To think that belief in Father Christmas is not comparable to religious belief.

[Throughthelongnight]

Just that really. I have noticed that the expectation is that we all go along with the pretence of FC for the sake of parent's children's sensibility, but the same is not afforded where religious belief is concerned.

GoshAnneGorilla the actual example was a joke - I was going to go with 'stoning' instead of 'silent' - though I wouldn't be surprised if there were similar passages. There are in the bible and the value of women seems similar.

And I asked if somebody could explain it to me- but they couldn't.

Quite. The word for people who cut and paste things they don't understand is "idiot". They're too stupid to understand it themselves, and assume that everyone else is too stupid to notice. If you've spent any time around YECs you can see this in action, where they cut and paste ludicrous nonsense that they're too stupid to see is ludicrous nonsense, can't explain or justify it, and response to people who know what they're doing pointing out the flaws by repeating it. They treat low-quality, unrefereed papers in junk journals the same as they treat their holy books: as unanswerable truth.

Let's, for fun, point out why the paper that our Muslim friends are cutting and pasting from is bollocks. Take section 1. The claim there is that all poetry in Arabic has to follow specific patterns, and all poems known fit those patterns. It's nonsense. You can produce a new pattern. It won't be part of the Arabic cannon, but it'll still be Arabic.

There's a finite set of existing formal poetic forms in English. A sonnet has fourteen lines in a specified rhyme scheme, each line usually of ten or twelve syllables. You can write a poem of fifteen lines, each line containing 11 syllables. It won't be a sonnet. It won't be (I think) any previously known form. It will still be a poem and, of course, it will still be English.

BTW, all this quoting from the Qu'ran and so forth really just wins the arguments for Atheists. Because when religious believers start properly explaining what they believe, most of the time it is laughably childish or scarily bonkers. That an adult believes a book can't have been written by normal people, or that there is proof of a deity just because a book goes "Cor, the, world, eh? Big and mysterious, innit? Has to have been some magical bloke dunnit and no mistake" terrifies me. It is simply not normal to be capable of making your mind operate like a tiny child believing in the tooth fairy.

"The claim there is that all poetry in Arabic has to follow specific patterns, and all poems known fit those patterns. It's nonsense. You can produce a new pattern. It won't be part of the Arabic cannon, but it'll still be Arabic."

That's what I thought, but I thought I must be missing something. And how can a metrical form be unrepeatable? I can write iambic pentameters- I am old enough to have had to in my youth. They aren't obviously,Shakespeare, but they are still iambic pentameters......

Ok,

I was not remotely attempting to pass that off as my work, so do not make those accusations. I said quran is the word of god. You asked for the criteria, i gave you the criteria - not my own criteria, but a criteria that would be accepted by linguists and scholars. As i said, go and get a chapter ready, then come back with your arguments.

Cheval, if you refute it, then produce the chapter.

Backto, same for you too - you said 20 minutes should be sufficient and an arabic speaking person could put a chapter together. Go do it.

Friday, you are of the opinion that calling someone stupid is not offensive. And you question someone else's principles! I have been saying that calling theirs names and being rude in general just because your beliefs do not match theirs is unnecessary and offensive. Your belief is that god doesnt exist So here is a challenge to you from the quran which challenges your belief system.

And how can a metrical form be unrepeatable? I can write iambic pentameters- I am old enough to have had to in my youth. They aren't obviously,Shakespeare, but they are still iambic pentameters.

No, I don't think that's the claim that's being made here. I think the claim that's being made is that there's a fixed and finite set of metrical patterns, and either that you can't write Arabic in a metrical pattern other than one of those or, alternatively, that you can, but in some sense it wouldn't be Arabic.

I don't speak Arabic. But let's assume that it's a language that contains elements, and that some of those elements are similar in sound (rhyme) and that some of the elements in a text will be stressed differently in ordinary reading (rhythm). Here's how I make a new metrical form. I write a piece in an existing metrical form. I add one extra element at random by replacing a word that contains n elements with one that contains n+1 elements (I'm saying "element" to finesse pedantry about phonemes, lexemes, graphemes, "feet", pulses, whatever). Does the result match an existing form? No? I've made a new one. Yes? Let's add another element, then.

Where Shakepeare wrote "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" (Sonnet 18) I can replace "thee" with "Sheldon Cooper, PhD". It's still English, it's still poetry, it's a new metrical form. Others could write new poems in my new metrical form, too.

It's easy, this stuff, isn't it?

You asked for the criteria, i gave you the criteria - not my own criteria, but a criteria that would be accepted by linguists and scholars.

The criteria wouldn't be accepted for a second by linguists. "This work is written divinely" is not the purview of linguists.

As i said, go and get a chapter ready, then come back with your arguments.

We have no idea, at all, what relevance the production of such a chapter has to your argument. We have already said, quite clearly, that producing a new piece of work to match seamlessly an existing corpus is a known hard, probably impossible, problem. You'll need to explain why you think keeping on saying this bolsters your argument.

Let's break this down, carefully.

I accept, certainly for the purposes of this discussion, that it is impossible to produce a literary text that seamlessly matches another, large corpus. Faking a missing chapter of Ulysses, or the missing "Love's Labour's Won", is not going to work. This does not prove that Joyce or Shakespeare are divine, just that literary analysis is sophisticated. Now, your task is to explain why our inability to replicate some other book proves that book to have been divinely produced. Try to write on only one side of the paper at once.

So here is a challenge to you from the quran which challenges your belief system.

What? What?

Anybags - citation please for stating the Qur'an justifies raping child brides.

Those saying "but I could just write something in Arabic" are rather missing the point.

Also, FWIW, I find many opinons people hold to be far more "terrifying" then religious faith, racism being a good example.

I take it we're moving to the part of the debate where the atheists claim that their sneering and mockery are all for our own good. Nothing at all dubious about that

GoshAnneGorilla, actually this is mostly the bit where we talk about poetry.

If you're referring to the reminder that Muhammad married a 9yo I don't know where in the koran it says this is acceptable. If you tell me it doesn't then I will believe you.

I think it's a bit unfair to bring that up anyway. Muhammad was just doing what everyone else did. It's not like he had access to some source of morality that the others of his time lacked.

Well, thank you friday for acknowledging it cant be done. The linguists are not there to comment on the quran being a divine revelation, but to tell you linguistically, that it is impossible to copy.

But as backto keeps reiterating...anyone can do it. No, any one can't do it.

Those saying "but I could just write something in Arabic" are rather missing the point.

We're rather struggling to understand what point is being made. There's a literary text. It's not possible to seamlessly produce more of it without the join showing. So what?

defuse Frankly I'm getting a little bored now with going over the same ground. Your whole argument has more holes than a fishing net. I'm amazed you can't see it.

The fact that the koran doesn't say it must fit the criteria that they/you claim it must is the least of your problems. Though isn't it some kind of sin to put words in Allah's mouth? Still I'm sure you and those people who wrote the criteria know better than him don't you and can explain that when you see him.

Regardless of that, and as many have tried to explain, even if you are right that it can't be made to fit the criteria, that proves nothing at all about Allah or the koran because the only evidence you have for the koran being true is still only what the koran says.

How old was aysha again?

Gosh - mockery is a very good thing. You can't mock something that makes sense.

You are right backto, only ypur viewpoint makes perfect sense. I am of course making things up about the quran and the criteria. The quran doesnt tell one how to perform prayer or ablution prior to prayer. But if i write the criteria down, then i am somehow sinful because it is my criteria right?

The evidence i have for the quran is what the quran says, because as you have acknowledged, nobody is able to produce a mere 3 lines copying the style. Not then and not now.

I re-iterate, there is no need to mock any religion, just because you do not believe.

Yes there is a need to mock it. People who blindly believe in religion are too ready, the world over, to tell the rest of us how to live.

Who has been telling you how to live kitten?

I have completely lost track. Are people saying that it is impossible to write a sura indistinguishable from the ones in the Qur'an? Well, as that would be largely a subjective judgement, then it's probably true- so long as the people judging the attempts wanted it to be true!

And it's pretty well accepted that the Qur'an talks about marriage and sex with what we would consider to be under age girls- Mohammed's wife was, I think 9 when they married? 6 when he proposed. Certainly 18 when he died.... But autre temps, autre moeurs. I presume this has been overtaken by modern standards of behaviour? No Muslim nowadays would sanction such behaviour. So in this a least, the Qur'aan is wrong?

The evidence i have for the quran is what the quran says, because as you have acknowledged, nobody is able to produce a mere 3 lines copying the style. Not then and not now.

Do you think that makes sense? Do you think it will convince anyone?

Curlew, i think this question has been covered many times on mumsnet. I think there was a piece in the guardian regarding this too. So, in answer to your question, no the quran was not and is not wring.

Friday, i have no intentions to convert you, nor convince you. The facts are there and still stand.

The facts are there and still stand.

Spell them out.

Which facts?

So far we've got "literary works are difficult, if not impossible, to copy seamlessly, therefore they are written by God". Do you have anything else? Because I don't think anyone outside the already convinced finds that argument anything other than laughable.

Curlew, are you living on a different planet to the rest of us? Because Muslims (and yes, men of other religions) are marrying and 'having sex with' (I refuse to write it as though it is normative) girls all over the bloody globe.

And I don't give a fuck if having sex with a child bride was normal at the time, it still makes the perpetrator a fucking freak and scumbag. A man cannot penetrate a child without immense, obvious pain and difficulty - they might have believed that it was normal and right, but they obviously found it okay, even enjoyable, to do that to children.

Defuse, I think you need a psychiatrist. The shit about evidence for the Qu'ran being the Qu'ran, and your latest attempts at debate are actually so bizarre as to be worrying. An adult that gullible and incapable of critical thought needs help. I'm not saying this to insult, it genuinely concerns me.

Friday, so far we have 'literary works are impossible To copy. ' i didnt say difficult, i said impossible.

My job is not to try and convince you or anyone else. You acknowledge that nobody, no expert can produce or imitate the 3 lines required. Yet you still insist that the argument is laughable.

My job is not to convince you nor convert you.

I am confused.

I am an atheist, I simply do not believe in any god or gods.

defuse, if I and millions of others do not believe in any deity why does a challenge laid down in a story have any bearing on anything - why would you bring that up?

Why does it "prove" there is in fact a god or gods or whatever?

I really, seriously just don't get it.

I have followed this thread all the way through and am completely in the dark now - I have no idea what point you are making (and I really, genuinely am not trying to be rude).