The Qur'an We Have Today is Not What Muhammad Dictated Verbatim.

Thanks Pro.SourcingPro once again provides no sources for any of his claims (he numbers his claims but doesn’t bother to provide me with references), so I cannot fact-check this round either. The fact that Pro provides no sources last round should count heavily against him since this is my final round of argumentation, thus I will be unable to respond to any of Pro’s sources and factual claims. We have absolutely no way to know if Con is making argument ex culo, PIDOOMA.[http://rationalwiki.org...]Pro commits the bare assertion fallacy throughout this entire debate, and spends virtually half of his previous round simply declaring my points false by fiat. Ignoring that I provided evidence or argument for virtually all of his listed statements. I will fill in the few gaps I do see this round (which Pro will have a chance to respond to unlike I myself will with his).[http://en.wikipedia.org...]Defence of Positive CaseOral & Textual TransmissionCumulative ErrorsPro ignores the bulk of my arguments in round 1, appealing to false analogy, however I provided a logical progression for my arguments against both textual and oral traditions from which the Qu’ran must fall within. Pro’s only substantive point in his gish gallop is hand-waving was:“An argument based on ‘we don’t have the facts, we don’t know, we can’t verify’, is an ignorance-based claim, & thus false, until proven.”While I object to the portrayal of my argument in this light (they are much more substantive than argument ad ignorantum) Even if we accept Con’s portrayal, it STILL affirms the resolution since: 1. The default position is to believe no text is transmitted perfectly 2. Thus, in ignorance of reasons to believe the text was transmitted perfectly, we should believe that any text was not transmitted perfectly This is simply an application of inductive reasoning, and I have given plenty of reason to believe the first premise here, due to the limited nature in which texts could be accurately transmitted before printing existed, and even since printing. Thus to believe the Qu’ran is any different either requires: 1. Special pleading 2. Good positive reasons to believe otherwise So far I have shown the latter has not been upheld by Con.Both oral and textual transmission run into problems of cumulation of errors. If one member of the chain introduces an error, then all transmitters, oral or textual, will contain the same errors. It application of biblical scholarship here has been thin, I only drew a parallel here for illustrative purposes, because it is this exact type of observations that have been studied in the textual criticism of the NT. The same field of textual criticism of the Qu’ran, especially by western scholars is by comparison in its infancy.This is especially problematic in the first few generations of each text, where: 1. The expansion of the text, from one copy to thousands of copies, will be most sensitive to introduced errors 2. Most susceptible to changes before canonisation Con simply has not addressed my arguments for the accumulation of errors.Textual VariantsI presented two lines of arguments here: 1. Textual Variants among early Uthmanic Manuscripts 2. Significant textual variants among Non-Uthmanic Manuscript Remember, our early manuscripts are essentially a snap-shot into what the oral tradition was at that time and place. For some bixxarre reason Con believes that the presence of variants affirms his position, which I simply cannot be more absurd.Textual variants demonstrate: 1. The oral/written tradition is not perfectly transmitted generation to generation 2. The route of transmission is not perfect 3. Thus errors within the present-day Qu’ran are inevitable (which satisfies the resolution) In both the Sana’a and early Uthlamic manuscripts, I presented theses that attest that indeed there are numerous variants, and these variants do affect the meaning of the text, which fulfils even the most stringent interpretation of this debate resolution.Sana’a manuscripts Pro omits my original point that it’s not just one QU’ran that the collection represents of non-Uthmanic tradition, but four variant Qu’rans, all with their own variations.[ https://www.scribd.com...] Moreover these variants make several indications:“The order in which the s$3;ra's were put together is a different matter.Different Companion codices had different s$3;ra sequences, indicating that the order was not completely fixed at the time of the Prophet. This is supported by C-1, which adopts a non-standard s$3;ra order. In aprevious article, one of us mentioned thres$3;ra transitions found in thelower writing, and subsequently another author mentioned two more.“[ p. 24 https://www.scribd.com...]They noted numerous variant sura transitions, in addition.Con needs to assert that the Uthmanic version is the correct version from Muhammad, however this is problematic:1.If the Uthmanic version was correct, then the oral and textual transmission would have been near-perfect in the early years2. If the oral & textual transmission was near-perfect in the early years, then we would expect non-Uthmanic traditions that are virtually identical to the Uthmanic tradition3.If the oral & textual transmission was near-perfect in the early years then we would expect virtually no variants outside of minor dialectic differencesHowever, both of these expectations are violated when it comes to early Qu’ranic manuscripts. I also noted Ibn Mas’ud and Ubayy ibn Ka'b who themselves had significantly variant versions of the Qu’ran which persisted for a while after canonisation. We simply would not expect these to exist if the transmission was perfect (remember, the Qu’ran is 60,000 words).Rebuttal of Con’s CaseTextual Transmission “Scribes of the Qur’an don’t copy it from other sources, but from memory, & thus errors can not cumulate. & they don’t do it solo either, & thus the likelihood of there being errors is even much smaller. Plus, the copies of the Qur’an are verified by others, other than the scribes themselves.” 1. No evidence for claims (non-solo scribe work, inability of errors to accumulate, cross-verification) 2. No reasons to believe memory is better than textual transmission 3. Almost certainly not applicable to early Islam (since these systems were in their early Infancy) Remember, I affirmed that errors accumulate via both progressive oral and textual transmission, thus unless Con has some third medium then his arguments are flat out false. Con attempts to shift his BoP by baldly asserting that today’s succession techniques were in use throughout the entire Qu’ranic history (necessary for there to be 0 errors) ignoring that we have excellent reasons (already mentioned) to believe this could not have always been the case, and also prima facie unlikelihood of a 1400 year old chain that always operated in exactly the manner which Con describe (which I argued even then doesn’t make it very likely there are no errors).Pro: “Con extensively addresses intentional/deliberate changes… That at best only makes a decent case against deliberate changes to the Qu’ran"Con: “That’s not true. The ‘Trustworthiness’ condition eliminates the eventual intentional changes” 1. Intentional =/= Unintentional 2. Bare assertion fallacy Also, Con implicitly assumes that both a trustworthy & judicious person is incapable of making errors –a quite frankly absurd assumption if I have ever seen one. Also I am waiting for a source for these alleged numbers uses (especially given I have reasons to doubt Pro’s judiciousness and trustworthiness, hah).“Islamic law was in it’s infancy in the first few centuries.- That’s an ignorant claim, & how is it even relevant! Islamic Law is founded by the Prophet himself, & was implemented fully by his successors, more than it was ever implemented after them .” 1. Bare assertion 2. The Hadith which dictate Islamic law today were not compiled for another 200 years after Muhammad’s death (including false Hadith, evidently politically motivated), and the notion that 3. I was inaccurate with my statement, I was talking about the Islamic Law regarding the preservation of the Qu’ran 4. The Qu’ran evidently did not have a mature system in place to preserve the Qu’ran, given it was scattered, and only compiled into a single text/Qu’ran at least two years after Muhammad’s death. Oral Transmission“we have a 2% chance PER GENERATION of errors being incorporated in the chain of transmission.”I already addressed most of Con’s responses to this in my previous points. He flat out ignores my reasoning for the cumulation effect, which negates Con’s absurd mathematical argument, with equally absurd input statistics. Remember, we have 1,400 years to span, which assuming a 20 year turn-over is 70 generations. Moreover one is not committed to the premise that there is even one person in this transmission chain who is immutable, and gave a perfect teaching of the Qu’ran each time. I cited manuscript, and other oral traditions for reasons to believe that to be the case. Thus, any error, even on the sub% scale, will accumulate over generations. For example a 0.01% average error per person would lead to a ~ 0.07% error over 70 generations (1.0001^70) which yields ~ 42 word errors per 60,000 in the Qu’ran.This ignores the fact that I have already shown Con’s claim here to be evidentially false from the textual variants noted within the Uthmanic tradition (round 2), thus Con’s math here is moot. ConclusionCon has failed spectacularly at ddression the evidential problem of textual variants. Most of Con's rebuttals are bare assertion fallacies, moreover Con completely drops my arguments against the canonisation of the Qu'ran. Thus voters are justified in voting Pro that the Qu'ran is not what muhummad dictated verbatim.