Considering Muslims wash ritually five times a day before prayers, shave their armpits and circumcise boys, all in the name of cleanliness, doesn't that sort of go against the grain? Why are we wasting even a moment on this?

Has anyone heard this story before or a variation of it?

Someone just pulled that out of their ass.







Ba-dum-ching.

Firstly: this is not complete "bullshit" - although I don't know all the details there is some truth to the trousers. And it's indeed worn in some Druze areas - I took the photograph below in a Druze villiage in the Golan Heights (currently administered by Israel - formerly Syria).



http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/mr ... directlink

I would appreciate it if someone could explain this better (without immediately writing it off as an urband legend)

I first heard this circa 1999, roughly 50 miles South of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The story was that during the holy month, Muslim men would sift through their feces, looking for an egg, from which the future messiah would hatch. It wasn't narrowed down to a specific sect, and, I thought it was a confused misinterpretation or urban legend. When I retold the story while studying World Religions, expressions were distinctly quizzical.

I heard the same story more than a decade later, in Turkey. Again, it was presented with abject certainty. It's been relayed for years by some US service members stationed in the Mideast, and I can only assume that the origin of the story also resides inside the armed forces.

I've never found anything resembling a Bible, Torah, or Qur'an reference, or any scholarly verification.

I thought it odd then, I find it extremely unlikely today.

True or false, the myth is plausible. The problem with evidence free, mechanism free, theory-free beliefs is that they can all be lampooned.

Considering how big a baby is I'm pretty sure you'd know if one crawled out of your ass.

laklak wrote:Considering how big a baby is I'm pretty sure you'd know if one crawled out of your ass.

It depends on the strength of your faith brother! U jist don't believ it enough! Checkmate atheists!

A new Jesus born that way? He would be a right little shit!

Varangian wrote:A new Jesus born that way? He would be a right little shit!

wasn't he anyway?

Ups

laklak wrote:Considering how big a baby is I'm pretty sure you'd know if one crawled out of your ass.

Not as big as some of the assertions the credulous extract from their anuses, to be fair...

hackenslash wrote:

laklak wrote:Considering how big a baby is I'm pretty sure you'd know if one crawled out of your ass.

Not as big as some of the assertions the credulous extract from their anuses, to be fair...

Indeed, true or false, this is a successful troll of many religious POVs, because:-

1. Magical beliefs of one sort or another are common, and arguably universal. [Except for folks who believe it is good to believe, or "cultural Christians" or whatever.
2. Misogyny, or at least belief in male superiority is common in many religious-cultural circles.
3. As others have noted, scientific literacy, with especial regard to biology, is also not uncommon in religious circles.

Because religions are so adept at making up shit, and such beliefs can well go to fixation in many religious communities, then any shit made up by critics of religion will be almost automatically plausable unless one has detailed knowledge of not only particular faiths, but detail of what the many sects in those religions believe.

These stories are mostly used by one religious group against the other.

There's this scene in Pratchett's "Pyramids" where two armies besiege each other, each one hiding in wooden horses along their border.

In one horse there is this conversation:

"Do you really think, the enemy is so stupid as to take our horses into their camp?"
- "Absolutely. The proof is that they are so stupid to think we would take their horses into our camp."

So that's why Christians hunt for eggs at Easter? And no doubt why they make them from chocolate, too.

Oeditor wrote:So that's why Christians hunt for eggs at Easter? And no doubt why they make them from chocolate, too.

"It's chocolate, it's a surprise, it's Baby Jesus!"

As a man who live is whole life in France close to Muslims (in my neighborhood they are between 20-40% of the population). I can say that I have knowledge above the majority of Westerner about Islam and this is the first time that I hear this story.

This story seem untrue for many reasons that I will explain if you answer to the next questions.
When you say messiah. Do you speak about Al-madhi ?

Darwinsbulldog wrote:True or false, the myth is plausible. The problem with evidence free, mechanism free, theory-free beliefs is that they can all be lampooned.

Yes, it's probably a poo poe.

my mother told me the same thing years ago, in the seventies...wonder why Saudi wear robes?

4 year resurrection? This thread's more miraculous than Jesus!

Oh, rather interesting