Human beings are biased in favor of certain positions and biased against other positions.
When a man simply gives in to his bias, this doesn't tell us much.
But when a man is hopelessly biased against a position and suddenly changes his course
and becomes one of its chief defenders, that's when we have to ask, "What just happened?"
Muslims believe that Muhammad's revelations were sent down from heaven.
But we find all of the building blocks of Islam in teachings and practices that were
common in Arabia during the seventh century.
There was Jewish monotheism in Arabia, along with countless Jewish stories about various prophets.
Some of these stories ended up in the Qur'an.
There were heretical Christian groups in Arabia, along with various stories about Jesus, Mary,
and others.
Some of these stories ended up in the Qur'an.
The Sabians, who are mentioned in the Qur'an, prayed at all five of the times Muslims pray
during their daily prayers, and they recited a creed—"La illaha ilallah"
("There is no god but Allah").
Many of the polytheists of Arabia performed ablutions (these are ceremonial washings);
they took an annual pilgrimage to Mecca; they circled the Ka'aba; they kissed a black
stone that supposedly fell from heaven.
What we know as Islam is a collection of beliefs and practices that were already circulating
in Arabia when Muhammad was born in Mecca.
But not all of the beliefs and practices that were circulating in Arabia became part of
Islam, so why did Muhammad accept some beliefs and practices but reject others?
What was the selection process?
To answer this question, we turn to psychology.
Muhammad's father died before he was born.
Shortly after his birth, the future prophet of Islam was sent to live with a foster family.
When he was around four years old, he was taken away from the foster family
and returned to his mother.
His mother died when he was six, and custody then fell to his grandfather,
who died when he was eight.
Psychological studies show that young children who experience so many broken relationships
tend to exhibit certain patterns of behavior later in life.
They often rebel against authority and tradition, and they frequently have a problem
with father figures—especially with viewing God as a heavenly father.
So, how did Muhammad's psychological framework express itself, given the materials available
in seventh-century Arabia?
Not surprisingly, he rebelled against authority and tradition.
Muhammad attacked his own people theologically, socially, morally, and economically,
and he violently subjugated his own tribe and his own city.
As part of his rebellion against polytheistic Meccan culture, Muhammad initially aligned
himself with Jews and Christians.
But since Jews and Christians view God as our heavenly Father, and Christians believe
that there's an eternal Father-Son relationship within the very nature of God, Muhammad's
psychological hostility towards father-figures compelled him to part ways with the Judeo-Christian
concept of God.
His revelations mocked Jews and Christians for calling God "Father" and eventually
demanded our violent subjugation due to our theological views.
All of this is exactly what we would expect, given Muhammad's traumatic childhood experiences.
So, Muhammad's claims about Jesus don't seem to be a matter of divine revelation,
or even a matter of historical investigation.
They're a matter of psychological manifestation.
In other words, Muhammad's childhood experiences left him with some psychological predispositions,
and these predispositions made certain beliefs and practices seem more appealing than others.
When the beliefs and practices of seventh-century Arabia are filtered
through Muhammad's psychological framework, we get Islam.
Why is this relevant?
Well, it's difficult to trust what Muhammad says about Jesus when his view of Jesus is
the product of his childhood trauma scrounging through the materials available in seventh-century
Arabia to find the beliefs and practices that were most soothing to his damaged psyche.
By contrast, Paul's claims about Jesus aren't simply a matter of wishful thinking on Paul's part.
In fact, they're just the opposite.
Paul at first despised Jesus, and his followers, and the message they were preaching.
Paul was convinced that God would only bless Israel if the religious leaders eradicated heresy.
And so he set out to destroy what he regarded as the Christian heresy.
As he was on one of his journeys to round up Christians, Paul suddenly began preaching
the faith that he was trying to destroy.
And he claimed that he had changed course because Jesus had appeared to him.
Paul's conversion is significant because he was initially extremely skeptical of the
claims of Christianity, to the point of wanting to see it utterly wiped out.
He was so utterly confident that Jesus was a false Messiah, he was willing to kill people
who followed Jesus.
So we can't accuse Paul of believing in Christianity because he was biased in favor
of it, and this adds another dimension to the evidence for Jesus' resurrection.
Jesus appeared to a lot of people after his death by crucifixion—more than 500 people
were witnesses of the Risen Jesus.
But many of them were followers of Jesus during his earthly ministry.
So someone could argue that they can't be fully trusted, because they were already loyal to Jesus.
Maybe they just saw what they wanted to see.
They were grieving after Jesus' death, and suddenly he appeared to them.
Perhaps they were only experiencing grief hallucinations.
It would be extraordinarily odd for so many people to experience the same hallucination,
but it's still an objection that critics raise.
Paul, however, wasn't grieving over Jesus, so he wasn't in the frame of mind to experience
grief hallucinations.
And yet he saw the same thing the other witnesses saw.
So, Muhammad's message flowed directly from his eclectic religious surroundings
and his abnormal psychological state, which raises further suspicions about his reliability.
Paul's message required a radical transformation— something that shook him out of his
previous view of Jesus and brought him into line with what Jesus' followers were already saying.
This transformation cries out for explanation, and I've never seen a better explanation
than that Paul really met the Risen Jesus.
Hi everyone.
Thanks for watching.
In case you stumbled upon this video while browsing or searching, I wanted to let you
know that it's part of a series comparing Paul and Muhammad.
So if you'd like to see the full series, be sure to click on the playlist.
If you're already in the playlist, you're about to see that Muhammad lived a morally
reprehensible life.
Paul didn't.
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