Good to see you on the show yesterday Farhan
The Is Hell Just debate could be very interesting, especially in relation to free will. Here's some verses/notes I collected a while ago on this in case anyone's interested.
Most of these verses are from Captaindisguise's vids on freewill:
11:118-119 "And if thy Lord had willed, He verily would have made mankind one nation, yet they cease not differing, Save him on whom thy Lord hath mercy; and for that He did create them.
And the Word of thy Lord hath been fulfilled: Verily I shall fill hell with the jinn and mankind together."
81:27-29 "This is naught else than a reminder unto creation, Unto whomsoever of you willeth to walk straight. And ye will not, unless (it be) that Allah willeth, the Lord of Creation."
6:112 "Thus have We appointed unto every prophet an adversary - devils
of humankind and jinn who inspire in one another plausible discourse through guile. If thy Lord willed, they would not do so; so leave them alone with their devising;"
So Allah makes some people do bad things!?
16:93 "Had Allah willed He could have made you (all) one nation, but He sendeth whom He will astray and guideth whom He will, and ye will indeed be asked of what ye used to do."
He seems to know of the contradiction between lack of freewill and punishment without solving it
Counter args use verses like 8:53 "That is because Allah never changeth the grace He hath bestowed on any people until they first change that which is in their hearts, and (that is) because Allah is Hearer, Knower."
and 2:26 "Lo! Allah disdaineth not to coin the similitude even of a gnat. Those who believe know that it is the truth from their Lord; but those who disbelieve say: What doth Allah wish (to teach) by such a similitude? He misleadeth many thereby, and He guideth many thereby; and He misleadeth thereby only miscreants;"
i.e. If you reject him/do bad things, then he leads you astray. If you want to accept him/do good, he guides you to straight path. The former seems a completely ridiculous thing to do, like he's causing you to do even more what he told you not to. It even says he gives each rejector a shaytan to lead them more astray but makes them think they are being rightly guided (43:36-37). Alternative counter-arg is to mistranslate verses that say send or lead astray as "leave astray" so he is just allowing it. That also ignores all the stuff about him veiling hearts etc.
The youtube user TheRationalizer had a nice argument that Allah could grant freewill, but make sin and doubt so painful or difficult that people would be very unlikely to do so. Instead it is apparently very easy for people to doubt the claims of Islam. "Allah" included verses that would foreseeably cause doubts in limited human minds such as 18:86, which says that a man reached the setting place of the sun and found it setting in a muddy spring. Who's fault would that be?
A few thoughts on the severity of punishment:
There's a verse that says only shirk is unforgiveable (so Muslims often say only that will be punished eternally), but how is that just? "God" cannot be harmed or suffer, so who is the victim for whom justice must be done? How is it even a moral issue rather than merely a morally neutral mistake if in itself it causes no other person to suffer. Wouldn't it make more sense that shirk is not even in need of forgiveness rather than the most unforgiveable? It's so obvious that it simply works as a useful manmade deterent against leaving/rejecting the religion.
Also how does it make sense to use physical punishments for thought crimes? Why is he limited to punishing people in physical ways that a life form with nerve endings and pain centres can suffer, even resurrecting and replenishing human bodies for the purpose? If he is able to give perfect justice, why is it the same kinds of punishment (extreme heat pain) for every sin, just for differing amounts of time. How can crime and punishment be objectively weighed so that a certain sin is worth a certain amount of time of torture? How do you quantify different kinds of suffering? It's apples and oranges. There is no right answer. If intention is what is punished, how do you quantify exactly how much suffering was intended? People's thoughts fluctuate and are vague.
Looks like Al Andalusi has 50-100 attendees coming and is saying Atheists need to be taken "to task". Anyway, I hope you have a good debate and enjoy your time in London
Topic: Jinn and Tonic Show on the 14th and I'm going to London the same week to debate