u/Antman269

When people question the reasoning for Jesus being created by God through a virgin birth in Islam since he isn’t viewed as God’s son in that religion, Muslims generally say it was meant to be a miracle to show how powerful God is, with the capability of doing anything. So he did that instead of choosing a man who was already alive to be his next prophet.

However, this argument has some problems, namely the fact that if it was simply meant to be a miracle, it isn’t one that could be verified by anybody.

It isn’t an obvious visible miracle that anybody could see and not have any natural explanation for. Mary simply becomes pregnant without a biological father being involved. If she had gone around saying that nobody would have any reason to believe it and would just assume her husband Joseph was the father.

The bible even states that they claimed Joseph was Jesus’ father and kept the actual circumstances to themselves. Even Joseph couldn’t be 100% sure that Mary didn’t secretly have an affair with another man if it wasn’t for angels telling him.

Basically the only person that could be 100% sure it was a miracle is Mary herself since she knows she didn’t have sex with a man. It isn’t really a miracle to show God’s power if nobody can see it or verify it. It’s not like the sea being split in Exodus, which had thousands of witnesses who could confirm it since it was an obvious visible event and actually made them realize an all-powerful being existed.

If some woman came around today in 2026 saying she got pregnant despite being a virgin, nobody would believe her. If we saw a sea or ocean being split today, tons of people would witness it and would take recordings and many atheists would start believing in God.

The claim that it was for God to show his power doesn’t work if nobody can actually see the miracle being performed.

I’ve seen some people, particularly certain Muslims on social media, try to deny, or at least downplay the death toll, of the Holocaust, generally as part of a larger plan to critique Israel. The claim is often that since it was the 1940’s, it was harder to document things and the numbers could have been significantly manipulated and inflated as a result to suit a certain narrative, leading to the claim that 6 million Jews died, which they believe is false.

Isn’t this really hypocritical when they also believe literally everything in a religious book written 1400 years ago, and also trust a biography about their prophet that was written more than a century after his death by Muslims who never even met him? They see no reason to question the claims him splitting the moon or riding a flying horse even though no outside sources ever saw or documented anything like that.

I think Israel is absolutely deserving of criticism, but trying to spread misinformation about a significant historical event just causes your entire movement to fall apart. They clearly have a double standard and are being very selective about what is historically reliable evidence.

Obviously plenty of Muslims disagree and accept the Holocaust as fully real while still critiquing Israel at the same time, but the point is that trying to say everything in your religious book is 100% historical fact is ridiculous.

It feels like it would be satisfying to see hardcore religious people that were always super confident in their beliefs and dedicated their whole lives to it suddenly realize they were wrong upon dying and there actually is no God or afterlife.

However, if atheists are actually right, that means consciousness completely ends at death. It isn’t just staring at a black void for eternity, there is no you left to even process any thoughts, your existence and consciousness completely vanishes.

So when people of every religion, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, etc, all eventually die, their final thoughts are going to be that they are about to enter the afterlife and meet their respective deities. There will be no moment where they can see that there is no afterlife and think “I was wrong, there is no God, everything I believed was wrong”

So in a way, everybody dies thinking they won the contest for the truth. Even atheists wouldn’t be able to think “I really was right” after they are dead.

The entire idea of Hell is insane and evil. The idea that a God would subject someone to eternal torture and torment with no way out because of finite actions after a relatively short life is absolutely unjust.

If you interpret all the religious claim literally, most people that end up in Hell will actually be people who were good overall and lived relatively chill and normal lives, and their only “crime” would be that they either saw no strong evidence that God existed, or they guessed the wrong religion out of dozens of options, which will generally be influenced by where they are born.

It would be one thing if not believing just meant that you don’t get the reward of Heaven, I could kind of understand that since you are still given some freedom to choose in that case. But literally being subjected to fire and torture and the worst suffering imaginable for every second of all eternity makes no sense.

I have heard some apologists argue that God’s standard of what is good enough for Heaven might be something we can’t comprehend and are not capable of as humans, so he gave us this path as an alternative, but by that logic, his standard of what is bad enough to justify Hell should also be something beyond what humans are capable of.

Our actions are finite and any consequences we face should also be finite no matter what we did in life. I don’t even think some of the worst people in history like Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Epstein deserve a truly eternal punishment since they were still human beings with finite actions like the rest of us, and all the pain and suffering they caused to others is still insignificant compared to what God does to billions people in Hell for eternity.

Absolutely nobody deserves this and anyone that tries to justify it and say it’s fine is either psychotic or can’t comprehend the idea of eternity.

Religious people often claim that atheists are just full of arrogance and pride and believe they are better than everyone else for simply rejecting the religions. This claim is absolutely absurd when you consider what views we actually have.

There are 4200 religions in the world, and most people of any religion have the confidence to say that 4199 of them are false and manmade, and that theirs is the only correct one and they have the definite answer to everything, even when the evidence still isn’t any better than the others. They also treat people who don’t follow their religion as inferior and say you deserve to go to Hell for it, while retconning their texts and shifting the goal posts when new evidence that contradicts it comes up. This is the real arrogance.

Atheists are being consistent and simply apply the same logic to one more religion than everyone else and say all 4200 of them are false because there isn’t enough evidence, or there is conflicting evidence. We don’t claim to have all the answers, just that we are still finding them as more scientific discoveries are made. We also believe everyone is equal and that nobody should go to Hell.

The idea that we are the ones who believe we are superior is insane.

There is an argument from theists that atheists gain nothing from not believing and lose everything if they are wrong. However, I would argue that there are so many possibilities and variables to consider, that being an atheist is the most logical.

For one, there is the fact that there are so many religions to choose from. An argument could be made that it can be narrowed down to Christianity vs Islam, but even then you might still need to pick the right denomination. If Christianity is true, maybe Protestants will go to Hell if Catholics are right or vice versa. If Islam is true, maybe Shias will go to Hell if Sunnis are right or vice versa.

There is also the fact that God would know you are only treating belief as a strategic move, so you could still be sent to Hell even if you picked the correct religion. Additionally, even if your belief is genuine, maybe he is so strict and selfish and he comes up with a bunch of other excuses for why you still aren’t good enough that you never even thought was a possibility.

Perhaps he even lied to us and doesn’t send anybody to Heaven. Or the correct religion is some super obscure one that died out centuries ago and nobody knows about, and it is super strict and doesn’t care if you had no way of knowing, so everyone on Earth is going to Hell no matter what.

If there is a God, the odds are stacked against you no matter what you do.

The idea that you lose nothing by believing isn’t true either. Every religion comes with its own rules and requires you to abstain from certain pleasures in life. Christianity’s rules are only mild, but other religions like Islam are insanely strict. You also lose a lot of your free time as well. If you mess up anything somewhere, you can still end up in Hell.

Being an atheist doesn’t come with any strict rules. So if atheists are right and there is no God or afterlife, they didn’t waste any of their time following a bunch of strict rules for nothing and got to live their life the way they wanted. There is something to gain from it.

Also, even if there is a God, you can still believe and go through all that trouble only to end up in Hell anyways for the multiple reasons I mentioned above and find out all your effort was for nothing.

At least as an atheist, you get to think for yourself and enjoy your life with freedom from religion, and if you end up in Hell after, you can at least know you lived your life to the fullest, while theists who end up in Hell will be extra depressed that they wasted their lives only to meet the same fate as the atheist.

Additionally, maybe the real God is pulling a test where he wants us to be atheists. I mentioned this idea in another post before, so once you consider that, an atheist isn’t really in any more danger than anyone else. Or at least maybe the real God punishes people who worship false Gods more than people who don’t worship any God at all (like atheists still end up in Hell, but their punishment isn’t as severe as people who chose the wrong religion)

Overall, being an atheist is most logical, because you have a high chance of getting screwed anyways, so you might as well not place a bet at all and do whatever you would like in the life you have now.

The Force Awakens has been #1 at the North American box office for a decade at $936 million, and I made a post a few months ago saying it wouldn’t be beaten this decade, and some even said that it might never get beaten at all. It looks like we were proven wrong now that Spider-Man: Brand New Day is about to beat it.

Endgame is only behind it by $68 million, and apparently the pre-sales for Encore are very strong for a re-release, so beating the Force Awakens seems within reach.

Doomsday’s early pre-sales are also insane with a potential $400 million+ opening. As long as the reviews are good, it should be able to clear $1 billion domestically, and Secret Wars can probably go even higher.

In a span of less than two years, it looks like the Force Awakens is suddenly gonna fall from the #1 to #5 spot.

I also think No Way Home would have outgrossed it as well if it wasn’t for COVID, and then the top five movies would all be Spider-Man and Avengers.

This kind of shows anything can surprise us and some things aren’t set in stone forever.

People keep debating who the highest grossing star of the year will be, and it is generally agreed to be either Zendaya or Florence Pugh depending on if you count Pugh’s cameo as Yelena in Spider-Man, as both are in Spider-Man + Dune 3, while Doomsday will clearly make more than the Odyssey. It could also still be Tom Holland if he turns out to be in Doomsday after all.

However, if you cut out all actors who are in one of the inevitable top three of the year (Avengers, Spider-Man, and Odyssey), who will be the top grossing actor of the year?

At one point I thought the Rock would have had a chance, but Moana bombed hard, so it doesn’t matter how Jumanji 3 does.

I’d say it will either be Anya Taylor-Joy or Jack Black. Both are in Super Mario Galaxy, which made a billion, and then each have a blockbuster flick coming in December (Dune 3 and Jumanji 3 respectively)

I’m not really sure about Jumanji 3 making as much as the last two though, so I’d lean towards Joy.

Funny enough, I think it would have been Mike Myers if Shrek 5 hadn’t been delayed to next year since he was also in Michael (but a very minor role)

If you assume animated voice roles also don’t count since they are dubbed in foreign countries, who would it be?

Avatar 1 and 2 are tied for most weeks as #1 at the domestic box office in the 21st century with 7 weeks before being dethroned. There are other movies from the 20th century that held it for longer, but the climate is too different now with more movies being made and also being frontloaded more often.

Doomsday is a huge event film with the same December slot as the Avatar movies, and it is looking like it will have the biggest opening weekend of all time based on pre-sales. It will also benefit from holiday legs since it has Christmas on its second Friday and New Years on its third Friday.

Assuming the movie has good reviews, with an 80-90% on Rotten Tomatoes and at least an A Cinemascore, how long can it hold the #1 spot for before losing it?

On its second weekend it should easily stay #1 above Jumanji 3. After that there is nothing else until the Beekeeper 2 on its fifth weekend, but the first one only had an opening of $16 million, while the sequel is more likely to do less, so it’s obviously not a threat.

I think it won’t be until its eighth weekend at the beginning of February that it finally loses the #1 spot to Ice Age 6, which would tie it exactly with the first two Avatar movies with 7 weeks at #1.

However, maybe I’m wrong and Dune 3 has some incredible legs and eventually gets a weekend above Doomsday.

How long do you think it will hold for?

Brand New Day has crossed the $2 billion mark after its third weekend. It is on track to at least beat Avatar 2 and become the third highest grossing movie of all time.

However, there is another milestone I wonder if it can achieve.

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy with Tobey Maguire has done around $2.5 billion combined with all three movies, regardless of whether or not you count the re-releases. Those movies were truly one of the biggest cultural phenomenons of the 2000’s.

With how Brand New Day is performing, do you think it has enough left in the tank to at least do another $500 million globally and outgross the entire trilogy?

Where do you think it will finish? Is $2.5 billion+ plausible, or will its late legs not be strong enough?

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.

There have been tons of American Christian missionary movements that go to foreign countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia to try and convert people to Christianity in order to show the truth and save them.

However, most mainstream branches of Christianity believe that people who genuinely never heard of Jesus will be judged differently by God.

Most people in those foreign countries are still going to say no even after learning about Jesus since it simply wasn’t what they were raised with and they see no convincing evidence. So because of introducing them to Jesus, they can now be held accountable for not becoming Christians and will go to Hell because of it.

If the missionaries had just stayed home, those people would have been perfectly fine without knowing. Trying to make them become Christians just screwed them over.

There is also a growing movement of Muslims trying to spread Islam into western countries. They are especially prominent on social media, promoting the religion, as well as alleged miracles of the Quran and prophecies of Muhammad.

However, Islam generally teaches that people who didn’t really know about the religion or understand it will be judged differently. Since most westerners who learn more about Islam still won’t convert due to it not being what they were raised by and not seeing strong enough evidence, the Muslim missionaries are sealing their fate to go to Hell when they would previously have been fine living as Christians or whatever other religion they were part of.

It is better to not try and introduce your religion to other people, as you are just putting them in a position where they can be held accountable. Letting them have invisible ignorance is better.

Islam has the famous story of Muhammad performing a miracle to prove his prophethood by splitting the moon in half for everyone to see.

Now generally, the argument from skeptics is that there is no proof any of this happened since there is absolutely zero records of this being witnessed by other parts of the world, even though it would have been night in Asia and part of Europe at the time the split happened. A major astronomical event surely would have been documented by thousands of different sources independently.

There is that story about an Indian king who witnessed it and then met Muhammad, but it is not really considered historically reliable since it is written in an Islamic source long after that supposedly happened and there are no Indian records of such a person existing.

Normally, Muslims argue it was only made visible to a small number of people in Arabia who asked Muhammad for a miracle, and the debate ends there since the Muslims have no real way to prove that it did happen and skeptics can’t fully prove that it didn’t happen, so it is just ignored.

However, I think what Muslims don’t realize is that even if we had tons of written records from multiple nations in different parts of the world that were all written independently proving that they all witnessed the moon being split and then coming back together, it still wouldn’t be proof for Islam specifically. It would only be proof that some sort of unexplainable cosmic event happened, and Muhammad may have just tried to steal credit for it and say it was Allah.

Realistically, if it actually happened, every religion would come up with their own interpretation of what it meant, and Muhammad’s claims would just be one of many. There is the Quran verse that mentions the moon being split, but we still wouldn’t be able to verify if that was revealed before or after the event happened. There would probably be dozens of false prophets who all come up with their own fake stories for what the cause was.

We would still be debating about it in modern times to this day, and there’d also be the question of whether it was really something supernatural, or if it was actually aliens using some sort of insane technology we can’t imagine. There’d be no way to use it as proof for any one specific religion.

I know the moon split argument normally isn’t used in debates anyways, but I feel like this seals the deal that it should just go away.

Genesis tells us that Earth and the Heavens were created in only 6 days, and also that the sun and stars were created after Earth. It also tells us that Adam was the first human ever and he was created from dust, and then Eve from his rib. The Quran is a bit more ambiguous since its description of the story is shorter, but it doesn’t really correct any of the scientific inaccuracies Genesis has.

Modern science has shown us that the universe is 13 billion years old and Earth is 4.5 billion. It also has shown us that all life on Earth shares a common ancestor and evolution is what shaped us, our shared DNA with primates and the other species of humans that are now extinct prove it. It is literally impossible for us all to be descended from just two humans.

People try to spin it as if the stories of creation are just metaphors now, but isn’t it absolutely unfair for God to do that? He makes up a fake story of how he created us, knowing that in the future we would make scientific discoveries that prove that isn’t literally how it happened, making people question the religions and turn away, and then pulls the rug from under the people who chose to accept the scientific evidence and sends them to Hell.

Spinning it as a metaphor that we can’t take literally is also dumb. Christianity treats Adam and Eve as the origin of humanity’s sins, which Jesus needed to save us from, while Islam emphasizes Adam as the beginning of a long line of prophets that ends with Muhammad. It was always interpreted literally for centuries until it couldn’t be anymore.

Imagine there is someone who wasn’t indoctrinated into religion as a child to influence their thoughts, and as an adult, they study the religious stories, as well as the modern scientific evidence that has been proven and backed up by multiple independent sources. Obviously anyone rational will pick the science and assume the religion is fake, so subjecting them to fire and torture for eternity because of it is insane.

God is basically rigging the system by making it so only people who have blind faith and ignore real evidence win while people who actually make an effort to pay attention to the evidence and conclude the religion can’t be true lose.

People who lived before the scientific discoveries were made were also at an advantage compared to people in modern times, since they had less reason to question their religions.

This should be a bigger challenge to the religions, and it is absolutely unjust for God to do something like this if he is actually real.

Genesis tells us that Earth and the Heavens were created in only 6 days, and also that the sun and stars were created after Earth. It also tells us that Adam was the first human ever and he was created from dust, and then Eve from his rib. The Quran is a bit more ambiguous, but it doesn’t really correct any of the scientific inaccuracies Genesis has.

Modern science has shown us that the universe is 13 billion years old and Earth is 4.5 billion. It also has shown us that all life on Earth shares a common ancestor and evolution is what shaped us, our shared DNA with primates and the other species of humans that are now extinct prove it. It is literally impossible for us all to be descended from just two humans.

People try to spin it as if the stories of creation are just metaphors now, but isn’t it absolutely unfair for God to do that? He makes up a fake story of how he created us, knowing that in the future we would make scientific discoveries that prove that isn’t literally how it happened, making people question the religions and turn away, and then pulls the rug from under the people who chose to accept the scientific evidence and sends them to Hell.

Spinning it as a metaphor that we can’t take literally is also dumb. Christianity treats Adam and Eve as the origin of humanity’s sins, which Jesus needed to save us from, while Islam emphasizes Adam as the beginning of a long line of prophets that ends with Muhammad. It was always interpreted literally for centuries until it couldn’t be anymore.

God is basically rigging the system by making it so only people who have blind faith and ignore real evidence win while people who actually make an effort to pay attention to the evidence and conclude the religion can’t be true lose.

People who lived before the scientific discoveries were made were also at an advantage compared to people in modern times, since they had less reason to question their religions.

This should be a bigger challenge to the religions, and it is absolutely unjust for God to do something like this.

Who are some social media influencers that actively make it their jobs to promote their religions to others do you get annoyed by the most and why? What claims do they make and how absurd are they?

I would have to go with Canyon Mimbs. He is a white American who converted to Islam and tries to convince you it is true by spreading as much misinformation as possible. He frequently posts debunked Islamic miracles and never debates with anyone. He believes Sharia Law can fix all of America’s problems, like drugs and prostitution, even though those things are already illegal.

He has also said some dumb things like looking at the stars proves Islam is the one true religion, and also once straight up lied that Islam is the only religion that believes in just one God. He also does some insane mental gymnastics to justify Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha.

I frequently see Christian, Atheist, and ex-Muslim accounts expose him and disprove his claims and he never addresses it. I’m willing to bet he has started doubting the religion with all the counter arguments made against him, but is making money off promoting it, so he has to keep the charade up.

Who are some of the worst ones for you?

People of all religions claim that God is the creator of everything and he is eternal, but how can they be so sure when it isn’t even guaranteed that God is sure of it?

Theists say the universe can’t be eternal with an endless chain of scientific causes, and then say God is the start of all of it, while Atheists just end the chain one level earlier and assume there is a natural scientific first cause of everything that we simply don’t know about yet.

But if we assume God actually exists, how can we be sure he doesn’t have a creator either and it doesn’t stretch back even further?

From his perspective, he just exists and has all these powers to create stuff, so he just uses it to create a whole universe and makes our world full of life and invents rules for us to follow since he’s here and can do it, and creates Heaven or Hell depending whether you choose to follow his rules.

How can we be sure that there wasn’t a beginning of consciousness for him and he isn’t also contemplating his own existence and wondering where he came from, with the idea that there could be beings that are above him?

If you apply the same logic, maybe there is a long chain of Gods creating lesser Gods, and the lesser Gods run their own universes not being aware that there is something bigger watching them.

Obviously the religious folks are going to say no and reject that idea, since they have been taught that God is eternal, but God may not actually know that for sure since his own creator could be hiding themselves and detecting them is the one thing his omniscient powers cannot do.

Maybe God’s creators were pulling a test where they didn’t want him to become selfish with his power and force other beings to worship him, and he is failing it.

Once you consider this, the idea that the universe absolutely 100% requires a creator falls apart.

People of all religions claim that God is the creator of everything and he is eternal, but how can they be so sure when it isn’t even guaranteed that God is sure of it.

Theists say the universe can’t be eternal with an endless chain of scientific causes, and then say God is the start of all of it, while Atheists just end the chain one level earlier and assume there is a natural scientific first cause of everything that we simply don’t know about yet.

But if we assume God actually exists, how can we be sure he doesn’t have a creator either?

From his perspective, he just exists and has all these powers to create stuff, so he just uses it to create a whole universe and makes our world full of life and invents rules for us to follow since he’s here and can do it, and creates Heaven or Hell depending whether you choose to follow his rules.

How can we be sure that there wasn’t a beginning of consciousness for him and he isn’t also contemplating his own existence and wondering where he came from, with the idea that there could be beings that are above him?

If you apply the same logic, maybe there is a long chain of Gods creating lesser Gods, and the lesser Gods run their own universes not being aware that there is something bigger watching them.

Obviously the religious folks are going to say no and reject that idea, since they have been taught that God is eternal, but God may not actually know that for sure since his own creator could be hiding themselves and detecting them is the one thing his omniscient powers cannot do.

Once you consider this, the idea that the universe absolutely 100% requires a creator falls apart.

People of different religions often point to Pascal’s Wager to try and convince Atheists that it is safer to believe in a God since you lose/gain nothing if God doesn’t exist and lose/gain everything if he does.

You would usually see Atheists counter it by explaining how there are multiple religions and you still need to guess the right one, as well as the fact that you can’t force belief if you aren’t convinced by the evidence, so an omniscient God would know you are just pretending and send you to Hell anyway.

However, there is another factor to consider, which is that maybe there is a God, but the real test is something we didn’t expect at all, which is that you were supposed to realize all of the religions were nonsense.

There have been thousands of different religions throughout history that all contradict each other, they can’t all be true, but they can certainly all be wrong.

What if there is a God who purposely created all of these different religions with conflicting evidence as a way of keeping us debating and engaging in violent conflict over it, and the real test is to see if we have the critical thinking skills to realize all of them are fake and can move away from these superstitions to advance as a society?

For example, perhaps God sent Jesus to Earth and told him to claim to be his son and his human incarnate, and then Jesus was killed by crucifixion, so God resurrected him and let word about it spread, leading to the creation of Christianity. Then, 600 years later, he sent a message to Muhammad and lied to him that none of that was actually true, leading to the creation of Islam.

All of the ancient pantheon Gods like Zeus, Ra, Vishnu, and Odin are also forms he took prior to that.

Perhaps Atheists and skeptics who come to the conclusion that it’s all nonsense and value morals over religion are the only ones who pass the test and get into Heaven while people with blind belief are punished and sent to Hell.

You might think it’s unfair because being an Atheist is easier, but that isn’t really the case. Being an Atheist comes with its own challenges and sacrifices since you may see your religious friends and family distance themselves from you, and you also have to overcome the fear of Hell before leaving the religion, and you have to do some strong outside research instead of staying in one little bubble, while also accepting the fact that there is no divine purpose to life and we are not special, just lucky to exist.

It feels equally plausible for this to be the real test as it is for any one religion being true, and once you consider that, Pascal’s Wager completely falls apart and you are also at risk by believing in any deity at all.

I still frequently run into Muslim accounts on social media that try to promote the alleged “scientific miracles” in the Quran, knowledge of science it supposedly contains that humans couldn’t have known at the time. However, most of them are easy to debunk if you actually view the verses and the historical context.

The most popular one is the description of embryology. Most critics obviously counter it by explaining how people like the Greek scientist Galen already said something similar centuries earlier, and even includes his mistake of saying bones form first and then get clothed with flesh, but Muslims still come up with excuses to make it fit. I specifically saw some videos saying “bones” is actually talking about bone cartilages, and the Arabic word Alaqah actually means leech, not blood clot.

However, there is evidence of Alaqah being used to describe an embryo in other poetry that predates Islam, specifically one about a pregnant camel, and clot is used in Syriac translations of Galen’s work from a century before Islam that give a similar description to the Quran’s version, and the bone cartilage thing is just an assumption they are using to make it work.

Muslims also claim that Galen made other mistakes that are not included in the verse, but I don’t think it’s a fair comparison. Galen wrote a long detailed analysis where there is a lot more room for mistakes to be made, whereas the Quran only gives a brief description of the basics in one verse where there isn’t as much room for everything to be included. While it doesn’t include Galen’s other mistakes, it also doesn’t provide any alternatives for them, such as telling us about how the sperm fertilizes the egg, which is the most important part of the process and something humans absolutely couldn’t have known about at the time.

Do Muslim influencers genuinely still believe this stuff is real when evidence has been provided that they are vague and don’t really work, or are they lying in the hopes of getting naive westerners to convert?