So I thought I'd expand on the above, because I honestly meant these to be arguments.
1) The quran: The quran claims itself to be the perfect uncorrupted word of god. That's it's biggest flaw. It invites challenge in a way other holy texts don't…
That’s actually its biggest strength, and a sign for those who believe. It’s God speaking directly to mankind, explaining who He is, and instructing us in exactly what He requires of us. It’s the only holy text that does this with no other "deity" challenging its claims. The One God’s word is true.
…and is really to arrogant for it's own good.
You don’t think the omniscient, omnipotent Supreme Creator of reality has a right to express arrogance? This is a perfect example of the fundamentally narrow-mind of the atheist, who is incapable of abstract thought beyond the familiarity of his immediate surroundings.
The level is enough that it doesn't have the flexibility needed to stand the test of time.
*looks @ watch* That’s 1,500 years and counting, right? What metric are you using for that statement, Quod?
The fact that it doesn't have this flexibility, and that it needs it in the first place, is an argument against it in my opinion.
Well, in my opinion that only represents you pulling a fake weakness out of thin air that doesn’t apply in any way, shape or form.
2) Sanity: There's only so much a human being can reasonably be held accountable for when it comes to spiritual matters. There's a verse in the quran which says allah has not given us two hearts. I personally view this as metaphorical, not literal. We view and believe certain things a certain way. I cannot at the same time believe in the quran while seeing flaws in it.
1.) There are no flaws in the Qur’an. All the flaws are in your prideful mindset. Let them go.
2.) Since you do not yet have faith in your heart, then just surrender, and do as He commands. Sustain the effort and He will bless you, strengthen your heart, and develop that surrender into true faith. But you must repent of your disbelief and surrender to Him.
3) Reality: The quran, like all the other holy texts, claims to be the word of god. The way to verify this is testing it, see if it stacks up.
lol The way to verify this is to take God at His word and do as He commands. Faith is the activating principle for the unseen.
Quite frankly it doesn't.
How would YOU know???
Dust devils and jinns, spontaneous human creation, great flood, there's a lot to choose from, but I'll pick a few. The story of the arc and the great flood. This would have happened around 4000 years ago.
Where are you getting that date from, and why should I take it seriously?
It's quite simply impossible for the number of races, ethnicities and the huge amount of genetic traits to come from one incestuous family in just 4000 years.
Then why are you making the leap that that’s the way it was supposed to have happened? What justification are you using for thinking so narrow-minded about it? For someone who is not supposed to believe in the tale anyway, I would think you would be more open to other angles in which the tale COULDV’E happened so that it at least would make sense in the narrative. Your stubbornly closed mind and dismissal isn’t of much use to anyone.
It cannot happen.
Well, in what way could it have happened, using logic and knowledge of what we do know of scripture and the tales of the prophets? Tell me.
Something else that puts a hole in the story is the amount of people who were thriving at this point. God flooded the entire world. Except for the Chinese who were developing at an incredible rate and remained unaffected from a global flood that wiped out every human on the planet. The Japanese were also unaffected. And the Africans. And the Europeans. And the Native Americans. And the Aztecs. And the South Americans. And most of the middle east. The flood never happened. It's not real.
There was a time period in our past in which every one of these peoples’ named absolutely did experience a global flood catastrophe. In fact, that date if added to the narrative is one of the pieces that will make the whole Deluge event make stunning sense.
The quran teaches that humans were created from clay in a specific creation. If you're to count on the hadiths, then it's just even more ludicrous. We know the first human was not a 90 foot tall clay giant.
I am not one to uphold as authentic those hadith that make claims of the unseen that are not also backed up by the Qur’an, but aside from that, how DO we know that the first human wasn’t a giant? Homo sapien are pretty old, in fact, old enough to have made our debut on earth during the
Age of the Mega-Fauna. If a creature like Gigantopithecus could exist, then what kept our earliest ancestors from being huge, too?
Even if you don't take the hadiths into account, it also doesn't account for evolution, the proof of which is overwhelming.
There is zero proof that supports evolution, Quod, let alone “overwhelming” proofs. That is a fiction you’ve been indoctrinated with.
Nor does it account for the number of people today who have Neanderthal DNA in them from before the Neanderthals went extinct.
Why would it mention something like that even if it was true? What would that have to do with the instructions for building a Muslim ummah, and keeping you on the Straight Way? The few science tidbits the Qur’an did drop were mentioned for very specific reasons. Are you really critiquing the Book based on it not revealing secrets of the past that has nothing to do with its actual point on earth? Is that supposed to be a real criticism?
Everything I know to be proven fact contradicts the claims of the quran.
Your idea of what is “proven fact” is pretty shady. Our understanding of everything you’ve mentioned thus far is liable to change dramatically in the next 15 years.
The only logical conclusion I can come to is that it was a story told by ancient societies because they didn't have any answers. Adam never existed. It's not real.
There are more humans alive now than there ever was, and logic demonstrates that all biological populations grew from smaller populations, all the way back to the smallest unit. Logically how could there NOT have been a first couple?
The sun orbits the Earth...yeah, we've known that's bullshit for a few centuries now.
I refuse to believe you intend that to actually be a serious critique.
It says in the quran that in the embryo/foetus the bones are the first thing to form. "So we made the clot a morsel, so we made the morsel bones, so we clothed the bones (with) meat". This is wrong. The skeleton is actually among the last to be formed. You'd think the all knowing creator of everything would realise this. It's wrong.
One of the biggest official criticisms against the Qur’an is that at no point does it ever make the attempt to explain anything in chronological order, so this is actually a strawman argument.
The stars are missiles to be hurled at jinns. Or they hunt demons. I haven't read the quran in a while so I can't remember the exact quote, but you can look it up to see exactly what it says. This is also wrong. The stars are just stars, they do the exact same thing as the star we orbit, the sun.
Why do you assume that it means “stars” in the strict technical astronomical sense? When the average person says “Wow, dude! Look at all the stars!” don’t we mean EVERY point of light we see in the sky, and not just the literal “stars?” He said the unseen spirits sometimes try to eavesdrop and they are chased away by mysterious points of light darting after them. The verse is pregnant with mystery, and creates far more questions than answers, yet your atheist mind snaps shut like a steel trap presuming to somehow know DEFINITIVELY exactly what it meant. That’s fundamentally ridiculous to me. God isn’t going to share the
Secrets of the Unseen with us, not until it’s time, but He does tease us with hints a lot.
Women are defective in intelligence.
The Qur’an does not say women are defective in intelligence. It actually says something very specific about the way they think when it comes to a very specific thing, but the fact that you interpreted it as meaning they are ‘defective’ says more about you than the Qur’an.
4) Nonsense: Do you believe that allah puts a veil over our hearts?
You have a veil over your heart right now, clear as a blaring noise.
If the answer to this is yes, then my reply to that would be that I'm blameless.
The veil is there because you rejected your Lord. Surrender to Him faithfully and he will remove it. He’s merciful like that.
If the reason I don't see the truth of islam is because allah put a veil over my heart, then it stands to reason I'll be punished (by being sent to hell) for a crime I didn't commit.
Your pride caused you to reject your Lord and turn your back on Him, and the punishment is a veil preventing you from seeing truth. To gain this ability you must humble yourself in surrender to the One who made you. And yes, on your damn knees.
My reason for saying I'm being punished for a crime I didn't commit is that allah delibertly put a veil over my heart so I would never know him, therefore the fault is allah's, not mine.
The veil is the consequence for what you did. A curse of consequence. The curse can be lifted only if your record of deeds begin to reveal that you no longer think the universe revolves around you. Bow down to your Guardian Lord who made you that the veil will be lifted, and you will have the
Freedom of Seeing the Straight Way towards Allah. Do you believe nothing happens accept by allah's will? If so then it's the same as above. If nothing happens except by allah's will, then allah made sure I wouldn't believe in him. So again the fault lies with allah, not myself.
You are confused. Everything that happens at all is in Allah’s will. Everything that doesn’t happen wasn’t in His will to happen. That includes choices that you decided not to make; it was in Allah’s will that you performed the way you performed, but you made the choice. God doesn’t control you. He allows you to act. THAT is His will, and whatever you decide to act in He allows. It is also in His will that you will be held accountable for what you decided to act in.
Do you believe islam teaches there's no compulsion in religion? If so does that mean if you don't accept islam as true, then you go to hell? If so, this means that allah has told us something to be taken as truth, and he punishes us for taking him at his word instead of assuming he was lying.
What are you saying here, Quod? God said that you can’t force people to believe. He’s certainly not forcing you to do anything, but He is warning you that there will be an accounting for what you decide. That’s not “force,” that’s a warning. “Force” would be an angel grabbing you by the back of the head and manhandling you through the motions of salat. God allows you to do whatever you want. There is no compulsion. Your actions decide whether you want to go to hell or not. It is literally up to you.
Do you believe in the virgin birth?
Of course.
If so, can you understand why I might think it's more likely that a teenage girl told a lie rather than a virgin magically conceiving a child, carrying it to term, birthing it, and the child while still an infant speaking?
Sure, if there was no such thing as God, spirit, and the message. But all of these things are real, and God told you the truth of the matter and said to believe in it is a requirement of your surrender. There’s no more that need be said about it.
Can you also understand why it may be confusing that said infant would only speak once to a few people and refuse to speak again to others, which would cause all doubt in the divinity of allah to be wiped away?
Does it matter?
Here's a situation. Let's say there's something in your house you don't like. It offends you. Let's also say you have the power of a god. Would you A) throw away the thing you didn't like or give it to charity, or B) bring it to life, give it intelligence so it can understand what's happening, enable it to feel pain, and torture it forever and ever and ever? Which is more merciful?
All you have to do is surrender to Him and do as he commands and you will receive infinite bliss. That’s all. There is nothing more merciful than that. But to throw that infinite bliss away over pride? There is nothing more stupid.
5) Common sense:
Honestly it’s common sense just to surrender and do what He said. If you are wrong then you’ll get infinite bliss, and if you are right you’ll get the nothingness of the void. But if you instead choose atheism and you are wrong…? That’s a no brainer. Why take the risk? Especially if you have an issue with “torture it forever and ever and ever.”
It becomes a common sense issue.
If you actually end up in hell it will definitely be a common sense issue. A complete lack thereof.
Let's say that I'm wrong. Let's say all the things I'm of the opinion are true are wrong. It doesn't change the fact that I find the quran unbelievable. I can't have more knowledge than what's available to me.
That’s why the operating principle is “faith.” Just do it.
Let's take evolution. I find it believable. I'm convinced of it. The quran goes against it. I have no reason whatsoever, nothing at all compelling me to believe the quranic story over proven scientific fact.
Evolution is a pagan religion (“Praise Darwin!”) pretending to be a legitimate aspect of science with not a single fact to support it. It is a house of cards with true believers like yourself upholding it purely by faith. It will be a poor substitute indeed for an infinity of bliss, and it won’t save you at all from the alternative.
Or another, let's take the big bang. I'm convinced by what knowledge I have that before the universe, and after the universe, there was no Earth. This planet did not exist. It took a very long time for our star to be born and for our planet to form. This seems plausible to me. From what I know of physics and cosmology, I can accept this. I have no reason whatsoever to believe that the Earth existed from the start and was ripped apart from heaven.
The veil over your heart is making you talk crazy again. The Big Bang Model for the universe’s origin’s 100% support what the Qur’an says about it. Allah said the universe had a definite creation point in the distant past, and Big Bang confirms this miracle as true. Remember at first the atheists just assumed the religion was lying, and so theorized that the universe was eternal and never had a beginning.
Or another. The quran and hadiths suggest a flat Earth. At one point it's spread out like a carpet…
Quod it’s spread out like a carpet from YOUR perspective as a human standing on it. Do you see the curve of the earth from your normal eye-level perspective? Why would He describe the earth as it looks from the moon’s surface to 7th century Arabs? Does that even make sense? This is exactly how ridiculous people sound when they have that veil on their hearts and can’t see.
…at another the Earth is like an ostrich egg (had to pick the bird that buries it's egg and flattens the soil)…
Right, because eggs are known for being FLAT. You are… I don’t know WHAT you are. lol
…allah will roll up the Earth like parchment/paper, and on and on it goes.
That’s actually a great metaphor to describe the eventual destruction of the universe considering it’s been expanding out since the Big Bang.
Everything I'm aware of tells me this is wrong. It becomes less and less believable to me. So with all this in mind, common sense tells me that the only truth that lies hidden in the quran is simply the truths of the cultural norms and mindset of that society and time. Historically and psychologically it's interesting, but that's all it is. No more, no less.
Considering the people in that particular time and place needed to master it at their level of understanding in order to spread it around the globe to all other people, why wouldn’t it be slanted towards that particular peoples’ cultural norms and mindset? Would the proud Arab have taken complete ownership of it, and so enthusiastically spread it around the world if it had instead had been slanted towards the cultural norms and mindset of the ancient Australian aborigine?
And I have to admit, these aren't even my strongest arguments.
I 100% expect your “strongest arguments” to be on the same level of seriousness, and possess the same lack of insight. Try me.
Topic: 5 strongest arguments against the Quran - debate challenge for all?