I’m glad to have piqued your interest. You have made a strong point as well.

All religions, including Islam, have been ravaged over time.

Few followers have been able to maintain a strong adherence to the faith, so all religions are mainly distortions. Here's some further discussion regarding this point: http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/ 1401#arg10419

For most people, access to any original evidence is near impossible in the case of the old religions (predating Islam), including the original, unadulterated religious scriptures. Islam is the last of the Abrahamic religions of God to have been revealed to humanity, and claims to be the final and complete guide for all generations to come.

However, an integral part of the Islamic religion is that an authority will always be present on the face of the Earth as a living testament to the word of God, declared categorically to its followers by the prevailing authority.

In the case of Islam, the blood lineage of the messenger Muhammad and his rightful successor, Maulana Ali, established a succession that would carry forward the religion of God for all time to come, ensuring its relevance through the ages.

Mainstream Islam of today opposes this view, denying divine succession of a central authority by appointment.

So once you get the popcorn out of the microwave, you might want to consider changing the channel, since most of what you’ll hear is just drivel.

Perhaps the best way to figure it out for yourself is to be honest in your judgments, have good, benevolent intentions, and pray that God will guide you to the light.

There are a few religions that have ever gained widespread acceptance, especially among the intellectuals of its age and passed down to the present day.

Islam doesn't say that other religions are wrong.

Muslims believe that there have been 124,000 prophets and messengers sent down to mankind throughout the ages. All these prophets preached the oneness of God.

A messenger is someone chosen by God to call people to the worship of one God and was given a new book or source of revelation, ie, Moses was given the Torah [Jesus was given the Bible] and Muhammad was given the Qur'an.

- http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2875395

However, the only scripture widely available to this generation in its original, unaltered form is the Koran.

Even the Koran has been taken apart by various forces since history, but it is the miracle that the original word still exists. The scripture was expressed by Muhammad through divine inspiration (enlightenment) and this was composed in everything from its narrative and poetry to its script and sounds. However, its meanings are beyond the understanding of ordinary people and very few have responsible, delegated authority to pass on this information - that is designed to guide humans towards this state of enlightenment, or heaven.

I believe a path to enlightenment does exist, and it is the only way to understand anything beyond our human cognition.

I guess water isn't wet to itself. But it can make anything else with so much as a wink.

Look, phuqster, I understand your reservations. I shared a similar mindset to yours in the past. But before I indulge in any argumentation with you, let me brief you on some areas that many people, like you, are lacking:

1. Being a religious follower is not simply a have-blind-faith-you-silly-billy-or-you-roast-in-hell-muahahaha. It’s about finding goodness – which is a whole lot of things over and above worldly issues. But yes, like in most situations, most people abuse religious doctrine to become power-wielders who can push people around. Unfortunately, very few people will ever know religion for what it really is, since history has always had its wicked culprits.

A great deal of understanding religion takes place at various levels, much the same way as a formal educational system. How much you get out of it is up to you, no matter how bad your teachers are at their job and in some cases even then the whole damn institution’s just beginning to rot and the teachers don’t even know the most basic concepts for themselves.

Sometimes you figure it out for yourself or if you’re really lucky, you get into the right school or have a wonderful teacher and develop into a rational human being who can make the right choice based on a highly-ingrained ability to do so.

2. Scientific dictates are the modern religion. Every generation holds on desperately to its ‘proven’ scientific beliefs till a paradigm shift sets things straight. There are always volumes of ‘evidence’ for any claim. And for most claims, droves of people are ready to verify or vilify any claim based on their personal judgment or lack of. Even if science is so god damned sophisticated, it is not infallible. Please answer me this question: http://tinyurl.com/6e26fb

3. The word of God is and has to be infallible (He’s talking about His own creation, for God’s sake). Humans have a limited capacity to learn, and humans are prone to error. Ordinary humans may have one or a few meanings or contexts to any written lines. But if a guy like Shakespeare, (or Matt Gorening for that matter), can have so much depth to their message, we’re talking about God Himself here. And if people can dedicate their whole professional lives studying the works of Shakespeare, you can bet you can probably spend more than a few lifetimes trying to comprehend a single word of God in its entirety. To understand the word of God is a highly involved and dedicated process – in which your questions bring you closer to the answers, not away from them.

4. There is a difference between religion and pseudo-religion. You are certainly right about the fact that you can’t trust ‘any guy’ who claims to know God. There are in fact very few who have ever achieved that status and still exist in peoples’ hearts and minds by the power of their message. I guess in the end you have to do what you’ve always done – make a judgment on what you believe to be true. Since you are earnestly seeking the truth, hopefully you will find it for yourself. That’ll be your paradise (though your version of paradise is pretty boring with primates and a giant science lab thingy going on). But whether you’ll ever get there is simply the will of God.

5. For the followers of a successful religious belief, scientific theory and religion are perfectly compatible and only pave the way for progress. For example, I love science and all it has to offer. I love science-people, especially when they’re honest and not full of themselves because they’re more knowledgeable: http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/ 1015#arg6757

..and a lot less.

Well sonny, thanks for taking the time to post the long involved argument – you just hate it when some one calls you sonny, huh. You are obviously well versed in evolution, and while I respect its scientific observations that may or may not be valid, the only part that I disagree with is that humans gradually evolved physically from the great apes – which is still a matter of debate. I may not have had the opportunity to study it as closely as you - the same way as you may not have studied religion or the Koran as closely.

I am a traveler of time and space the same as you and am looking for the answer to the riddle of my existence, to which the answer I believe is simply not that we have no purpose and that there is nothing beyond dirt in our lives. No matter how sophisticated science or your understanding of it is, I believe that it is plain arrogant to dismiss the Creator on the basis of an understanding of a few mechanics of creation. I am not an authority on any subject by any means. Like you, I have a limited understanding of the universe around me and a limited capacity to learn. But I have decided on whom to trust as my fountain head of wisdom – which I do not claim is the whimsical science community nor religious fundamentalist dictates of unqualified preachers.

Regarding your comments on how ‘the Koran gets it wrong’ (a highly assertive statement) – I think it is you who gets it wrong. Not only does your English translation of the Arabic script lose the beauty of its words and the depth of its message, it can in fact be interpreted as a continuous, simultaneous process by the use of the word ‘and’ instead of ‘then’ as per your statement that ‘muscles and the cartilage precursors of the bones start forming from the somite at the same time’.

One of the few unadulterated divine texts available to this generation, the Koran has the following claim:

“The Qur'an itself says it holds the knowledge of everything! Everything in creation and beyond. If this fact is accepted, it is unimaginable that such colossal amounts of information could be put down in a few pages, except by divine intervention. Thus, knowledge exists in the Qur'an in everything, from its narrative and poetry to its script and sounds.” (- this excerpt is from an authenticated source)

The true religion of God is likely to be neither counter-productive nor a hindrance to ‘enjoying life’. In fact, the prophets who I believe conveyed the words of divinity to mankind through divine inspiration found a stairway to heaven, to evolve man from his animalistic existence into the eternal and divine. Having embraced this path, I have never felt that I am missing out on life – in fact I often reflect painfully on what I would have missed. As a rational human being with a healthy intelligence and understanding of how the world we live in, I am neither out to deceive myself or anyone else – and I want the same as you: to live a full, complete life in which I have made the best use of the little time that I have.

The truth is infallible and irrefutable. Best of luck to both of us in finding it for ourselves. If you have the time, I wrote a couple of simple lines on my understanding of it here: [ http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/ WHAT_IS_THE_MEANING_OF_TRUTH (look on both sides) ]

PS. I do consider you to be much better than any religious follower who blindly follows a religion without understanding and conviction. I especially love the part “Thank god I’m an atheist”, it really made me laugh. At least you’re thankful, I’m sure that counts.