Wake up and smell the coffee

Submitted by Karl Popper (Australia), Oct 23, 2006 at 13:47

Human beings need to be taught to think for themselves, not blindly follow the cultural entities known as "religion", a human invention if ever there was one. When you think about it, the Qu'ran is third-hand information - at best. For a start, the hadith was not set in writing until 200 years after the man's death.One human being had an intensely personal experience. There were no independent witnesses to the claimed angelic visitation. Muhammad never wrote anything down himself. Writing down complex verses on bones and palm leaves and relying on human memory, are not highly accurate over a long period of time.

The actual Qu'ran as an historical document was written by a committee of "scholars" under orders from one of the first four Caliphs to try and bring order to the various factions of the new movement, some years after Muhammad had died suddenly and unexpectedly in his bed. The usage of "books" came from Greek pagan antiquity (although the Muslims didn't realize this - and don't today). They willed that their "book", modelled on those of the Christians and Jews, would surpass and supplant the former. And new imperial possibilities were opening up as the Byzantine and Sassanid empires were breaking down. A new cult, a new book, a new empire.

Today, we know better. And we must use that knowledge to prevent the Counter-Enlightenment which is being unleashed on the West by those pious fanatics who are reacting against the modern realisation that there never was an Adam & Hawa(Eve), never was a Noah, that evolved human consciousness made religion to imprison the individual's own spirituality in a cultural cage.

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