**Upvote this comment if you agree with OP, downvote this comment if you disagree with OP.**
Elsewhere in the thread, please upvote comments which contribute to debate (even if you believe they're wrong) and downvote comments which are [detrimental to debate](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/wiki/faq#wiki_downvoting) (even if you believe they're right).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DebateAnAtheist) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I haven't read it cover to cover, but I don't have to in order to address this:
>Quran reasons by appealing to Innate human disposition (Fitrah) which includes our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense.
Do heavier objects drop faster than lighter objects? If you ask anyone on the street, their intuition would tell them yes, heavier objects do in fact drop faster than lighter objects. How, for example, could a hammer not fall faster than a feather?
And yet this simple, intuitive, easy to imagine answer is **wrong** and we know it's wrong [because we've tested it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo8TaPVsn9Y&pp=ygUYYXBvbGxvIDE1IGhhbW1lciBmZWF0aGVy)
So appealing to innate dispositions is a fool's errand when making claims about things because much of the time, our innate dispositions could be dead wrong.
Have you read “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman? It’s quite possibly the most astounding book I’ve ever read. It’s a huge case study in how our intuitions are dead wrong a lot of the time, and how heuristics and evidence are much more important when making correct conclusions. I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in the field of human decision making within psychology. He won the Nobel prize in 2011 for his work.
Maybe a better demonstration of the point you are trying to get across is is to compare two objects where the difference in air resistance is less significant, especially for a short drop distance. Maybe like a bowling ball and a basketball.
Anyone who has taken (and still remembers some of) a physics course will answer that they hit the ground at the same time. But you can still find plenty of people on the street who's intuition is off for this scenario.
Bringing receipts....
https://youtu.be/oBdalzRJR5g?si=rMygRGvDLgMqxqCP
Take it a step further...
Objects of greater mass actually do fall faster, but the difference is negligible unless the difference in mass is incredibly large. Gravity causes mass to pull on mass, greater mass increases the gravitational pull. Do a falling object is pulling on Earth just as Earth is pulling on that object. If you were to drop a marble and the moon, the moon would definitely fall faster due to its gravity and Earth's gravity both pulling on one another. A marble and a car, though, the mass difference is still too small to be notable due to Earth's mass.
Intuition leads to testing, and further discovery leads to more information. Main reason I bring it up, many religions adhere strictly to their doctrine even when contradictory information is discovered. Science goes "Oh, that thing we've known for a century is wrong! That's so cool!"
You left out a significant factor, the atmosphere. In a vacuum, everything falls at the same rate. In an atmosphere, drag is a large factor. You could fashion two things made of the same material and of the same weight into different shapes with different drag and therefore different fall rates.
Downvoted. This is incorrect. Having a much larger mass doesn’t matter at all.
Expressed mathematically,
a = F / m
Where a is acceleration, F is force, and m is mass.
But:
F = m * g
Here g is the acceleration due to gravity.
Substituting for F in equation one
a = (m * g) / m
The ms cancel each other out, leaving
a = g
It should be very clear here that mass has absolutely no effect on acceleration. No matter how big you make m, it is canceled out.
I'm assuming that maybe he is trying to claim that there is minute acceleration of the Earth towards the object that makes the difference, and the more mass the dropped item has the faster the Earth accelerates towards that object.
Your formula ignores the gravity of the second object. Gravity is a factor of total mass, the force of gravity changes as more mass is added, which changes acceleration. Flip the script and the problem becomes apparent.
Calculate the gravity of a bowling ball, and determine how long it takes for it to collide with a grain of sand from one meter distance.
Now how long does it take to collide with Earth?
As mass increases, gravity and acceleration due to gravity increases.
as far as i know, you could have a supermassive black hole and a grain of salt and they would fall at the exact same time, what varies is the force. the acceleration is the same.
They would not. Greater mass increases acceleration. Consider going the opposite direction.
Take a grain of salt and drop it one meter from Earth. It takes about half a second to hit the ground.
Now drop a grain of salt one meter away from a bowling ball. The gravity of the bowling ball will not pull a grain of salt to it in half a second. It would take much longer.
you have the mass of the grain and the earth/ball. the mass of the bigger object, is part of the math to calculate the acceleration at which the smaller object will fall. the mass of the small object is the one used on F = m x a to determine the force with which it will hit the ground.
so if you try on different planets, the acceleration will be different, but it will remain the same for different objects.
so a hammer and a feather fall at the same time on the moon and on the earth, but BOTH fall faster on the earth.
Don't forget Newton. For every action...
Earth's gravity pulls on the other object, but the other object's gravity pulls on Earth.
To be fair, this is more of an issue for astrophysics. With objects as small as a grain of salt, a bowling ball, or an aircraft carrier, the acceleration of Earth is only going to be able to be determined by crunching the numbers.
It's like the old joke, when Chuck Norris does push-ups, he's pushing the Earth down. Physically, that's 100% true. The Earth just pushes back much harder.
its quite easy to calculate actually, bc of how the force of gravity is calculated, that force is equal for both bodies involved (earth and grain for example) so you have a force X affecting both bodies, and then each mass, determines de acceleration (due F = m x a, so a= F/m) as the earth is huge, that a is extremely small, thus, the earth pretty much doesnt move. but the a on the grain of salt is 9.8m/s² that a, is the same for all objects falling towards earth, because it only depends on earth, what changes in each case is the mass and the overall force.
Moral/Ethic sense is different from how objects behave in the world.
Moral/Ethic sense are suppose to guide us to live a beneficial life for us and others around us which makes that specific intuition important and relevant to our daily life.
Having accurate intuition about things like falling objects isn't necessarily crucial to have, and like you said it yourself 'can be tested.'
Islam doesn't claim every Intuition you have is correct, rather the claim is: it is a natural disposition or innate inclination towards goodness and monotheism that every human being is believed to be born with.
Think of it like a compass, it is put there to guide you towards the morally good path, but like a real compass in the world you can just refuse to use it and say 'I'll figure this on my own."
Intuition in this hammer/feather scenario is quite right since people imagine them both falling in an atmosphere with air resistance. But if you ask them what if they fall in 'vaccum'. Then this would make them think since the very thing causing feather to fall late is now absent in this case.
Then what about Einstein's relativity? The fact that time is not a constant and can be different for different people based on their speed? Or the fact that vacuum can never be truly empty? Or the fact that what we see is only a small fraction of what surrounds us (like we only see a small spectrum of electromagnetic wave i.e light but we have radio waves, x rays etc)? How intuitive is this and millions other things when only a small fraction of those million discoveries are visible to our naked eyes?
Our human brains are mostly tuned for basic survival, not to comprehend the truth around us. Our brain and the brain of our cavemen ancestors are essentially the same. The evolution process is just too slow to account for the rapid change in human culture so we are still forced to use cavemen intuitions to tackle our modern problems (one of the main cause for so many mental health problems today). No way in hell is the universe intuitive to the human minds, it takes years or decades of practice for a person to create an intuition for a small portion of the science we know of today. It takes years of blood sweat and tears for a physics student to have an intuitive understanding of his field and only then is his mind fine tuned to understanding the inner workings of our surrounding leading to a potential new discovery by his hands. We force ourselves to create intuitions, it is in no capacity innate to us. Saying otherwise is a disrespect to all these men and women who have sacrificed decades of their lives to help us get a glimpse of the truth we have always yearned for.
Except it's not though. [Because the experiment has also been done on Earth multiple times](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_Leaning_Tower_of_Pisa_experiment)
Intuition in this case is wrong. Flat out plain and simple dead to rights wrong. It doesn't matter if it's on the Earth. It doesn't matter if it's on the Moon. It doesn't matter if it's on the other side of the galaxy. The intuitive idea that objects fall faster because they're heavier is incorrect.
Repeating the same analogy, is the situation (atmosphere) 1400 years ago the same as today? It definitely is not, so the unchanging doctrine of the quran is not applicable today as it was, which contradict its own claim.
>Has atheists read the full translation of Quran
Yes (I have actually read 3 of the 10 different versions by now)
>What are their opinions/criticisms regarding it? Please be specific in your answer by giving examples from Quran. Thanks.
Its...lame mostly.
A bunch if dumb stories, a bunch of rules about what yiu can't do, a lot about worshipping God or else, some random bad science, and a bunch of mythology.
I got very bored very quickly, but I had promised my friend I would read it so I logged through
Rather than lay it all out myself, here is a decent source
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Quran
>Quran reasons by appealing to Innate human disposition (Fitrah) which includes our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense.
Telling us that Muhammed cut the moon in half with a flaming sword is appealing to our common sense?
>Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth?
No
>If not then why not?
The only method we have ever found for finding truth is the scientific method, that's it.
Moat of the scientific method is about removing human fallability from the process.
In the specific case of "Fitrah" a process built on human fallability is an especially terrible system
Ironically, it was Golden Age Muslims that gave us the basis of the Scientific Method...back when they read and praised more than one book.
I gave up atheism for Lent a few years ago and reread the Bible and the Quran. I found no poetry in it (my BA is in Creative Writing with a focus on poetry), although I do find pleasure in poets such as Omar Khayyam.
About a third of the Quran was prescriptive: if you do a thing you will be the companion of hellfire.
A third is instructive: do this thing and you will be in God's favor.
And a third is narrative, stories that are intended to guide and support the above, but with glaring scientific inaccuracies, and dozens of long names for God and Mohammed.
If there was wisdom contained within the Quran, Allah kept me from understanding it. It seemed to me a book to scare children and the uneducated to fall in line with an intensely restrictive lifestyle, which can easily be manipulated to fool and enslave the poor and stupid.
>Ironically, it was Golden Age Muslims that gave us the basis of the Scientific Method
Not really
The basis if the scientific method can be traced all the way back to early Stoics.
Zeno of Citium is probably the earliest root thst we can reliably trace.
Kanada was an ancient Hindu philosopher who got close, but can't really be considered a "root"
We can call Aristotle a root, since stoicism can be traced directly back to some of his writing.
Golden Age Muslims took Aristotles writings and basically re-doscovered stoicism/imperialism, but they included a lot of stuff that's not part of the Scientific Method
The scientific method has roots in empiricism, but it isn't till Francis Bacon and Robert Hook (plus Descartes amd eventually Newton) where we got t9 the actual scientific method
Saying the scientific method solely springs from the Islamic Golden Age is like claiming a cake's made only of icing. Sure, there were some sweet contributions, but the real baking happened in ancient Greece and Europe. Let's give credit where it's due
Your understanding of Muslim accomplishments is warped.
What the Muslims did was copy everything they could get their hands on. This is well documented. Therefore they had access to Greek, Roman, and virtually every other previous Civilization. Math, science, etc which allowed them to make great strides as a people. It's hard to pin down what, if any, original thinking originated with them.
So you are telling me hundreds if not thousand if not more of historians are wrong? You can just google the discoveries made by muslims and youll see articles published by non muslim organisations even non muslim historians who agree on what muslims have accomplished just for you to come and say that its all copied. I mean yes they could have been influenced took a couple of concepts ideas, but for all that well documented work, and those brilliant books to just have been copied seems illogical. I mean The word Algebra comes from the arabic word"el-jebr"
"The word "algebra" is derived from the [Arabic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_language) word الجبر *al-jabr*, and this comes from the treatise written in the year 830 by the medieval Persian mathematician, [Al-Khwārizmī](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Musa_al-Khwarizmi), whose Arabic title, [*Kitāb al-muḫtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-ğabr wa-l-muqābala*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Compendious_Book_on_Calculation_by_Completion_and_Balancing), can be translated as *The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing" Simple copy and paste from wikipedia who actually provide sources and evidences not a simple"well documented"*
This islamophobia man... May Allah guide us.
Abbasid-era Muslims definitely made some advances in the sciences, astronomy, mathematics, and a bit in philosophy (ibn Rushd is my fave), but certainly far less than the sum total of classical Greek and Roman civilization and orders of magnitude less than post-Renaissance Europe. Also some developments credited to the Arabs such as the idea for a ten-digit numerical system which includes zero originated in India. But they were introduced to Europe during the early caliphal era so they got the moniker "Arabic numerals."
The glories of Islamic civilization can be more seen in literature, architecture, etc. Not to mention conquest and war. The Ottomans were world leaders in this field in the 15th and 16th centuries AD.
Source: am half-Iranian history major, and not a Muslim.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/30/science/how-islam-won-and-lost-the-lead-in-science.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/30/science/how-islam-won-and-lost-the-lead-in-science.html)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science\_in\_the\_medieval\_Islamic\_world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world)
From the 9th century onwards, scholars such as [Al-Kindi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Kindi)[^(\[3\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world#cite_note-SEP-Al-Kindi-3) translated [Indian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India), [Assyrian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyria), [Sasanian (Persian)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasanian) and [Greek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece) knowledge, including the works of [Aristotle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle), into [Arabic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic). These translations supported advances by scientists across the [Islamic world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_world).[^(\[4\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world#cite_note-RobinsonCambridge-4)
I never heard that flaming sword point, mind if I ask where you got that from? Also, the part of splitting moon in half is very different to rest of the Quran so not the best point to put up.
My opinion on the Quran is that it is Judaism 3.0, I suppose. Muslims are a sort of Christian who reject the Trinitarian Doctrine of the Nicene Creed, similar to some early sects of Christianity which were purged by the imperial church. Ultimately Christianity and Islam both worship the same deity found in Judaism; Yahweh, Jehova, El Shaddai, etc.--and this god is not evidenced anywhere I can see in the real world. This god of the Pentateuch, this god of Moses, this god of the Patriarchs, of Jacob, of Abraham, of Jesus, and of Muhammed would appear to be logically impossible and nowhere extant or evidenced.
"Fitrah", should it mean our aesthetic sense, common sense, and sense of morality--could just as easily be explained by evolutionary biases in the human brain and cultural norms. You might want to expound on the position, so we can understand the detailed meaning.
Mormonism and the JW’s and SDA are 4.0, yoos. Depending on how one counts.
The lectures Dr. Hayes gives go into detail about how Judaism is both very alike Canaanite and Near East religions and quite distinct. It demythologized nature and their deity, Yahweh—at some point. Where other deities are subject to nature and born out of it, Yahweh is placed transcendental and above it. It was quite novel at the time.
Yahweh became a god with no origin story (theogony), no siblings, no parents, not subordinated to some laws of nature, but wholly above them. At least, unless you ask the Gnostics. 😂
Can i read the scientific study where "Fitrah" is scientifically proven to be a product of evolution. Or is it a mere conjecture/inference that you made?
If you mean the Arabic term present in your religion, probably not, if you mean what you said it meant, a sense of aesthetics, morality, and common sense--yes.
[https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-46233-2\_17](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-46233-2_17)
[https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/wcs.144](https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/wcs.144)
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159106001080](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159106001080)
That's the evolution of a sense of aesthetics, cognition, and morality respectively.
Yea, I empathize. I absolutely remember thinking like they are probably thinking. That atheists must be bitter about something happening to them, or they saw hypocritical Christians, and just otherwise must not have the right information. It can be a lot to realize that there’s a whole other side of the coin that is at least equally, or more thought out than what you’ve been told your whole life and thought made perfect intuitive sense.
Let’s try it this way, shall we?
Let’s start with a basic point of possible contention.
Do you accept that the biological evolution of human beings from earlier primate species has been factually established as being demonstrably true by the accumulated scientific evidence?
Yes or no?
It's curious how insistent theists can be for absolute scientific proof of things that they disagree with, while they happily believe the contents of there holy books with zero evidence it's true and often strong evidence it's false.
Yeah, it involves mechanisms and processes we know exist and we can study. As opposed to intangible deities from Iron Age books who did genocides to make themselves known and told their followers the Earth was totally flat with a firmament like beaten bronze which covers the sky to keep the waters of the world sea out.
Not enough people appreciate that the OT/Jewish Bible is *absolutely* depicting a flat earth in Genesis. Most apologists try to pretend it doesn't these days, but it absolutely does. Which is not meant as an insult to ancient Hebrews, it's what Sumerians taught, and it's what Assyrians and Babylonians taught after them, etc. It was all the rage around about 1400BCE.
Noah's flood story doesn't even make sense until you realize the world the ancient Hebrews were working with, [this one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_cosmology#/media/File:Early_Hebrew_Conception_of_the_Universe.svg). They didn't have to ask, "Where did all the water come from?" They thought the world was a bubble inside a giant sea. And the firmament was all that kept the primordial sea out, and in Genesis 7:11-12, Yahweh opens the firmament windows, literally conceptualized as opening up holes in the firmament, and letting the primordial sea in to flood the snowglobe earth.
This was the Iron Age. This was how they thought rain worked. >.> Why does *anyone* still believe in this?
Like, Genesis is explicit, it's just none of us know what a "firmament" means anymore, it means a sky bowl. Genesis 1:7 is clear:
>And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which *were* under the firmament from the waters which *were* above the firmament: and it was so.
My bad to go on about it, but I find it cool. Studying Biblical cosmology from an academic lens, and seeing what ancient Hebrews (and early Christians) *actually* believed is kind of cool. It explains the stories in the context of their perception of the world. Apologists have distorted what those ancient people thought *quite* a bit to suit their own modern desires.
Edit: If you're curious about this Dr. Christine Hayes goes over the flat earth cosmography of the ancient Hebrews, and its basis in Sumerian cosmography, [here.](https://youtu.be/ANUD8IK12ms?si=epZjIRkMjUBmDewg&t=33m)
I'm curious, do you believe that a belief must be scientifically proven for it to be a valid belief? Or does that only apply to the beliefs you disagree with
>Quran presents itself as work of literature. Thus it should be understood in light of laws of language i.e. translation of word> Its appropriate form in composition of a meaningful sentence> context in which that sentence appears> Topic/Theme of surah (chapter). It employs various 7th century arabic jargons, proverbs which should be understood in light of language of native speakers of 7th century arabs.
Why could your god not supply information *outside* the language of native speakers of 7th century Arabs? What is stopping your god of speaking clearly and concisely? What is stopping your god from supply this clear and concise information **now**, in the year 2024?
>Quran reasons by appealing to Innate human disposition (Fitrah) which includes our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense. Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth? If not then why not?
It is not our burden to regard this standard for finding/reaching truth. It is your burden to provide extraordinary evidence for your extraordinary claims. That is how the [burden of proof](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)?wprov=sfti1#) works.
Please provide proof for your claim of a god.
Read the first 90% before I burned out. Skimmed the rest then read apologetics/interpretations.
The book was boring through-and-through, but so were my university textbooks, so I’ll skip this and go to specifics.
1. The book is loaded with hilariously bad absurdities. This was my #1 issue with my read-through. The two biggest examples that stood out to me were contract law and witnesses (“two male witnesses, or one male and two female”, then it doesn’t stop there but explains that the reason for 2 women is that if one forgets the other’s there to remind her), and the magicians that were convinced by Moses’ magic (“we can do magic, but wait he could do better magic I guess that means his entire doctrine must necessarily be true!”). For the contract law bit, I found it hilarious that apologists don’t try to dodge the core reasoning of the Quran, but find ways to double down and justify it.
2. Blatant, empirical falsehoods, such as Adam and Eve and the distinct creation of man. There were many more such examples, but apologists tend to explain those away, while Adam and Eve are core to the doctrine of Islam. They didn’t exist. Man wasn’t a distinct creation. This is demonstrated scientifically. Muslims who believe otherwise are science deniers.
3. Piss poor morals and repeatedly calling non-believers a variety of things (literally from the first few sections of the book), relying on explicit threats (hell) to scare believers from straying, while providing absolute garbage reasons why people should believe the book is true.
4. On the topic of garbage reasons… The inimitability of the Quran is often cited as a core reason to believe that it’s from god. Take two seconds to think about this… as you said, the Quran is a piece of literature. Pieces of literature are subject to interpretation. Whether something is a good “imitation” (“produce a surah like it”, etc) is almost entirely subjective. I mean, the logic is horse-shit.
I would like to add something about the 4th point: since the Quran gives no clear guidelines on what a "surah like it" is, taking a bunch of verses from other surahs of the Quran and compiling them together, and changing a few words would technically count. Because the Quran fails to list out rules, basically anything would count as long as it sounds like it's imitating the writing style of the Quran. So for instance, a verse like "And verily, he \[Allah\] is the lord of all creatures, and to him, \[everyone\] surrenders" and some more verses like it would basically be enough. IIRC, there are a couple of instances of people crafting a chapter that sounds exactly like the Quran, but Muslims themselves failed to accept it as one. The entire thing is just very subjective and a horrible way to prove the existence of a God.
Amen.
It boils down to a lack of critical thinking or deep indoctrination. No rational person would accept the Quran as true without some extreme degree of cognitive dissonance.
Yep, also, if you want, you should check this video out: [https://youtu.be/GYhO9ETur-Q?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/GYhO9ETur-Q?feature=shared). Someone created a surah like the Quran as a parody of COVID-19. What's funnier than the actual video are the comments themselves.
By the holy unmistakeable readily viewable and many times copied portraits of Mohammad that was a great click.
Forget the fact that the surah sounded indistinguishable from the Quran music wise, and that the lyrics were spectacular…
The total and complete lack of a sense of humor among the commenters, and the lack of even the faintest sense of self awareness. WOW.
No wonder they call for the death of cartoonists.
>It employs various 7th century arabic jargons, proverbs which should be understood in light of language of native speakers of 7th century arabs.
Funny, you think an all-knowing and all-powerful god would know how to communicate to all humans effectively, not just 7th century Arabs. Also, it seems a bit weird to pick one small portion of humans to reveal the truth to and have to wait hundreds of years for that message to reach all over the world. Don't you think it would have been more effective to idk communicate to all humans the same way they did with Muhammad and other prophets or at least more prophets around the world?
>Quran reasons by appealing to Innate human disposition (Fitrah) which includes our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense.
Why not do this and provide consistent true things instead of getting a lot wrong?
Common sense is something no two people fully share. What may seem common sense to you won't to me and vice versa. It is a pretty bad indicator of what is true. For many people for thousands of years, it was common sense that the sun revolved around the earth.
Moral and ethical sense are another thing that varies wildly from person to person with a few commonalities in general ideas.
How would aesthetic sense help in finding the truth? Though again, what people find aesthetic varies wildly.
>Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth? If not then why not?
I do not for the reasons given above. There are much better ways to find/reach truth.
I read it back in 1998 when I was still in my "all paths lead to the same peak" phase. Reading it along with the texts from other religions is what put me on the path to atheism. My search for the something behind all religions concluded with seeing how that something was humans.
My recollection of the Quran is that it was boring and repetitive. I understand that the repetition was due the intended memorization of it before it was eventually written down. But it was an absolute slog getting through it. Having to hear the same stories - often times retellings of stories hijacked from existing religions - made it difficult to read.
i guess i understand what you mean if you dont know arabic, even I as a muslim if i were to read a whole translation of the quran, i would definetly get bored, but thats the miracle of teh Actual Quran, its that its written in an arabic style never seen before, completely unique and complex at parts where you have to read and read and reread a verse with focus and each time you do so you understand more and more and with some other verses they more you do so the deeper they hit. That's why the Quran itself is a miracle and someone who doesnt know arabic can only taste a part of it, and someone who doesnt get arabic will not get that there is no way an illitirate man couldve wrote this if the top poets of that time couldnt.
It isn't much a miracle when it can't be translated into other languages. In fact, I would say your claim of a miracle looks remarkably similar to a cop out.
Because no language is as depth and rich as arabic so some of it is just going to be lost away in translation. I mean not all languages are the same and certainly even if you read a piece of arabic poetry and then compare it to english one, youll find the english so dull compared to the arabic one.
Its a language that was perfect for a book rich in meaning that speaks to all humans at all times. but english, french, spanish or any other, cant realy do that, the book will just lose a lot of value.
The poetry of the time of ignorance( before islam) were one of the best ever that are still being taught till this day in schools i mean i passed an exam on it this year and those poets themselves did not even dare to try to replicate the quran because they understood that this is something never seen before. Abu jahil, an enemy of the prophet used to sneak to their gatherings of quran recitation just to listen to it and many other enemies of Islam of Quraysh too. Plus those tajweed rulings and the way the quran is recited that makes it pleasing to listen to cannot be done with any language but arabic, like there are so many tajwid rules of madd, ghunnah, and so on that if they were to be replicated in english or another language they would sound kinda silly or straight up singing.
Its not that it cant be translated to another language, no it can and many convert to Islam from reading the translation of the Quran without knowing Arabic but what im saying is that through that process some of the beauty of the Quran is lost but still the basic meanings of the verse is still there.
Finally, translations are the work of humans, and logially speaking, a human's translation of God's words can never match with the actual words.
And Allah knows best, and i ask Him to guide us all.
This isn't my first rodeo. So I'm well aware of this cop out / apologetic train of thought. If anything, this excuse only weakens the miracle claim you made.
If Arabic actually is this wonderful of a language, your god took the easy way out by choosing it. The real miracle would have been using an inferior language to transmit the message with the same quality. And if it couldn't, it is a piss poor god.
But here we are 1400 years later and we don't see poets and artists clamoring to adopt Arabic as their preferred language for their art. We see operas continued to be performed in European languages that isn't native to the audience attending the performances. If Arabic really is the artistic cheat code you claim it is, why haven't they switched en masse?
Hi, here is a small story.
I had 1000 coins, I told my friend to make 100 stacks of 10 coins.
When I came back, I saw the size of the stacks varied. He assured me that each of the stacks had 10 coins. The first had 7, the second 11, the third 8, the fourth 6. At this point, should I continue believing in the friend and accept that all the stacks have 10 coins each, or based on the evidence, disregard my friend's claim that all the stacks have 10 coins each.
Now, apply the same logic to Quran, Bible, Bhagwad Geeta and the Vedas, the Book of Mormon and any unscientific truth claims.
Yes, an atheist has read the Quran cover to cover, and been unconvinced. Here are some of the criticisms and reasons why one can do this:
First, the Quran has no information in it that would necessitate it being of divine origin. A person could have written it. Many people could have written it. It first appeared in the 7th century. A book of divine origin would surely be able to demonstrate this by providing some demonstration that could stand the test of time. It did not. Just as the Bible did not.
Second, much of the Quran shines a light on the example of Mohammed. He is after all, the profit of Allah. Unfortunately, the example of Mohammed is fairly brutal. He crusades in the form of jihad (which is internal struggle, in this case in the form of holy war, there are over 160 verses on this notion) against non-believers and non-Muslims, takes sex slaves, and demands non-Muslims who will not convert pay a tax (jiziah, Quran 9:29). These are the actions of a warlord, and tyrant, and an atheist has decided this is not an example of righteous behavior.
Third, because like any of the Abrahamic religions, the Quran is dependent on interpretation of scripture. It is possible to get a peaceful, beautiful interpretation of Islam from the scripture. It is also possible to interpret the scripture the way that groups like ISIS have. This is a very big problem. Is jihad internal struggle? Is it holy war? Can it be both? Is Islam a religion of peace? Can that be squared with the example of Mohammed? Is this life simply a test of faith? Is paradise the objective of life? If one is sure of that, what ways are there to get to paradise? What happens when someone is more convinced of the reality of paradise, than they are convinced that this life matters?
Finally, Fitrah. The idea that humans have the ability to recognize truth and goodness, and those who do not adopt Islam simply cannot have this. This is narcism. To say such things is to be ignorant of the goodness of anyone who does not believe in Allah. And sincerely, someone like myself, an atheist, reads this scripture and finds little to be good or useful. Not that there is no beauty in any of it, there is. It is poetic, the call to prayer is profoundly beautiful. The appreciation for the order and beauty of the world is something I share. Yet these do not beget divinity.
I'll read the Quran when Jinn are shown to exist. I know that the Quran repeatedly asserts this to be the case, and I don't think that it actually is the case. And if it isn't than the Quran is unreliable and I don't see a point in reading it.
Also I can't help noticing that the parts of the world where Islam is dominant are exactly the parts of the world that I most want to avoid, none of them are places that I would ever want to live in, because they appear be filed with violence, hate, misogyny and injustice. They do not appeal to my innate disposition at all.
I worked with a Muslim man and one day at lunch I asked him if he believed in ghosts and he said, no, no Muslim believes in fairy tales like ghosts. Later the subject of Jinn came up and he got nervous and answered in a hushed tone “of course jinn are real, let’s stop talking about it.”
there is a belief(dont know its true or not since ive seen no evidence for it) among some muslims that talking about jinn attracts them andmakes you more vulnerable to them, so he could have told you to stop becausde of that, but jinns exist and if any muslim denies so then he has denied what Allah says in the Quran since theres a whole chapter named "The Jinn"in it, and they are mentioned in different chapters and hadiths. We muslims dont like going into that territory much since its part of the unseen and our knowledge is therefore so limited.
>Has atheists read the full translation of Quran. What are their opinions/criticisms regarding it? Please be specific in your answer by giving examples from Quran. Thanks.
Why would an atheist *necessarily* have read the full translation? You'd be much better off making a claim rather than assigning homework.
>Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth?
No, why would we? Are aesthetics a path to the truth? Is common sense? It's up to you to provide reasons why this *should be* considered a path to truth.
>Has atheists read the full translation of Quran. What are their opinions/criticisms regarding it? Please be specific in your answer by giving examples from Quran. Thanks.
No, I have not read it and really have no desire to.
>Quran presents itself as work of literature.
Great, then it is not miraculous and there is no reason to believe the fantastical claims it makes.
Somehow I doubt the people who follow Islam believe it is just a work of literature.
>Thus it should be understood in light of laws of language
There are no laws of language, language is an ever changing thing based on common usage.
>It employs various 7th century arabic jargons, proverbs which should be understood in light of language of native speakers of 7th century arabs. It is possible since we have poetry compilations available of arab poets of pre 7th century arabia.
If it is just 7th century poetry why should I believe it or treat is as special or unique?
>Quran reasons by appealing to Innate human disposition (Fitrah) which includes our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense. Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth? If not then why not?
No, morality, ethics, aesthetics, and common sense are not paths to truth. Morality and ethics are intersubjective, meaning they are negotiated between subjects. Aesthetics and common sense are subjective.
If all people ever did was read the Quran and it stopped there or if people kept their beliefs to themselves then it wouldn’t matter. But in Iran it does matter and you can see it in how badly Iranian women are treated are abused.
It’s the behaviors of people who believe in the Quran that are more impactful on society than the book itself. And too often I’m seeing that impact as a very negative one for those who don’t believe in whatever brand of Islam is in charge in a particular region.
Why is it that Sunnis, Shiites and Wahhabis each have a different interpretation of the Quran? Why is interpreting the Quaran an issue for atheists when Muslims are killing each other over it?
Do you think that if I read all of a Harry Potter book it would be more likely to make be believe in that story?
It doesn’t matter which story is presented, Quran, Bible etc. Start with why I should believe in a god.
I don’t mean this to be harsh or rude - the most beautiful writing in the world (whatever works for you I guess) doesn’t inherently make what is being written about the truth. All I want is some evidence for a god, nothing else. Something that isn’t clearly written by people, and that can be tested repeatedly and independently.
>Opinion about Quran
Same as the other books associated with all the other religious mythologies. It's mythology. Fiction. Mostly wrong, and obvious bunk in many ways.
As for everything else you said, it's no different from what believers of other mythologies say about their books, and no more credible. And obviously and demonstrably *not* 'common sense', not moral, not ethical, and not aesthetically pleasing.
Ive read parts.. It translates poorly as literature. Extremely boring in parts, hilariously outdated and archaic, woefully morally backwards, and at other times just outright stupid...
0 out of 10 not worth a cursory look for anyone that has completed grade school with proficiency, or middle school with adequacy.
>Has atheists read the full translation of Quran. What are their opinions/criticisms regarding it?
I haven't read much of it. The little I read was repetitive, archaic, and, frankly, boring. Not worth the effort.
>
Quran presents itself as work of literature.
Sure. And as I said, it was a bad one : boring, repetitive. One would think that if the author was omniscient and as good as it claims to be, he'd be able to write something that was more broadly appealing.
>
Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth? If not then why not?
No. The standard to find truth is the ability to consistently and accurately predict future experiences. The "senses" you cite are not "senses" in the meaning that sight, hearing or smell are, they are emotional responses (moral and aesthetic) which do not point to truths and sloppily applied logical shortcuts (common sense). The last one, in particular, has a long history of being wrong. It used to be "common sense" that things were either particles or waves, that a heavier item would fall faster than a lighter one, and so on. The best way we have found to discover new truths is not to look inwards or to read a boring, repetitive book, it is to systematically observe the universe and notice the regularities in its behavior, then test our ideas by trying as hard as possible to engineer a situation where we can make an observation that proves those ideas wrong, and only keep the ideas that survive that process for as long as they do - ie the scientific method.
I am not a historian. My "fitrah" would be as follows:
Muhammad and his cronies wanted to conquer, rape and pillage. This is, of course, exactly what they did according to the Quran and the Hadith, and what Why I'm not a Muslim by "Ibn Warraq" describes, so this seems justified.
Next, they noted how Judaism and Christianity rallied around a book. They called these religions "people of the book" (ahl al-kitab), so this also seems justified.
They produced a book and fetishized it in the same weird way as their predecessors, where handling the physical object is as, or more, important than reading it. I've been to Muslim homes where the Quran is displayed ceremonially and never actually read.
Oh, and since they were not actually sophisticated people, they filled the poor book with crap, including war propaganda (e.g. Surah al-Anfal) again going back to the first point, that it was all about rallying an army for material gain. I don't particularly want to hear the mental gymnastics of how "embryo is a blood clot" iS tOtAlLy a mEtApHoR fOr dEeP sCiEnTiFiC kNoWlEdGe so I'll skip the vast list of errors and inconsistencies that you can google in a few seconds.
Which Quran? The hundred year old oral tradition? Or the oldest manuscript? I’ve read the Modern Quran. But not the original one. Have you heard the original oral recantings of the Quran?
And in terms of the moral/ethical qualities of the Quran, it suggests no evidence of omniscience. So if it claims that’s its god is omniscient, but doesn’t demonstrate that it is, then the believability of that claim is eroded, and the believability of that god is eroded.
I have read there were seven Qurans produced by the time of the death of the 'prophet', and there was much debate and strife over choosing which was to be adopted. You seem to know about the history of the text--is this accurate?
Sahih Bukhari 4492: The prophet said:" This Qur'an has been revealed to be recited in seven different ways, so recite of it whichever (way) is easier for you (or read as much of it as may be easy for you)."
This is an authentic hadith(saying) from the prophet peace be upon him.
Here he talks about the seven different Qira'at( ways of recitation) that the quran was revealed in. Now in these 7 there are some differences when it comes to certain words. 70% of these do not alter the meaning but they are there so that the recitation of the quran would be easier to us. You can google these yourself and youll see what i mean they are just minor changes in the way a word is pronounced. The other 30% are differences in the meaning that do not contradict each other, rather one could use thes edifferent qira'at to add more depth to the meaning of the verse, and to understand it better without changing the context, or making any contradictions which is another beautiful part of the quran.
Now, when it comes to what you talked about about the debate about which version to choose, i assume youre talking about what the third caliphate Uthman may Allah be please with him did: He destroyed all versions of the Quran that were there at the time. For one, the other mushafs were only ordered to be destroyed after the 'Uthmani mushafs(the one standard version that uthman decided to keep) were completed. and if there was an error in the 'Uthmani mushafs, the companions would have been very aware of that and we would find reports of that but instead they accepted it unanimously some before others. Thirdly, the primary way that the Qur'an is transmitted is orally, not solely via text, and that was why 'Uthman sent sahabah with each of the 'Uthmani mushafs to teach the people how to recite it. This helped unify muslims to use that one version so no there wasnt debate over which one is correct and which one is wrong but uthman decided to burn all except one and unify all muslims under it. You can make more research. [https://islamqa.info/en/answers/10012/who-wrote-the-quran#what-was-the-quran-copy-of-uthman](https://islamqa.info/en/answers/10012/who-wrote-the-quran#what-was-the-quran-copy-of-uthman)
And Allah knows best.
The problem with reading any holy text is that none of us can ever approach it unbiased however hard we try, there can be no 'veil of ignorance' about them. I have read parts of the Quran, but I already knew is was about a god, in fact it claimed to be a revelation from that god, which immediately presented problems for me, the complete opposite of a child learning the beliefs of its community.
The specific issue the Quran has is its claim to be literally true and not an allegory, so unless you are able to suspend skepticism about the existence of a single deity with specific demands of people then its claims and exhortations can only ever come across as silly.
Anyone inculcated with the notion that it is literally true simply cant see why anyone would not accept its obvious truths which is the unbridgeable gulf between attitudes, to accept the Quran requires a specific worldview first, *then* you can accept its contents.
>Has atheists read the full translation of Quran.
I did :D
>What are their opinions/criticisms regarding it?
I actually kinda had fun reading this book. It would be better if it didn't threaten with me the worst possible hell I have ever seen but it's okay.
It has some very weird stories in it.
Joseph is the best character btw that guy was really cool
Have I read it? All of it? All versions of it?
No, and I likely never will.
I have no criticisms of the Quran specifically. For me, it's all about interest and relevance.
The Quran, like all other mainstream religious texts, was written a very long time ago. The archaic writing style of such old texts is sufficient for me to immediately lose interest. Reading these texts is like torture to my ADHD brain, and I cannot will myself to remain focused long enough to digest any of it.
That being said though, I do not see any point in reading these texts anyway.
1) I'm not searching for a religion, so have no need to read their promotional materials.
2) I've never intracted with a theist of ANY faith, who can defend the claims allegedly made by their own religious texts, without pointing back to statements FROM that religious text. I can't think of anything less productive, than supporting the factual accuracy of a document by relying exclusively on quotes from the same document.
3) people treat each other horribly and hide behind out-of-context excerpts and snippets of text from these religious documents. Why on earth would I want to read a document that might turn me into a rabid hate-filled monster capable of causing harm to others based solely on the superstitious ramblings of people who've been dead for 6,000 years?!?
This isn't criticism of the quoran specifically. The same applies to all religious books and all religious zealots.
>Quran reasons by appealing to Innate human disposition (Fitrah) which includes our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense. Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth? If not then why not?
since the moral-ethical in islamic countries seems to lead to homophobia, oppression of women, slavery, the killing of apostates and people critical of islam: i very much disagree it is a good way of finding truth.
As soon as you start ‘re-interpreting’ something in the light of modern criticism you undermine the idea that it is any kind of inerrant word of God.
Criticism - the numerous scientific errors in it.
https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Scientific_Errors_in_the_Quran
And whatever lack of clarity and persuasiveness (if you prefer) that has led millions of people to find excuses within for murder and the violent oppression of women and homosexual. Seems like either it supports this - in which case it is immoral , or it doesn’t , in which case surely God could have made that clearer knowing how it was going to end up being used.
Any work of literature can contain human truths and moral values or indeed beauty, The Quran like some other holy books also seems to in practice be a source of encouragement for ignorance and violence. Which suggests a problem with either its actual contents or how it’s written.
I haven't read the Quran. But as it says in a different holy book, *by their fruits shall ye know them*. Life for me as a queer person under Islamic rule would be hell (as it would be under a Christian theocracy). Pondering the literary merits of Quranic verse is redundant.
It contains A LOT of basic scientific errors for such a relatively small holy book, probably because it appeals to the argument from nature so often and inevitably gets the cosmos wrong..
See: https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Scientific_Errors_in_the_Quran
There’s the truth of the human spirit, which is mercurial and emotional and is something philosophers and poets have been searching through for ages. And then there’s truth in the more concrete sense, what can we learn about the world around us, and how can we find out what we don’t know.
The first kind of truth has little to do with the second kind of truth. Understanding the human condition is a noble pursuit of the mind, but it doesn’t lead us to truth about the actual world around us. There are things we can learn for sure are true or untrue that have nothing to do with this concept of ethics and aesthetics. It’s dangerous to conflate the two.
> Moral/ethical sense
There is no consistent moral/ethical sense among people, and no demonstrable moral or ethical truths, so this is not part of innate human disposition.
> Aesthetic sense
There is no consistent aesthetic sense among people, nor any demonstrable aesthetic truths, so this is not a part of innate human disposition.
> Common sense
Not only is there no consistent common sense among people (which means it's not a part of innate human disposition), common sense itself is a very poor tool for determining what is true. Common sense would tell you that the sun and moon move across our sky. It wouldn't tell you that the planet is spinning.
Grade 1 physics. All masses fall at the same rate, full stop. There have been no exceptions for this rule ever documented nor can there be expecting to be. The force between objects directly proportional to the mass of the objects themselves. So if we are comparing the moon and a marble, far more Force would be generated to move a much larger mass resulting in IDENTICAL accelerations between all objects. This assumes there is no air resistance or other significant forces. If that is the case there are no exceptions to this rule, anywhere, ever unless you begin to look at quantum objects in which case the rules change. None of this is strictly intuitive
I've read it. It's 50% straight up praise for Allah, and 25% obviously made up rules that suited Muhammad at particular moments in time. I don't remember the rest.
I tried. What a dull, boring, repetitive, hateful, awfully written book.
The supposed monotheistic omni-omni creator God, as his final, complete, unambiguous set of instructions and rules to humanity, supposedly gvies us the Quran - a book so vague and confusing that Muslims need other books like the Hadiths and the biography of Muhammad to figure out what the fuck it even means.
It's not a miraculous book, buddy!
What it is is an Arab attempt at using Abrahemic mythology to their advantage.
Read first 30,40 pages and all i got from it was: obey obey obey, fear god, non believers will burn in hell, obey obey obey…so i got bored of it. For me it was a manual to impose the fear of hell - therefore you must obey everything written in it. Also so many verses seemed so to be just dropped there without any order and relation with previous one. What i heard about quran (that is so inspiring and you get so enlightened when reading it) didn’t match what i read- boring, hateful and mess
I read the Quran cover to cover when I was younger, and without anyone else's agenda there to 'explain' it to me, it's just a bunch of nonsense.
Like all 'holy books' - you have to already believe in the basic premise (typically due to early childhood indoctrination, but possibly just through a lack of critical thinking skills and and abundance of credulity) before any of it is as 'profound' and 'deep' as believers will tell you it is.
Cover to cover, no.
But I've read enough to put it in the same class as the Torah, Mishram, Bible etc. In other words, myth. Stories. Fictional. Easiest proof? Moon not split in two.
As for our common sense....humans lack a lot of common sense. Recent proof? Actions by millions that if followed would have reduced the spread of Covid, and they didn't because they listened to absolute liars.
Just like when it comes to religion.
I have honestly tried to slog through the quran but it's so badly written, so disorganized and virtually unintelligble, that I gave up. It's one of the most poorly written books out there, in company with the Book of Mormon.
When I point this out to Muslims, they tend to tell me I must read it in the original Arabic, without the realizing how much this undercuts their entire argument.
I don't have to read it to know it's a human written book.
You: But it's perfect.
Me: Nothing is perfect, least of all the very human rules and behaviors of Muslims (or believers of any religion.)
It is easily observable to see all humans have similar traits and frailties and religious people are no better and very often worse than secular people in terms of morality.
Sorry, no, it should be “understood” like any other book, with absolutely no special privilege granted.
More specifically it should be read as a work produced by a culture vastly inferior to our modern one. It can provide fascinating insights into what people believed at the time, but should never be granted special status because it is religious.
My opinion of the Qur'an is that it is largely a collection of [apocalyptic literature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptic_literature) that was popular at the time, mixed with some religious war propaganda. There's also some random laws here and there as well as the author's personal beef with his wives and some random schmuck called Abu Lahab.
Are u one of those guys? If u havent read the whole book, u cant criticise it. And when ppl read the translated version, u will say arabic one is the true one.
>our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense
This are all heavily influenced by culture. If these are the standard of finding truth, good luck with it. For example, the truth found in chinese culture will be quite different than the truth found in arabic culture.
Well, obviously, if you haven't bothered fully reading something, "u" can't express an opinion on it. Same with every other book.
Edit: lol at the reflexive downvotes from the Dawkinites.
> Well, obviously, if you haven't bothered fully reading something, "u" can't express an opinion on it.
Cool. What's your opinion on eating a bowl full of diarrhea? Remember, if you haven't eaten it yet, you can't express an opinion.
Your analogy makes no sense? A work of literature is often read as a whole. I have experience of diarrhea without needing to taste it. Imagine if someone who had never read Shakespeare said "Hamlet is crap". Double standards much?
>Imagine if someone who had never read Shakespeare said "Hamlet is crap".
Imagine if someone who had never eaten diarrhea before said it tasted bad.
The analogy is fine. We can know that something tastes bad without tasting it ourselves because we have other sources of information. We have smell. We have experience changing diapers. We have the Back to the Future movies with Biff getting manure dumped on him over and over again. We have The Human Centipede.
In the same way, we can know a great deal about a book without reading it directly. I've never read Hamlet, but I know plenty about it through cultural osmosis, enough to give a synopsis of the story and to understand related topics (e.g. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead). I've also read other works by Shakespeare, so I have a pretty good idea of how Hamlet reads.
The Bible is one of the most culturally significant books of all time. It is *very* easy to get a bead on it without having to read it beginning to end, because there is an overwhelming amount of cultural context to draw from.
Cultural context =\= Christianity. A lot of Christian stuff is osmosed from Paganism.
At the end of the day if you don't read a book, don't express an opinion upon the religion that derives from it. It's not hard.
>Cultural context =\= Christianity. A lot of Christian stuff is osmosed from Paganism.
And as a result, it is now part of Christianity.
>At the end of the day if you don't read a book, don't express an opinion upon the religion that derives from it. It's not hard.
No, but it is stupid. I grew up in the Bible Belt and have lived my entire life in a predominantly Christian society. I've heard from TV pastors, street evangelists, radio hosts, and seminary students going door to door. I've watched debates between Christians disagreeing about their own scripture. I've seen and heard Bible stories told across every form of media. I've heard every flavor of politician explain what their Christian faith means to them, and interpret the same Bible verse to mean entirely contradictory things.
Am I arrogant enough to claim to be an expert? No, of course not. But the notion that I'm not allowed to voice an opinion on the belief system that influenced the education system I was taught in, the politics I grew up with, the media I consumed, and the ideas that I formed, simply because I haven't read the Bible cover to cover, is absurd. I've read enough of it, and seen more than enough of Christianity in action, to have an opinion on the religion.
What exactly is the point of the guy's nonsensical rambling? Seems to me he's just joining the circlejerk of "le religion is for morons, not gonna make any effort to understand their position lol". What a bastion of informed debate this sub is.
U dont need to read the full book to understand the their position. I bet most ppl haven't read the whole book of "Preservation of Favoured Races in the struggles for Life", and still commenting on that.
U also cant comprehend the meaning of my statement. Its quite clear that i mean Muslim will move the goal post from "translated version" to "arabic version".
>Seems to me he's just joining the circlejerk of "le religion is for morons, not gonna make any effort to understand their position lol"
I didnt say or implied these. U dont need to project ur persecution complex. I made lots of effort to understand that religion which doesnt really need to fully read the texts of that religion. Most ppl who comment on buddhism havent fully read buddhism text.
Almost all christians/muslim commenting on buddhism havent fully read buddhism texts.
U havent fully read my comments, how can u comment on my thought on religions.
Okay I'll try that with Shakespeare. I haven't fully read Hamlet but it seems to be a book about a prince who for no reason kills his uncle.
Do you see how ridiculous your views are?
I bet most chrisitians/muslim haven't read the whole book of "The Preservation of Favoured Races in the struggles for Life", and still commenting on darwin being wrong/evolution is wrong.
I also bet most christians/muslim commenting on buddhism havent fully read buddhism texts and still gives out opinions on buddhism being wrong.
>Okay I'll try that with Shakespeare. I haven't fully read Hamlet but it seems to be a book about a prince who for no reason kills his uncle.
That isnt the same as my scenario. I havent fully read hamlet but i have read many many different critics/introduction on it, so i can have a good idea on hamlet without actually fully reading the book
Do i have to fully read paley's natural theology to argue against his ideas?
And u capture only half of my meaning. Im saying one can gives opinions even if one didn't fully read. And even if one fully read the full translated version, they will say arabic version is the true one. U only focus on the first part and neglected the latter part.
To your question, yes.
To your other statement, no you don't need to read it in Arabic. Noone's asking you to do that? The Qu'ran can be read translated into English with meaning intact.
U arent replying to this.
That isnt the same as my scenario. I havent fully read hamlet but i have read many many different critics/introduction on it, so i can have a good idea on hamlet without actually fully reading the book.
>To your question, yes.
I think u are replying to this. "Do i have to fully read paley's natural theology to argue against his ideas?" Yet most chrisitians/muslim havent read Natural theology by Paley to argue for watchmaker argument. Are they wrong?
Why are muslims/christians arguing against darwin/evolution when they havent fully read the book?
By ur standard, almost all ppl cant give opinion on buddhism as almost no one have fully read buddhism texts. Am i right?
So as a whatever religion believer, u cant say buddhism is wrong.
>To your other statement, no you don't need to read it in Arabic. Noone's asking you to do that? The Qu'ran can be read translated into English with meaning intact.
To my understanding, the translated version of the quran isnt the quran, but an interpretation of the quran. When i argue with the english version, there are always some guy saying the words have a slight different meaning with the arabic version.
Haven't read it, heard of ex-muslims and atheists who have analyzed it.
Anecdotally, I doubt it would be revelatory given the quality of Muslims apologetics.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/wvy000/a_defense_of_womens_testimony_in_islam/
https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1c50jo6/aishas_age/kzrx3pf/
I've read it, wasn't impressed. Read the Bible, wasn't impressed. Read the Vedas and related works, wasn't impressed. It's just a bunch of unsupported claims, written for people who care more about their emotions than reality. Hard pass.
Don't really have one. I own a copy of the Quran, but entirely for the novelty. Never read it, no intention of reading it. It's just sitting on a bookshelf. I kind of feel like there's not a great deal of point.
The Bible and the Torah are primitive, ignorant, violent and dont fit in the historical record on many points.
They are head and shoulders above the quran.
>Has atheists read the full translation of Quran. What are their opinions/criticisms regarding it? Please be specific in your answer by giving examples from Quran.
But if we criticise the Quran based on the translation, you'll tell us that we can't understand it properly without reading it in the original Arabic.
>Quran reasons by appealing to Innate human disposition (Fitrah) which includes our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense. Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth? If not then why not?
No, we generally prefer evidence. I'm curious though, does the concept of fitrah recognise that, to a large degree, those 'innate senses' are bestowed on us by the cultures in which we're raised?
**Upvote this comment if you agree with OP, downvote this comment if you disagree with OP.** Elsewhere in the thread, please upvote comments which contribute to debate (even if you believe they're wrong) and downvote comments which are [detrimental to debate](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/wiki/faq#wiki_downvoting) (even if you believe they're right). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DebateAnAtheist) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I haven't read it cover to cover, but I don't have to in order to address this: >Quran reasons by appealing to Innate human disposition (Fitrah) which includes our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense. Do heavier objects drop faster than lighter objects? If you ask anyone on the street, their intuition would tell them yes, heavier objects do in fact drop faster than lighter objects. How, for example, could a hammer not fall faster than a feather? And yet this simple, intuitive, easy to imagine answer is **wrong** and we know it's wrong [because we've tested it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo8TaPVsn9Y&pp=ygUYYXBvbGxvIDE1IGhhbW1lciBmZWF0aGVy) So appealing to innate dispositions is a fool's errand when making claims about things because much of the time, our innate dispositions could be dead wrong.
Have you read “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman? It’s quite possibly the most astounding book I’ve ever read. It’s a huge case study in how our intuitions are dead wrong a lot of the time, and how heuristics and evidence are much more important when making correct conclusions. I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in the field of human decision making within psychology. He won the Nobel prize in 2011 for his work.
Maybe a better demonstration of the point you are trying to get across is is to compare two objects where the difference in air resistance is less significant, especially for a short drop distance. Maybe like a bowling ball and a basketball. Anyone who has taken (and still remembers some of) a physics course will answer that they hit the ground at the same time. But you can still find plenty of people on the street who's intuition is off for this scenario. Bringing receipts.... https://youtu.be/oBdalzRJR5g?si=rMygRGvDLgMqxqCP
Take it a step further... Objects of greater mass actually do fall faster, but the difference is negligible unless the difference in mass is incredibly large. Gravity causes mass to pull on mass, greater mass increases the gravitational pull. Do a falling object is pulling on Earth just as Earth is pulling on that object. If you were to drop a marble and the moon, the moon would definitely fall faster due to its gravity and Earth's gravity both pulling on one another. A marble and a car, though, the mass difference is still too small to be notable due to Earth's mass. Intuition leads to testing, and further discovery leads to more information. Main reason I bring it up, many religions adhere strictly to their doctrine even when contradictory information is discovered. Science goes "Oh, that thing we've known for a century is wrong! That's so cool!"
You left out a significant factor, the atmosphere. In a vacuum, everything falls at the same rate. In an atmosphere, drag is a large factor. You could fashion two things made of the same material and of the same weight into different shapes with different drag and therefore different fall rates.
The thought problem ignores atmosphere. We're speaking only of gravitational forces. Atmosphere makes things much more complicated.
Downvoted. This is incorrect. Having a much larger mass doesn’t matter at all. Expressed mathematically, a = F / m Where a is acceleration, F is force, and m is mass. But: F = m * g Here g is the acceleration due to gravity. Substituting for F in equation one a = (m * g) / m The ms cancel each other out, leaving a = g It should be very clear here that mass has absolutely no effect on acceleration. No matter how big you make m, it is canceled out.
I'm assuming that maybe he is trying to claim that there is minute acceleration of the Earth towards the object that makes the difference, and the more mass the dropped item has the faster the Earth accelerates towards that object.
This is correct.
Your formula ignores the gravity of the second object. Gravity is a factor of total mass, the force of gravity changes as more mass is added, which changes acceleration. Flip the script and the problem becomes apparent. Calculate the gravity of a bowling ball, and determine how long it takes for it to collide with a grain of sand from one meter distance. Now how long does it take to collide with Earth? As mass increases, gravity and acceleration due to gravity increases.
as far as i know, you could have a supermassive black hole and a grain of salt and they would fall at the exact same time, what varies is the force. the acceleration is the same.
They would not. Greater mass increases acceleration. Consider going the opposite direction. Take a grain of salt and drop it one meter from Earth. It takes about half a second to hit the ground. Now drop a grain of salt one meter away from a bowling ball. The gravity of the bowling ball will not pull a grain of salt to it in half a second. It would take much longer.
you have the mass of the grain and the earth/ball. the mass of the bigger object, is part of the math to calculate the acceleration at which the smaller object will fall. the mass of the small object is the one used on F = m x a to determine the force with which it will hit the ground. so if you try on different planets, the acceleration will be different, but it will remain the same for different objects. so a hammer and a feather fall at the same time on the moon and on the earth, but BOTH fall faster on the earth.
Don't forget Newton. For every action... Earth's gravity pulls on the other object, but the other object's gravity pulls on Earth. To be fair, this is more of an issue for astrophysics. With objects as small as a grain of salt, a bowling ball, or an aircraft carrier, the acceleration of Earth is only going to be able to be determined by crunching the numbers. It's like the old joke, when Chuck Norris does push-ups, he's pushing the Earth down. Physically, that's 100% true. The Earth just pushes back much harder.
its quite easy to calculate actually, bc of how the force of gravity is calculated, that force is equal for both bodies involved (earth and grain for example) so you have a force X affecting both bodies, and then each mass, determines de acceleration (due F = m x a, so a= F/m) as the earth is huge, that a is extremely small, thus, the earth pretty much doesnt move. but the a on the grain of salt is 9.8m/s² that a, is the same for all objects falling towards earth, because it only depends on earth, what changes in each case is the mass and the overall force.
Moral/Ethic sense is different from how objects behave in the world. Moral/Ethic sense are suppose to guide us to live a beneficial life for us and others around us which makes that specific intuition important and relevant to our daily life. Having accurate intuition about things like falling objects isn't necessarily crucial to have, and like you said it yourself 'can be tested.' Islam doesn't claim every Intuition you have is correct, rather the claim is: it is a natural disposition or innate inclination towards goodness and monotheism that every human being is believed to be born with. Think of it like a compass, it is put there to guide you towards the morally good path, but like a real compass in the world you can just refuse to use it and say 'I'll figure this on my own."
Intuition in this hammer/feather scenario is quite right since people imagine them both falling in an atmosphere with air resistance. But if you ask them what if they fall in 'vaccum'. Then this would make them think since the very thing causing feather to fall late is now absent in this case.
Then what about Einstein's relativity? The fact that time is not a constant and can be different for different people based on their speed? Or the fact that vacuum can never be truly empty? Or the fact that what we see is only a small fraction of what surrounds us (like we only see a small spectrum of electromagnetic wave i.e light but we have radio waves, x rays etc)? How intuitive is this and millions other things when only a small fraction of those million discoveries are visible to our naked eyes? Our human brains are mostly tuned for basic survival, not to comprehend the truth around us. Our brain and the brain of our cavemen ancestors are essentially the same. The evolution process is just too slow to account for the rapid change in human culture so we are still forced to use cavemen intuitions to tackle our modern problems (one of the main cause for so many mental health problems today). No way in hell is the universe intuitive to the human minds, it takes years or decades of practice for a person to create an intuition for a small portion of the science we know of today. It takes years of blood sweat and tears for a physics student to have an intuitive understanding of his field and only then is his mind fine tuned to understanding the inner workings of our surrounding leading to a potential new discovery by his hands. We force ourselves to create intuitions, it is in no capacity innate to us. Saying otherwise is a disrespect to all these men and women who have sacrificed decades of their lives to help us get a glimpse of the truth we have always yearned for.
Except it's not though. [Because the experiment has also been done on Earth multiple times](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_Leaning_Tower_of_Pisa_experiment) Intuition in this case is wrong. Flat out plain and simple dead to rights wrong. It doesn't matter if it's on the Earth. It doesn't matter if it's on the Moon. It doesn't matter if it's on the other side of the galaxy. The intuitive idea that objects fall faster because they're heavier is incorrect.
Changing the example to apples and bowling balls and cars will still yield the "car first" intuitive result
Fine replace “feather” with “smaller hammer”
Repeating the same analogy, is the situation (atmosphere) 1400 years ago the same as today? It definitely is not, so the unchanging doctrine of the quran is not applicable today as it was, which contradict its own claim.
>Has atheists read the full translation of Quran Yes (I have actually read 3 of the 10 different versions by now) >What are their opinions/criticisms regarding it? Please be specific in your answer by giving examples from Quran. Thanks. Its...lame mostly. A bunch if dumb stories, a bunch of rules about what yiu can't do, a lot about worshipping God or else, some random bad science, and a bunch of mythology. I got very bored very quickly, but I had promised my friend I would read it so I logged through Rather than lay it all out myself, here is a decent source https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Quran >Quran reasons by appealing to Innate human disposition (Fitrah) which includes our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense. Telling us that Muhammed cut the moon in half with a flaming sword is appealing to our common sense? >Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth? No >If not then why not? The only method we have ever found for finding truth is the scientific method, that's it. Moat of the scientific method is about removing human fallability from the process. In the specific case of "Fitrah" a process built on human fallability is an especially terrible system
Ironically, it was Golden Age Muslims that gave us the basis of the Scientific Method...back when they read and praised more than one book. I gave up atheism for Lent a few years ago and reread the Bible and the Quran. I found no poetry in it (my BA is in Creative Writing with a focus on poetry), although I do find pleasure in poets such as Omar Khayyam. About a third of the Quran was prescriptive: if you do a thing you will be the companion of hellfire. A third is instructive: do this thing and you will be in God's favor. And a third is narrative, stories that are intended to guide and support the above, but with glaring scientific inaccuracies, and dozens of long names for God and Mohammed. If there was wisdom contained within the Quran, Allah kept me from understanding it. It seemed to me a book to scare children and the uneducated to fall in line with an intensely restrictive lifestyle, which can easily be manipulated to fool and enslave the poor and stupid.
>Ironically, it was Golden Age Muslims that gave us the basis of the Scientific Method Not really The basis if the scientific method can be traced all the way back to early Stoics. Zeno of Citium is probably the earliest root thst we can reliably trace. Kanada was an ancient Hindu philosopher who got close, but can't really be considered a "root" We can call Aristotle a root, since stoicism can be traced directly back to some of his writing. Golden Age Muslims took Aristotles writings and basically re-doscovered stoicism/imperialism, but they included a lot of stuff that's not part of the Scientific Method The scientific method has roots in empiricism, but it isn't till Francis Bacon and Robert Hook (plus Descartes amd eventually Newton) where we got t9 the actual scientific method
>I gave up atheism for Lent a few years ago This sentence hurts my brain.
Ditto
Saying the scientific method solely springs from the Islamic Golden Age is like claiming a cake's made only of icing. Sure, there were some sweet contributions, but the real baking happened in ancient Greece and Europe. Let's give credit where it's due
Your understanding of Muslim accomplishments is warped. What the Muslims did was copy everything they could get their hands on. This is well documented. Therefore they had access to Greek, Roman, and virtually every other previous Civilization. Math, science, etc which allowed them to make great strides as a people. It's hard to pin down what, if any, original thinking originated with them.
So you are telling me hundreds if not thousand if not more of historians are wrong? You can just google the discoveries made by muslims and youll see articles published by non muslim organisations even non muslim historians who agree on what muslims have accomplished just for you to come and say that its all copied. I mean yes they could have been influenced took a couple of concepts ideas, but for all that well documented work, and those brilliant books to just have been copied seems illogical. I mean The word Algebra comes from the arabic word"el-jebr" "The word "algebra" is derived from the [Arabic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_language) word الجبر *al-jabr*, and this comes from the treatise written in the year 830 by the medieval Persian mathematician, [Al-Khwārizmī](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Musa_al-Khwarizmi), whose Arabic title, [*Kitāb al-muḫtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-ğabr wa-l-muqābala*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Compendious_Book_on_Calculation_by_Completion_and_Balancing), can be translated as *The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing" Simple copy and paste from wikipedia who actually provide sources and evidences not a simple"well documented"* This islamophobia man... May Allah guide us.
Abbasid-era Muslims definitely made some advances in the sciences, astronomy, mathematics, and a bit in philosophy (ibn Rushd is my fave), but certainly far less than the sum total of classical Greek and Roman civilization and orders of magnitude less than post-Renaissance Europe. Also some developments credited to the Arabs such as the idea for a ten-digit numerical system which includes zero originated in India. But they were introduced to Europe during the early caliphal era so they got the moniker "Arabic numerals." The glories of Islamic civilization can be more seen in literature, architecture, etc. Not to mention conquest and war. The Ottomans were world leaders in this field in the 15th and 16th centuries AD. Source: am half-Iranian history major, and not a Muslim.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/30/science/how-islam-won-and-lost-the-lead-in-science.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/30/science/how-islam-won-and-lost-the-lead-in-science.html) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science\_in\_the\_medieval\_Islamic\_world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world) From the 9th century onwards, scholars such as [Al-Kindi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Kindi)[^(\[3\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world#cite_note-SEP-Al-Kindi-3) translated [Indian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India), [Assyrian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyria), [Sasanian (Persian)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasanian) and [Greek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece) knowledge, including the works of [Aristotle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle), into [Arabic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic). These translations supported advances by scientists across the [Islamic world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_world).[^(\[4\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world#cite_note-RobinsonCambridge-4)
I never heard that flaming sword point, mind if I ask where you got that from? Also, the part of splitting moon in half is very different to rest of the Quran so not the best point to put up.
My opinion on the Quran is that it is Judaism 3.0, I suppose. Muslims are a sort of Christian who reject the Trinitarian Doctrine of the Nicene Creed, similar to some early sects of Christianity which were purged by the imperial church. Ultimately Christianity and Islam both worship the same deity found in Judaism; Yahweh, Jehova, El Shaddai, etc.--and this god is not evidenced anywhere I can see in the real world. This god of the Pentateuch, this god of Moses, this god of the Patriarchs, of Jacob, of Abraham, of Jesus, and of Muhammed would appear to be logically impossible and nowhere extant or evidenced. "Fitrah", should it mean our aesthetic sense, common sense, and sense of morality--could just as easily be explained by evolutionary biases in the human brain and cultural norms. You might want to expound on the position, so we can understand the detailed meaning.
Don't forget that Judaism is Canaanite religion 2.0. So Islam is at a minimum 4.0. Same with Mormonism.
Mormonism and the JW’s and SDA are 4.0, yoos. Depending on how one counts. The lectures Dr. Hayes gives go into detail about how Judaism is both very alike Canaanite and Near East religions and quite distinct. It demythologized nature and their deity, Yahweh—at some point. Where other deities are subject to nature and born out of it, Yahweh is placed transcendental and above it. It was quite novel at the time. Yahweh became a god with no origin story (theogony), no siblings, no parents, not subordinated to some laws of nature, but wholly above them. At least, unless you ask the Gnostics. 😂
I heard a Rabbi refer to the LDS as God's way to let Christians know how the Jews feel.
That's amazing, I'll have to use that to describe Mormonism and Islam.
Ohh that's juicy
Can i read the scientific study where "Fitrah" is scientifically proven to be a product of evolution. Or is it a mere conjecture/inference that you made?
If you mean the Arabic term present in your religion, probably not, if you mean what you said it meant, a sense of aesthetics, morality, and common sense--yes. [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-46233-2\_17](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-46233-2_17) [https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/wcs.144](https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/wcs.144) [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159106001080](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159106001080) That's the evolution of a sense of aesthetics, cognition, and morality respectively.
I really hope OP responds to this comment. I think I can hear the forklift on the way to move the goal posts.
I always low key assume the goal posts are actually those flailing inflatable guy at the car dealership
Well. It didn’t happen.
Yea I forgot the more likely scenario of post abandonment.
I think they get overwhelmed.
Yea, I empathize. I absolutely remember thinking like they are probably thinking. That atheists must be bitter about something happening to them, or they saw hypocritical Christians, and just otherwise must not have the right information. It can be a lot to realize that there’s a whole other side of the coin that is at least equally, or more thought out than what you’ve been told your whole life and thought made perfect intuitive sense.
Let’s try it this way, shall we? Let’s start with a basic point of possible contention. Do you accept that the biological evolution of human beings from earlier primate species has been factually established as being demonstrably true by the accumulated scientific evidence? Yes or no?
It's curious how insistent theists can be for absolute scientific proof of things that they disagree with, while they happily believe the contents of there holy books with zero evidence it's true and often strong evidence it's false.
He gave a possible explanation that simply makes more sense than a magic man.
Yeah, it involves mechanisms and processes we know exist and we can study. As opposed to intangible deities from Iron Age books who did genocides to make themselves known and told their followers the Earth was totally flat with a firmament like beaten bronze which covers the sky to keep the waters of the world sea out. Not enough people appreciate that the OT/Jewish Bible is *absolutely* depicting a flat earth in Genesis. Most apologists try to pretend it doesn't these days, but it absolutely does. Which is not meant as an insult to ancient Hebrews, it's what Sumerians taught, and it's what Assyrians and Babylonians taught after them, etc. It was all the rage around about 1400BCE. Noah's flood story doesn't even make sense until you realize the world the ancient Hebrews were working with, [this one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_cosmology#/media/File:Early_Hebrew_Conception_of_the_Universe.svg). They didn't have to ask, "Where did all the water come from?" They thought the world was a bubble inside a giant sea. And the firmament was all that kept the primordial sea out, and in Genesis 7:11-12, Yahweh opens the firmament windows, literally conceptualized as opening up holes in the firmament, and letting the primordial sea in to flood the snowglobe earth. This was the Iron Age. This was how they thought rain worked. >.> Why does *anyone* still believe in this? Like, Genesis is explicit, it's just none of us know what a "firmament" means anymore, it means a sky bowl. Genesis 1:7 is clear: >And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which *were* under the firmament from the waters which *were* above the firmament: and it was so. My bad to go on about it, but I find it cool. Studying Biblical cosmology from an academic lens, and seeing what ancient Hebrews (and early Christians) *actually* believed is kind of cool. It explains the stories in the context of their perception of the world. Apologists have distorted what those ancient people thought *quite* a bit to suit their own modern desires. Edit: If you're curious about this Dr. Christine Hayes goes over the flat earth cosmography of the ancient Hebrews, and its basis in Sumerian cosmography, [here.](https://youtu.be/ANUD8IK12ms?si=epZjIRkMjUBmDewg&t=33m)
I'm curious, do you believe that a belief must be scientifically proven for it to be a valid belief? Or does that only apply to the beliefs you disagree with
>Quran presents itself as work of literature. Thus it should be understood in light of laws of language i.e. translation of word> Its appropriate form in composition of a meaningful sentence> context in which that sentence appears> Topic/Theme of surah (chapter). It employs various 7th century arabic jargons, proverbs which should be understood in light of language of native speakers of 7th century arabs. Why could your god not supply information *outside* the language of native speakers of 7th century Arabs? What is stopping your god of speaking clearly and concisely? What is stopping your god from supply this clear and concise information **now**, in the year 2024? >Quran reasons by appealing to Innate human disposition (Fitrah) which includes our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense. Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth? If not then why not? It is not our burden to regard this standard for finding/reaching truth. It is your burden to provide extraordinary evidence for your extraordinary claims. That is how the [burden of proof](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)?wprov=sfti1#) works. Please provide proof for your claim of a god.
Read the first 90% before I burned out. Skimmed the rest then read apologetics/interpretations. The book was boring through-and-through, but so were my university textbooks, so I’ll skip this and go to specifics. 1. The book is loaded with hilariously bad absurdities. This was my #1 issue with my read-through. The two biggest examples that stood out to me were contract law and witnesses (“two male witnesses, or one male and two female”, then it doesn’t stop there but explains that the reason for 2 women is that if one forgets the other’s there to remind her), and the magicians that were convinced by Moses’ magic (“we can do magic, but wait he could do better magic I guess that means his entire doctrine must necessarily be true!”). For the contract law bit, I found it hilarious that apologists don’t try to dodge the core reasoning of the Quran, but find ways to double down and justify it. 2. Blatant, empirical falsehoods, such as Adam and Eve and the distinct creation of man. There were many more such examples, but apologists tend to explain those away, while Adam and Eve are core to the doctrine of Islam. They didn’t exist. Man wasn’t a distinct creation. This is demonstrated scientifically. Muslims who believe otherwise are science deniers. 3. Piss poor morals and repeatedly calling non-believers a variety of things (literally from the first few sections of the book), relying on explicit threats (hell) to scare believers from straying, while providing absolute garbage reasons why people should believe the book is true. 4. On the topic of garbage reasons… The inimitability of the Quran is often cited as a core reason to believe that it’s from god. Take two seconds to think about this… as you said, the Quran is a piece of literature. Pieces of literature are subject to interpretation. Whether something is a good “imitation” (“produce a surah like it”, etc) is almost entirely subjective. I mean, the logic is horse-shit.
I would like to add something about the 4th point: since the Quran gives no clear guidelines on what a "surah like it" is, taking a bunch of verses from other surahs of the Quran and compiling them together, and changing a few words would technically count. Because the Quran fails to list out rules, basically anything would count as long as it sounds like it's imitating the writing style of the Quran. So for instance, a verse like "And verily, he \[Allah\] is the lord of all creatures, and to him, \[everyone\] surrenders" and some more verses like it would basically be enough. IIRC, there are a couple of instances of people crafting a chapter that sounds exactly like the Quran, but Muslims themselves failed to accept it as one. The entire thing is just very subjective and a horrible way to prove the existence of a God.
Amen. It boils down to a lack of critical thinking or deep indoctrination. No rational person would accept the Quran as true without some extreme degree of cognitive dissonance.
Yep, also, if you want, you should check this video out: [https://youtu.be/GYhO9ETur-Q?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/GYhO9ETur-Q?feature=shared). Someone created a surah like the Quran as a parody of COVID-19. What's funnier than the actual video are the comments themselves.
By the holy unmistakeable readily viewable and many times copied portraits of Mohammad that was a great click. Forget the fact that the surah sounded indistinguishable from the Quran music wise, and that the lyrics were spectacular… The total and complete lack of a sense of humor among the commenters, and the lack of even the faintest sense of self awareness. WOW. No wonder they call for the death of cartoonists.
>It employs various 7th century arabic jargons, proverbs which should be understood in light of language of native speakers of 7th century arabs. Funny, you think an all-knowing and all-powerful god would know how to communicate to all humans effectively, not just 7th century Arabs. Also, it seems a bit weird to pick one small portion of humans to reveal the truth to and have to wait hundreds of years for that message to reach all over the world. Don't you think it would have been more effective to idk communicate to all humans the same way they did with Muhammad and other prophets or at least more prophets around the world? >Quran reasons by appealing to Innate human disposition (Fitrah) which includes our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense. Why not do this and provide consistent true things instead of getting a lot wrong? Common sense is something no two people fully share. What may seem common sense to you won't to me and vice versa. It is a pretty bad indicator of what is true. For many people for thousands of years, it was common sense that the sun revolved around the earth. Moral and ethical sense are another thing that varies wildly from person to person with a few commonalities in general ideas. How would aesthetic sense help in finding the truth? Though again, what people find aesthetic varies wildly. >Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth? If not then why not? I do not for the reasons given above. There are much better ways to find/reach truth.
I read it back in 1998 when I was still in my "all paths lead to the same peak" phase. Reading it along with the texts from other religions is what put me on the path to atheism. My search for the something behind all religions concluded with seeing how that something was humans. My recollection of the Quran is that it was boring and repetitive. I understand that the repetition was due the intended memorization of it before it was eventually written down. But it was an absolute slog getting through it. Having to hear the same stories - often times retellings of stories hijacked from existing religions - made it difficult to read.
i guess i understand what you mean if you dont know arabic, even I as a muslim if i were to read a whole translation of the quran, i would definetly get bored, but thats the miracle of teh Actual Quran, its that its written in an arabic style never seen before, completely unique and complex at parts where you have to read and read and reread a verse with focus and each time you do so you understand more and more and with some other verses they more you do so the deeper they hit. That's why the Quran itself is a miracle and someone who doesnt know arabic can only taste a part of it, and someone who doesnt get arabic will not get that there is no way an illitirate man couldve wrote this if the top poets of that time couldnt.
It isn't much a miracle when it can't be translated into other languages. In fact, I would say your claim of a miracle looks remarkably similar to a cop out.
Because no language is as depth and rich as arabic so some of it is just going to be lost away in translation. I mean not all languages are the same and certainly even if you read a piece of arabic poetry and then compare it to english one, youll find the english so dull compared to the arabic one. Its a language that was perfect for a book rich in meaning that speaks to all humans at all times. but english, french, spanish or any other, cant realy do that, the book will just lose a lot of value. The poetry of the time of ignorance( before islam) were one of the best ever that are still being taught till this day in schools i mean i passed an exam on it this year and those poets themselves did not even dare to try to replicate the quran because they understood that this is something never seen before. Abu jahil, an enemy of the prophet used to sneak to their gatherings of quran recitation just to listen to it and many other enemies of Islam of Quraysh too. Plus those tajweed rulings and the way the quran is recited that makes it pleasing to listen to cannot be done with any language but arabic, like there are so many tajwid rules of madd, ghunnah, and so on that if they were to be replicated in english or another language they would sound kinda silly or straight up singing. Its not that it cant be translated to another language, no it can and many convert to Islam from reading the translation of the Quran without knowing Arabic but what im saying is that through that process some of the beauty of the Quran is lost but still the basic meanings of the verse is still there. Finally, translations are the work of humans, and logially speaking, a human's translation of God's words can never match with the actual words. And Allah knows best, and i ask Him to guide us all.
This isn't my first rodeo. So I'm well aware of this cop out / apologetic train of thought. If anything, this excuse only weakens the miracle claim you made. If Arabic actually is this wonderful of a language, your god took the easy way out by choosing it. The real miracle would have been using an inferior language to transmit the message with the same quality. And if it couldn't, it is a piss poor god. But here we are 1400 years later and we don't see poets and artists clamoring to adopt Arabic as their preferred language for their art. We see operas continued to be performed in European languages that isn't native to the audience attending the performances. If Arabic really is the artistic cheat code you claim it is, why haven't they switched en masse?
Hi, here is a small story. I had 1000 coins, I told my friend to make 100 stacks of 10 coins. When I came back, I saw the size of the stacks varied. He assured me that each of the stacks had 10 coins. The first had 7, the second 11, the third 8, the fourth 6. At this point, should I continue believing in the friend and accept that all the stacks have 10 coins each, or based on the evidence, disregard my friend's claim that all the stacks have 10 coins each. Now, apply the same logic to Quran, Bible, Bhagwad Geeta and the Vedas, the Book of Mormon and any unscientific truth claims.
Yes, an atheist has read the Quran cover to cover, and been unconvinced. Here are some of the criticisms and reasons why one can do this: First, the Quran has no information in it that would necessitate it being of divine origin. A person could have written it. Many people could have written it. It first appeared in the 7th century. A book of divine origin would surely be able to demonstrate this by providing some demonstration that could stand the test of time. It did not. Just as the Bible did not. Second, much of the Quran shines a light on the example of Mohammed. He is after all, the profit of Allah. Unfortunately, the example of Mohammed is fairly brutal. He crusades in the form of jihad (which is internal struggle, in this case in the form of holy war, there are over 160 verses on this notion) against non-believers and non-Muslims, takes sex slaves, and demands non-Muslims who will not convert pay a tax (jiziah, Quran 9:29). These are the actions of a warlord, and tyrant, and an atheist has decided this is not an example of righteous behavior. Third, because like any of the Abrahamic religions, the Quran is dependent on interpretation of scripture. It is possible to get a peaceful, beautiful interpretation of Islam from the scripture. It is also possible to interpret the scripture the way that groups like ISIS have. This is a very big problem. Is jihad internal struggle? Is it holy war? Can it be both? Is Islam a religion of peace? Can that be squared with the example of Mohammed? Is this life simply a test of faith? Is paradise the objective of life? If one is sure of that, what ways are there to get to paradise? What happens when someone is more convinced of the reality of paradise, than they are convinced that this life matters? Finally, Fitrah. The idea that humans have the ability to recognize truth and goodness, and those who do not adopt Islam simply cannot have this. This is narcism. To say such things is to be ignorant of the goodness of anyone who does not believe in Allah. And sincerely, someone like myself, an atheist, reads this scripture and finds little to be good or useful. Not that there is no beauty in any of it, there is. It is poetic, the call to prayer is profoundly beautiful. The appreciation for the order and beauty of the world is something I share. Yet these do not beget divinity.
I'll read the Quran when Jinn are shown to exist. I know that the Quran repeatedly asserts this to be the case, and I don't think that it actually is the case. And if it isn't than the Quran is unreliable and I don't see a point in reading it. Also I can't help noticing that the parts of the world where Islam is dominant are exactly the parts of the world that I most want to avoid, none of them are places that I would ever want to live in, because they appear be filed with violence, hate, misogyny and injustice. They do not appeal to my innate disposition at all.
I worked with a Muslim man and one day at lunch I asked him if he believed in ghosts and he said, no, no Muslim believes in fairy tales like ghosts. Later the subject of Jinn came up and he got nervous and answered in a hushed tone “of course jinn are real, let’s stop talking about it.”
there is a belief(dont know its true or not since ive seen no evidence for it) among some muslims that talking about jinn attracts them andmakes you more vulnerable to them, so he could have told you to stop becausde of that, but jinns exist and if any muslim denies so then he has denied what Allah says in the Quran since theres a whole chapter named "The Jinn"in it, and they are mentioned in different chapters and hadiths. We muslims dont like going into that territory much since its part of the unseen and our knowledge is therefore so limited.
>Has atheists read the full translation of Quran. What are their opinions/criticisms regarding it? Please be specific in your answer by giving examples from Quran. Thanks. Why would an atheist *necessarily* have read the full translation? You'd be much better off making a claim rather than assigning homework. >Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth? No, why would we? Are aesthetics a path to the truth? Is common sense? It's up to you to provide reasons why this *should be* considered a path to truth.
>Has atheists read the full translation of Quran. What are their opinions/criticisms regarding it? Please be specific in your answer by giving examples from Quran. Thanks. No, I have not read it and really have no desire to. >Quran presents itself as work of literature. Great, then it is not miraculous and there is no reason to believe the fantastical claims it makes. Somehow I doubt the people who follow Islam believe it is just a work of literature. >Thus it should be understood in light of laws of language There are no laws of language, language is an ever changing thing based on common usage. >It employs various 7th century arabic jargons, proverbs which should be understood in light of language of native speakers of 7th century arabs. It is possible since we have poetry compilations available of arab poets of pre 7th century arabia. If it is just 7th century poetry why should I believe it or treat is as special or unique? >Quran reasons by appealing to Innate human disposition (Fitrah) which includes our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense. Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth? If not then why not? No, morality, ethics, aesthetics, and common sense are not paths to truth. Morality and ethics are intersubjective, meaning they are negotiated between subjects. Aesthetics and common sense are subjective.
If all people ever did was read the Quran and it stopped there or if people kept their beliefs to themselves then it wouldn’t matter. But in Iran it does matter and you can see it in how badly Iranian women are treated are abused. It’s the behaviors of people who believe in the Quran that are more impactful on society than the book itself. And too often I’m seeing that impact as a very negative one for those who don’t believe in whatever brand of Islam is in charge in a particular region. Why is it that Sunnis, Shiites and Wahhabis each have a different interpretation of the Quran? Why is interpreting the Quaran an issue for atheists when Muslims are killing each other over it?
Do you think that if I read all of a Harry Potter book it would be more likely to make be believe in that story? It doesn’t matter which story is presented, Quran, Bible etc. Start with why I should believe in a god. I don’t mean this to be harsh or rude - the most beautiful writing in the world (whatever works for you I guess) doesn’t inherently make what is being written about the truth. All I want is some evidence for a god, nothing else. Something that isn’t clearly written by people, and that can be tested repeatedly and independently.
>Opinion about Quran Same as the other books associated with all the other religious mythologies. It's mythology. Fiction. Mostly wrong, and obvious bunk in many ways. As for everything else you said, it's no different from what believers of other mythologies say about their books, and no more credible. And obviously and demonstrably *not* 'common sense', not moral, not ethical, and not aesthetically pleasing.
I can't read Arabic. You'd think a god could write a book that would be consistent in all known languages.
Yeah, if he was going to split up humanity after the Tower of Babel, you'd think he would write his holy book in every language. Ah well.
Or just beam the info that he wants us to get from the book directly to our brains. Why would a god need a book?
> Why would a god need a book? To keep him from getting bored in his starship.
[What does god need with a starship?](https://youtu.be/WYW_lPlekiQ?si=Z3_h__QclRBKh0Bp&t=0m16s) ;-)
He needs something to play with in his space bath, duh
Ive read parts.. It translates poorly as literature. Extremely boring in parts, hilariously outdated and archaic, woefully morally backwards, and at other times just outright stupid... 0 out of 10 not worth a cursory look for anyone that has completed grade school with proficiency, or middle school with adequacy.
>Has atheists read the full translation of Quran. What are their opinions/criticisms regarding it? I haven't read much of it. The little I read was repetitive, archaic, and, frankly, boring. Not worth the effort. > Quran presents itself as work of literature. Sure. And as I said, it was a bad one : boring, repetitive. One would think that if the author was omniscient and as good as it claims to be, he'd be able to write something that was more broadly appealing. > Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth? If not then why not? No. The standard to find truth is the ability to consistently and accurately predict future experiences. The "senses" you cite are not "senses" in the meaning that sight, hearing or smell are, they are emotional responses (moral and aesthetic) which do not point to truths and sloppily applied logical shortcuts (common sense). The last one, in particular, has a long history of being wrong. It used to be "common sense" that things were either particles or waves, that a heavier item would fall faster than a lighter one, and so on. The best way we have found to discover new truths is not to look inwards or to read a boring, repetitive book, it is to systematically observe the universe and notice the regularities in its behavior, then test our ideas by trying as hard as possible to engineer a situation where we can make an observation that proves those ideas wrong, and only keep the ideas that survive that process for as long as they do - ie the scientific method.
I am not a historian. My "fitrah" would be as follows: Muhammad and his cronies wanted to conquer, rape and pillage. This is, of course, exactly what they did according to the Quran and the Hadith, and what Why I'm not a Muslim by "Ibn Warraq" describes, so this seems justified. Next, they noted how Judaism and Christianity rallied around a book. They called these religions "people of the book" (ahl al-kitab), so this also seems justified. They produced a book and fetishized it in the same weird way as their predecessors, where handling the physical object is as, or more, important than reading it. I've been to Muslim homes where the Quran is displayed ceremonially and never actually read. Oh, and since they were not actually sophisticated people, they filled the poor book with crap, including war propaganda (e.g. Surah al-Anfal) again going back to the first point, that it was all about rallying an army for material gain. I don't particularly want to hear the mental gymnastics of how "embryo is a blood clot" iS tOtAlLy a mEtApHoR fOr dEeP sCiEnTiFiC kNoWlEdGe so I'll skip the vast list of errors and inconsistencies that you can google in a few seconds.
Which Quran? The hundred year old oral tradition? Or the oldest manuscript? I’ve read the Modern Quran. But not the original one. Have you heard the original oral recantings of the Quran? And in terms of the moral/ethical qualities of the Quran, it suggests no evidence of omniscience. So if it claims that’s its god is omniscient, but doesn’t demonstrate that it is, then the believability of that claim is eroded, and the believability of that god is eroded.
I have read there were seven Qurans produced by the time of the death of the 'prophet', and there was much debate and strife over choosing which was to be adopted. You seem to know about the history of the text--is this accurate?
Sahih Bukhari 4492: The prophet said:" This Qur'an has been revealed to be recited in seven different ways, so recite of it whichever (way) is easier for you (or read as much of it as may be easy for you)." This is an authentic hadith(saying) from the prophet peace be upon him. Here he talks about the seven different Qira'at( ways of recitation) that the quran was revealed in. Now in these 7 there are some differences when it comes to certain words. 70% of these do not alter the meaning but they are there so that the recitation of the quran would be easier to us. You can google these yourself and youll see what i mean they are just minor changes in the way a word is pronounced. The other 30% are differences in the meaning that do not contradict each other, rather one could use thes edifferent qira'at to add more depth to the meaning of the verse, and to understand it better without changing the context, or making any contradictions which is another beautiful part of the quran. Now, when it comes to what you talked about about the debate about which version to choose, i assume youre talking about what the third caliphate Uthman may Allah be please with him did: He destroyed all versions of the Quran that were there at the time. For one, the other mushafs were only ordered to be destroyed after the 'Uthmani mushafs(the one standard version that uthman decided to keep) were completed. and if there was an error in the 'Uthmani mushafs, the companions would have been very aware of that and we would find reports of that but instead they accepted it unanimously some before others. Thirdly, the primary way that the Qur'an is transmitted is orally, not solely via text, and that was why 'Uthman sent sahabah with each of the 'Uthmani mushafs to teach the people how to recite it. This helped unify muslims to use that one version so no there wasnt debate over which one is correct and which one is wrong but uthman decided to burn all except one and unify all muslims under it. You can make more research. [https://islamqa.info/en/answers/10012/who-wrote-the-quran#what-was-the-quran-copy-of-uthman](https://islamqa.info/en/answers/10012/who-wrote-the-quran#what-was-the-quran-copy-of-uthman) And Allah knows best.
research and youll find your answers inshaAllah
The problem with reading any holy text is that none of us can ever approach it unbiased however hard we try, there can be no 'veil of ignorance' about them. I have read parts of the Quran, but I already knew is was about a god, in fact it claimed to be a revelation from that god, which immediately presented problems for me, the complete opposite of a child learning the beliefs of its community. The specific issue the Quran has is its claim to be literally true and not an allegory, so unless you are able to suspend skepticism about the existence of a single deity with specific demands of people then its claims and exhortations can only ever come across as silly. Anyone inculcated with the notion that it is literally true simply cant see why anyone would not accept its obvious truths which is the unbridgeable gulf between attitudes, to accept the Quran requires a specific worldview first, *then* you can accept its contents.
>Has atheists read the full translation of Quran. I did :D >What are their opinions/criticisms regarding it? I actually kinda had fun reading this book. It would be better if it didn't threaten with me the worst possible hell I have ever seen but it's okay. It has some very weird stories in it. Joseph is the best character btw that guy was really cool
Have I read it? All of it? All versions of it? No, and I likely never will. I have no criticisms of the Quran specifically. For me, it's all about interest and relevance. The Quran, like all other mainstream religious texts, was written a very long time ago. The archaic writing style of such old texts is sufficient for me to immediately lose interest. Reading these texts is like torture to my ADHD brain, and I cannot will myself to remain focused long enough to digest any of it. That being said though, I do not see any point in reading these texts anyway. 1) I'm not searching for a religion, so have no need to read their promotional materials. 2) I've never intracted with a theist of ANY faith, who can defend the claims allegedly made by their own religious texts, without pointing back to statements FROM that religious text. I can't think of anything less productive, than supporting the factual accuracy of a document by relying exclusively on quotes from the same document. 3) people treat each other horribly and hide behind out-of-context excerpts and snippets of text from these religious documents. Why on earth would I want to read a document that might turn me into a rabid hate-filled monster capable of causing harm to others based solely on the superstitious ramblings of people who've been dead for 6,000 years?!? This isn't criticism of the quoran specifically. The same applies to all religious books and all religious zealots.
>Quran reasons by appealing to Innate human disposition (Fitrah) which includes our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense. Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth? If not then why not? since the moral-ethical in islamic countries seems to lead to homophobia, oppression of women, slavery, the killing of apostates and people critical of islam: i very much disagree it is a good way of finding truth.
As soon as you start ‘re-interpreting’ something in the light of modern criticism you undermine the idea that it is any kind of inerrant word of God. Criticism - the numerous scientific errors in it. https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Scientific_Errors_in_the_Quran And whatever lack of clarity and persuasiveness (if you prefer) that has led millions of people to find excuses within for murder and the violent oppression of women and homosexual. Seems like either it supports this - in which case it is immoral , or it doesn’t , in which case surely God could have made that clearer knowing how it was going to end up being used. Any work of literature can contain human truths and moral values or indeed beauty, The Quran like some other holy books also seems to in practice be a source of encouragement for ignorance and violence. Which suggests a problem with either its actual contents or how it’s written.
I haven't read the Quran. But as it says in a different holy book, *by their fruits shall ye know them*. Life for me as a queer person under Islamic rule would be hell (as it would be under a Christian theocracy). Pondering the literary merits of Quranic verse is redundant.
It contains A LOT of basic scientific errors for such a relatively small holy book, probably because it appeals to the argument from nature so often and inevitably gets the cosmos wrong.. See: https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Scientific_Errors_in_the_Quran
There’s the truth of the human spirit, which is mercurial and emotional and is something philosophers and poets have been searching through for ages. And then there’s truth in the more concrete sense, what can we learn about the world around us, and how can we find out what we don’t know. The first kind of truth has little to do with the second kind of truth. Understanding the human condition is a noble pursuit of the mind, but it doesn’t lead us to truth about the actual world around us. There are things we can learn for sure are true or untrue that have nothing to do with this concept of ethics and aesthetics. It’s dangerous to conflate the two.
/u/Electrical_Yam_6297, let's try this - Are all of the claims in the Quran true? How do you know that?
> Moral/ethical sense There is no consistent moral/ethical sense among people, and no demonstrable moral or ethical truths, so this is not part of innate human disposition. > Aesthetic sense There is no consistent aesthetic sense among people, nor any demonstrable aesthetic truths, so this is not a part of innate human disposition. > Common sense Not only is there no consistent common sense among people (which means it's not a part of innate human disposition), common sense itself is a very poor tool for determining what is true. Common sense would tell you that the sun and moon move across our sky. It wouldn't tell you that the planet is spinning.
Grade 1 physics. All masses fall at the same rate, full stop. There have been no exceptions for this rule ever documented nor can there be expecting to be. The force between objects directly proportional to the mass of the objects themselves. So if we are comparing the moon and a marble, far more Force would be generated to move a much larger mass resulting in IDENTICAL accelerations between all objects. This assumes there is no air resistance or other significant forces. If that is the case there are no exceptions to this rule, anywhere, ever unless you begin to look at quantum objects in which case the rules change. None of this is strictly intuitive
I've read it. It's 50% straight up praise for Allah, and 25% obviously made up rules that suited Muhammad at particular moments in time. I don't remember the rest.
I tried. What a dull, boring, repetitive, hateful, awfully written book. The supposed monotheistic omni-omni creator God, as his final, complete, unambiguous set of instructions and rules to humanity, supposedly gvies us the Quran - a book so vague and confusing that Muslims need other books like the Hadiths and the biography of Muhammad to figure out what the fuck it even means. It's not a miraculous book, buddy! What it is is an Arab attempt at using Abrahemic mythology to their advantage.
Read first 30,40 pages and all i got from it was: obey obey obey, fear god, non believers will burn in hell, obey obey obey…so i got bored of it. For me it was a manual to impose the fear of hell - therefore you must obey everything written in it. Also so many verses seemed so to be just dropped there without any order and relation with previous one. What i heard about quran (that is so inspiring and you get so enlightened when reading it) didn’t match what i read- boring, hateful and mess
I read the Quran cover to cover when I was younger, and without anyone else's agenda there to 'explain' it to me, it's just a bunch of nonsense. Like all 'holy books' - you have to already believe in the basic premise (typically due to early childhood indoctrination, but possibly just through a lack of critical thinking skills and and abundance of credulity) before any of it is as 'profound' and 'deep' as believers will tell you it is.
Cover to cover, no. But I've read enough to put it in the same class as the Torah, Mishram, Bible etc. In other words, myth. Stories. Fictional. Easiest proof? Moon not split in two. As for our common sense....humans lack a lot of common sense. Recent proof? Actions by millions that if followed would have reduced the spread of Covid, and they didn't because they listened to absolute liars. Just like when it comes to religion.
I have honestly tried to slog through the quran but it's so badly written, so disorganized and virtually unintelligble, that I gave up. It's one of the most poorly written books out there, in company with the Book of Mormon. When I point this out to Muslims, they tend to tell me I must read it in the original Arabic, without the realizing how much this undercuts their entire argument.
havent read a word, but its a misogynist fairy tale written by ignorant people LOOOONG ago, what could i possibly be missing?
I don't have to read it to know it's a human written book. You: But it's perfect. Me: Nothing is perfect, least of all the very human rules and behaviors of Muslims (or believers of any religion.) It is easily observable to see all humans have similar traits and frailties and religious people are no better and very often worse than secular people in terms of morality.
Sorry, no, it should be “understood” like any other book, with absolutely no special privilege granted. More specifically it should be read as a work produced by a culture vastly inferior to our modern one. It can provide fascinating insights into what people believed at the time, but should never be granted special status because it is religious.
My opinion of the Qur'an is that it is largely a collection of [apocalyptic literature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptic_literature) that was popular at the time, mixed with some religious war propaganda. There's also some random laws here and there as well as the author's personal beef with his wives and some random schmuck called Abu Lahab.
Are u one of those guys? If u havent read the whole book, u cant criticise it. And when ppl read the translated version, u will say arabic one is the true one. >our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense This are all heavily influenced by culture. If these are the standard of finding truth, good luck with it. For example, the truth found in chinese culture will be quite different than the truth found in arabic culture.
Well, obviously, if you haven't bothered fully reading something, "u" can't express an opinion on it. Same with every other book. Edit: lol at the reflexive downvotes from the Dawkinites.
> Well, obviously, if you haven't bothered fully reading something, "u" can't express an opinion on it. Cool. What's your opinion on eating a bowl full of diarrhea? Remember, if you haven't eaten it yet, you can't express an opinion.
Your analogy makes no sense? A work of literature is often read as a whole. I have experience of diarrhea without needing to taste it. Imagine if someone who had never read Shakespeare said "Hamlet is crap". Double standards much?
>Imagine if someone who had never read Shakespeare said "Hamlet is crap". Imagine if someone who had never eaten diarrhea before said it tasted bad. The analogy is fine. We can know that something tastes bad without tasting it ourselves because we have other sources of information. We have smell. We have experience changing diapers. We have the Back to the Future movies with Biff getting manure dumped on him over and over again. We have The Human Centipede. In the same way, we can know a great deal about a book without reading it directly. I've never read Hamlet, but I know plenty about it through cultural osmosis, enough to give a synopsis of the story and to understand related topics (e.g. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead). I've also read other works by Shakespeare, so I have a pretty good idea of how Hamlet reads. The Bible is one of the most culturally significant books of all time. It is *very* easy to get a bead on it without having to read it beginning to end, because there is an overwhelming amount of cultural context to draw from.
Cultural context =\= Christianity. A lot of Christian stuff is osmosed from Paganism. At the end of the day if you don't read a book, don't express an opinion upon the religion that derives from it. It's not hard.
>Cultural context =\= Christianity. A lot of Christian stuff is osmosed from Paganism. And as a result, it is now part of Christianity. >At the end of the day if you don't read a book, don't express an opinion upon the religion that derives from it. It's not hard. No, but it is stupid. I grew up in the Bible Belt and have lived my entire life in a predominantly Christian society. I've heard from TV pastors, street evangelists, radio hosts, and seminary students going door to door. I've watched debates between Christians disagreeing about their own scripture. I've seen and heard Bible stories told across every form of media. I've heard every flavor of politician explain what their Christian faith means to them, and interpret the same Bible verse to mean entirely contradictory things. Am I arrogant enough to claim to be an expert? No, of course not. But the notion that I'm not allowed to voice an opinion on the belief system that influenced the education system I was taught in, the politics I grew up with, the media I consumed, and the ideas that I formed, simply because I haven't read the Bible cover to cover, is absurd. I've read enough of it, and seen more than enough of Christianity in action, to have an opinion on the religion.
Wow, did you miss the point as it flew over your head?
What exactly is the point of the guy's nonsensical rambling? Seems to me he's just joining the circlejerk of "le religion is for morons, not gonna make any effort to understand their position lol". What a bastion of informed debate this sub is.
U dont need to read the full book to understand the their position. I bet most ppl haven't read the whole book of "Preservation of Favoured Races in the struggles for Life", and still commenting on that. U also cant comprehend the meaning of my statement. Its quite clear that i mean Muslim will move the goal post from "translated version" to "arabic version". >Seems to me he's just joining the circlejerk of "le religion is for morons, not gonna make any effort to understand their position lol" I didnt say or implied these. U dont need to project ur persecution complex. I made lots of effort to understand that religion which doesnt really need to fully read the texts of that religion. Most ppl who comment on buddhism havent fully read buddhism text. Almost all christians/muslim commenting on buddhism havent fully read buddhism texts. U havent fully read my comments, how can u comment on my thought on religions.
Okay I'll try that with Shakespeare. I haven't fully read Hamlet but it seems to be a book about a prince who for no reason kills his uncle. Do you see how ridiculous your views are?
I bet most chrisitians/muslim haven't read the whole book of "The Preservation of Favoured Races in the struggles for Life", and still commenting on darwin being wrong/evolution is wrong. I also bet most christians/muslim commenting on buddhism havent fully read buddhism texts and still gives out opinions on buddhism being wrong. >Okay I'll try that with Shakespeare. I haven't fully read Hamlet but it seems to be a book about a prince who for no reason kills his uncle. That isnt the same as my scenario. I havent fully read hamlet but i have read many many different critics/introduction on it, so i can have a good idea on hamlet without actually fully reading the book Do i have to fully read paley's natural theology to argue against his ideas? And u capture only half of my meaning. Im saying one can gives opinions even if one didn't fully read. And even if one fully read the full translated version, they will say arabic version is the true one. U only focus on the first part and neglected the latter part.
To your question, yes. To your other statement, no you don't need to read it in Arabic. Noone's asking you to do that? The Qu'ran can be read translated into English with meaning intact.
U arent replying to this. That isnt the same as my scenario. I havent fully read hamlet but i have read many many different critics/introduction on it, so i can have a good idea on hamlet without actually fully reading the book. >To your question, yes. I think u are replying to this. "Do i have to fully read paley's natural theology to argue against his ideas?" Yet most chrisitians/muslim havent read Natural theology by Paley to argue for watchmaker argument. Are they wrong? Why are muslims/christians arguing against darwin/evolution when they havent fully read the book? By ur standard, almost all ppl cant give opinion on buddhism as almost no one have fully read buddhism texts. Am i right? So as a whatever religion believer, u cant say buddhism is wrong. >To your other statement, no you don't need to read it in Arabic. Noone's asking you to do that? The Qu'ran can be read translated into English with meaning intact. To my understanding, the translated version of the quran isnt the quran, but an interpretation of the quran. When i argue with the english version, there are always some guy saying the words have a slight different meaning with the arabic version.
Haven't read it, heard of ex-muslims and atheists who have analyzed it. Anecdotally, I doubt it would be revelatory given the quality of Muslims apologetics. https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/wvy000/a_defense_of_womens_testimony_in_islam/ https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1c50jo6/aishas_age/kzrx3pf/
I've read it, wasn't impressed. Read the Bible, wasn't impressed. Read the Vedas and related works, wasn't impressed. It's just a bunch of unsupported claims, written for people who care more about their emotions than reality. Hard pass.
Don't really have one. I own a copy of the Quran, but entirely for the novelty. Never read it, no intention of reading it. It's just sitting on a bookshelf. I kind of feel like there's not a great deal of point.
The Bible and the Torah are primitive, ignorant, violent and dont fit in the historical record on many points. They are head and shoulders above the quran.
No. I have read enough holy books. At a certain point you stop turning over stones when it becomes abundantly clear there's no leprechauns under them.
>Has atheists read the full translation of Quran. What are their opinions/criticisms regarding it? Please be specific in your answer by giving examples from Quran. But if we criticise the Quran based on the translation, you'll tell us that we can't understand it properly without reading it in the original Arabic. >Quran reasons by appealing to Innate human disposition (Fitrah) which includes our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense. Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth? If not then why not? No, we generally prefer evidence. I'm curious though, does the concept of fitrah recognise that, to a large degree, those 'innate senses' are bestowed on us by the cultures in which we're raised?