Peace Br. TS,
Peace Sharp,
I used to be a fan of the old Sharp after reading his sharp posts but it seems that the new Sharp is not as sharp as the old Sharp!! I am really disappointed by your response.
I guess I overestimated you but that's my fault not yours. 
I'm sorry to have disappointed you. I guess this is one of the many areas of my life, I really haven't pondered over. I hope to look into it further, soon. Till that time, I'll try to post as little as I can.
I have already explained all these points in my past posts on this thread IN DETAIL and I didn't want to repeat myself over and over again. That's a logical fallacy of repetition. In any case I would humbly request you to go back and read my older posts and other posts that deal with these points for details. I would also request you to do your homework, like the old Sharp used to do. Instead of inventing your fantasy calendar with every lunar cycle of 30 days, you could have consulted a real solar calendar with lunar phases superimposed and did the calculations but you didn't. Even with your fantasy calendar, had you continued counting the 30 day fantasy lunar cycles in the next solar years you would have found that for the next 2 solar years there would have been 11 complete lunar cycles in each solar year.
I apologize. My mistake that I didn't go through all the 80 pages of this thread, just went through first 22 pages before I jumped here. In my defense, all I can say is I needed an answer within the span of 5-6 hours, which definitely was unreasonable. But, in the end, I wasn't able to convince either myself or my brother of not fasting in the (how you would call it) so-called month of Ramadan, and ended up fasting yesterday, am fasting today and probably will till the end of this so-called month of Ramadan.
Ok let's start step by step and point by point. Let's deal with the first point only for now and when it is settled we can move on to the next one. You can either consider the following luni-solar calendar and count the lunar cycles in each year consecutively for at least 12 years:
http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/moonphases.html
OR do the following exercise:
Forget about all calendars and see what the reality is. Go out and start counting the lunar cycles for three actual solar years. Start from any solstice as your day 1 of the solar year. Then look for the first full moon after that day. The second full moon after that will complete the first "interval between two full moons" as per your definition of shahr. Count such intervals for the whole solar year until the same next solstice. For example if you started from the summer solstice this year then count the "interval between two full moons" until the summer solstice next year. Do this for at least 3 years and let me know what your findings are.
Let me make a prediction for you. From summer solstice this year (which was June 21) until the day before summer solstice of 2010 (June 20, 2010) you will count 11 complete lunar cycles. The first full moon during this period was on July 7 and the last full moon during this period will be on May 27. But don't take my word for it. Actually observe all the full moons and count the "intervals between two full moons" yourself. Repeat the same exercise for the period from June 21, 2010 to June 20, 2011. You will count 12 complete lunar cycles in that time period. Then repeat the same exercise for the period from June 21, 2011 to June 20, 2012. You will count 11 complete lunar cycles in that time period.
If you want, continue this exercise for the next 12 solar years. You will find that there are actually 11 complete lunar cycles (or intervals between two full moons) for 2 consecutive solar years and 12 complete lunar cycles in the third solar year and this will repeat. This will be empirical proof that shahr cannot mean lunar cycle because you should be able to count at least 12 "shahr" EVERY SOLAR YEAR.
I think I may have misunderstood the whole thing from the outset, because my line of thinking appears to be based on the fact that the "year" starts on the day after the "Shahar Ramadan" and ends on the night of the next "Shahar Ramadan", but your thinking is that a Solar Year (which is the period between one Summer/Winter Solistice to the next Summer/Winter Solistice) would contain either 12 or 13 Full Moons. Am I correct in this assumption?
See you in 3 or 12 solar years. I will not respond to you until I see the old Sharp again, who has sincerely done his homework with ACTUAL FACTS BASED ON REALITY as per 17:36. Once again I apologize for overestimating you.
Ah, what a wonderful sign.
17:36 - And do not uphold what you have no knowledge of. For the hearing, eyesight, and mind, all these you are responsible for.
Thanks for the reminder.
PS: Wherever I have used the term "full moon" the reader should understand it as referring to the actual "nearly full moon".
Yes, I perfectly understand. Thanks.
Peace Br. Ayman,
Peace Sharp001,
You partially misunderstood the concept. You are assuming that the beginning of the cycle will fall exactly on the summer solstice. This will rarely happen. Most likely, whatever marker one chooses, whether it is the full-moon or the crescent, will occur sometimes after the solstice. If it is more than 10 days after the solstice then you will only get 11 complete cycles. So as Truthseeker said, most of the times you will only get 11 integer cycles in a year. If you start counting fractions of a cycle then you will end up with 12.3 cycles in a year, never 12. The only way you can count 12 in a year is if "shahr" was an event and meant "full-moon". If it meant "crescent" then you will also have a problem because there are 24-26 crescents in a year.
Like I said to TS, I may have started off on the wrong foot. My line of thinking appears to be based on the fact that the "year" starts on the day after the "Shahar Ramadan" and ends on the night of the next "Shahar Ramadan", but your thinking is that a Solar Year (which is the period between one Summer/Winter Solistice to the next Summer/Winter Solistice) would contain either 12 or 13 Full Moons. Am I correct in this assumption?
No it does change your understanding. Now you are forced to say "marker" and not a continuous month. This is due to "witnessed" being in the perfect past tense while "fast" is in the present tense. There is no way around it, "shahr" has to be an event that, as you said, marks the start of the fast.
Hmm... I see where you're coming from, and it seems logical. But come to think of it, the current practice is the same in theory, even though the marker and the time of year may be wrong. Around the world, as soon as the New Moon is sighted/witnessed, the month and the fasting begins the next day. Again, I'm not justifying or validating the practice, just making an observation.
In 2:184, we also hear that the fast is for a few days ("ayyam ma3doodat"). This would be redundant and useless information if it was already known that "shahr" is 29-30 days.
I totally overlooked that verse. Your claim of redunduncy has merit.
Menstruations are EVENTS exactly like the full-moon is an event. No woman I know has a continuous period from one period to the next, like month is a continuous period from one month to the next. This would be miserable, especially for her husband
.
I agree that Mestruations are events. I think I may have misunderstood the verses as I took the Period to mean the Menstrual Cycle, whereas I think it indicates the Menstruation Phase of the cycle. Please correct me, if I'm mistaken.
Truthseeker is saying the opposite. The great reading was clearly descended in one night. The wrong understanding of "shahr" as "month" creates a contradiction. So now on the one hand the god is saying that it descended in on night and on the other he is saying 29-30 days!
I think you and TS may have misunderstood what I meant. I'll try to illustrate it.
If I tell you today that I was born in March, and tomorrow I tell you that on the night I was born there was a Full Moon, (A) Would you take the first statement to mean that I was born through-out the month? (B) Would the statements be contradictory to each other?
So basically what I was trying to say is if] the time frame of "Ramadan" started from witnessing of the "Scorching Full Moon" and ended at the witnessing of the next "Full Moon", and the Book was sent down on the night of the 'Scorching Full Moon", which falls into that time frame, then the verse mentioning that the Book being sent down
in the "month" of Ramadan doesn't automatically imply that it was sent down
throughout the "month".
58:4 So who did not find, so fasting two months following each other from before that they touch each other, so who was not able, so feeding sixty poorest
This is talking about the period between consecutive full-moons.
Sorry about being off-topic, but I have a question about this verse. The period between two full-moons would/can be 29-30 days, but the feeding is to 60 poorest. It seems kind of odd and non-symmetrical (for lack of a better word). 30 days or 60 feedings? I expected, 30 days and 30 feeding, or 60 days and 60 feedings, for equality, I guess.
Peace All