polite_gandalf wrote on Feb 6^th, 2014 at 1:15pm:

Like all religions a fairly large leap of faith is required. It is not really intended for scientific scrutiny*, although its certainly not something thats beyond the bounds of possibility. But the point is, it all comes down to muslims believing that it was passed down flawlessly into the form we have today - because thats what God intended to happen. * as an interesting aside, during the Islamic golden age when islamic philosophy became dominated by a scientific approach, there emerged a dominant idea amongst islamic scholars that the quran was in fact not divine, but man-made

polite_gandalf wrote on Feb 6^th, 2014 at 2:30pm:

Datalife wrote on Feb 6th, 2014 at 2:22pm: LOL, well clearly that is much better. not really. Anyway, for those who are interested - you can read all about the islamic philosophy that states (among other things) that the Quran is man made and not the eternal word of God: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu%27tazila http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/H052 http://hangingodes.wordpress.com/2005/10/13/creation-of-quran-a-mutazilite-perspective/

polite_gandalf wrote on Feb 7^th, 2014 at 6:51am:

freediver wrote on Feb 6th, 2014 at 7:33pm: Do any of those links claim that this view became dominant among Islamic scholars during the "golden" age? I don't think so. Dominant may not have been the correct term, but it did flourish and was a leading philosophy. But it did become official state doctrine during the minha, though this actually backfired on the movement as public sympathy was lost as a result of that state intervention (freedom of thought was strong in those days), and public sympathy shifted towards the Hanbal school of thought.

Gandalf, what do you think of this philosophy?

Does it hold that the Koran has no special value?

freediver wrote on Feb 9^th, 2014 at 10:20am:

Gandalf, what do you think of this philosophy?

Never really thought about it.


freediver wrote on Feb 9^th, 2014 at 10:20am:

Does it hold that the Koran has no special value?

What? Good grief no. That would be just a massive misunderstanding of the philosophy.

So how can they hold the Koran to be divine and entirely man-made at the same time?

No. Please read up on it FD.

They say the word of God is not created or "man-made" - only the sound, ink, paper etc that we understand it through. God's "word" can only appear to us through a "created" medium (written or spoken arabic language).

Whats more interesting though is the implications of this: for the Mu'tazila, it means that because God's injunctions are presented to man in man-made form, it is therefore entirely accessible to rational thought. Since all knowledge is obtained through reason. Thus they reject the commonly held muslim view that you do what the quran tells you to do - not because it makes sense, but because the quran tells you to do it - and you do it without question. No, for them, God's commands should be obtained through reason and rational thought.

I did read the wikipedia article, which was surprisingly unhelpful.

So they still hold the Muhammed received the Koran directly from God, and the limitation is the language, not the source?