Paul Williams Move On Over!

Paul Williams a member of MDI, is allegedly a convert from Christianity to Islam. Now I admittedly confess I am also a convert. I am a convert from Christianity all the way to eventually what I am now, a Secular Humanist. So I find it awfully disturbing and bizarre for a person who claims they have left Christianity in order to convert to Islam. In fact it was reading the Quran for so long that drove me toward Atheism, I realized after reading the Quran, none of these books could possibly come from God, but most certainly the Quran was the worst of them all.

None the less if you ask an evangelical protestant why they believe in the Bible normally they will conjure up some reasons like Biblical prophecy of Jesus or Israel. Perhaps they will say archeology supports the Bible. Maybe they will argue there is biblical evidence for a creator, perhaps even scientific evidence for a creator.

In this sense Paul Williams hasn't changed much. He takes the most shallow, preposterous reasons just like the above reasons but has his own Quranic version of the same mumbo jumbo.

Paul Williams in a recent comment on the MDI blog revealed why he believes the Quran to be the word of a creator. He gives a list of reasons provided by Shabir Ally but oddly never challenges or questions the list. Of course Mr Williams is also putting the shoe before the foot. Since in order to even attempt to interpret claims of a book in a supernatural origins framework, you actually need to at least show why it is likely a creator exists. Something we have repeatedly challenged here. But let's assume Mr Williams is right that a creator does exist. It would then follow we need to explain why the Creator cares about revealing a book  to one species over all other species this is also after having ignored our species for 200,000 years, and allowing all the other species to go rotten and extinct. Yes that's 99.9% of all species that existed on this planet Mr Williams. God must finally do the right thing by revealing his word to an illiterate merchant who frequents caves and associates with known outcasts like Zaid bin Amr and steals his ideas about Abraham being neither a Jew or a Christian but a Hanif, when Amr dies, William's Prophet feels like throwing himself off a mountain, great choice Lord!. Is this a bumbling creator? A fool? Well whatever reasons "God" revealed a book for, this "God" certainly has alot of explaining to do in this book. Perhaps the God can tell us a little about ethics, science, theology, history, philosophy, medicine, health, self improvement? Sounds informative!

So without further or do, here is Mr Williams reasons to believe the Quran is divine word of an infinitely complex creator being:

How can Muslims be assured that the Qur’an is the Word of God?

• "Physical incapacity. The prophet was physically incapable of writing the Quran. History has him as an unlettered man who could not write anything more than his own name. How could he write a book?"

Mr Williams has already conceded the man learnt to write his own name, so surely he can learn to write more letters of the alphabet. No supernatural explanation required here. What about history, does history prove the prophet Mohammed was illiterate? Turns out it's not quite as likely as Williams would like us to think. The word "ummi" often translated as "illiterate" turns out this interpretation is not altogether justified. An ummi was merely one who was not given scriptures, meaning a gentile, but no where does the word imply the person had no chance of being literate. Besides there being conflicting testimony about whether Mohammed was written in Quranic and Ahadith, it's quite obvious the argument that Mohammed never wrote the Quran is absurd. It's known that Mohammed's appointed scribes wrote the Quran and hence were uttering the words Mohammed recited. So the more appropriate question is where did Mohammed receive these words? From a creator? his own mind? rumors, stories? jinn?. So thank you for a completely irrelevant question to start us off with.

• "Sincerity. The prophet was morally constrained to tell the truth about the origin of the Quran. He was noted to be so honest and trustworthy that even his enemies called him al-Amin (the trustworthy). Moreover, he suffered persecution, refused offers to compromise, and maintained his message for a period of twenty-three years. Historians of religion have to conclude that he was sincere."

Very interesting indeed, Historians support the idea that he was genuine, not because they take the Quran or Hadith as fully detailed historical records, but they take what they think are the facts about these situations and then accept that a man in his right mind would of have to had been sincere. But this doesn't answer the objections. Would a sincere person intermix God's words with his own words in the Quran? Would a sincere person have God legislated him an unlimited amount of wives, or even 20% of the boot-ay? Well these are all interesting questions. But even if Mr Williams could jump over this hill, he would have to conclude using the historical method (like historians use with Mohammed), that the Apostle Paul also suffered miserable persecution, suffering and was even a martyr. Proving "sincerity" does not prove the Quran is a work of any kind of God. No I'm afraid sincerity doesn't cut it. Besides Mr Williams should update himself on phenomena like the "God Helmet" or even people who experience epileptic seizures. Sincere people having genuine divine experiences, are often "sincerely deluded". So once again we have no evidence the Quran is the word of God.

• "Psychology. The Quran speaks to the prophet, commands him, and even criticizes him. Such contents do not point to the prophet as the self-conscious author. On the other hand, the author declares himself to be the creator of the heavens and the earth."

 Well this is one of the stupidest claims I've heard. If you were going to pretend to be at least two people (a God and a prophet), would you NOT pretend to be one party talking to the other? Well of course in order to convince others God is speaking to you, you would need to have clear distinctions between you and God. But alas Muhammad could not always cover up these distinctions (Q 42:-6-10, 51:46-51, 19:63-65) as his "mental health" he even confused himself. Either he was to tired to keep up the hoax, he was mentally unstable, schizophrenic or he simply made a mistake by interjecting his own words along side of God.

• "History. The prophet was incapable of writing the Quran. The Quran details items of history which were not known to the prophet or his contemporaries. And independent studies confirm that the Quran was true in what it said."

Of course it is impossible to know for sure what his contemporaries knew. But we can make probabilities or good estimations. But apart from Mohammed's Arab contemporaries, we also have Mohammad's life before he was 40. Mohammed was a tradesman, a caravan worker, traveler and a business man. Mohammed's contemporaries ranged from all over Syria to Iran, Iraq and India, this doesn't include the people he knew who had visited Greece or the knowledge he had of the Byzantines , Coptics Abyssinian's etc. So the claim that Mohammed's contemporaries didn't know about history is almost entirely unlikely. But what is more of significant note here is Mohammed never got all of his history right in the first place. You can get some parts right and some parts wrong. But you need a measuring stick. According to the measuring sticks we have, the Quran contains to many historical errors.But why we would assume Mohammed got any special accuracies from the creator and not simply his colleague and contemporaries, I have no clue. Does the Quran require a special super doper 'divine history' explanation. There is nothing in the Quran so unbelievable that a creator just had to have given this information to an illiterate merchant who learn't most of his bad history from his illiterate friends who passed around fire camp stories..

• "Prophecy. The Quran speaks prophetically, detailing what the future holds. Then the future unfolds exactly as foretold. Who could author such a book?"

Of course this is one of many false prophecies that included the Dajal and End of days and return of Jesus would all come in the life time of Mohammed's contemporaries. Don't forget his prediction about the Romans was false, the Romans won but this was not in the time frame predicted by Mohammed. I wonder if Williams thinks if my friend John was a prophet for predicting Saddam Hussein s defeat before 2003. Well humans will believe whatever makes them comfortable. But again none of this is real evidence.

• "Science. The Quran draws attention to a wide range of physical phenomena in order to teach moral lessons. The statements were not meant to teach science. Yet modern scientists are amazed at the accuracy of these statements. For example, the Quran said things about the growth and development of the human embryo which could not be studied without the use of a microscope. Dr. Keith Moore was professor and chairman of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Toronto. After reviewing the Quranic statements he said: “”I am amazed at the accuracy of these statements which were already made in the 7th century AD.”" Such knowledge in the Qur?an points to God as its source."

Such knowledge points to God as it's source? Well that does it then! God must of had a word with Mohammed! Except Dr Keith Moore openly confessed Muslims and Christians took his comments out of context. But lets assume they didn't maybe Keith Moore could still be right? Well no. It turns out the Quran thought the order was the Bones and THEN the flesh. But alas, there is no "THEN". The arabic word that definitely means "THEN"'' according to Adnan Rashid (who changed his mind 1 minute later), falsfies the Quran once again. Clearly here we see Paul Williams motivation for wanting to believe the Quran is scientific, wanting to adhere to really what is fairytalism, but why? Why not just let it go. The Quran doesn't have to be scientific for you to have a fulfilling, meaningful life. If people would seeing what they want to see, no body else can see this but your particular group of devotees, gee I wonder why?

• "Consistency. The Quran challenges skeptics to find errors in it, which, if found, would disprove its divine claim. But no one has yet been able to point to a real error in it."

This is of suffers from quite a few problems. First it is impossible to prove a book has no contradiction. Second the test is subjective. If I say here it says "I am the first Muslim" but over here it has someone else who was a Muslim before then, the Muslim simply adds to the Quran and reconciles anything. Ad infinitum circular.

•  "Inimitability. A unique feature of the Quran is that no one is able to produce a book that would match its beauty, eloquence and wisdom. The Quran itself challenges humankind to produce even a chapter like it. But no one has been able to do it."

For me personally, I get the most wisdom, beauty and eloquence out of people like Tony Robbins, Echart Tolle or Tyler Durdon. Lately I'm enjoying Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku who are about a million times more eloquent, wise and beautiful than the Quran. Learning about actual science is more eloquent than reading any divine book I've ever seen. The simple study of nature is beautiful, eloquent and wise beyond any religious scripture. The Quran being beautiful could very well be true (for some people), it could very well be false for others (those of us who hate Arabic). The Quran having wisdom could be true but it's not an objective criterion. Most books have some sort of wisdom. What does Ally mean by wisdom? How can a God who can't even experience why we have wisdom provide us with wisdom? Wisdom comes from mistakes, experience, knowledge and lessons learn't. Wisdom is a purely human property. 

These eight reasons together form a strong cumulative case in favor of the Qurans divine origin. Hence Muslims can be confident that the belief of Islam, which is based on the Quran, is true.

From Shabir Ally

It's time religious people got over the pseudo apologetics and actually look at something useful. Physics is much more interesting than the Quran, trust me. So is biology. Science is beautiful, natural, eloquent and superior to all religious scripture.

But a more easy question for Williams and Ally is why do you accept such cheap, shoddy argumentation for your religion? Why not just concede this makes you spiritually content but of course the book is outdated by a long shot! There is no reason for accepting this tripe. There is only hope, the hope that your miserable lives don't cease to exist. You can live a much more morally satisfying life, when you be good for goodness sake, not for God's sake gentlemen. Give up pseudo dawagandist propoganda and come join real researchers.