I've come at a crossroad, which path will I take?
Reply #3 - January 21, 2016, 08:49 AM
Hi contemplating,
I think what stood out for me the most from your post was your emphasis on asking about scientific and logical reasons for leaving Islam, and not necessarily moral or cultural. When I was first going through my periods of doubt and shaky faith, I reasoned with myself that morals and cultures are a really gray area to judge a religion by - if God exists, and if he commands us to do something that sounds immoral, such as make a woman's testimony in court half the worth of a man's... who are we to question God? The only way to have a more rigorous form of analysis of the truthfulness of the religion is to judge it on scientific/logical grounds, which is why I lost my faith. (Disclosure: I am a Biochemistry major and currently a medical student, so I have quite a bit of science background).
The first thing is this. We know where humans came from. Through the process of evolution by natural selection, the diversity of life on earth was generated, and this a well-substantiated pillar of modern biology. There was no Adam or Eve, and even if we put aside the idea of evolution for a second, we see that believing that all humans are descended from 2 individuals who lived a few thousand years ago isn't a logical hypothesis. The mutation rate needed to generate the current level of diversity, human migration patterns to inhabit the continents, the problem with inbreeding for the first couple generations, and the biggest thing, the entire mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal DNA record all disprove it strongly.
There was no flood either from the story of Noah's ark. People did not live to be hundreds of years old in ancient times. The concept of Jinns is rooted in Pre-Islamic Arabian mythology (and conspicuously, appear no where at all in Judaic or Christian texts... odd considering they received their message from the same source apparently?). The possibility of a child being born without a father is completely impossible (where did Jesus get his Y-chromosome, or even the centromeres needed for the very first replication of the zygote stage?? This is a topic I could go on about, but won't for the sake of brevity).
If you study Islam from an objective perspective, it becomes very clear (to me at least), that it is a human creation, not a divine one. It is a product of the culture and times from which it developed in, rooted in geography, pre-existing cultural beliefs, and the traditions of the Arabs. Much like Judaism developed as an extension of Israelite culture, Hinduism developed from ancient Indian culture, Christianity developed with a strong influence from Hellenic/Greek culture... All the religions of the world show examples of that human touch, and their answers to the mysteries of the world are grounded in ignorance and lack of rigorous investigation.
Sure we haven't figured everything out, e.g. where did the universe initially come from. But if religions are already wrong about the stuff we have figured out, they sure as hell won't have the right answer to the bigger questions either.
Topic: I've come at a crossroad, which path will I take?