard pass for me.

If you want a more scholarly discussion on the origin and history of Islam, I would suggestion Raymond Ibrahim:

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I'll admit, i had no idea what you were talking about and then i watched the video.

I agree that Islam is a death cult established by a sexually fristrated gay pedo warlord. But using people like this to prove your point doesn't exactly give you credibility

nortex97 said:

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The person 'mohammed' didn't exist and is a combination of different people/narratives put together after 'his' wars/death many years later.

So, it's pretty tough to give any credence to this 'farsight.'

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A data driven research group. Perhaps you just don't like the results? You are not alone. Years ago I would have believed this was of the devil.

Arachnologistguy said:

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nortex97 said:

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The person 'mohammed' didn't exist and is a combination of different people/narratives put together after 'his' wars/death many years later.

So, it's pretty tough to give any credence to this 'farsight.'

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A data driven research group. Perhaps you just don't like the results? You are not alone. Years ago I would have believed this was of the devil.

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What results? Islam is a fabricated religion (really just a violent cultural organization) based on a false story about the foundational 'prophet.'

The original mosques didn't even point to mecca as the story about mohammed hadn't been written/codified when they were built. Jumping to a conclusion that he did somehow exist as the quran has been constructed, and further was visited by an alien is just illogical.

Just posting some lyrics from this Mormon hymn:

" If You Could Hie To Kolob Lyrics

If You Could Hie to Kolob, 284 William W. Phelps

1. If you could hie to Kolob In the twinkling of an eye,
And then continue onward With that same speed to fly,
Do you think that you could ever, Through all eternity,
Find out the generation Where Gods began to be?

2. Or see the grand beginning, Where space did not extend?
Or view the last creation, Where Gods and matter end?
Me thinks the Spirit whispers, "No man has found 'pure space,'
Nor seen the outside curtains, Where nothing has a place."

3. The works of God continue, And worlds and lives abound;
Improvement and progression Have one eternal round.
There is no end to matter; There is no end to space;
There is no end to spirit; There is no end to race.

4. There is no end to virtue; There is no end to might;
There is no end to wisdom; There is no end to light.
There is no end to union; There is no end to youth;
There is no end to priesthood; There is no end to truth."