Problemen in de koran, hadith

Why Literalist Islam is False
(And why other forms of Islam are probably false too.)

Shorter Summary can be found in this link: HERE

 

(Reasons to doubt that the Quran is the perfect words of a maximally just and wise God—a cumulative case)

All of these alone are reasons not to be a literalist Muslim, but jointly they are devastating. 

 

Remember to ask yourself: Is the Quran more likely made by a man or God?

 

And remember: One error is enough to falsify the hypothesis that God wrote the Quran.

Preliminary:
There are thousands of religions worldwide (and unfathomably many possible ones) so you have to start with a low probability of Islam being specifically the right one before you even open the book. (I don’t mean a 1/10,000 prior specifically for Islam that would be silly because I specifically mentioned all the possible religions that aren’t instantiated.) I am saying it has an extremely tiny prior.) As in, given many rival religion hypotheses, no particular one should begin with a high default probability.

 Also, the Quran makes thousands of distinct claims. Conjunctions of thousands of claims are less likely than single claims or simple hypotheses. So again this makes Islam low probability before you even start the analysis.

This low prior probability means that the default is that Islam is more likely false than true and it needs a bunch of evidence to overcome the low prior probability.

Now let’s get into it.

 

1)  The Inheritance Problem 

There’s a mathematical error in the Quran. It directly instructs you to do a mathematical thing that’s impossible. (Surah An-Nisa 4:11-12) If you die and have two daughters, two parents, and a wife, you literally cannot divide up the estate the way the Quran commands.

It’s not plausible that God would make a simple math mistake.

 

Inheritance problem explained

It says in the Quran:

• “If there are only daughters, two or more, for them is two-thirds of what he leaves.” 66.7 percent
• “And for one’s parents, to each one of them is a sixth if he left children.” 16.7 percent 
• “But if you leave a child, then for your wife is one-eighth of what you leave.”  12.5 percent 

Total = 66.7 + 16.7 + 16.7 + 12.5 = 112.5%

(The fact that the Shia and Sunni disagree on how to interpret the inheritance verses proves that it’s not obvious from the text how you should handle this problem.)

Here’s what you should pay most attention to: What’s more likely? Some guy flubbed the math or that God wanted to give you broken math instructions that needed to be fixed by later inconsistent and fallible oral reports? 

 

2)  Scientific Errors 

• Adam and Eve were the literal first humans, created directly from clay, with all people descending from them (e.g., 38:71–72, 55:14) 

• Stars and/or meteors are lamps and are used to pelt devils — Surah Al-Mulk 67:5

• Babies come from an ejected fluid between the backbone and ribs — Surah At-Tariq 86:6–7

 

• • Earth and Hell can talk — Surah Fussilat 41:11, Az-Zalzalah 99:4 / / Surah Qaf 50:30
  • Ants can talk and have complicated human concepts — Surah An-Naml 27:18–19
  • Mountains are like pegs to stabilize the Earth that’s flattened like a bed — Surah An-Naba 78:6–7 and  Surah An-Nahl  16:15
  • Bones form first, then get clothed in muscle (rather than forming in parallel) — Surah al-Muʾminūn 23:12–14
  • The Sun sets in a muddy spring —  Surah Al-Kahf 18:86 (Sunan Abi Dawud 4002 is a sahih hadith where Muhammad says the sun sets in a spring. So this is probably not a metaphor. This is probably what Muhammad believed.)
  • The Quranic flood story (Surah Hud 11:40–44) involves rain covering the world. But mixing freshwater rain with saltwater oceans would disrupt salinity levels and kill most marine life. Noah would’ve needed aquariums to save the fish. Also, how are you gonna fit over a million species on a boat, and how do you explain why basically all the marsupials ended up in Australia?
  • The Quran claims Lot’s peers are the first gay men. — Surah Al-A’raf 7:80

• The Quran lists only four kinds of livestock—sheep, goats, camels, and cattle—and calls them “eight pairs.” This implies these are the only types God created for human use. But other domesticated species like llamas, alpacas, and reindeer existed long before Islam. Why is the Quran so locally focused? — Surah 6:143–144,

• • The Quran describes God having a literal physical throne. — Surah Ghafir 40:7  (Why does an immaterial being need a chair?)

• The Quran describes there being seven skies and earths. — Surah al-Mulk 67:3/ Surah At-Talaq 65:12 (Where are they?)

• • The Quran says birds can’t fly without God holding them up in the sky, and only God is holding them up, and this is evidence of God. — Surah An-Nahl 16:79, 67:19 (Aerodynamics explains this and separately this isn’t good evidence of God. )

• The Quran describes lightning praising God. — Surah Ar-Ra’d 13:13 (Why do humans require years of education to learn to speak and think, but lightning doesn’t?)

• The Quran describes the sky as a roof. That has pieces that can fall. — Surah Al-Anbiya 21:32 / Surah Saba 34:9

• The Quran describes hands and feet as being able to talk and having independent minds. — Surah An-Nur 24:24

• The Earth is described in ways that suggest flatness:

1. “And the earth – how is it spread out?” “Laid out flat” (سُطِحَتَ suṭiḥat) — e.g., Surah Al-Ghashiyah 88:20
2. “Have We not made the earth a bed?” “Bed” (مِهَاد mihād) — e.g., Surah An-Naba 78:6
3. “And the earth—after that He leveled it out.” “Flattened/leveled” (دَحَاها daḥāhā) — e.g., Surah An-Nazi’at 79:30
4. “Who made for you the earth like a cradle?” “Cradle” (مَهْدًا mahdan) — e.g., Surah Taha 20:53
5. “Who made for you the earth like a bed” “Bed” (فِرَاشًا firāshan) — e.g., Surah Al-Baqarah 2:22

 

These verses strongly imply a flat Earth. Whether false or just misleading, that’s a problem for a book claiming perfection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Near_Eastern_cosmology To see how people at the time thought about cosmology and how similar it is to Quranic descriptions.

 

There’s also implausible miracle claims like:

• • A mountain was levitated.  — Surah Al-Baqarah 2:63                                                        

• A group of boys slept for 309 years in a cave and woke up unharmed — Surah Al-Kahf 18:9-18:25

• Some humans got turned into pigs and apes. — Surah Al-Ma’idah —  5:60, 2:65

• Solomon had the wind at his beck and call — (21:81; 34:12; 38:36)

 

These are the views of a pre-scientific person.

 

3)  Many Reliable Hadiths are Comical
Many literalist Muslims treat the Sahih hadiths—especially those in Bukhari and Muslim—as effectively infallible or nearly so, believing them to be highly reliable and authoritative sources of religious guidance, second only to the Quran.

• Dates (the fruit) make you not affected from magic or poison — Sahih al-Bukhari 5445
• If a fly lands in your drink, dip it fully because one wing has poison and the other the cure — Sahih al-Bukhari 3320
• Whoever orgasms first determines the baby’s sex — Sahih Muslim 315a / Sahih al-Bukhari 3329
• Adam was ~90 feet tall and humanity has been shrinking since — Sahih al-Bukhari 3326
• Trees can talk and are racist — Sahih Muslim 2922a
• Drinking camel urine is good medicine — Sahih al-Bukhari 5686 
• Some rats are transformed Jews and you can tell because they follow kosher diets — Sahih al-Bukhari 3305
• Angels avoid houses with dogs — Sahih al-Bukhari 3322
• Satan sleeps in your nose and ties your hair into knots when you are sleeping — Sahih al-Bukhari 1142 / Sahih al-Bukhari 3295
• Most people in Hell are women and their intelligence is deficient — Sahih al-Bukhari 304 (Which is funny because most rape and murder is commited by men.)
• Monkeys stone other monkeys for adultery. — Sahih al-Bukhari 3849
•  Satan farts when the call to prayer happens because he is running away so quickly. – Sahih al-Bukhari 608
• Drink sitting down, if you drink while standing then puke it up. — Sahih Muslim 2026
•  Both of God’s hands are right hands — Sunan an-Nasa’i 5379
• You should wipe your butt with odd numbers of stones. — Sahih Muslim 239

• It’s good to kill dogs, especially black dogs which are devils. — Sahih Muslim 1572 / Sahih Muslim 510a
• If a wife turns down sex, angels will curse her until morning — Sahih al-Bukhari 5193 
• Angels hate onions — Sahih muslim 564a  
• Angels cause thunder — Jami` at-Tirmidhi 3117
• Muhammad spit (مَجَّها) on a 5 year old’s face — Sahih bukhari 77 
• You should kill lizards — Sahih al-Bukhari 3359 / Sahih Muslim 2238 (He blames all lizards for the crimes of some lizards which is racist.)

• • Do not eat with your left hand, because Satan eats with his left hand. — Sahih Muslim 2019  (If Satan doing stuff means you shouldn’t do it, it implies that you shouldn’t talk, sleep, run, laugh etc.) 
  •  Don’t lie on your back with feet on top of each other. — Sahih Muslim 2099e

• Black seed (Nigella sativa) cures every disease except death —  Sahih al-Bukhari 7:591

• Don’t wipe your butt with camel poop. — Sahih Muslim 263 (Why does this need to be said?)

• • The Sun prostrates under God’s throne after it sets. — Sahih al-Bukhari 4802

• Tailbones don’t decay. — Sahih Muslim 2955a

• Talking wolves exist. —  Musnad Ahmad 11792, Bukhari 3663 and 3471)

• Pus is better than poetry. — Sahih al-Bukhari 6154

• Muslims are at war with all snakes (some of which are jinns). — Sunan Abu Dawud 5250, Al-Tabarani, Al-Mujam al-Kabir 11946

• • Backgammon is evil. —  Sahih Muslim 2260 

• A literal rock/stone can steal clothing and run away —Sahih al-Bukhari 3404

• If Jews did not exist, meat would not decay — Sahih al-Bukhari 3399

 

If you think these are metaphors, what is drinking camel piss a good metaphor for?

 

4)  There are Literal Contradictions 

 

Which was made first, the Earth or the Heavens?

• Option 1 – Earth first: Earth created, then mountains, then heavens — Surah Fussilat 41:9–12 / 2:29
• Option 2 – Heavens first: Heavens built, then Earth spread — Surah An-Nazi’at 79:27–30
  → Both can’t be true.

 

And more importantly when, relative to the heavens, were the mountains and earthly provisions made?

Surah 41:9–12 answers: mountains & sustenance first, then heavens.
Surah 79:27–33 answers: heavens first, then mountains & water/sustenance.

 

For Muslims reading this: If heaven was already built, raised, and had night and day, and only after that the earth was made and spread with mountains and sustenance, how could heaven still be “smoke” when it was later made into seven heavens?

 

Is Hell Proportionate to your Crime?

• Option 1 – Proportional Punishment: “Whoever does an evil deed will not be recompensed except with the like thereof…” — Surah Ghafir 40:40
• Option 2 – Infinite Torture: “Abiding eternally therein. The punishment will not be lightened for them, nor will they be reprieved.” — Surah Al-Baqarah 2:162, 2:39, 2:81, 2:217; Al-Imran 3:88; Al-Jinn 72:23
  → Both can’t be true.

 

Do Good People of the Book go to Heaven?

• Option 1 – Yes: “Those who believe (in the Quran), and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians, any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.” — Surah Al-Baqarah 2:62
• Option 2 – No: “Whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted by him and in the Hereafter they will be among the losers” — Surah Al-Imran 3:85
  → Both can’t be true.

 

How Long is God’s Day?

• Option 1 – A day with Allah equals 1,000 years: “then it all ascends to Him on a Day whose length is a thousand years by your counting.” — Surah as-Sajdah 32:5 Also, “And indeed, a day with your Lord is like a thousand years of those which you count.” Surah Al-Hajj 22:47
• Option 2 – A day with Allah equals 50,000 years: “The angels and the Spirit ascend to Him in a day whose measure is fifty thousand years.” — Surah Al-Ma’arij 70:4

→ Both cannot be true.

 

How Long Did Creation Take?

• Option 1 – Six Days: “Indeed, your Lord is Allah, who created the heavens and the earth in six days…” — Surah Al-A’raf 7:54, Surah Yunus 10:3, Surah Hud 11:7, Surah Al-Furqan 25:59
• Option 2 – Eight Days Total (when adding the steps): “He who created the earth in two days… then placed on it firmly set mountains above it and blessed it and determined therein its [creatures’] sustenance in four days… Then He directed Himself to the heaven… and He completed them as seven heavens in two days…” — Surah Fussilat 41:9–12
  → 2 days (earth) + 4 days (mountains & sustenance) + 2 days (heavens) = 8 days total

→ Both cannot be literally true.

 

 (It’s also weird on this account that the heavens which are quadrillions of times bigger than earth took way less time.) (Why does omnipotent being take multiple days to do anything?)

 

Does Allah Forgive Shirk (Idolatry)?

• Option 1 – Allah never forgives shirk: “God does not forgive the sin of considering

others equal to Him, but He may choose to forgive other sins. — Surah An-Nisa 4:48

• Option 2 – Allah forgave the Israelites for worshipping the golden calf (a form of shirk): “And ˹remember˺when We appointed forty nights for Moses, then you worshipped the calf in his absence, acting wrongfully. Then We forgave you after that so perhaps you would be grateful. — Surah Al-Baqarah 2:52

 

→ Both cannot be true: If Allah “never forgives shirk,” it’s unclear how He forgave calf-worship, which is the textbook case of shirk.

 

 Also, it’s not clear how Christians can get to heaven as per 2:62 given they do shirk.

Also, in 39:53 the Quran says, “Allah certainly forgives all sins.”
How can he never forgive shirk if he forgives all sins?

 

Is There Compulsion in Religion?

• Option 1 – No Compulsion “There shall be no compulsion in religion. The right course has become clear from the wrong.” — Surah Al-Baqarah 2:256

• Option 2 – Compulsion Allowed / Commanded “Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture — [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.” — Surah At-Tawbah 9:29

→ Either there is no compulsion, or people are to be fought until they accept Islam or submit under it. Both can’t be true.

Individual vs. Collective Justice

•  Option 1 – Individual accountability only: “No soul shall bear the burden of another” — Surah 6:164, 35:18, 39:7, 53:38
• Option 2 – Collective destruction: The People of Thamud destroyed by earthquake — Surah 7:73-79

 

→ Did every infant in Thamud reject the prophet?

 

Are All Prophets Equal or Are Some Preferred?

• Option 1 – No Distinction: “We make no distinction between any of His messengers.” — Surah Al-Baqarah 2:285
•  Option 2 – Some Preferred:“We have chosen some of those messengers above others; among them are those to whom Allah spoke, and He raised some in degrees.” — Surah Al-Baqarah 2:253

→ Both can’t be literally true. Either no distinction exists between any messengers, or some are chosen above others

 

What is every living thing made of?

• Option 1 – All Water:
  “We made from water every living thing.” — Surah Al-Anbiya 21:30
• Option 2 – Some Fire:
  And He created the jinn from a smokeless flame of fire.” Surah Ar-Rahman (55:15) 

 

Were Warners Sent to the Arabs/Meccans Before Muhammad?

Option 1 – Yes, the Arabs/Meccans already had warners

1. Ishmael is a prophet who enjoins prayer and charity on his people, and is listed among those given “the Book and prophethood.” (6:84–89; 19:54–55)
2. Abraham and Ishmael build the Kaaba in Arabia. (2:125–129)
3. Hūd and Ṣāliḥ are sent to ʿĀd and Thamūd, both portrayed as Arabian tribes. (7:65, 7:73, etc.)

Option 2 – No, Muhammad’s people had no previous warner or book

1. “…to warn a people to whom no warner had come before (qablika) you…” (28:46; 32:3)
2. “…that you may warn a people whose fathers were never warned…” (36:2–6)
3. “We had not given them any Books… nor sent to them before you any warner.” (34:44)

→ Either the Meccans/Arabs already had earlier warners, or no warner/book came to them before Muhammad. The Quran affirms both.

 

There’s also free will and abrogation and mercy  and clarity and name contradictions which I will talk about later in the document. There are also more listed in links in my footnotes.

You might say, “You’re just misinterpreting the verses. Scholars have answers for all of this.” Yes, and Hindu, Mormon, and Christian scholars all have answers for their texts too. The question isn’t whether apologetics exist—it’s whether they’re persuasive and plausible.
“Can be harmonized” is not the same as “most plausible reading.”

 

5)  A Perfect Book Wouldn’t be this Ambiguous
“These are the verses of the clear Book.” (26:2)

“These are the verses of the Quran; the clear Book.” (27:1)

“These are the verses of the clear Book.” (28:2)

“He is the One Who sends down clear revelations to His servant to bring you out of darkness and into light.” (57:9)

“This is a Book whose verses are well perfected and then fully explained.” (11:1)

“We have sent down to you the Book as clarification for all things and as guidance.“(16:89)

There should be no ambiguity on whether beating your wife or aggressive holy war are allowed.

Scholars have spent centuries debating what many verses mean without reaching consensus. If even the scholarly and faithful can’t agree after centuries of debate, it could have been written more clearly. And if it could have been written more clearly, it’s not perfect. (And if it’s not clear it contradicts the many verses saying it’s clear.)

 

Sometimes the Quran says “God is light” (Surah An-Nur 24:35), sometimes that “the Earth talked” (Surah Fussilat 41:11). There’s no clear note about whether these are metaphorical or literal. It would have been trivial to clear up such ambiguities. Just tag metaphors as metaphors.

If there is a miscommunication between two people, the fault is on both people unless the speaker is maximally clear or the listener was maximally perceptive. It would have been easy to make the Quran clearer so it isn’t maximally clear. So it’s not perfect.

Also, major Islamic schools (e.g., Hanafi vs. Hanbali) do not agree how to handle unmentioned things. Which is a pretty big deal! Something that could have easily been cleared up by a single line.

And then there are the disconnected letters—“Alif Lam Meem,” etc.—that begin many surahs. No one knows what they mean. Why would you fill your perfect book, your clear book with uninterpretable letters?

The Quran also says that some verses are unclear: Quran (3:7) “some verses are precise… while others are ambiguous.” This contradicts all the verses quoted at the start of this section. Which is another logical contradiction.

(Some causes of the ambiguity: Vowel choices in the Quran come from oral recitation tradition and juristic preference, not the parchment itself. Early Quranic parchments have the consonantal skeleton (rasm) without short vowels or full diacritics. Single roots carry several dictionary senses; context sometimes leaves more than one viable. The Quran often uses ellipsis, metaphor and hyperbole for effect, again widening interpretive space.  Classical Arabic had no commas or quotation marks, so whether a clause is relative, conditional, or parenthetical is partly inferred by the reader.)

Ambiguity is an all-pervasive specter that haunts the claim of perfection of the Quran. And what makes the ambiguity especially damaging is that the stakes are allegedly eternal.

 

.

 

6)  Obviously 

You obviously shouldn’t believe a guy who tells you that God said he’s allowed to have more wives than you. 

 

Don’t be gullible. 

 

7)  Petty Vindictiveness 

Roughly 10 percent of verses in the Quran insult or threaten non-believers. They’re called fools, blind, arrogant, or are told they’ll burn in hell. Oh, you would think a perfectly wise and intelligent being is going to spend 10 percent of his holy text, his last guidance to man, talking shit to the haters?

Why not persuade the unbelievers rather than threaten and insult them? 

 

• Surah 2:171 – “Deaf, dumb, and blind—so they do not understand.”
• Surah 7:179 / Surah 25:44– “They are like cattle—rather, they are more astray.”
• Surah 2:13 – “Indeed, it is they who are the fools, but they do not know.”
• Surah 9:28 – “Indeed the polytheists are unclean (najis).”
• Surah 2:10 – “In their hearts is a disease, so Allah increased their disease.”

• Surah 4:56 – “We will roast them in the Fire, and every time their skins are burned, We will replace them so they may taste the punishment.”
• Surah 22:19-20 – “Boiling water will be poured over their heads, melting their insides and their skins.”
• Surah 7:175–176 – “His likeness is that of a dog”
• Surah 40:71-72 – “When the shackles are on their necks and the chains, they will be dragged. In boiling water they will be dragged, then into the Fire they will be seared.”
• Surah 14:16 “Awaiting them is Hell, and they will be left to drink oozing pus.” 
• Or things as tiny as, “The arrogant said, “We surely reject what you believe in.” Surah 7:76

 

8)  Abrogation

According to most Muslim scholars, later verses cancel earlier ones. Why would God not plan out his verses better so that you didn’t need a principle of abrogation?

Just sit with that for a minute.

And if abrogations are needed because of different circumstances during Muhammads life, why not have more abrogations for different circumstances after Muhamamds life?

But it gets worse than that because here is just a direct contradiction:

1. Surah Qaf 50:29 says, “My Word cannot be changed.”
2. Surah Al-Baqarah 2:106 says, “If We ever abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten, We replace it with a better or similar one.”
3. Surah Yunus 10:64 “No change is there in the words of Allah.”

 

How can all of these be true at the same time?

Also, importantly, if God’s behaviors are perfect, how can any action be better than perfection? If God is perfect and makes the perfect decision to give a verse, how could a better verse be created? 

 
Just think about what scholars are saying: the Quran was dynamically changing in the 20ish years of Muhammad’s preaching, but no dynamic changes were needed in the roughly 1400 years since Muhammad’s life? When all sorts of technological/cultural/political developments were happening. 

|=|============================================================|

Pink represents Muhammad’s time preaching where we needed dynamic advice.
Blue represents all the time since Muhammad, where we have needed no dynamic advice.                   

Also it’s not obvious which verses are later and which are earlier given that the Quran is not in chronological order. So the method used to determine which verses abrogate which other ones is error prone.

9)  Missing Guidance 

The Quran has three different verses on alcohol. But it has nothing on artificial intelligence, cloning, nuclear war, social media, germs/washing hands before surgery, environmental damage/climate change, vaccines, teleportation, transhumanism, aliens, mind uploading, robots, bioweapons, or exploring other planets.

 

Why is liquor more important than those? Why would God not want to give us ethical and prudential advice on issues more complicated and consequential than liquor?
Alcohol is a specific technology and gives prudential advice on how to handle it.

Why give three verses on alcohol, but none on these?

 

10)  Why Not Trivially Prove Itself From God 

 

“There has come to you conclusive evidence from your Lord.”(4:174)

 

God could have proven divine authorship easily.

God could have listed the next 10,000 visible-from-Earth supernovas with their exact dates and coordinates. Why didn’t God do something that would make it obvious that the Quran is not made by a human? The Quran contains no information a human at that time couldn’t have known or guessed which is super suspicious. Like even just including an accurate description of Australia or South America would have been eyebrow raising. Or mentioning dinosaurs or kangaroos.

Imagine it said:
“The Earth is a sphere rotating around a star, surrounded by vacuum, with gravity holding oceans in place, and the stars are distant suns, most older than humanity, some already dead — and you are seeing their light from the past.”  That would make me believe. But instead of saying that it talks about stars as lamps to pelt devils with.

 

And wouldn’t God want us protected from charlatans? So he’d be expected to give us evidence that his prophet isn’t a charlatan.

 

Nowhere in the Quran does it even hint that God is purposely making things obscure for theological reasons. In fact, the Quran says a lot that Allah is obvious and there are lots of signs and miracles he gives you so it will be obvious. 

 

The Quran says, “He makes the signs clear so that you may be certain of the meeting with your Lord.” (Ar-R’ad 13:2)

Yet he didn’t make it certain when he trivially could have.

 

11)  Occam’s Razor 

Occam’s razor is brutal to religious texts. To believe the Quran is divine, you have to jointly accept thousands of distinct claims. (Any of which could be wrong.) It’s a really complicated hypothesis. Just think about probability: A and B and C and D all happening is going to be less likely than just A happening. 

Here is an intuition pump (NOT SOMETHING TO TAKE LITERAL): suppose each verse has a 99.9 percent chance of being true:

• Multiplying .999 times itself 6236 times 0.00194      
• Multiplying .9999 times itself 6236 times is  0.5357 

 

Analogously, even if each item in the phone book has an extremely high probability of being correct when you have thousands of items in the phonebook it becomes likely that there’s a mistake somewhere. 

Now, suppose you doubt this above iterated multiplication procedure, you should still accept that the more complicated the hypothesis, the lower the prior probability. For example, it’s obvious that “God exists” is, a priori, more likely than “God exists and is named Bob and likes playing bananagrams on Thursdays and likes the smell of goose eggs and likes vacationing in Cuba.”

And ignoring all these subtle points about parsimony and probability, what’s more likely without any other info? A guy made up a story, or God wrote this specific book with these thousands of claims and each of the thousands is true.

 

12)  Splitting the Moon 

The Quran says Muhammad split the moon, but no one outside Arabia noticed this? No one in China or Byzantium wrote this down?

 

13)  Fitna 

There were two civil wars immediately after Muhammad’s death. (Ridda Wars/Fitna) If Muhammad truly gave divine guidance, why did it immediately lead to bloodshed? I’d sort of expect peace and love and prosperity to be the result of divine revelation.

(I also wouldn’t expect the Islamic slave trade and the conquest of Byzantium and the Sassanids. Nor would I expect the general poverty in Islamic countries today.)

If a society really possesses the perfect guidance of a maximally wise God, and millions of sincere people are trying to implement it over long periods, then we should expect some noticeable civilizational advantage on average—moral, institutional, epistemic, or practical—relative to societies operating without that guidance.

 

14)  Dhul-Qarnayn 

This character in the Quran Dhul-Qarnayn matches Alexander the Great myths that were floating around Arabia at the time (e.g., the Syriac Alexander Legend). If the Dhul-Qarnayn story were the real history of Alexander, you’d expect it to match earlier, more accurate Alexander writings. But it in fact aligns with later fantastical Alexander stories. When have legends gotten more accurate over time? 

A version of Alexander romance called the Greek α-recension mentions Alexander building bronze gates between mountains to enclose twenty-two nations, including Gog and Magog. This is 400 years before the Quran so it couldn’t have come from the Quran. Why is the Quran seemingly copying literal fables? 

15) Gog and Magog?
The Quranic passages containing Dhul-Qarnayn claim Gog and Magog and their people are blocked behind a wall between two mountains until the end of time. Where are they? Why haven’t we found them? You think humans would have found a giant gate between mountains enclosing an army.

 

16)  Don’t Show Up Early For Dinner  

Do you really think a perfect, infinitely intelligent timeless God would take up valuable space in his final holy book to say, “Hey, don’t show up early to Muhammad’s house for dinner because he’s shy?”  (Surah Al-Ahzab 33:53)

 

Isn’t believing this kind of ridiculous? Don’t you think that within the limited space of the Quran, there was a more important point to make than that??

17)  Hell 

There is a strong tension between these two verses: 

 

• “We will cast them into the Fire. Whenever their skin is burnt completely, We will replace it so they will ˹constantly˺ taste the punishment.” (Surah An-Nisa 4:56)

and

• “Do not lose hope in Allah’s mercy, for Allah certainly forgives all sins. He is indeed the All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.” (Surah Az-Zumar  39:53)

 

Why would the most merciful being torture someone like this for an eternity? Like you are saying after a quadrillion years of torture they haven’t had enough? They need another quadrillion years? And this is merciful? People who say this are just not imagining what a quadrillion years of torture actually is.

It’s just childish to call someone who tortures someone for quadrillions of years a merciful being.

 

18)  Djinn 

The Quran says there are literal genies (Surah Al-Hijr 15:27). This is not something we see any evidence of. If genies are real, why do other cultures not independently believe creatures made of smokeless fire? 

The Quran’s claim isn’t just “spirits exist,” it’s that there is a literal race of beings made of smokeless fire. If that were real, we’d expect consistent cross-cultural confirmation of “fire beings.”

 

19)  The Quran Gives a Falsifiability Test—and Fails It 

“And if you are in doubt… produce a surah like it…” (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:23)

Shortest surah is:

 

“We have granted you al-Kawthar. So pray and sacrifice. Indeed, your enemy is the one cut off.”

 

This is not some unbeatable literary miracle. It’s not hard to write something more profound. Compare it to: 

 

“What is success? To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate the beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch Or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!” – Emerson

 

Or compare it to this fake Surah I invented.

 

Surah al-Falaḥ (The Flourishing)

 

Verily, do not murder, for life is sacred in the sight of the Most High. 

Do not steal, for the provision of your Lord is sufficient for those who walk upright. 

Do not rape, for the body is a trust, and to violate it is a crime before the heavens. 

Do not torture, for your Lord is the Most Merciful, and loves not the oppressors. 

Do not enslave for freedom is beloved in the mind of Most Righteous. 

Do not lie, for falsehood is the path of ruin, and truth is the light upon the straight path. 

And love your fellow man, and strive to bring flourishing to the earth,

For your Lord made you stewards, not tyrants, and blessed are those who sow peace and righteousness.
 

حقًّا، لا تقتل، فإنّ الحياة مُقدَّسةٌ في نظر العليّ.
ولا تسرق، فإنّ رزقَ ربّك كافٍ للذين يسيرون بالاستقامة.
ولا تغتصب، فإنّ الجسدَ أمانةٌ، وانتهاكَه جريمةٌ أمام السماوات.
ولا تعذّب، فإنّ ربّك هو الأرحم، ولا يحبّ الظالمين.
ولا تستعبد، فإنّ الحريّةَ محبوبةٌ في عقلِ الأبرّ.
ولا تكذب، فإنّ الكذبَ طريقُ الهلاك، والحقُّ نورٌ على الصراط المستقيم.
وأحبِبْ أخاك الإنسان، واسعَ إلى إحياءِ الأرض وازدهارِها،
فإنّ ربّك جعلكم خُلَفاء لا طغاة، وطوبى لِمَن يزرعون السلامَ والبرَّ.

But at the end of the day, evaluating which text is ‘better’ is a subjective, non-truth-apt exercise. If the Quran stakes its truth on that kind of test, the test is ill-posed—and that, by itself, makes Allah look kinda dumb. 

Like imagine someone said, “You know this arugula is from God because it’s super yummy and you couldn’t make something as yummy.” People have different aesthetic preferences so that would be a stupid test. Not everyone likes arugula.

20)  The Satanic Verses Incident 

Early Islamic sources (al-Tabari, Ibn Ishaq) record Muhammad delivering verses praising pagan gods (Allāt, Al-Uzza, and Manāt) — then retracting the verses claiming they were Satanic deception.

If Satan could trick Muhammad once, why assume he didn’t succeed more often? It proves that Muhammad is fallible, and can’t always tell what is from God and what is not from God.

I know some modern Muslims want to deny this event happened, but earlier Muslims thought it happened, and why would you know better than them?

 

 

21)  Why Does God Switch from First to Third Person? 

• “Indeed, I am Allah. There is no deity except Me, so worship Me and establish prayer for My remembrance.” (Surah Ta-Ha 20:14)
• “And Allah invites to the Home of Peace and guides whom He wills to a straight path.” (Surah Yunus 10:25)
• “It is Allah who created the heavens and the earth and whatever is between them in six days; then He established Himself above the Throne.” (Surah Al-Furqan 25:59)

 

If the Quran is supposed to be God’s direct speech, why does it sometimes refer to God in the third person, as if someone else is talking about Him? Why does the voice shift between “I” and “He”? Wouldn’t you expect a message from God Himself to have a consistent voice throughout? Why does it sometimes sound like Muhammad is talking about God? 

It says in the first chapter, “Thee alone do we worship and Thee alone do we implore for help.” If this is God’s words, is God saying he worships himself? 

22) Why does God’s style change?

Stylometry also somewhat hurts the  “divine author” claim. When you run the Quran through authorship analysis, it splits cleanly into Meccan and Medinan styles—different tone, vocabulary, and rhythm. That’s exactly what you see when a single human’s writing evolves over time, but not what you’d expect from a perfectly consistent, outside-of-time voice.

23)  Hadiths are an Unreliable Method 

In Islam, many Muslims say the hadiths are necessary for interpreting the Quran. Why is God using an unreliable method—a game of Chinese whispers—to give you mandatory information for how to practice the faith? If it’s mandatory for the faith, why not just put it into the Quran itself?

If God wanted to guide people clearly and unambiguously, why not stick to a single, safeguarded text? Why allow a bunch of opaque oral reports to become central to the religion, despite obvious risks of error and confusion.

If hadith scholars who graded the reliability of hadiths are fallible, the whole system based on this is fallible.

 

A religion that needs fallible rumor-filtering to recover its essential practices does not look like the work of a God who wanted to guide humanity clearly

 

24)  Inside View vs Outside View 

From the inside view, your religion might feel incredibly compelling—emotionally resonant, logically sound, or simply self-evident. This personal perspective provides powerful subjective evidence.

But from the outside view, however, billions throughout history have felt equally certain about other rival contradictory beliefs. Religious adherents cannot all be correct despite similar confidence levels.

Just as a startup founder must balance internal optimism with the reality that 70% of startups fail, religious believers should weigh their personal confidence against the broader pattern of billions of religious people being wrong despite their similar certainty through history.

Humans are very capable of incorrectly, confidently thinking they have sacred text from God. And you know humans are like this. You could be the kind of person that mistakenly thinks your holy text is right given that you know people do this all the time. 

Humans — the species you belong to — have the capacity to be completely certain about the divine perfection of a text while being wrong, and to remain wrong for life, even in the face of counterarguments that seem obvious to outsiders. 

You might be inside the same condition right now, because, by definition, if you were, you wouldn’t know it.

 

25)  Imagine Planet Sized Brains  

You can imagine beings with planet sized brains being so vast and parallel that they can hold hundreds of thousands  of separate chains of reasoning at once, each one as detailed and deep as a human’s whole mental life. 

And then imagine us with a Quran trying to give them advice — maybe sharing what we think are profound insights.

 And those creatures being like: “Oh, yes, thank you for your wisdom… (cross-referencing it against 47,382 relevant sub-thoughts, processing it from 12,067 ethical frameworks, simulating a billion futures where that advice matters…”

 You think they would find the Quran particularly useful? 

 

Like actually think about what you are saying when you say an infinitely intelligent entity wrote this book.

 If someone told me a sword was from heaven, I would look at it and if it just looked like a normal sword I would not believe it was from heaven. But if the weapon had a 1000 buttons and could turn people into trees and could reverse gravity, I’d say oh yes this weapon might be from heaven. The Quran looks too mundane to be from heaven.

 

26)  Morally Problematic Teachings 

• • The Quran permits wife-beating as a final step to discipline disobedient wives. (Surah An-Nisa 4:34)
  • The Quran permits sex with female slaves—without their consent or marriage. (Surah Al-Mu’minun 23:5–6; An-Nisa 4:24; Al-Ahzab 33:50)
  • The Quran prescribes cutting off the hands of thieves. (Surah Al-Ma’idah 5:38)
  • The Quran recommends crucifixion and cutting off hands and feet on opposite sides for rebels. (Surah Al-Ma’idah 5:33)
  • The Quran commands Muslims to kill polytheists wherever they find them. (Surah At-Tawbah 9:5) (Why not include a sunset clause if this is temporary. If you know this will be misunderstood why write it this way?)
  • The Quran says a woman’s testimony is worth half a man’s. (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:282)
  • The Quran allows marriage and divorce of girls who haven’t yet menstruated. (Surah At-Talaq 65:4)
  • The Quran endorses a story where a boy is killed—not for anything he did, but because he would have sinned in the future. (Surah Al-Kahf 18:80)

• The Quran says ​​and I quote, “Fight those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day, nor comply with what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth from among those who were given the Scripture, until they pay the tax, willingly submitting, fully humbled.” (Surah At-Tawbaw 9:29)

• The Quran shames people for being bastards (Surah Al-Qalam 68:13)

• The Quran compares women to farmland (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:p)
• The Quran says heaven will have servants in it. “And they will be waited on in heaven by their youthful servants.” (52:24)
• The Quran says, “Persecution is far worse than killing.” (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:217) (Most people would rather be persecuted than murdered. And the verse is saying Muslims are allowed to kill because “hindering others from the Path of Allah, and rejecting Allah” is just cause to kill.)
• The Quran says, “So fight in the cause of —and motivate the believers to fight, so that Allah may restrain the might of the disbelievers.” (4:84)

 

Even the “nice” lines can collapse into cruelty
The Quran’s famous kind slogan — “Whoever kills a soul, it is as if he killed all mankind” (5:32) — is immediately followed by 5:33 prescribing crucifixion and maiming. The book seemingly can’t even let its most quoted “peaceful” verse breathe without pivoting straight back to brutality.

Hadiths:

• • Gay men should be executed. (Sunan Abu Dawud 4462; Al-Tirmidhi 1456)
  • People who commit suicide will be tortured in Hell. (Sahih al-Bukhari 5778)

• Apostates from Islam should be killed. (Sahih al-Bukhari 6922; Sahih Muslim 1676; Sahih al-Bukhari 6878; Sunan Ibn Majah 2535 ) (It’s debatable that if you kill someone for leaving your group you are a cult not a religion or community.  And killing people for changing their mind, incentivizes stupidity.) 

• Muhammad came close to burning down the houses of some guys who skipped congregational prayer. (Sahih al-Bukhari 644)
• A newborn baby goes to hell. (Sunan Abi Dawud 4717) How does it square with this 52:21  “Every person will reap only what they sowed.”
• Slaves can be flogged  (Sahih al-Bukhari 5204)
• It’s okay to kill women and children (Sahih al-Bukhari 3012)

In the Islamic jurisprudential tradition, people could be born into slavery if both parents were slaves.

 

Sort of surprising God would endorse or recommend things so vicious.

 

Also, obviously any sacred text that doesn’t explicitly ban slavery is not plausibly from God. 

 

27)  Muhammad’s Character isn’t Plausibly Divinely Guided 

 

He had sex with a 9-year-old (Aisha), owned a sex slave (Maria the Copt), married women right after killing their husbands (Safiyya bint Huyayy and also Juwayriya), initiated aggressive military actions (Khaybar), owned slaves (Sahih Muslim 115), and traded two black slaves for one Arab slave (Sahih Muslim 1602a). He stopped visiting his second wife because she was too old and visited Aisha instead (Saudah bint Zamʿah). Muhammad said to a girl she shouldn’t have freed her slavegirl and that she should have given the slavegirl to her uncle. (Sahih al-Bukhari 2592) He married his adopted son’s ex-wife, and arguably ended the practice of adoption merely so he could do that. (Zaynab) He declared the person who stabbed to death a woman, who disparaged him, shouldn’t be punished. (Sunan Abi Dawud 4361) There are reports of him ordering the death of mere poets who criticized him. (Fartana/Abū ʿAfak) Muhammad attacked the Quraysh caravan at Nakhlah during the sacred month of Rajab, which shattered the pan-Arab taboo against warfare in a holy month. (It’s nice to have a time of the year when no war happens.) Muhammad endorsed the execution of all pubescent males of the Banu Qurayza tribe and the enslavement of the women and children. Finally, Muhammad didn’t set up a stable succession system which led to awful turmoil.  

This should be really simple: 

Sex with a 9-year-old? Evil.

Sex slavery? Evil.

Marrying a woman whose family you killed? Evil.

God would not select an evil person to be his guide for how to live.

28)  Why Ordered That Way? 

The ordering of the surahs in the Quran is irrational from both a thematic and chronological perspective. Rather than following a sensible sequence—such as grouping by topic, placing revelations in historical order, or building a coherent narrative—the chapters are mostly arranged by length, with longer surahs first and shorter ones later. This results in abrupt shifts in topic, tone, and context, making it difficult to follow any overarching argument or progression. For a book claimed to be perfectly revealed by a maximally wise deity, the lack of clear structure is puzzling.

As Thomas Carlyle said, ​​“A wearisome confused jumble.”

 

29)  A Scribe Caught Muhammad Copying Him 

“If Muhammad is truthful then I receive the revelation as much as he does.” – ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd

One of Muhammad’s scribes, ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd, left Islam after realizing Muhammad repeated his phrasings of verses as revelation (Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah; al-Tabari, Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk). In at least one case, after the scribe added a flourish like “So blessed be Allah, the best of creators!”, Muhammad reportedly agreed and said it should be part of the verse.

ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd thought: “Wait, this isn’t divine, I said that—he’s just going with whatever sounds good.” He also messed around with word orderings to see if Muhammad would notice. Muhammad didn’t notice.

 

He left, told people, and Muhammad ordered him killed and he was only pardoned because he was family with one of Muhammad’s close companions, Uthman.

This is one of the most damning pieces of historical evidence that Muhammad wasn’t divinely guided. 

30)  The Injustice of Geography
Why did Arabs get this blessing of divine knowledge? Why didn’t God send a Muhammad type prophet to the Cambodians, Nigerians, Dutch, and Apache? Why did they have to wait hundreds of years to receive God’s blessing of the Quran? Isn’t that unfair? This fact of the Quran showing up once in Arabia makes total sense if Muhammad made up the book. It makes less sense if God wanted to give all of humanity his divine instruction. 

 

Also, most people stay in the religion they’re raised in. Yet under traditional Islam, salvation depends on accepting Islam—meaning a Hindu child in India is, by many interpretations, far more likely to go to hell than a Muslim born in Arabia, simply due to birthplace. If eternal torment depends on such chance, Islam starts to look less like justice and more like a cosmic lottery (with infinite pain as a consequence) rigged by geography.

 

31)  Miscellaneous Errors

 

2:6 – “Indeed, those who disbelieve — it is all the same whether you warn them or do not warn them — they will not believe.”
→ False. Some disbelievers do respond to warnings. This is an overgeneralization. If it’s just saying “stubborn people are stubborn,” then it’s redundant, there’s no reason to bring it up.

2:120 – “The Jews and Christians will never be pleased with you until you follow their religion.”
→ False. Jews don’t try to convert people in general; it’s not a proselytizing faith. Historically, many Jews and Christians have admired Muhammad or respected Muslims without requiring conversion.

107:1–2 – “Have you seen the one who denies the final Judgment? That is the one who repulses the orphan.”
→ False. Not all who deny judgment repulse orphans. Many atheists and agnostics care for them and are loved.

2:2 – “This is the Book about which there is no doubt…”
→ False. People do doubt it; atheists and others openly reject it.

5:67 – “And Allah will protect you from the people.”
→ False. Muhammad was wounded in battle and poisoned, and Umar prevented him from saying something to keep Muslims from going astray.

54:40 “And We have certainly made the Quran easy to remember.”
→ False. Memorizing the Quran is not easy.

54:11 “We opened the gates of the sky with pouring rain.”
→ False. Sky gates don’t exist. (Reflects ancient near-East mythical cosmology. The Bible has the “waters above.”)

63:6 – “Allah does not guide the rebellious people.”
→ Contradiction. 76:30 says “You do not will except that Allah wills.” If all willing is God’s, rebellion too must be His will. Also contradiction with, 61:5 “So when they ˹persistently˺ deviated, Allah caused their hearts to deviate.”

51:23 “˹All˺ this [heaven] is certainly as true as ˹the fact that˺ you can speak!”

→ Error: In fact your speaking is more certain than heaven.

52:44 “If they were to see a ˹deadly˺ piece of the sky fall down ˹upon them˺, still they would say, “˹This is just˺ a pile of clouds.””
→ Error: That’s not what most people would say. WHO WOULD SAY THAT?

 

54:50 “Our command is but a single word, done in the blink of an eye.”

→ Contradiction: Then how did heavens and earth take multiple days to make?

 

58:10 “Secret talks are only inspired by Satan” 

→ Error: Surprise birthday parties are probably not from Satan.

 

86:16 “But I too am planning”
→ How does an omniscient being outside time plan anything?

 

98:6 “Indeed, those who disbelieve from the People of the Book and the polytheists will be in the Fire of Hell, to stay there forever. They are the worst of ˹all˺ beings. 

→ Contradiction: Satan is the worst being in Islam. Not the disbeliever. Also, even if it’s not a direct contradiction, it’s dumb and immoral to call every Hindu the worst of all beings.

 

59:1 “Whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth glorifies Allah” 

→ Bizarre: So like a child’s head getting kicked in glorifies Allah?

2:262 Those who spend their wealth in the cause of Allah…will not grieve.
→ Error: Even if you are charitable there are times when you will grieve. 

 

25:55 Yet they worship besides Allah what can neither benefit nor harm them

→ Contradiction: Muslim doctrine also teaches that you go to hell if you worship other gods. Also you could worship something that does harm you like an evil king. 

 

Why is God’s book full of technical errors? God can’t speak profoundly without saying technically false things? 

 

32)  Commands Consequentialist Harm
Islam teaches that an individual suffering leads to their greater eternal reward. But at the same time, God commands you to relieve others’ suffering. That means God is commanding you to intervene in ways that reduce someone’s eternal benefit. You’re expected to help, even when helping will reduce the quality of someone’s infinite reward. You are commanded to lower people’s eternal reward.

Islam if you really believe the theology, teaches that helping someone is on net hurting them.

 

33)  Smartest People 

“He makes the signs clear so that you may be certain of the meeting with your Lord.” (Ar-R’ad 13:2)

All of these people knew about Islam and WERE NOT PERSUADED.

 

Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Kurt Gödel, John von Neumann, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose, Noam Chomsky, Charles Darwin, Francis Crick, Blaise Pascal, Baruch Spinoza, Alan Turing, Terence Tao, Saul Kripke, Willard Van Orman Quine, Karl Popper, Ed Witten, Carl Sagan, Marvin Minsky, Alexander Grothendieck, Daniel Kahneman, James Clerk Maxwell, Leonhard Euler, Derek Parfit, John Stuart Mill, E.O. Wilson, William James, Douglas Hofstadter, Emile Durkheim, Nikola Tesla, Michael Faraday, Erwin Schrödinger, Hilary Putnam, Alfred Tarski, Max Planck, Carl Jung, Viktor Frankl, Ramanujan, Amartya Sen, Chen-Ning Yang, Abu Bakr Al-Razi, Al-Maʿarri, Ibn al-Rawandi.

These were among the most curious, reflective minds in history — and not one of them was persuaded by Islam.

This isn’t an argument from authority which says, an expert says it therefore it’s definitely true. It’s evidence. This counts as evidence in a Bayesian sense because evidence is anything that makes a hypothesis more or less likely. If Islam were true, you’d expect highly intelligent people—those with the best tools for evaluating arguments and spotting contradictions—to be more likely to recognize that truth. So this pattern of belief distribution shifts the probability against Islam being true. It’s not decisive on its own, but it’s real, non-negligible evidence.

Just imagine what Muslims would say if every smartest person upon reading the Quran converted immediately. Would they neglect to mention this fact? They wouldn’t.

 

 The way that evidence works is that if Muslims would count it as evidence if all the smartest people in the world immediately converted upon being exposed, then it does count as some evidence against them that they don’t. If finding an egg in my room is evidence that a duck lives in my room, then me not finding an egg is some evidence that there isn’t a duck living in my room.

The elites converge on round Earth, old Earth, evolution, and heliocentrism. Why don’t they converge on this?

The smartest aren’t convinced by Islam and yet the Quran says Allah gives clear signs.

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer says, “Consider the Koran, for example; this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical needs of countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. In this book we find the saddest and poorest form of theism … I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value.” He’s a great philosopher and sees no ideas of value in it.

 

And notice the asymmetry: none of the greatest Western minds converted to Islam, but some of the greatest Arab and Persian minds — al-Razi, al-Maʿarri, Ibn al-Rawandi — actually abandoned it. That’s telling. Islam didn’t merely fail to attract the brightest outsiders; it even lost some of its brightest insiders.

 

34) Western Islamic Experts Are Also Not Persuaded
Most of the leading Western specialists on early Islamic history, Quran manuscripts, 7th-century Arabia, and Quranic studies are non-Muslim and—despite spending their careers in this material—did not convert to Islam. This “expert non-convergence” is evidence against the truth of Islam’s central claims: the people best positioned to be persuaded by the earliest texts, manuscripts, languages, and contexts typically are not.

Examples of such scholars:

• Quran manuscripts & codicology: François Déroche; Alba Fedeli; Michael Marx; Alain George.
• Early Islamic history / historiography: Patricia Crone; Michael Cook; Robert G. Hoyland; Fred M. Donner; Harald Motzki; Gerald Hawting; Chase F. Robinson; Sean W. Anthony; Stephen J. Shoemaker; Gregor Schoeler.
• Quran in Late Antique / intertextual context: Gabriel Said Reynolds; Angelika Neuwirth; Nicolai Sinai; Sidney H. Griffith; Guillaume Dye.
• Arabic linguistics & epigraphy (crucial for early Quranic Arabic): Marijn van Putten.

Across these subfields, the most common result among top Western experts is sustained non-belief and non-conversion, even after deep, first-hand engagement with the primary evidence.

And remember the Quran says,“He makes the signs clear so that you may be certain of the meeting with your Lord.” (Ar-R’ad 13:2)

 

35)  Elephant Army 

 

Surah Al-Fil 105 describes an entire elephant army getting wrecked by birds dropping pebbles. You expect me to believe armored men and literal war elephants got shredded by flying birds dropping clay pellets? Which, by the way, have a low terminal velocity. Dropping a penny off of the Empire State Building won’t kill people, that’s a myth.

 

Why would God only make birds do stuff like this before cameras and videos were invented?

36)  Free Will? 

•  “You will not will unless Allah wills.” (Surah At-Takwir 81:29)
  → This verse strongly suggests a form of divine determinism: human will itself is contingent on God’s will. You literally cannot choose unless God chooses that you choose.

 

•  “Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” (Surah Ar-Ra’d 13:11)
  → This verse implies the opposite: that people must take the initiative to change, and then Allah will respond. That presupposes that people can change by their own will.

 

These two verses seem fundamentally incompatible. Either humans have autonomous willpower that can bring about change, or their will is wholly subject to God’s will.

And if the Quran’s stance on free will is clear and coherent, why have Muslims theologians and philosophers debated this for centuries?

 

37)  The “Perfect Preservation” Problem
Quran 15:9 says: “We have sent down the Reminder, and surely We will guard it.” Literalists take this to mean every letter of the Quran has been miraculously preserved. But the historical record tells a different story:

• Early disagreements among companions: Ibn Masʿūd’s codex omitted Surahs 1, 113, and 114. Ubayy’s codex contained two extra prayers. Abū Mūsā’s codex had other unique readings. All of this is documented by early Muslim scholars like Ibn Abī Dāwūd.
• State-enforced standardization: Caliph ʿUthmān ordered rival codices burned (Bukhārī 4987). If God miraculously preserved every letter, why would a political purge be necessary?
• Manuscript evidence: The 7th-century Ṣanʿāʾ palimpsest preserves pre-ʿUthmānic readings, showing differences in words, grammar, and verse divisions (e.g., Q 2:196: “amāntum” vs. “amin(tum)”).
• Built-in variation: Muhammad himself allowed multiple wordings via the “seven aḥruf,” and the ten canonical qirāʾāt preserve those differences—e.g., Q 1:4 has “malik” (King) vs. “mālik” (Owner). In Q 2:184, Ḥafṣ says to feed one poor person per missed day of fasting; Warsh says to feed poor people (plural) per day—changing the obligation from 30 to 60+ people for a missed month.
• Today, Muslims recite different canonical readings—Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim, Warsh ʿan Nāfiʿ, Qālūn ʿan Nāfiʿ, al-Dūrī ʿan Abī ʿAmr, Hishām ʿan Ibn ʿĀmir—each of these have slight differences in wording and meaning. Which one did Muhammad actually hear from Gabriel?  Or was God repeating himself?

This isn’t an exact, frozen, perfectly preserved text.

Why would god waste time repeating himself in multiple dialects of Arabic but not reveal in multiple other human languages like English and Japanese? What’s more likely that multiple slightly different variants of the Quran were later given theological justification by scholars or that God repeats himself a bunch to Muhammad and has the goal to give multiple subtly different Arabic Qurans but no Qurans in other languages?

Also the sahih hadiths collections contain reports of missing Quranic verses: Abū Mūsā told 300 reciters of Basra that they had once recited a surah like Sūrat al-Tawbah and another like one of the Musabbihāt, but he had forgotten them except for a few lines (Sahih Muslim 1050). And ʿUmar says “the verse of stoning” was among what Allah revealed, that “we did recite this verse and understood and memorized it,” yet later people would say they do not find it in Allah’s Book (Sahih al-Bukhari 6830; Sahih Muslim 1691a).

It’s extremely hard to prove that the Quran we have is exactly the same (word for word, letter for letter) as the one that Muhammad laid down. And literalist Islam rests on this.

 

38)  Why a Book? Why a single book in one time and place? 

Why have a bunch of revelations that are written in a book? Why not indestructible obelisks, or give an orb that gives fine tuned advice to anyone who touches it, or something else that would make it obvious that a guy didn’t just make stuff up?

It being a single book in one place and time is better explained by a human author making shit up then god wanting to “get the message out.”

 

39)  The Quran Reflects the imagination of a 7th Century Human:

Heaven in Quran is not like optional bodies, mind melding, a large variety of totally new emotions, memory transfers, parallel universe creation, multiple time dimensions, extra spatial dimensions. No, it is gardens with attractive ladies, carpets, fancy jewelry and chairs. Why does it look like the imagination of a 7th century human?

And if the Quran came from an all-powerful, all-knowing being, why do Allah’s actions feel so primitive? Earthquakes, lightning bolts, droughts, and diseases. Why not something more elegant? Allah can blink beings out of existence; he doesn’t need crude proxies like lightning and earthquakes. This is what you’d expect from the imagination of 7th-century humans.

 

It’s also striking that God’s morality isn’t the savage brutality of cavemen, nor the more humane values of modern people, nor the unimaginable ethics of some far-future or alien society. Out of the full spectrum of possibilities, it ends up looking only slightly more refined than the norms of 7th-century Arabia. If divine morality could have been anything, the fact that it mirrors the moral intuitions (e.g. slavery) of Muhammad’s own time and place is awfully suspicious. It’s way better explained by people writing down their norms.

 

Or to put it another way, if God could have revealed any morality out of a trillion possibilities, why does scripture’s morality land so close to the cultural norms of its time? That’s what you’d expect from human authors. Imagine your friends and God writing numbers down and then drawing one at random from a hat: if your friends could only write down 1–10, and God could write down 1–1,000,000,000,000, and the number drawn from the hat is “4,” it’s overwhelmingly more likely you chose your friend’s number not God’s.

 

40)  Problem of Animal Suffering
There’s so much pain happening to innocent animals in the world. Why is a merciful God permitting this? There have been like septillions of animals that have ever lived and most of them had a painful death. The classic problem of evil is a problem for theists, and if theism is false, literalist Islam is false.


41)  Problem of Divine Hiddenness  
God either wants us to know him or not. If not, he wouldn’t give us the Quran. If yes, he would have made it more obvious. (He could write stuff in the stars.) If he doesn’t want it obvious, why do miracles? The classic problem of divine hiddenness is a problem for theists and if theism is false, literalist Islam is false.

Remember, the Quran says, “He makes the signs clear so that you may be certain of the meeting with your Lord.” (Ar-R’ad 13:2) 

 

Then he hides himself.

 

42)  I Checked 

Quran 10:94 says, “If you are in doubt about that We have revealed to you, then ask those who read the Scripture before you.” When I ask Christians and Jews they don’t affirm what the Quran is asking me to check with them.


43)  Music
Many literalist traditional Muslims think Islam teaches that music is forbidden. It’s not plausible God would give Beethoven and Coltrane and Hendrix such gifts and not want them to express their genius.

Music is one of the jewels of humanity. Opposing is like opposing friendship, smiling, kindness, or fun.

 

44)  Narcissism 
Why the heck would God want and demand praise? Do you care if ants praise you?

 

45)  Why Did God Cause Mass Extinctions? 

Why would God cause the Permian and Cretaceous mass extinctions? Killing a whole planet worth of life twice? Isn’t this kind of a wasteful method for an all powerful God to make humans? 

 

46)  Alcohol And Slavery

Why does the Quran clearly and explicitly ban usury and alcohol and ham but is unclear on child marriage and slavery?

Millions of Muslims have thought slavery was okay, but they didn’t think alcohol was okay. Why would God not make it way, way clearer? If you are going to make alcohol and ham clear, why not make slavery clear? 

 

Isn’t slavery way more important?

 

47)  It’s Boring and Repetitive 

The Quran obsessively repeats the same threats of the same vague praises of Allah’s greatness, the same stock phrases (“He is the Most Merciful, the Most Wise”)—over and over. And over. And over. 

 

It’s hard to exaggerate just how much it repeats over and over that the unbelievers will burn. It just never stops.

The Quran twice calls unbelievers cattle? Maybe a verse about germ theory of disease which would save tens of thousands of lives would be better than a repetition of a cattle insult. Or like when the Quran says in 3:42  “Allah has chosen you, purified you, and chosen you” couldn’t the second chosen have been dropped? In Surah 55 it just keeps repeating. “Then which of your Lord’s favours will you both deny?” It says it 31 times. Or when it says three times that in heaven that there will be fruit that would be easily grasped.

Scholars estimate that roughly 23–53% of the Quran is formulaic repetition (reused phrases/stock formulas), based on a computerized oral-formulaic analysis of the text. (Why do God’s words have the marks of oral tradition?)

If you think this is merely subjective and worthless as evidence, what if the Quran just said the word Muhammad a million times and that’s it? Or what if it just said the word banana one million times in the last chapter of the Quran? Wouldn’t that count as evidence that this was not from God?

If “it’s boring” is not a good argument, because “it’s a matter of taste,” then islam saying it’s amazing aesthetic quality is proof of its truth is a bad argument, and therefore the Quran includes a bad argument therefore the Quran is not God’s direct words.

 

48)  Biblical Confusions
The Quran confuses Moses & Aaron’s sister Miriam with Jesus’ mother Mary. Surah Maryam 19:28 calls Jesus’ mother “sister of Aaron,” and Surah At-Taḥrīm 66:12 labels her “daughter of ʿImrān.”Yet Aaron and his father Amram (ʿImrān) lived around 1,300 years before Mary. Early Jews in Medina reportedly mocked this genealogical mix-up. If Muslims argue that these titles are merely honorifics, it’s striking that, out of the entire range of possible honorific comparisons for Mary, the ones used just happen to resemble a Mary/Miriam confusion.

The Quran seems to treat Pharoah as a name of a person and not a title.

The Quran blames a “Samaritan” (al-Samiri) for the golden calf incident (20:85–95), but Samaritans didn’t exist until centuries after when Moses purportedly lived. That’s a major historical anachronism. It’s most likely an error from someone mishearing Jewish traditions.

The Quran also says, “The Jews and Christians each claim that none will enter Paradise except those of their own faith.” But Jews do not think that.

Also Quranic versions of Bible stories tend to be shorter and simpler. This is exactly what you’d expect if someone was half-remembering them. It’s not what you’d expect if God (who knows the millimeter length of the eyelashes of everyone on Earth) was actually telling you the truth. If you asked me to summarize the movie the Godfather from memory, I’d do a decently good job, but I’d simplify things, shorten things, and mix stuff up. This is exactly what the Quran looks like.

49) Ezra
The Quran claims Jews think Ezra is the son of God which is false. (Surah At-Tawbah 9:30)

50) Jesus vs. Muhammad

It’s strange to think that the peaceful ascetic who died telling people to love is not the main character of the religion, but the main character of the religion is the guy who sought women and secular power. 

 

It’s also strange that in the Quran, Jesus is born of a virgin, to a woman chosen above all others (3:42), and raised alive to heaven, while Muhammad has an ordinary birth and dies an ordinary death. Strange that the “greater” prophet, the centerpiece of the religion, has the less miraculous entrance and exit and powers. Jesus is so miraculous in the Quran he even talked as a baby. (19:29)

 

51)  Pairs 

Surah Adh-Dhariyat 51:49 says,“And of everything We have created pairs: That ye may receive instruction”

 

False, not everything exists in pairs. There’s only one universe, one Earth, one Muhammad. There are hermaphroditic (Leeches) and asexual reproducing species (Bdelloid rotifers). If the Quran meant “most things,” it could have used the Arabic word mu‘ẓam (معظم)—but it didn’t.

Surah Ar-Ra’d 13:3 says Allah “created fruits of every kind in pairs.” But most fruiting plants are hermaphrodites, not male and female. If this doesn’t work as a falsification, what would falsify the claim that everything comes in pairs?

52) Saltwater/Freshwater

The Quran says in 25:53 “And He is the One Who merges the two bodies of water: one fresh and palatable and the other salty and bitter, placing between them a barrier they cannot cross.”

Salt water and freshwater mix all the time. Brackish water exists. Brackish water has its own Wikipedia page. Errors like this falsify the Quran.

If this doesn’t work as a falsification, what would falsify the claim that salt water and fresh water have barriers between them that they cannot cross?

53)  Uncle Abu Lahab
Surah Al-Masad (111) is a whole surah dedicated to shit talking Muhammad’s uncle, Abu Lahab. You think this is divine? 

May the hands of Abu Lahab be ruined, and ruined is he!

His wealth will not avail him or that which he gained!

He will enter to burn in a Fire of flame!

And his wife as well – the carrier of firewood!

Around her neck is a rope of twisted fiber!

 

It doesn’t even tell you what Abu Lahab did! So it can’t be for moral instruction. It’s arguably blasphemy to think God would write something that sounds like Hulk Hogan talking smack in a WWE promo.

Do you actually think God would spend an entire chapter of his final testament to mankind talking shit to one man and not explain what he did?

54) Bragging
Why does the Quran brag about how awesome it is? (e.g., 39:23, 56:77–80, 12:3)
Why not just be awesome. If you are awesome you shouldn’t need to tell people you are awesome. Does Shakespeare say, “this is the best sonnet ever” during the sonnet?

 

And why does Allah brag about being able to kill everyone and replace them? Is that something a merciful and just being would brag about? (4:133)

Its arguably blasphemy to say God would be a such a petty narcissist to be bragging all the time.

 

55) Sealed Hearts

Surah Al-Baqarah 2:7 says “Allah has sealed their hearts and their hearing, and their sight is covered. They will suffer a tremendous punishment.”

So:

1. There are unbelievers.
2. Allah seals the hearts and eyes of the unbelievers so they remain unbelievers.
3. Upon death Allah then punishes the unbelievers for remaining unbelievers.

Allah could just have easily left the heart and eyes unsealed so that unbelievers can eventually believe but Allah does the opposite. 

56) Peaceful Verses Get Cancelled

Classical abrogation doctrine says later verses override earlier ones, so many scholars take the militant Medinan “sword verses” (like 9:5, 9:29) to cancel or restrict the earlier Meccan verses about “no compulsion in religion” and “to you your religion, to me mine.” That means the final form of the Quran’s ethics, on these readings, is more warlike than the early phase— which is both unethical, and separately exactly what you’d expect from a human political leader who softens the message when weak and hardens it when strong, not from a maximally wise God giving one clear, timeless moral law.

57) Hell in the Quran is Uncreative.
Why is hell described as having pus, fire, skin flaying, and boiling water. This is the stuff a 7th century man could think of. You’d think an all good God wouldn’t constantly threaten people to believe because that’s cruel and bizarre. I wouldn’t say, “If you don’t believe my math proof, I’ll kick your dog.” That would be insane. But if you were going to threaten people, why use threats that are sort of uncreative and what a 7th century mind could generate? God’s threats could be any of billions of options,  but it happens to be what they could think of? What a coincidence.

58) The Ramadan Pole Problem

The Quran commands Muslims to fast from dawn to sunset during the month of Ramadan.

“And eat and drink until the white thread of dawn becomes distinct to you from the black thread [of night]. Then complete the fast until the night.”
— Surah Al-Baqarah 2:187

This rule assumes that you can do this without dying. Yet near the poles, daylight or night can last for months. For instance, in northern Norway or Antarctica, there may be continuous daylight during Ramadan, meaning fasting “until night” would require not eating or drinking for months. 

A being with full knowledge of Earth’s geography would have foreseen this problem. The most plausible explanation is that the verse reflects a 7th century Arabian human’s understanding of the world.

59) Bad Reasoning in the Quran
Distinct from contradictions or factual errors about the world is errors in reasoning. God shouldn’t make illegitimate inferences.

4:82 – “If it were from any other than Allah, they would have found many discrepancies in it.”
→ Irrational: Plenty of books not from God—short novels, instruction manuals, and autobiographies—are entirely free of discrepancies. If the Quran was made up by Muhammad there’s no reason why it would necessarily have to have a discrepancy in it.

62:6 – “Say, O Jews, if you claim to be Allah’s chosen people, then wish for death if you are truthful.”

→ Irrational: Claiming divine favor doesn’t imply a wish for death; suicide is forbidden in Judaism and instinctively feared by all humans.

 

53:10 “Then Allah revealed to His servant what He revealed ˹through Gabriel. The Prophet’s heart did not doubt what he saw. How can you O pagans then dispute with him regarding what he saw?”

→ Irrational: The Pagans have different evidence than Muhammad had. They have different evidence levels so it’s very easy to understand and unsurprising that  they would have different levels of confidence.

 

6:101 “How could He have children when He has no mate?”
→ Irrational: There are ways to create children without mates. Parthenogenesis exists. Asexual reproduction exists. Omnipotent beings can create sons without mates.

3:65 “O People of the Book! Why do you argue about Abraham, while the Torah and the Gospel were not revealed until long after him?”
→ Irrational:  if The Bible is unreliable on Abraham because the Bible is written after Abraham then so is Quran because it is also written after Abraham. 

24:13 “Why did they not produce four witnesses? Now, since they have failed to produce witnesses, they are ˹truly˺ liars in the sight of Allah.”
→ Irrational. “You cannot produce four witnesses, therefore you are the liar” is not valid reasoning. Lots of true events have fewer than four witnesses.

Then there’s the aforementioned  “make a surah like it” mistake where God is irrationally saying a subjective test is good evidence of divinity.

60) False prophecy

Muhammad told a young boy the world would end when he’s somewhat old. (Sahih Muslim 2953b)

This is just an obviously false prophecy which is sufficient on its own to falsify traditionalist literalist Islam.

A man said, “When would the Last Hour come?
Muhammad said, “If this boy lives he would not grow very old till the Last Hour would come to you.”

(The Quran uses as-Sāʿa (ٱلسَّاعَة, “the Hour”) dozens of times (over 40 occurrences). In all or nearly all instances, it refers to the Day of Judgment — the cosmic end.)

As an aside, the Quran also says, “The Hour has drawn near.” (Quran 54:1) But the end of the world didn’t happen for 1400ish years which is not near.

Another false prophecy: “Allah’s Messenger said, “This matter (caliphate) will remain with the Quraysh even if only two of them were still existing.” Sahih al-Bukhari 7140

61) Apostasy
In classical Sunni fiqh, all four Sunni madhhabs treat apostasy as a capital crime. Huge numbers of Muslims (many millions) believe the death penalty is warranted for apostasy.

This is cult-like behavior. (Many cults will kill you for leaving.)

Think about what such a policy does for intellectual inquiry. It makes people scared to explore what’s true because if they come to the conclusion Islam is false, they could die. So it stops people asking questions. Such a policy is deeply incompatible with any commitment to being truth-oriented.

It’s not plausible divine love and wisdom is the source of cult-like behavior.

62) Testing Issues

A) Why would God test us? The reason humans test each other is that the test-giver doesn’t know what’s in the mind of the test-taker. (My math teacher doesn’t know how much math I know, so uses a test to find out.) But God knows what’s in our minds and hearts and what we will do. He doesn’t benefit from testing us.

God could just only create people who freely choose the Good and put them into heaven. Does he enjoy creating creatures that he knows he will torture for trillions of years?

B) Also, many Muslims believe that before we were born we humans chose to be given this test. But given that according to Islamic theology, non-Muslims are going to hell. (And there are many more non-Muslims than Muslims. 6 billion to 2 billion) (And not even all Muslims are going to heaven.) It’s totally irrational to take a test where it’s more likely than not that I will be tortured infinitely, and I would never agree to that.

C) Torture for disbelief is evil and ridiculous. There are thousands of religions, philosophy of religion is hard, and you are going to torture people over something there isn’t a consensus on?

63) Creation issues
Why did Allah create humanity at all? When God was alone, reality was already perfect. Why would God change that? And why would he choose to create imperfection?

 

64) Guidance Attempts
Why did God’s revelation fail with Christians and Jews? Why would an omniscient being need multiple “attempts” at guidance?

65) Best Societies
You’d expect God’s law to be found in societies doing really, really well in terms of happiness and crime and orderly, functional institutions. Unless God in incompetent at choosing when and how to give his message.

Muslim societies are not doing amazing in those respects. And even during the Golden Age of Islam they still had huge issues like the Zanj Rebellion.  

 

66) Names
Several of Allah’s classic 99 names describe traits that are villainous. Which is surprising on its own.

• Al-Mu’akhkhir — The Delayer
• Al-Māniʿ — The Withholder
• Al-Khāfiḍ — The Degrader 
• Al-Mudhill — The Dishonourer
• Al-Jabbār — The Compeller
• Aḍ-Ḍārr — The Distresser
• Al-Muntaqim — The Retaliator 
• Al-Mumīt — The Creator of Death

But they also literally contradict other of his names like Ar-Raʾūf (The Most Kind)  and Al-Wadūd  (The Most Loving). 

67) Atheism just has a lot going for it:

There’s the aforementioned:

Problem of evil: a world with vast, seemingly gratuitous suffering is hard to reconcile with an all-good, all-powerful God.
Divine hiddenness: if God wants a relationship, pervasive reasonable nonbelief is unexpected. Why does the universe look so indifferent? Why not make it obvious? Is he a trickster?
Mass extinctions: Earth’s deep history of repeated, indiscriminate planetwide die-offs fits blind processes better than providential design.

But there’s also:
Low priors: classical theism is a narrow corner of the “mind-first” hypothesis space, so its prior probability is low absent strong evidence.

Divine complexity: the God hypothesis posits a being with many distinct knowledge items, goals, and powers—penalized by parsimony compared with simpler natural laws. If humans are complex and God has the goal to make us, his mind gets that complexity. If God specifically intended humans over octopuses, his goals must represent humanness in detail. That’s representational complexity. God isn’t simple

Erosion of superstition: centuries-long trend of natural explanations replacing supernatural ones; induction suggests that will continue.

Mind–brain dependence: every mind we observe is tied to a brain; induction favors mental states supervening on physical brains, not immaterial minds.If immaterial minds are possible — which theism requires — then the granular dependence of our minds on brains becomes mysterious on theism. 

Prayer doesn’t work statistically.

And no uniquely divine information: purported revelations haven’t delivered demonstrably true, otherwise unknowable content.

68) Four Tough Questions

1) Is it more likely that infinite hell is a scare tactic by humans or the creation of the most merciful?
We know humans lie to manipulate all the time, but we don’t know if merciful beings torture people for quadrillions of years. 

2) Is it more likely that abrogation is the result of humans changing their laws to fit the situation or the result of an omniscient being outside of time changing his eternal law?
We know humans change their minds about stuff, but with omniscient beings outside of time we have no reason to think they could or would do that. 

 

3) Is it more likely that punishments like wife beating, crucifixion, and cutting off feet are made by ancient humans writing down their norms or the result of the most merciful being giving dictates?
We know primitive humans were violent and cruel and it’s expected they will be. It’s not expected that the most merciful being would be.

 

4) Do the Quran’s moral norms (like slavery and polygyny, corporal punishments, asymmetrical gender norms) being similar to the norms of the day more likely by the fact that humans are writing down their norms or an unfathomable coincidence where people at that time happened to coincidentally agree with the creator of the universe?
(If it’s humans writing down norms there’s no extreme coincidence to be explained.)

69) Situatedness
The Quran exhibits the precise linguistic profile of 7th-century Hijazi Arabic and references contemporary political events (like the Byzantine-Sasanian wars and local tribal disputes), it engages with religious debates current in Late Antiquity (such as Miaphysite vs. Dyophysite Christology, Jewish law), and follows literary forms (rhymed prose, saj’) common to Arabian oratory of that milieu. It even has linguistic/grammatical features common to that time and place. From a historical standpoint, this is exactly what “originating from a human in a specific human context” looks like. To posit divine authorship requires layering on extra assumptions that aren’t needed to explain the data.

 

If you found a document written in very specific 1920s New York slang (callings things the “cats pajamas”), referencing Prohibition and Warren G. Harding, using the comedic rhythms and jokes common in vaudeville, you wouldn’t need to posit “a timeless supernatural author who chose 1920’s NYC slang for mysterious reasons. You’d just say: it’s from that milieu.

 

70) ​​ Selective-Charity Double Standard 

The interpretive flexibilities and metaphorical re-definitions that literalist Muslims might deploy to rescue Quranic difficulties are precisely the maneuvers they would dismiss if Christians defended the Gospels, Hindus justified the Vedas, or Mormons excused the Book of Mormon. If the same elastic toolkit were granted to every scripture, any text could be declared flawless.

 

71) Actually Imagine a Perfect Book
Imagine a book that you could read both forwards and backwards. As in, the letters in all the words just so happen to be arranged such that the book could be meaningfully read both ways with different messages. That alone would be insane. But then also the chapter titles formed an acrostic and the whole book rhymed.

 

Oh and imagine this book contained so much scientific and mathematical knowledge that it would make scientists and mathematicians irrelevant for millennia.

Oh and imagine this book was so beautifully written that human beings 99% of the time cried and converted upon reading it.

Imagine a book that not only gave fantastic advice on current issues, with all their nuances and sub-nuances, but gave detailed advice about situations that would not occur for thousands of years.

Oh and it gave detailed advice about how to interpret it, so there would be literally no feuds about the correct way to interpret it.

An infinitely intelligent God could definitely write such a book.

So why would he give us… the Quran? 

 

(If your response to this is, “Oh, a limited mind could never comprehend what an infinite mind would create,” then you are committed to believing that if the Quran consisted of hundreds of pages saying, “I, Lord Poopy Butt, commandeth you to rub poop on your faces, throw poop at each other, roll around in poop, and make poop hats…” you couldn’t say, “I don’t think an infinite mind would create that…” Instead, you’d have to say, “A limited being like me could never know what an infinite mind might do.”)

72)  Many of these Objections are Independent of Each Other
Addressing one argument does not resolve the others. Each independent criticism stands alone and reduces the probability and plausibility of literalist interpretations of Islam. Since the claim is that the Quran is perfect, demonstrating even a single flaw is sufficient to falsify the assertion.

 

We have two competing hypotheses:

1) God gave Muhammad the Quran 

 

2) Muhammad made it up

Given the amount of independent flaws we have found, “Muhammad made it up” is overwhelmingly the preferred hypothesis. 

 

(Especially given the low prior probability we started with.)

P.S.) Humanity
Even in the purely hypothetical world where the Quran had zero internal flaws, you still shouldn’t believe it’s from God, because it looks overwhelmingly like the work of a 7th-century Arabian man, not a timeless deity:

• A) Convenient revelations that grant Muhammad special privileges (like extra wives that you cannot marry after he dies)

• B) Content narrowly focused on Arabia (camels, yes; kangaroos, no)

• C) No real future knowledge (nothing about algebra, electricity, or the internet)

• D) Constant insults and threats aimed at nonbelievers

• E) A heaven that reads like a tribal chief’s fantasy (pretty women, wine, servants)

• F) Morality that mirrors the era’s norms (including slavery)

• G) A book that won’t stop bragging about itself

• H) No detailed, nontrivial scientific information

• I) Borrowed and reworked stories (like Dhul Qarnayn)

 It’s just too human.

In summary:  

Sometimes showing a claim to be false is like killing an ant with a bazooka.

We’ve found logical contradictions, scientific errors, aesthetic failures, self-serving motives, mathematical mistakes, factual blunders, moral atrocities, illogical inferences, and signs of both ineptitude and pettiness. We’ve seen useless content, plagiarism, historical anachronisms, failed tests, probabilistic implausibility, character flaws, philosophical issues, false prophecies, unreliable transmission, childishness, boringness, incoherent structure, cultural narrowness, and ambiguity. At this point, it’s hard to imagine in principle what kind of flaw a text could have that this one doesn’t. And you’re telling me this is the perfect word of God?