Hi Whitefire

At the outset, let me tell you that it would be very very difficult to make a believing Muslim see that Quran has errors, because I had been reading it for over 25 years (as in studying it carefully) and I never once saw it, rather I was reading into it all kinds of scientific facts and miracles which were non existent.

But here is how I reasoned it out at my moment of epiphany.

The Quran basically throws 2 kinds of challenges to its readers regarding its divinity. 1. It dares its detractors to produce a chapter like it, matching its linguistic eloquence. Now, that’s such a subjective thing to judge that scholars throughout the ages have been giving vastly different interpretation of what that challenge actually means. ON that count, that challenge is meaningless.

The second challenge is this. It says that “Had this Quran been authored by anyone other than God, then there would be many contradictions in it. As is obvious, to write a book without contradictions does not call for divine powers – all you need is an average IQ. However, the author of Quran took 23 long years to write it – and most importantly – with several revisions where whole verses and chapters were removed and replaced. Therefore, asking to spot a contradiction in a text with so many revised drafts doesn’t not show its author in great light.

But it doesn’t’ end there – in spite of all this, there are still many contradictions in it. But they come up with all kinds of hermeneutic gymnastics in order to tide over the contradictions. Here is one: Quran says in 5:47 “Let the People of the Gospel (Injeel) judge by that which Allah hath revealed therein." Now, this is a verse where Allah is asking Christians to follow their bible. If you follow the bible, you will have to accept the divinity of Christ and so forth. However, at other places, Quran categorically rejects such claims and condemns those who hold such beliefs to hell.

Moreover, you have primitive cosmological ideas that’s perfectly in keeping with the superstitions of those times. Quran says that the stars (some interpret it as shooting stars) are used to pelt the devil in order to drive him away from overhearing conversations between God and angels.

That’s such an embarrassing thing to say from a modern perspective, now that we have a better grasp of the size of these cosmic bodies. For a desert nomad of those times stars and shooting stars must have been these tiny shining pebbles, small enough to throw at someone like stones. Especially the devil, who we know from other Islamic traditions, is comparable in size to a human being.

There are loads more. But trust me, your candidate will have all kinds of workarounds for these points. And nothing will help him see the light unless he is willing to cast off his colored glasses and study the quran critically.

Hi Nyarl

I have not renounced my faith in Islam because I was convinced about the theory of evolution. I have given up Islam owing to its internal flaws. Therefore, Islam being wrong doesn’t make evolution right. But yes, now the advantage is I will not be dogmatically restricted in my study of evolution. I will be able approaching it with a more open mind. But I will not be accepting it until I am intellectually convinced. And I still believe that many of the issues I had with the theory during my believing days are still valid.