9/30/08

Who the hell's talking?

Just hold it right there. Before we go any further, I gotta know-who's talking. We've looked at this before but I still can't get past 93:6

6. Did he not find you an orphan and take care of you?

No, actually, he didn't. I was never an orphan. It turns out Mo was, but that's nothing to do with me. If the whole book is Mohammed's private conversation, it'd be impolite to listen in, so WexactlyTF? Is it god talking to Mo, and irrelevant to me, or is the book talking to people in general? This isn't a translation issue, it's a big controversy even in the original Arabic. (A better explanation is here.)

In an earlier post we had a guy, call him Buck Harry, reported that he, or his grampa or his great great grampa, reported that he heard Mohammed say something. What we didn't mention is that nobody ever claimed God talked to Mohammed in the first place. What Mo claimed to have seen and spoke to was Kafirgirl's angel Gabriel.

I'll give you the exact explanation I was given in Islamic Sunday school: if someone calls you on the telephone, you do not say "the telephone is talking to me." You say, "Bob is talking to me." That's how they explained Gabriel to me. A mouthpiece. With God talking directly through him.
so we've got

Buck said [Mo said [Gabe said [god said [ "Did he not find you..."]]]]

On the off [off [off [off [off chance]]]] that it was repeated exactly at every stage, we have god saying "he" and "we" when it means god. The most natural thing in the world for polytheistic moon worshippers--the goddess Uzza, say, talking about her main squeeze. After 40 years of talking that way it'd be hard not to let shit like that slip out, but if Mo wanted his new cult to take off he'd have to rein it in.

Another possibility is that god refers to itself in the 2nd person he when he actually means I, because god is a fucken schizoid loony. To avoid this conclusion, insert { traditional apologetics } that we've already seen are dumber than cat turds. This is all confusing as hell so I made a flow chart.

Picking up at the left side of the chart, if it's Gabe talking, the question is, is Gabe quoting god directly? Is it....

[Buck said [Mo said [the angel said [god said ["I found you"]]]].

Or is it....

[Buck said [Mo said [the angel said [god said he found me]]]].


The angel would use 2nd person, and say "I seek refuge with the Lord" and "didn't He (that's god!) find you (& there's Mo!) bla bla..." to make it a normal conversation in God's Book of Gossip, 1400-years-ago edition. So it's all good. It can be interpreted as metaphor and parables because it's not the Literal Word of God®, so lines like "kill them wherever you find them" can be interpreted allegorically to mean "nothing beats snuggling up with your gay lover for sausage pizza and wine."

Holy books like that I can live with, although they'd be way better to use Calvin & Hobbes.

1 comment:

AtheistExile said...

That's some funny stuff, uzza! I particularly like the the flow chart.

By the way, I think we all know Muhammad's sock puppet is really the one talking.