Islam has more evidence, makes more sense, and is more rational than Atheism.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's good to be back. Thank you, audience, and thank you, FogFail, for making this debate possible. In order to win this debate, my opponent must provide sufficient reasons for the audience to fully agree with the resolution outside of their personal biases. That will be his burden of proof from this point forward. And the resolution itself contains three very bold statements: 1) Islam has more evidence than atheism. 2) Islam makes more sense than atheism. 3) Islam is more rational than atheism. It is mainly the third statement I would like to address. Is it more rational for a thinking person to remain an atheist, or convert to the beliefs of the Qu'ran? My opponent claims that I, as an atheist, cannot possibly answer three very tough questions of his without resorting to speculation, questions concerning the origins of the universe and of life: How did the universe come to be? How did life on Earth come to be? And how did that life evolve into the sexy individuals we are today? Nowadays, there are very convincing, very evidentially-supported scientific theories concerning these topics, but I won't bother boring you with them because as far as I'm concerned, they are irrelevant to my opponent's burden of proof (to prove Islam is more rational than atheism) and are therefore irrelevant to this debate entirely. Even if there were no convincing answers to these questions in the fields of science, does that mean atheism itself is not valid? That we should convert to some religion claiming to know the answers, even if they may not be supported by logic or evidence? Should we lay out our prayer mats and turn East five times a day? I should certainly hope not. Quite simply, this is because no answer at all is better than a bad one. Maybe I don't have all the answers to my opponent's questions. Maybe I don't know where the universe came from or how life evolved. Is that irrational? Is it irrational to say "I don't know the answer to that" when it is true that no one knows the answer and could not possibly know the answer? On the contrary, admitting ignorance when it exists is the perfectly rational thing to do! So I shall say again: no answer at all is better than a bad one. And that’s really the difference between my opponent and me. While I would be happy telling you we have yet to fully understand the origins and inner-workings of our universe (though our knowledge multiplies dramatically each decade), my opponent would rather you believe a deity was somehow responsible for our existence. And what warrant does my opponent provide to support this claim? I quote, “Many things in the quran are scientifically accurate and there thigns people at the time had no clue of. […] Its truly a miracle.” My opponent seems to believe that there had been a profound lack of scientific discovery prior to the Qu’ran’s writing (including the shape of the Earth, the reflection of sunlight off the moon, etc.), as if information regarding these phenomena were only made available to mankind via the Qu’ran, instead of the far more likely scenario that the Qu’ran’s passages were written with the whole of that era’s current scientific knowledge in mind. My opponent references no specific passages and I don’t feel like doing his homework for him (I’ve been rambling far too long anyway), but I will make a few points before giving him the floor again. The Qu’ran was first written, at the earliest, during Mohammad’s lifetime in the seventh century CE. [1] But the knowledge my opponent claims could have been nothing other than a revelation from God had already been discovered (or at least speculated) far before 600 CE. The theory that the moon does not emit its own light source, but instead reflects it off of the sun, dates back as far as the Athenian philosopher Anaxagoras (500-428 BCE). Hippolytus wrote about the philosopher in the late second century CE, “[According to Anaxagoras,] the moon is below the sun, closer to us. The sun is larger than the Peloponnesus. The moon does not shine with its own light, but receives its light from the sun…. Eclipses of the moon occur when the earth cuts off the light, and sometimes when the bodies below the moon cut off the light. Eclipses of the sun take place at new moon, when the moon cuts off the light…. Anaxagoras was the first to describe the circumstances under which eclipses occur and the way light is reflected by the moon.” [2] In that same vein, it had been speculated by Greek astronomers and philosophers for hundreds of years before Muhammad was even born that the Earth was spherical. Eratosthenes, who lived in the third century BCE, was one of the first to speculate the Earth must be round and to calculate its circumference (and did so very accurately). He had heard from an account that on the summer solstice, in the city of Swenet, the sun’s rays shined straight down on the city’s pillars, causing them to cast no shadow at all. Meanwhile, Eratosthenes witnessed the shadows of the pillars in his hometown of Alexendria grow long on this very same day. So how could it be that at the same time on the same day the shadow of a pillar in Alexendira is long while the shadow of a pillar in Swenet (about 500 miles away) is nonexistent? The only answer, Eratosthenes predicted, is that the surface of the Earth is curved. [3] As historical evidence has shown us, no true scientific claim or implication that was written in the Qu’ran was in any way revolutionary to the time period in which it was written, and my opponent has no solid evidence to convince us otherwise or that the god of the Qu’ran truly exists. In conclusion, when considering those questions my opponent posed (how did the universe and we come into being?), it is much more rational to simply say “I do not know” than to say a deity was responsible. Thus, it is much more rational to be an atheist than a Muslim. Sources: [1] http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] http://www.iep.utm.edu... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org...