Toto

Not true.

This theory has been endorsed by a Muslim cleric.

eta: Professor Hired for Outreach to Muslims Delivers a Jolt

ApostateAbe

Yeah, he was actually the guy I had in mind, and that is why I said, "...ideologically oppose the traditional beliefs of the religion."

Read the article further, and you will see what I mean:

He has doubts, too, about the Quran. "God doesn't write books," Prof. Kalisch says.

I take him to be analogous to Robert M. Price. As you have pointed out, Price is a member of a Christian church.

Minimalist

Does that apply to Scientology, Abe?


(Courtesy - Wiki )

ApostateAbe

Yes. Do you have an objection? To review, I said: "...whenever a cult adheres to a reputedly-human founder of the cult, then that person existed, in all cases that we know about. There are no known cases where the reputedly-human founder of the cult existed only as myth."

Pamela Spencer

L. Ron Hubbard, an American fiction author, did exist.

http://www.lronhubbard.org/biography.html

Grog

Well...

except in 3 major cases, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism that rule of thumb is questioned.

I do grant L. Ron Hubbard and would add Joseph Smith as two verifiable human-founders, though.

ApostateAbe

You can do a search for cults on Google. Some websites maintain a list of cults, many cults have websites, and you can contact a recruiter of the cult by phone. Ask them who their founder is, and you can then find out whether or not that person exists or has existed. For example, the reputedly-human founder of the Unification Church is Sun Myung Moon. This guy is known to exist. If the mythicist theories of either Jesus or Muhammad are plausible, then we should be able to find other cults with a reputedly-human but merely-mythical founder. Some cults really do assert the existence of reputedly-human characters, and some such characters probably did not exist. For example, Mormons believe that the Angel Moroni was once a human being. We can be almost completely certain that Moroni did not really exist. Can we do that with any reputed-human cult founder? If we can not, then why should we give any serious consideration that either Jesus or Muhammad were the reputed-human merely-mythical founders of their respective cults?

PhilosopherJay

Hi Apostate Abe,

You may have forgotten that Jesus is only half human. Does that mean that we can be sure that he half existed?

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

ApostateAbe

I would say that would still count. However, no Christians I know in either antiquity nor modernity would believe that Jesus is half human. Christians typically define Jesus as both fully-God and fully-man, which is the Christology of the Nicene Creed.

Pamela Spencer

If Muhammad's being was regarded as fictitious or seriously contested on pragmatic grounds than there should at least exist in circulation historical examples of dissenters (or even a party of rebels) that openly (or covertly, for that matter) challenged Muhammad's existence from roughly around the time period of his origin (give or take a century or two)/(e.g "rogue", or "suppressed" hadith literature elements), or even cross-cultural remnants and/or artifacts that would seem to suggest (otherwise). Instead, we possess a "purported letter sent by Muhammad to Heraclius, emperor of Byzantium", as well as other letters sent to regarded Heads-of-State.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhamma...Heads-of-State

It would be exceedingly difficult, and perhaps relatively counter-intuitive to maintain the physical existence of Jesus based on traditional Islamic sources. Theoretically, Jesus the Christ was raised bodily to heaven, therefore, substantial evidence for Jesus should, in actuality, disprove the very being of the Messiah (unless, you happen to adhere to the Ahmadiyya perspective and/or heterodox Muslim research suggesting the existence of an Eastern Jesus Christ/Saint Issar that traveled to Tibet and was eventually buried at Kashmir at the age of 120 years). Compounding this issue (further) is the Muslim claim, that as an ascetic, Jesus the Christ, possessed two material items, namely, a comb and a jug:

"Jesus, the Messiah, (pbuh) used to take nothing with him but a comb and a jug. The he saw a man combing his beard with his fingers, so he threw away the comb; and he saw another man drinking from a river with the palms of his hands, so he threw away the jug." [A non-specific hadith concerning Jesus Christ]

Likewise, there are currently no legitimate reasons to dispute the existence of Siddhārtha Gautama, based on traditional sources. He was not an obscure figure, but a well-known Prince from a supposedly noble lineage. The Buddha's father was King Śuddhodana (the leader of Sheikha clan) whose capital was Kapeel.