Saturday, December 29, 2012

Stories of Messengers Become More Realistic

We concluded that as we were moving towards more recent events of history and human became more rigorous in writing and recording of events, messengers of the God also became less supernatural in behaviour and their lives became recorded as the life of ordinary people. The last one established himself among the people and part of his mission covered ordinary administration of a society.

If you read history, the life of Muhammad very carefully has been recorded. What he has left behind has been divided in two parts: one part, based on his own instruction is from God and is collected as a holy book sent from the God, and all of his followers have consensus on every detail of that. Another part of his legacy his followers quote from him as an ordinary person talking from his own intelligence and in many occasions his followers have controversy about.

Read stories of ordinary people who were not prophet and are known as saints and similar entities, living after Muhammad until very recent eras. Still, there are fables attributing strange things to them not attributed to Muhammad. In the Muhammad's holy book, except for his journey to Jerusalem over one night, there is nothing to be interpreted as Muhammad being supernatural being or has done as a supernatural feat; in contrast in any occasion it is emphasized that he was an ordinary human but with a mission. That assertion does not end to Muhammad alone. His book also extends that to other messengers who came before him.

What is the rational inference of this chronology. It is that the positivist philosophy seems to come around. When humans become more scientific they become less superstitious, less believing in supernatural phenomena. It shows that we can reach to the conclusion that prophets before Muhammad also were similar. It is not possible that Moses becomes endowed with such a convincing power and can sink an army chasing him into the sea, but God deprived his son of being able to overpower three soldiers who came and arrested him. As details about Muhammad have been written clearly he completely followed rules of ordinary conflicts and tactics in his campaigns. Sometimes defeated, sometimes won.

What I want to say is that if we say the messengers were supernatural beings it is similar to saying pyramids were built by jennies and ghouls and aliens from other planets not by project managers and geometricians and calculating people. It is similar to saying that man has not capacity to build such a colossal monuments and man has not the capacity to receive the message of god.

Now read history of Muhammad; parts which are not written as the holy book. We read that he talked with people. He invited people for dinner and he invited people to believe. He went to different places and asked them to believe. People stoned him and insulted him without he being able to convince them or stop them. He led some wars and instructed his army to such and such. Everything was absolutely earthly.

Let's go back a few century and go to the time of Jesus Christ. There are similar stories about him. He travelled from this place to other place and talked and invited people and it is said that he faced a court, a trial. Story of that court has been told millions of time during the centuries. It shows defence of an earthly skilled lawyer who foil an unjust prosecutor. The Roman, as it is said, washed his hand. That was correct and meant that in his soul he could not reach  to a legal verdict against Christ. Consider that Romans had a sophisticated administration and lawyers were part of their cultivation; for instance Cicero was a famous lawyer. Romans were familiar with defendants who could thwart government prosecutors by pointing out the right precedence and written laws.

That will eliminate the need to add thunder bolts and lightning to the story.