[Serious] Time to embrace Islam!

[R00tKiT]

Kidding aside, what would be the advantage to me of 'embracing Islam'?  I've never, for as long as I can recall, been a believer in any religion.  I'm in a gloriously happy marriage, I have friends and family who care about me, I have work that interests and engages me, my health is good, I've got bags of free time, and - while not exactly rich - I've done well enough to retire in a couple of years.

So, in what way do you imagine embracing Islam would make things better for me?

Boru

Congratulations first !

Objectively speaking, Islam doesn't guarantee a fulfilling life in the materialistic way. The very meaning of the word Islam is complete submission to the will of God, which means putting religion ahead of everything else. What one truly gets is a satisfactory answer to the big questions, and some sort of ultimate purpose to be pursued for the promise of heavenly afterlife. Everything else is regarded as means for the purpose. As a result, various aspects of life are rethought in Islam.

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Reading the text in the image, they don't seem confident enough about the accuracy of these traditions. What they say in the image is its value in making for accuracy cannot be questioned, but this doesn't necessarily mean the accuracy of these traditions cannot be questioned. What I understand them to be saying is that this Isnad is a useful means to arrive at accurate truths, but only provided that it isn't riddled with fabrications and such, practices that were common and even tolerated.

In other words, "meh".

Well, the whole point of Isnad is to spot these fabrications. Also, the conditions for a hadith to be declared authentic or sahih'  are pretty rigorous once one understands them. If this doesn't make one assured of the accuracy of Islamic traditions, then one should seriously study this science. Yes, it's a whole field of expertise and there are scholars who dedicated their lives to formalise it.
I agree there is no 100% certainty here, but one should try to avoid to be unreasonably skeptical. It's one thing to say that fabrications are common and that one should be extremely careful when looking for them. It's quite another to dismiss the entire tradition because elements of uncertainty - that scholars dealt with extensively - exist.

I've read the Qur'an, and it certainly doesn't deal with all aspects of life (unless you were just being rhetorical here). I also didn't get the impression it was the greatest literature of all time

Actually, for you to get the 'impression' it was the greatest literature of all time, you should be proficient in literary criticism first and have loads of other credentials. The sure fire way to get an objective opinion about the Qur'an is to simply go back to what experts had to say about it, and once we read them, we don't find much disagreement.

Again, this assumes the traditions are accurate, and if so, that Muhammad's contemporaries had easy access to the message at the time. So again, we're arguing from ignorance here, and arguments from ignorance don't work very well here.

It also assumes, by the way, that there is something so awesome about the book it couldn't have been rivaled, but it's not clear to me how this awesomeness has been measured. Sounds like a rather biased POV.

Checking accuracy is as I said a huge subject, a really huge one. The only way one can get a satisfactory answer is to study the basics of Isnad and see if they are reasonable enough according to his standards. And if they are, arguing from traditions isn't arguing from ignorance anymore.

I already explained the way the book was unrivaled : Muhammad said the words of the Qur'an spontaneously in real life situations, it's like a coming up with a landmark of literature out of thin air without any previous preparation. And you probably already know that Muhammad was reportedly illiterate.

And since Muhammad's religion was a threat to the entire Meccan cultural heritage, one would expect all the people proficient in Arabic to debunk his new book and expose all its flaws, or at the very least come up with rival books. But none of that happened.

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Well if you don't like "Mein Kampf" parallel then take another one: you didn't read "Dianetics" and yet you concluded that Scientology is fake and just lies and deceptions, as did Dawkins with your garbage religion.

Yeah, Islam is totally not comparable to Nazism... oh wait, it so is

https://www.theatlantic.com/internationa...th/355961/

Using extremes such as Nazism, Mein Kampf and such, just to dimiss our religion as garbage before reading its book, is hardly more than garbage claims.

Also, the link provided says some countries consider apostasy, and not atheism per se, to be a crime. Apostasy is the religious equivalent of treason in common law.