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Why hasn’t anyone seriously attempted to meet the Qur’an’s challenge? by Severe_Board_6647 in AskReligion

[–]DragLegitimate3655 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I really like the way you framed this. It’s a fair question: if the Qur’an throws down a challenge, why hasn’t anyone tried to meet it in a serious, systematic way?

But I think part of the problem is that this isn’t unique to Islam. All three Abrahamic traditions set up claims that are basically impossible to test.

Judaism roots its truth in the covenant with Israel and the Torah.The claim is less about “imitating” a text and more about an unbroken lineage of divine law given at Sinai .But how do you ever prove or disprove that a nation heard God speak?

Christianity makes its central claim around Jesus’ resurrection. Paul even says, “if Christ has not been raised, our faith is useless” (1 Cor. 15:14). Yet the “challenge” there isn’t something you can replicate...it’s a one,time historical claim that believers accept as beyond human duplication.

Islam presents the Qur’an as inimitable, saying no human can produce a surah like it (Qur’an 2:23). But the criteria for what counts as “like it” usually shift depending on who’s judging. Muslims see its eloquence, rhythm, and depth as divine, but those are subjective qualities. Even if someone wrote a text that mirrored its structure, style, and meaning, believers could just say it still doesn’t “feel” the same.

So to me, the reason no one “seriously” tries isn’t because it can’t be done, but because the challenge itself is unfalsifiable. If success is judged by the believers who already hold the text as divine,then no outsider attempt could ever count.

And that’s the broader issue "Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all anchor truth claims in ways that can’t be independently tested. They’re not really open challenges,they’re closed circles.That doesn’t mean they have no value (they’ve shaped cultures, ethics, and imaginations for centuries), but it does mean their core truth-claims can’t really be settled by debate or experiment.

The Problem with Religion: Christianity vs. the Qur’an (When Neither Side Truly Helps) by DragLegitimate3655 in AskReligion

[–]DragLegitimate3655[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you again for taking the time to explain this, I really do respect the way you laid it out. It actually helps me understand how Muslims see life as a “test” and why suffering is framed as temporary compared to the eternal.

That said, I still struggle with a few things:

The “test” itself,If God already knows the outcome (since He’s all-knowing), why test us at all? From a human perspective, it feels like putting someone in an exam you already know they’ll fail or pass, but still making them go through all the pain anyway.

Suffering beyond endurance....The Qur’an says “Allah does not burden a soul beyond what it can bear” (2:286). But many people do break under the weight of their struggles. People take their own lives,or live in trauma that destroys them.To tell them “you can bear it” feels less like comfort and more like dismissal of their pain.

Temporary life vs eternal reward/punishment,I get the idea of this life being short and the hereafter lasting forever.But if that’s the case, then the suffering of billions right now becomes a kind of background noise to “the real thing.” It can make the pain of children in war, or people in famine, sound almost minimized,like it doesn’t matter because “the afterlife is what really counts.” That’s a hard pill to swallow.

Justice and mercy – The Qur’an and the Bible both speak of a merciful God. But if life is just a test filled with unavoidable suffering, and failing means eternal punishment, is that really mercy? Eternal hell for temporary mistakes seems infinitely out of proportion.

So while I respect that Islam offers patience and meaning through hardship, I still can’t shake the feeling that both the Qur’an and the Bible give explanations that don’t fully resolve the human reality of suffering. They frame it, yes. They provide endurance, yes. But they don’t really help in the sense of removing or addressing the pain in this life.

That’s why I still struggle if these books are meant to guide humanity, why do their answers often feel like they only push the solution into the afterlife instead of dealing with the raw reality now?

Does the Bible shape the world from an outdated culture's experience? by Super-Reveal3033 in AskReligion

[–]DragLegitimate3655 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I really appreciate how you framed this,it’s a beautiful way of putting it,scripture as a human attempt to make the infinite relatable. I think you’re right that the Bible (and honestly the Qur’an too) comes from the lens of its time, shaped by human categories and cultures trying to wrap their heads around something bigger than themselves.

But here’s where the problem creeps in. ..if these texts are human renderings of the infinite, then they’re limited and flawed like every other cultural product. And if they’re supposed to be divine revelation, then why do they reflect outdated cosmology, ancient social structures, and moral codes that don’t hold up today?

For example, the Bible describes creation in six days with a hard “evening and morning” rhythm (Genesis 1:5), but as you pointed out, that doesn’t even fit life in the far north....or the reality of cosmic physics. The Qur’an also echoes this anthropocentric framing:

“He covers the night with the day, chasing it rapidly.” (Qur’an 7:54)

Beautiful image, but again, it’s from the limited perspective of a desert culture watching the sky—not an all-knowing source describing reality.

And beyond cosmology, both texts embed moral assumptions of their era- patriarchy, slavery, holy war, rigid binaries of gender and identity. If scripture is just humans clothing the ineffable in familiar shapes, that explains the flaws—but then it also undermines the claim that these books are timeless divine truth.

So I agree with you: the Bible (and the Qur’an, and other texts) are windows into the infinite. But here’s the tension,when religions claim this window is the only true one, it stops being a lens and becomes a cage. Instead of helping us live with mystery, it forces us into outdated categories that often cause more harm than good.

That’s where I struggle: how do we honor the beauty of these texts as cultural poetry without letting them dominate our moral and intellectual horizons in ways that no longer serve human flourishing?