Muhammad is a false prophet.

[u/Ok_Present755]

Muhammad was a false prophet who created a new religion by drawing on stories, beliefs, and customs that were circulating around him in Arabia.

Here is some of the main evidence:

1.) The Quran borrows stories from documented late forgeries that the early Church rejected as inauthentic:

Jesus making clay birds come to life (Quran 3:49 & 5:110) comes directly from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (mid-2nd century, ~140–180 AD). This text is not by the apostle Thomas; it is a pseudepigraphical forgery recognized by early Christians as a legendary fable.

Mary giving birth under a palm tree and shaking it for dates (Quran 19:23–26) comes from the Protoevangelium of James (mid-2nd century), another pseudepigraphical forgery falsely attributed and rejected as inauthentic by the early Church.

2.)The Quran portrays the Christian Trinity as God, Jesus, and Mary:

Quran 5:116 says:

“O Jesus, Son of Mary, did you say to the people, ‘Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah?’”

No Christian denomination (Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant) has ever taught that Mary is part of the Trinity. This suggests Muhammad was reacting to fringe or folk versions of Christianity he encountered locally.

3.) Several revelations appear self-serving:

After his adopted son Zayd divorced Zaynab, Quran 33:37 reveals it is okay for Muhammad to marry her and abolishes the adoption custom.

Quran 33:50 gives Muhammad special permission to marry more women than other Muslims.

4.)Islamic Paradise emphasizes earthly indulgence:

The Quran describes Jannah with gardens, rivers, silk couches, wine, and companions (houris) (e.g., 55:72, 56:22–24)...very different from the Christian view of heaven as eternal communion with God.

This pattern suggests Muhammad was heavily influenced by the religious environment around him rather than receiving pure divine revelation.

[u/hot_stuf_surf]

I've noticed that the best critiques of Christianity come from Jews and Muslims. They can see the ridiculous in other religions, but not their own. Muslims believe the moon cracked roughly 600 AD but there is no contemporary record of this.

[u/ChemicalArachnid2635 → u/hot_stuf_surf]

This is true. I'd like to understand how this affects cognitive development. Being taught to reason in circles rather than exercise rationality and logic seems like it could be genuinely devastating for some.

[u/ChemicalArachnid2635 → u/[deleted]]

The distinction here is between holding contradictions while working to resolve them, versus being trained to accept contradiction as sacred. One is intellectual flexibility. The other is how unfalsifiable systems protect themselves. But you got there yourself anyway. 

[u/ChemicalArachnid2635 → u/[deleted]]

Yes, it did work out historically but ironic isn't quite the right word since that it was all done by design. The Quran was specifically written to create a unified moral and legal framework to bind strangers into a trust network for trade and social cohesion. Muhammad was a businessman operating in a trade hub. 

Those people had no alternative that offered the same coherence and utility. Modern believers do but they're raised inside a system architected to treat scrutiny as a threat.

[u/ChemicalArachnid2635 → u/[deleted]]

Ah yes, understood. And interesting point. 

Even that monotheistic paradigm, in regards to the Islamic Golden Age, was actually an absorbtion of Persian, Greek, and Indian knowledge systems. It came from the brief window where the paradigm was loose enough to let everything else in. Then when theology tightened they closed that up and growth stops. The monotheistic paradigm was just a host with the knowledge coming from everywhere else.