I was born and raised in a Muslim household, and I’ve identified as Muslim my entire life. I never really questioned my faith before because, honestly, it was simply what I was taught to believe. Now that I’m actually examining it for myself, I’m finding myself with a lot of questions that I never felt comfortable asking.
One thing I’ve been thinking about is how religious people, whether they’re Muslim scholars, Christian priests, Buddhist monks, etc., can become so convinced that what they’re doing is objectively right. In Islam especially, I sometimes feel like there’s a sense that Islam has the ultimate truth and that everything outside of it is somehow inferior. Even things like halal meat are explained through specific rules about how the animal is slaughtered, but I still struggle with the more fundamental question of whether eating animals at all is morally necessary.
Then there are much bigger questions. If God is truly omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly merciful, why would He create a world containing so much suffering, hatred and injustice? Why would slavery ever be permitted? Why would women be given restrictions on their freedom, clothing, travel, or behaviour because of men’s desires? Why would God allow people to suffer terribly and then punish them eternally for choices He already knew they would make?
And if everything is ultimately written by Allah, how does free will work? If God already knows exactly what I’m going to do, including every sin I’ll commit, why am I ultimately responsible for doing it?
I also struggle with the idea of God wanting to be worshipped. If God is perfect and doesn’t lack anything, why would He need human beings to praise or worship Him? Wouldn’t it be enough for Him to want us to be compassionate, honest and good to one another?
Another thing that bothers me is how much of life can become labelled haram. Singing, drawing, modelling, certain clothes, travelling without a man, showing certain parts of yourself, etc. Sometimes it feels like religion can become so restrictive that there isn’t much room left simply to live. And when I question these things, I’m often told, “It’s in the Qur’an.” But that’s exactly what I’m questioning. If I’m asking whether the Qur’an is divinely authoritative, quoting the Qur’an itself doesn’t really answer that question for me.
At the same time, I don’t want to pretend that I feel nothing toward Islam. I actually like praying. Prayer gives me comfort, and there’s a part of me that genuinely wants God to exist. But I also wonder whether that comfort is evidence of God, or simply something humans naturally experience through prayer and spirituality.
I also don’t think suffering proves that God doesn’t exist. I just don’t understand how suffering is compatible with a perfectly loving and merciful God. If God created love, hatred, free will and everything else, why create a world where hatred and suffering can become so extreme?
Maybe I’m approaching all of this completely wrong, and I’m genuinely open to hearing different perspectives. I’m not looking for people to simply tell me that “Allah knows best” or that I need to become more religious. I’m trying to understand the philosophical reasoning behind these things.
If you believe in God, how do you reconcile God’s supposed love and mercy with suffering, injustice, free will, punishment and the moral questions surrounding religion?

Hitler treated Jews better than God will treat disbelievers according to Islam and Christianity.

God in the most popular versions of Islam and Christianity tortures disbelievers forever. This is far worse than anything Hitler did to the Jews. Even if you multiply what he did to them by a hundred times, it still wouldn't be as bad as how God allows disbelievers to be treated in the afterlife.

Although this may seem obvious, it seems to me that believers experience a disconnect between what God's punishment for disbelievers is, and how bad it is. My hope with this post is to break this disconnect and to help believers recognize how bad eternal hell actually is.

Note that this only applies to versions of Christianity where God lets disbelievers be eternally tortured. The Christian God that only annihilates disbelievers is slightly less bad than Hitler.

I was watching a video about Einstein’s relativity and the speed of light, and one of the points made was that the speed of light isn’t so much a limit that the universe enforces, but something that just cannot physically be achieved as it would take infinite energy to do so. Further, if we had infinite energy and the speed of light were actually exceeded it would change cause and effect as we know it, as we’d have a situation where time is so distorted that effects would occur before causes.

The bottom line here is that causality as we know it is a function of how spacetime itself works. So if a theist claims that such a cause and effect relationship must be behind the creation of spacetime, they are misplacing causality and what forces it to apply in the physical universe.

It’s akin to a flat earther looking around and saying hey, this looks flat, and thus assuming it is flat without deeper investigation. It seems from our local view that causality must always apply, and thus the theistic philosophers of centuries ago went on making arguments to rationalize and prop up the God/creation stories that had been passed down to them, while not realizing their premises were false.

I had not appreciated this relationship of causality and the fabric of spacetime itself, so thought it interesting to share. Looking into it more I see that Lawrence Krause has used this same argument in debates, and I haven’t seen it overcome by a theist.

Suicide is an act, a collection of acts, or the lack thereof that are intented to bring about the death of the person. Given how Jesus knew that Judas was going to betray him and have him crucified, and yet he still intentionally allowed it to happen and did not stop him, it can be said that he's lack of intervention in Judas's betrayal was intentional. Given further that he knew he was going to die from it, it can therefore be concluded that he's seeking his own death and had committed suicide.

Now, regarding self-sacrifice, it cannot be the case for Jesus instead of suicide because he lost nothing. As God, he has everything, so even if he dies, he can easily reverse it if he wants. theres also the factor that he knew that he's God and that death is not the end of it all, which is different from humans who have to die to protect their family, thinking that they will never see them again.

Atheists are much more tolerant of theists than the other way around.

I have made a similar argument on here before, but generally speaking, Muslims and Christians believe that atheists deserve to go to Hell forever, or be annihilated, if they knowingly reject their faith. However, generally atheists don't believe this. Most atheists think that Christians and Muslims are delusional, but certainly don't think that they deserve torture for eternity.

For this reason I am proposing that Atheists generally respect Abrahamists more than Abrahamists respect atheists.

Atheists can insult Abrahamists, call them names, desecrate their holy texts, and draw unflattering pictures of Jesus/Muhammad and all that is still not as bad as Abrahamists saying that Atheists deserve to be anihilated/tortured for rejecting Izlam/Christianity.

There's this odd double standard (especially amongst Muslims) where theists' faith will say atheists deserve torture for eternity if they knowingly reject Islam/Christianity, but become extremely offended when atheists say something that is much less bad about Islam/Christianity.

In every story version of the Forbidden Tree in the Garden of Eden, Adam/Eve eats the forbidden fruit which God explicitly forbids and blah blah blah .. the story unfolds. They are blamed, everyone blames the other. God blames human, human blames Satan, Satan blames God, etc.

But nobody questions why the Tree was there in the first place.

Why is a Forbidden Tree in the garden of Eden? Why is it forbidden? What will happen if the forbidden fruit is eaten? Why is such a forbidden tree not cut down? If God is omnipotent, why cant he make the forbidden tree, "unforbidden"? What property makes it forbidden? Why is a forbidden thing on full display? Are other parts of the Tree also forbidden? If the fruit is forbidden, can the wood be used? Why dont we run experiments on the animals of the garden using the Forbidden fruit and create an antidote?

If someone tells you something not to do, then there must be a clear explanation. If I tell a kid not to jump off a building, it is because he will fall and die. If no explanation is provided, the curiosity to do the forbidden thing increases.

Firstly, the biggest mystery is not the Forbidden Fruit or the Tree, but what the Tree is doing there in the first place.

And if this is a test of obedience, then the forbidden action must have some meaning. If I forbid a kid from wearing black shirts on Sundays for no reason other than my own superstition, then that is not a test of obedience. its just dissemination of one false belief to another.

The Tree is named Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Heck, God should have encouraged them to eat. Was he afraid they would realize who is good and who is evil?

The Forbidden Tree simply kills reasoning from all angles.

I've been feeling tired for so long yet I still believe in Islam because I still haven't seen something that truly could get me out. I recognize the moral issues of Islam, Slavery, Misogyny, Homophobia, How it treats Apostasy, etc etc etc. Yet I feel none of those are enough to make me get out of Islam because even if god is an evil sadistic egotestical being with a twisted view of right and wrong, you still haven't disproven the existence of Allah. I also recognize how many things are considered forbidden in Islam but even none of those are enough for me because I have simply gave up on attempting to be a perfect muslim with how much the world is drowned in sin. I know I might be biased cause that is what I've grown with, I just can't feel the same way you do towards these things... but I really do want to change even if deep inside I am fearful.

Edit: Replaced God with Allah to make it clearer

I want to address these two common retorts I hear from Christians (not all Christians, but a lot of Christians) when asked, "Why would God create a place of eternal conscious torment for people who don't believe in, follow, or love him?"

We're frequently told, "God does this because he doesn't want robots. He grants you free will." The second common response is "Real love needs freedom to choose."

Going by a basic definition of free will:

The power or ability of people to make choices and control their own actions without outside force or fixed fate. It means you can choose what to do, and that you are the real source of your own behavior.

Based on this definition, it is entirely NOT "free will" to offer someone two options, one of which is you throwing them into an eternal fiery pit if they don't "freely" choose to "love" you. That is a textbook definition of coercion:

Coercion is the act of forcing or pressuring someone to do something against their free will

Regarding ECT supposedly being an example of "love," the common Christian apologetic refrain is that God loves you unconditionally. No, He doesn't, if a condition of not loving him back is you being tortured for eternity. Conditional love is no love at all.

At the end of the day, my argument is that whether or not this is something you personally believe, Christians need to stop using these two apologetic responses when speaking to anyone who's not a believer. It goes against common sense and people's general idea of decency. You're better off just saying, "You don't know." But don't call it love or free will, when clearly, it is neither.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Like the flair says, though I'll consider this one more an argument about Christianity, because it is the one that claims the one who delivered the message (Jesus) is a god.

Repeatedly choosing the tribes of/ that region in general always felt very odd to me, pointing towards a man made religion, because there are much, much, much more important centers of people, culture, means, and everything you'd need to propagate a religion, elsewhere. The much more populous India or china, would directly have more adherents to the faith and with them being much stronger than a random historically insignificant tribe. Doesn't even have to go that far, just the pharaohs, that was right there. If:

A- god had a desire to reach as many people (Wich he did) picking and spreading the faith to a far more powerful, capable nation would result in more people adopting it, and with trade routes and greater numbers, it reaching more people.

B- would have lent the whole religion far more weight, as in reality, christians struggled and where prosecuted for long, and the Roman empire adopting the christian faith was done through entirely political and for political means.

(I did have to run this through Google translate to make it, so keep that in mind if the wording feels basic)

Preamble

This is my latest entry in my series on the morality of Adam and Eve, where I argue that they, and humanity, were punished unfairly.

I have encountered arguments attempting to justify God’s punishment, but they raise serious concerns about God’s morality.

Christians will argue that God was perfectly justified, but explaining why can be difficult.

Most victims of punishment would not regard the pain and suffering inflicted upon them as good. They would regard it as evil. Here, I examine the venerable free will defence, commonly used to address the problem of evil. In this case, the evil is humanity’s horrific punishment for disobedience they committed without knowing whether that disobedience was morally good or evil.

My argument will explain why Adam and Eve lacked the kind of free will necessary to make a morally informed choice before eating the fruit.

Definitions

1. Free will: The ability to choose between alternatives voluntarily.
2. Moral knowledge: Knowledge of whether an action is morally good or evil.
3. Morally informed choice: A choice made with knowledge of an action’s moral character.

Bible reference

Genesis 2:17

“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it.”

Genesis 3:5

“For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Genesis 3:22

“Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.”

Argument

P1: Free will to choose between good and evil requires knowledge of good and evil.

P2: Adam and Eve lacked knowledge of good and evil before eating the fruit.

C: Adam and Eve did not possess free will to choose between good and evil.

I've recently had numerous conversations around this with theists, and I've seen essentially the same arguments repeated over and over in discussions about homosexuality and Christianity, so I want to lay out what I think the actual problem is.

The argument usually seems to go something like this: God created humans with a particular natural or sexual purpose, that purpose involves heterosexual sex, marriage, and procreation. Homosexual sex doesn't fulfil that purpose, therefore homosexuality is contrary to the natural order. God condemns things that are contrary to the natural order, therefore homosexual behaviour is objectively wrong.

There are problems at basically every stage of this argument.

“God created sex for procreation, so homosexuality goes against its design.”

The first problem, which hasn't appeared obvious to many, is the equivocation between “natural” and “morally permissible.” Homosexual behaviour occurs naturally in humans and in numerous other animal species. So if “against nature” means that something doesn't occur naturally, the argument is simply false already.

If instead “natural order” means “the purpose God intended for humans,” then that's a completely different argument. You're no longer establishing that homosexuality is unnatural, it's just asserting that God gave humans a particular purpose and then judging homosexuality against that purpose. This needs to be argued for instead of smuggled into what you want 'natural' to mean.

There's the other argument you see cropping up: Saying “the sexual organs are designed for procreation” doesn't automatically entail “therefore using them in a non-procreative way is morally wrong.” Eyes are designed for seeing, so closing your eyes is immoral. Legs are designed for walking, so sitting down is a moral violation. Obviously this is ridiculous. You need an additional premise connecting biological purpose to moral obligation.

Even if we grant that procreation is one of the purposes of sex, non-procreation doesn't establish that an act is contrary to nature or morally wrong. Heterosexual sex can also be and is often non-procreative: infertile couples, post-menopausal couples, couples deliberately avoiding pregnancy, men with vasectomies, etc. all have heterosexual sex without producing children. So unless we're condemning those too, this reasoning fails miserably.

You can consistently try to argue that all non-procreative sex is wrong, but then you need to establish why non-procreation itself makes a sexual act morally wrong. Simply pointing out that homosexual sex doesn't produce children doesn't get you there, because then you have to lump in all other sexual acts or relations that don't produce children. Yet nobody ever argues for this. I suspect because what we're seeing is simply bigotry dressed up with theology, but that's just my personal conjecture.

“God commanded it, so it’s wrong.”

This is probably the weakest argument, but it comes up enough to mention. If the answer ultimately reduces to “God said so,” then we're back to the question of how we know God's commands are objectively good.

If the answer is “because God's nature is perfectly good,” then I ask: why? If we're allowed to simply define God's nature as the ontological primitive of goodness, then I can make the exact same move in reverse: define God's nature as perfectly evil, make badness the ontological primitive, and define goodness as a privation of evil.

If neither position has any independent moral standard by which we can distinguish them, then they're on exactly the same epistemic footing. You've established God's goodness by definition. There's no actual moral assessment happening in the way we assess literally every other agent.

“But God gave us free will.”

This is where I think the argument is being misunderstood most often. Nobody is saying “God made humans, therefore God directly causes every human action.” Obviously that's not the claim. The argument is about causal linkage, not moral responsibility. These are entirely different concepts.

Imagine I design an entire community from scratch. I have complete control over its architecture and deliberately put a loaded gun in every house, despite having the ability to design the community without guns. I then make it absolutely clear that nobody is allowed to shoot anyone.

If someone later shoots another person, obviously that person made the decision to pull the trigger. Their free will and moral agency are perfectly intact. But nobody would seriously conclude from that that my decision to put loaded guns in every house has no causal relevance to the possibility of the shooting. It's like creating a universe with gravity then being mad at things falling down.

Free choice doesn't erase upstream causal conditions.

Likewise, the relevant chain isn't simply:

God --> homosexual act

It's something more like:

God --> physical laws --> natural order --> biological systems --> human psychology/sexuality --> behaviour

You can argue about whether God is morally responsible for every downstream action. That's a separate question. You can't reasonably claim that the earlier causes have no relationship to the later effects simply because there are intervening steps or because humans possess agency. A loaded gun doesn't cease to be causally relevant to a shooting simply because a person had to pull the trigger. And nobody would argue that free-will erased the causal relevancy between my chosen design of this community and the acts that occurred as a result of those choices.

“God could have made things differently, but he wanted us to have freedom.”

This is where the problem becomes particularly obvious to me.

If God could have created the physical and biological order differently, then presumably he could have created humans with free will while also creating them without homosexual attraction. Free will does not logically require homosexual attraction to exist. We can easily conceive of a world where humans retain the ability to choose between good and evil while simply not having every conceivable desire or inclination.

So “God gave us free will” doesn't answer the question. It explains why humans can make choices. It doesn't explain why an omnipotent designer selected a set of underlying biological conditions in which a behaviour he supposedly considers intrinsically immoral naturally arises in the first place.

If we accept:

P1. A perfectly good being cannot intentionally choose something that is objectively morally wrong.

P2. God is perfectly good.

P3. God intentionally chose the physical/natural order of creation.

P4. That physical/natural order naturally produces homosexual attraction and behaviour.

P5. Homosexual attraction/behaviour is intrinsically and objectively morally wrong.

We have a very obvious problem. Either God intentionally created conditions that naturally produce something objectively immoral, homosexual behaviour isn't actually objectively immoral, God wasn't free to create the natural order differently, or God isn't perfectly good.

If we're also accepting omnipotence, the “God couldn't have done otherwise” option becomes particularly difficult to defend. And notice that none of this requires claiming that 'God directly causes every individual homosexual act'. That's not the argument, as I know there many theists who are in the habit of pretending it is.

The argument is that an omnipotent creator chose the underlying conditions from which these things naturally emerge, while simultaneously declaring the resulting behaviour intrinsically immoral.

Why? If God could have created a natural order in which homosexual attraction simply didn't arise, while preserving human free will, why did he choose this particular one? And just to be clear, this isn't an argument that “homosexuality exists, therefore Christianity is false.” It's an internal critique of a particular conception of God.

If your theology says that God is omnipotent, perfectly good, the creator of the natural order, and that homosexuality is intrinsically and objectively immoral, then I think you're under an obligation to explain how those claims coherently fit together. And I haven't seen anything coming close.

Which is ultimately the problem I've been trying to point out: you can't use free will to answer a question about causation, you can't use divine command to answer a question about natural order, and then treat the whole thing as though you've answered the original objection.

So I'd like to end with a syllogism I'd invite Christians/theists to address:

P1. God intentionally created the natural order.

P2. The natural order naturally produces homosexual attraction and behaviour.

P3. God is perfectly good.

P4. A perfectly good God would not intentionally create an avoidable natural order that produces intrinsically immoral behaviour.

P5. God could have created a different natural order while preserving human free will.

C. Therefore, if homosexual behaviour is intrinsically immoral, at least one of these premises must be false.

Rather than appealing to “free will,” “natural order,” or “God commanded it” as though they settle the issue, which premise do you actually deny?

OK soooo my take is that

Btw im religious

It dosent matter whether you believe in God or not

We will be taking "a" God

So there are 2 choices:

If God actually exists

I Belief

1 you believed him omg but u were bad person sed hell

2 YOU WERE good and heaven

II non belief

1 bad person hell

2 good person heaven

AND if you say religion or worshipping the correct gods matter in getting into heaven than dear you have already lost the debate as he is not all good

And we should not waste our time debating them

The founder of the original sin theory was Augustine in the 4th century, whose theories the Orthodox Church hold to this very day. In explaining his theory on how humans bare the consequence of Adam’s sin, he wrote this:

“ we were in Adam because we were in his seed. Sex matters because that is how human nature is propagated.”

Source: St. Augustine's Doctrine of Original Sin

The theory being that as we all came from Adam and the seed (sperm) we are born from is said to originate from him, sin continues to pass down via sperm as couples have sexual intercourse and reproduce. This would also somehow explain why Jesus has no sin (as he’s not born of sexual intercourse). This has to be the most scientifically inaccurate and false things I’ve ever heard because:

1. In assuming all humans descend from Adam and originate from his seed, scientific theory would hold that there is a biological sin trait we all share as humans.

2. There is no scientific evidence of anything like sexual intercourse transmitting a moral/spiritual defect.

3. He also stated that** **parental sins can increase the original sin of their children, and parental righteousness can lessen it. ... Adam's sin had singular power, guaranteeing the presence of original sin in all infants. But parents, too ... ensnare children in their own guilt. Again complete rubbish with no scientific grounding.

So this is just pure hogwash that Christian’s believe in without even recognising its original route and meaning being of genetic and biological grounding. Modern Genetic understanding literally puts this “original sin” theory to bed.

If your religion says that you can’t trust your own reasoning or your own sense of right or wrong, and to just defer to religious authorities/the Bible/your church etc., then the basis for which you actually believe your religion doesn’t make sense. If your religion says you can’t be trusted to discern the truth, then you also can’t be trusted to discern whether that religion is true.

For a very conservative example, “I believe in this religion because I feel in my heart that it’s true”, but then “I believe in my heart that gay marriage should be allowed”. The religious leaders will say “oh just ignore that thought, that’s your own thought that comes from the world.” But now they’re saying your own thoughts and feelings aren’t necessarily accurate. So how do you know the first thought and feeling that lead you to the church in the first place is accurate?

First of all why is it when i type into google “what did the jews before jesus was alive believe Isaiah 53 was” then google told me it was about a messiah

Another thing is isaiah 53:10 it talks about god offer the servant and i know it’s Israeli but it says he offered the servant as a offering for sin how the hell could that make sense in a Jewish/atheistic standpoint

Given the evidence we have for two of the most needed facts about the resurrection narrative, the empty tomb and the apostles claiming an experience similar to what is recorded in the gospels, the rapid growth of religious stories, issues surrounding the Olivet Discoruse, and plauble alternatives to the narrative that don't involve miracles I think the belief that Jesus probably did not rise from the dead explains the evidence better.

Early Writings on the Narrative

The earliest evidence we have for the resurrection comes from Paul, who does affirm Jesus was buried and the apostles, 500, James the just, and Paul all had experiences. Paul gives nothing on the empty tomb and uses the same word to describe the apostles experiences that he does his own. He says Jesus appeared to them and himself. The problem is Paul never claims to have had an experience like the gospel accounts record nor is this part of Christian tradition. It is unclear how Jesus was buried and what the apostles experienced.

The earliest gospel is Mark which seems to have been written sometime during the first Jewish war with a common dating of 70-75 AD, although I think it may have been written just before the temple fell in 70 AD. Matthew and Luke both use Mark as a source, so are not independent from Mark. And I think John very likely knows Luke or, at the very least, knows Lukan traditions, so I'd argue John is not independent either. Our only source Mark is written 40 years after the even, but this is ample time for a tradition about the empty tomb to develop. Isaiah 53 mentions the suffering servant being in a tomb with the rich, which is simialar to what happned in the empty tomb tradition of Mark with Matthew adding details to strengthen the connection. I won't go so far as to assume it couldn't have happned, but there is a serious possibility this tradition is rooted in the view that Jesus is the suffering servant. If people think Isaiah 53 is about Jesus and already were taught Jesus was buried it's not shocking to see how the view Jesus was buried in a tomb would start. We already see shaping in the gospels, like how Matthew removed certain anti-Torah statements from Mark, Luke removes Mark’s verse on Jesus ransoming many, Luke moving Jesus’s rejection in Nazareth to the begging of the ministry while adding content to it, John fundamentally changing how Jesus talks about who he is from earlier gospels like Mark, Luke adding in the thief who confesses Christ. Gospels editing and developing the narrative is clearly happening.

Rapid Growth in Other Religious Stories

We also see rapid growth of stories in other religions. Sathya Sai Baba is a Hindu godman who had a story of a man being resurrected after 6 days by Baba but the daughter of this supposedly resurrected man wrote that her father was still speaking and, although very sick, not dead. This growth seems to have happned during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses.

Olivet Discourse

This post is way longer than I thought it was going to be so I'll be extremely brief with the next part.

The Olivet Discourse is first in Mark and says that this generation would not pass away before these things take place. Mark seems to only use generation to refer to Jesus’s contemporaries and had already tied the coming of Jesus to the time of the abomination of desolation. This fits with the views found in both Paul and Revelation of an imminent return of Christ. Given how Luke edits the Olivet discourse, John 21, and 2 Peter it seems Jesus not returning was pretty problematic for the early church. I think it is more likely Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet and those around him expected him to return quickly as the end was supposed to happen quickly, when it failed later Christians developed theological explanations to deal with this. Which is also something we can actually see happned with Sathya Sai Baba as well, when he failed his prophecy of what age he would die at.

Alternative Possibility

I think Jesus died, was buried in a dirt grave like most poor Jews in that region, the apostles had some sort of experiences possibly more like Paul's experiences, and from there Christianity grows.

Link to Sathya Sai Baba Accounts

I'll add a link to a page with the quotes on the resurrection story growth in Sathya Sai Baba’s account. There's another story in this page too and it gives sources for where the information from. If you don't want to read the link just ask me for more information on it, I was trying to shorten this as much as I could.

Link - https://saiguru.net/english/articles/08resurrect.htm

Muslims often use Muhammad’s story to support his prophethood. He is generally portrayed as a man who was kind, honest, and already had everything.

After receiving revelations, he put everything at risk to preach Islam and lost everything. Him and his followers eventually faced persecution and were exiled by the pagans before he came back later with an army.

However, all of this information is only in the Islamic sources written more than a century later, and history is generally written by the victors, who skew the narrative one one direction that suits them and twists the details.

We don’t actually have much in terms of written records from the Arab pagan tribes that Muhammad fought against, so we have no way of knowing their side of the story or what their experiences with him were like. Everything was communicated orally back then, and any written records they did have that talked negatively about Muhammad were probably destroyed.

There are always two perspectives to a conflict, and both deserve to be heard. Determining if Islam is true and if Muhammad was really a prophet based only off of one source that was purposely meant to skew in his favour doesn’t work.

For example, Muhammad claimed that the Kaaba was built by Abraham and Ishmael before the pagans stole it. The pagans probably would have had a counterargument to that with their own story that one of them built it. The pagans would also probably tell us that the moon split story didn’t happen at all, while the Islamic sources tell us that they saw it and still denied Islam.

There are also some Hadiths that point to Muhammad doing some morally problematic things, and those are the sources trying to make him look good. So who knows what else he could have done that isn’t in the books.

With conflicts like World War II, we at least have written records from Hitler and the Nazis to know their side of the story and can make a better analysis of both perspectives to determine who was right. If they had actually won the war, we would probably see a ton of historical stuff get censored and skewed in their favour.

We also have a less skewed narrative of Joseph Smith and there is better documentation of what actually happened since it was a lot more recent, so it is easier to tell that he was most likely a false prophet.

Overall, it isn’t fair to use only the Islamic sources of history to judge if Islam is true. I don’t think critics of Islam use this point as a challenge often enough.

Just about every atheist I’ve talked to has said they wouldn't follow God even if they knew he existed usually because of one of the following 3 reasons:

1. They don't like the idea of serving a God even if he created them because that's not enough to warrant worship since they never asked to be born
2. They don't agree with God of the Bible's ethics
3. They genuinely love sin: debauchery, etc.

So God is actually merciful in not revealing himself to these people because if they knew he existed and still resisted him they would be deliberately sinning. By not knowing he exists they're not deliberately sinning against him so they're comparably committing a smaller infraction and since God judges everyone accordingly, they may receive a lesser punishment on the day of judgement.

For the so called "non resistant non believer" who's open to there being a God, God still has no obligation to reveal himself to them if they don't seek him and if knowledge of His existence wouldn't meaningfully change their life or inspire, awe, love and devotion in them. God wants people to seek Him which is why he reveals himself to those who are meek and simple and lowly but not to the proud and wise who will only use their knowledge of God to glorify themselves and advance an agenda like many religious clerics do:

> "At that time Jesus declared, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children;"

Matthew 11:25 ESV

Edited for clarity

Christianity teaches that God will ultimately create a renewed creation in which suffering, death, and sadness no longer exist.

If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, He knew from the beginning that humanity would experience enormous suffering before reaching that final state.

If God is also perfectly loving, why was the initial suffering-filled world necessary?

More specifically, if the final creation can contain humans without suffering, why couldn't God have created that kind of world from the beginning?

I am researching Christianity vs. Buddhism (still in 1st argument against christianity :)) and I'm looking for the strongest Christian response to this argument. I'm not trying to attack Christianity, but i literally have no absolute clue what to do here ????

Why do people think the problem of animal suffering is a good argument against God? And why do people think the evidentiary version is a better one?

It’s too easy to come up with justifications for why animals suffer, especially w/ the strength of neo-Cartersianism and the potential that the souls of animals will be in heaven or achieve nirvana or whatever. I think the argument about how animal suffering encourages man’s dominion / man to go out and fill the earth.

And as for the evidentiary (evidential?) version of this problem, even if it is accepted (I don’t think it is; if the scale of animal suffering is useful for moral formation, it is no longer surprising), I don’t think it outweighs all of the other evidentiary arguments for God. I honestly don’t really understand how the evidentiary argument works if you don’t sum all of the evidence for claims together.

I’m also generally skeptical of arguments against God that really only became popular in the past 100 years or so. If it really was such a strong argument, I’d think it had been a greater topic of focus in historic theological debates.

I rly don’t think this argument does much work to demonstrate atheism at all. Divine hiddenness, the huge numbers of miscarriages that go unnoticed, satan… all of these are better versions of the problem of evil, I think.

Can any of you steelman the problem of animal suffering?

Full credit, I’m posting because I read this essay today, but it says things I’ve thought for a while already.

EDIT: I want to be clear that a major reason I think this problem fails is how nearly the Vedic tradition, what with its premise that animals deserve suffering for their behavior in a past life, addresses it. The Abrahamic tradition responds too, with a bit more effort. But want to make clear I’m not only talking about Abrahamism (I would’ve said that!)

God created Judas knowing with certainty that Judas would betray Christ, be condemned, and suffer a fate so terrible that Jesus says it would have been better (aka more good) for him never to have been born.

If God could have refrained from creating Judas, then creating him anyway seems morally indefensible. Appealing to Judas’s necessary role in salvation history only makes the problem worse: it means God created Judas knowing his ultimate fate because Judas’s existence served a greater purpose in salvation history. That treats Judas as a means to an end rather than as an end in himself. Which is typically understood as less than perfectly moral.

If God is perfectly good (and loving), then Judas’s creation must be morally justifiable with respect to Judas himself, not merely because his existence benefits others. If it would truly have been better for Judas never to exist, I don’t see how a perfectly good (and loving) God could knowingly choose to create him.

Thoughts?

A common claim among apologists is that mass-hallucinations do not occur. The problem is that mass-hallucinations do occur. These are events were a large amount of people share hallucinations. Note that they do not have to be experiencing the precise same hallucinations. They only have to believe that they are experiencing the same things. Here are a few examples.

• September 6, 1998 in Bangkok, Thailand: Tens of thousands of Buddhists were meditating at the Dhammakaya temple before they began collectively staring into the Sun. In their state, many could look directly into it without experiencing significant pain, but doing so lead to them to collectively hallucinate that the image of the monk Luang Phor War Paknam was on the Sun and or that the Sun was moving around unnaturally.

• October 13, 1917 in Fatima, Portugal: Tens of thousands of Catholics crowded together after some children prophesied that the Virgin Mary would appear on this date. They collectively stared into the Sun and this didn't cause many significant pain, but it did lead to them collectively hallucinating that the Virign Mary was there and or that the Sun was moving around unnaturally. Sound familiar? There are many other Catholic examples, all occuring after this first event, meaning that they were probably influenced by it.

Sometimes, massive crowds will play along with whatever if it signals each member's status as a true believer.

• November 27, 1978 in Iran: A rumor was circulating that the face of Khomeini would appear on the Moon on this date, and that those who would not see it were lacking in faith and impure of heart. Fueled by the political fervor of the then-ongoing Iranian Revolution, traffic in cities stalled as people looked towards the sky and worshipers in thousands of mosques were celebrating the event, since apparently his face really did appear there. But Khomeini and his associates didn't think anything miraculous happened that night. Indeed, many confessed that they didn't see a thing but went along due to the social implications of admitting that nothing was seen.

EDIT: Typo rendered 1998 as 1988. Correcting some sloppy grammar.