The Quran, A very serious book for those who have knowledge

[Vitamin_C]

You can rewrite game of thrones and claim the previous one was distorted, but it does not make our claim original or true, at the end of the day it is just a unsubstantiated claim someone is making.

I don’t understand what you mean by atheist perspective because there is no such thing. Atheism is not a belief system.

But I’ll answer you from human perspective because at the end of the day human knowledge comes not from holy books but from studying the world around us.

According to the best archaeological evidence we have, Homo Sapiens have been around since at least 200,000 years. There is no evidence of any religions during this time but for short periods they did engage in some form of ritual behaviour like burying dead or placing ornaments in graves etc. People lived in small groups of up to 40 hunter gatherers in a tankless society (everyone equal).

About 10,000 years ago when Ice age ended. And people started settling down in larger settlements to engage in agriculture of groups over 100. Because of this, there arose a need for rules and laws. To make these rules someone needs to have rank and authority. This where the earliest forms of religions started to make up a story of divinity and give authority to one person to rule. This religion concept has been evolving since then and you can see each religious text is just an upgraded version of the other and each religions god concept is just an evolution on the previous ones. Every new religion redefined god with new attributes so Islam is not the only one with this quality. That’s the history and purpose of religion in a nutshell.

In modern and more civilized countries religion is getting outdated because people no longer need a divinity story to follow rules, there is rule of law in these countries and the institutions are very efficient. Plus no body will buy these stories in these countries because they are more educated and critical thinking and reasoning are mandatory part of school system.

Are they the same or were they in response to distortion or misbelief? I think It was a wrong of me to ask you these advance questions. Let's start from the basics. What is religion and what is the purpose of religion? I want to know athiest point of view.

 

[Qalumkar]

I never said I have a problem with people who read Quran, I read it too along with many other books. My point is that there is nothing in the Quran that stands out to me as out-worldly. Its all standard stuff that is in books written before it. No life changing ideas or discoveries like you would find after germ theory, vaccinations, womens rights movements etc. The only thing we see is life of women and of slaves getting slightly better and Arab conquests of Persian and Byzantine empires. Feats that others before have out performed like the Mongols. Which means its nothing out of the ordinary. Correct me if I am wrong.

آپ کا نقطہ نظر اور قرآن کے بارے میں رائے سن لی اور سمجھ لی۔ آپ کا بہت شکریہ۔​

 

[aCryptoBit]

Thanks for taking some time out and sharing your point of view! May I ask about your education? Was it all in regular secular education system or you ever attended any islamic school? Have you taken any comparative religion class? How many religious books have you read? Did you fully read them with translations or read few chapters?

You can rewrite game of thrones and claim the previous one was distorted, but it does not make our claim original or true, at the end of the day it is just a unsubstantiated claim someone is making.

I don’t understand what you mean by atheist perspective because there is no such thing. Atheism is not a belief system.

But I’ll answer you from human perspective because at the end of the day human knowledge comes not from holy books but from studying the world around us.

According to the best archaeological evidence we have, Homo Sapiens have been around since at least 200,000 years. There is no evidence of any religions during this time but for short periods they did engage in some form of ritual behaviour like burying dead or placing ornaments in graves etc. People lived in small groups of up to 40 hunter gatherers in a tankless society (everyone equal).

About 10,000 years ago when Ice age ended. And people started settling down in larger settlements to engage in agriculture of groups over 100. Because of this, there arose a need for rules and laws. To make these rules someone needs to have rank and authority. This where the earliest forms of religions started to make up a story of divinity and give authority to one person to rule. This religion concept has been evolving since then and you can see each religious text is just an upgraded version of the other and each religions god concept is just an evolution on the previous ones. Every new religion redefined god with new attributes so Islam is not the only one with this quality. That’s the history and purpose of religion in a nutshell.

In modern and more civilized countries religion is getting outdated because people no longer need a divinity story to follow rules, there is rule of law in these countries and the institutions are very efficient. Plus no body will buy these stories in these countries because they are more educated and critical thinking and reasoning are mandatory part of school system.

 

[Vitamin_C]

Neither secular nor religious. I had a Quran teacher since age 5 and I received the King James Bible from a teacher when I was 10. Since then I have also read the Jewish Bible.

As for Quran I have read it cover to cover many times with translation and tafsir, I have also gone as far as to read Prophets biography for more context on the story behind the verses in Quran.

I found many interesting things. Most of the stories in most of these books are modified version of a previous book. Some stories are later add-ons. For example the old versions of Jewish Bible do not have any mention of story of Musa. It only appears in bible after 800 bc when the Israelites were at war with Egyptians, which means it was probably propaganda. Israeli archaeologists found no evidence for Jewish exodus from Egypt when they controlled Sinai peninsula from 1967 to 1982, which means this story was probably copied and modified from Greek or Babylonian mythologies.

Another thing that I found is that even Islam has been changing in last 1,400 years. Meaning the mainstream Islam you have today is completely different religion from mainstream Islam 1,000. And at one point in history, Shia Islam was the mainstream version and not Sunni Islam during Fatimid dynasty.

The Belief systems were also very different for example according to the tafsirs from various eras, early Muslims interpreted Quran as saying that earth is flat and sun revolves around it. So when the Muslim scientists in Baghdad discovered that the Earth is round and it is revolving around the sun, according to arab historical documents, these scientists were threated with death over blasphemy charges.

Anyway I do not want to overload you with information. But the only issue I have with Islam is that compared to Christianity and Judaism, it is the slowest one to change and adopt to scientific discoveries. Since the Mongols burned the libraries in Baghdad, we are slow to adopt and are in a dark age since then.

Thanks for taking some time out and sharing your point of view! May I ask about your education? Was it all in regular secular education system or you ever attended any islamic school? Have you taken any comparative religion class? How many religious books have you read? Did you fully read them with translations or read few chapters?