With all due respect, I think Muhammad may have been many things, but stupid he wasn't. It was very clever of him to attribute all the good things to Allah and all blame for bad things to humans as it helps reinforce the message that man must submit completely to Allah if he wants to be saved. Man can't go on his own - he needs to submit his will to Allah and by being a faithful slave he will avoid bad and be guided to the good. (This guilt trip idea was not new either).
My claim is muhhamad was highly skilled and intelligent at manipulating people but indeed a stupid person when it came to logical thinking and thats why I said he was crafty but dumb when it came to logic. He couldnt think thoroughly about his claims .Only gullible folks would fall for this trap of 4:79.
I dont think that all the people during this time were fools to buy his crap. There are a few reasons I see as to why muhhamad became successful inspite of being a dumb at logical thinking and people being intelligent.
1)People during muhhamads time didnt have the luxury to criticize his statements and doubt them . WE all know what happened to those who criticized him.
2)The reason all of them failed to see through his lies was because of their convinction about muhhamad being a true prophet.This convinction came because of muhhamads own conviction about he being a prophet of GOD.When a lie is repeated a no of times it becomes the truth. Thats what Muhhamad did.
He had created a charming personality around him and people wouldnt even think to doubt his claims for e.g In a hadith we see that Um Salama once asked muhhamad to treat all the wives justly and muhhamad s reply was divine inspiration comes to him when he is bed of Aisha.Now what is the fault of Um Salama in that ?Why unfair treatment must be given to her for no fault of hers? When muhhamad gave this excuse Um Salama asked for forgiveness. Logically Um Salama was right in her claims for demanding justice and the excuse given by muhhamad was crap but yet she accepted his explanation and asked for forgiveness to Allah.
3) Muhhamad was a crafty salesman of his own religion. He would deliberately inject some good things into the religion so that people buy his crap in entirety. Thats what all successful cult leaders do.Keep preaching good things until you acquire people's trust and then in between insert something that is evil which benefits only you. Gullible folks fall for it.
Muhhamad had created such an enigma around him and that people accepted his claims without analyzing them. Thats what cults do. Anyone who is outside muhhamads enigma can easily see through his lies so if Muhhamad was intelligent then he would have made intelligent comments and people with common sense would not object and call it crap. His only skill was in making people believe in his stupid lies . Thats why I say that Muhhamad was intelligent in being crafty but stupid to the core when it came to philosophical and logical thinking as he couldnt convince people on proper reasoning but on resorting to deceptive tactics.
In my next post I will give another example of dumb thinking from Muhhamad.
The example you gave is fine - but you forget that many people who have suffered terrible things end up blaming themselves. (no matter how perverse that it - it is true.) They say 'this bad thing happened to me because I did such and such - or because I abandoned God's law etc...'
I would say thats a perspective of a believer influenced by emotions and is far away from truth. Truth is universal and not relative .Religious people are trapped in enigma of their faith.They tend to blame themselves because of that and not because they actually think they are at fault.
Ask any religious person whether a woman raped is at fault or not without mentioning anything about the verse 4:79 or anything related to religion. His answer would be No (assuming the a case she is dressed properly and did nothing wrong) so I see the moment people come of their religious influence they start using their brains and do not buy crap but that doesnt mean that one who wrote this crap was intelligent. He remains dumb for improper thinking and his only skill is fooling people.
In fact this is one of the things that makes me so angry about Islam (and all religions that lay the guilt trip on it's followers). There are so many innocent, abused victims who end up blaming themselves because of this fucked-up religious mentality and all it does is throw them deeper into the arms of religion to seek a cure. There are a few who get out - but they are a few.
I agree with you completely here. Religion has done more damage than possibly good.
Topic: Good Comes from Allah, Evil from Myself?