Rayaan Wrote:So your argument is that if Allah is made up, then we would expect to find the religion originate at a "specific" place in the world, and that's a baseless statement because you can't prove that. What if Allah is not made up? Isn't it still possible to have the same effects for this situation as the former?
I can't prove that? I didn't think it was disputed. Islam, as well as Judaism and Christianity, all originated in the same area of the world, the Middle-East. Every single one of the prophets revered in the Koran all came from roughly the same geographic area. Their message spread to the rest of the world only through human efforts. This is exactly what we should expect to find in a model universe where Yahweh-Allah is the creation of human imagination.
If you suggest a model universe where Allah exists and only spoke with prophets in that geographic region, you need to explain why your god likes the people from the Middle-East more than anyone else in the world. Over the course of a little more than a thousand years, he spoke to many prophets but never anyone outside that relatively small area.
Now factor into this alternative model that Allah loves all of his children and wants a universal religion, not one with a "chosen people" as with Judaism. In fact, it's one positive thing about Islam that I can think of is just how inclusive it is. Were I, as a man of European descent, to join Islam, I would be just as much a brother in your religion as one of Arabian descent. Allah's "color-blind" nature is an admirable trait but unfortunately it doesn't square with the model universe you would propose.
Now I'm sure you will say that Allah (1) exists, (2) spoke only to prophets from the Middle-East and (3) doesn't have a chosen people but still (4) focused only on that area of the planet for some reason known only to your god. However, the number of unsubstantiated ad hoc hypotheses necessary to sustain that model runs well past the threshold point where Occam's Razor is invoked. Specifically, the reason it looks like Islam was a human invention is because it's a human invention.
Atheist Forums Hall of Shame:
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too."
... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept
"(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question"
... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too."
... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept
"(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question"
... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist
