Antitheism is justified

I will be using the Penguin translation of the Qu'ran which uses less archaic language than what my opponent uses. I hope this is alright. Bear in mind that my opponent has the burden of proof. God is evil? I agree with her that religion is man-made. I also agree that the Gods of those religions do not exist. Now she has to prove why worshipping a non-existent God is immoral. She attempts to do so with reference to several Qu'ranic verses. But the point is that anything she can prove it says in the Qu'ran God will do is irrelevant, because God won't, because God does not exist. How can a non-existent thing be evil? The implicit assumption I'm making here that people should not do God's job for him, but it's made explicit in the Bible, the Torah and the Qu'ran. For instance, and I quote from the Qu'ran sura 17, verses 55 and 56: "Your Lord knows you best. He will show you mercy if He will, and punish you if He pleases. We have not sent you to be their [other people's] guardian. Your Lord is best aware of all who dwell in the heavens and the earth". So for a Muslim to carry out instructions of what God will do would be tantamount to a claim that Muslim knows as much as God does about that person, for our friendly non-existent God alone determines guilt and punishment. That alone deals with around half of my opponent's points - she is confusing what is right for God to do (ie, what humans should not generally do), and what is right for people. In Islam especially, the distinction is very important. Innocent KidsShe only makes this one very briefly, so I'll only give a quick response. This whole argument presupposes Islam is bad. I reject that premise. Muslims are evil? My opponent believes that the Qu'ran commands bleeding and dying for Allah - it does not. What it proscribed is the Arabic "Jihad", which is unfortunately sometimes wrongly translated as "fight" because the translators couldn't think of a better English word. A better translation might be "struggle", although it still isn't accurate. It has several meanings. It refers to a struggle within yourself to be a better person, so a person sitting at home all day and not at, say, the mosque, is not equal. It also refers to defending Islam (not "attacking others" for Islam, as sura 2 verse 191 specifically commands ". .. do not attack them first. God does not love aggressors"). This may be a defence in the sense of apologetics, or in a military sense if invaded. Some scholars also see Jihad as a special obligation to help their community in general. See also . http://en.wikipedia.org... . This is not unjustified. Trying to better yourself, or your community, or self-defense either physically or verbally, is good even from a secular perspective because it makes everyone happy. Even with Jihad there is a code of conduct. "Call (others) to the way of your Lord with wisdom and goodly exhortation, and argue with them in the best manner" (16:125) - so Muslims, your religion commands you to be respectful debaters! I will be the first to admit that these things have been largely misunderstood by many muslims themselves, but that's a great reason to teach them the truth about their religion, not to buy into the lies about it. What about making friends with non-Muslims? In fact, if you read the end of that sentence, it reads "Let not believers make friends with infidels IN PREFERENCE to the faithful" (emphasis added). By leaving this part out, my opponent makes it seem like Muslims cannot tolerate non-Muslims - they can, they just need to tolerate other Muslims as well. A Muslim is, of course, one who upholds the moral code of Islam which is pretty good, so that's not a problem either. He also selectively cites a part of the Qu'ran when he quotes "And believe no one unless he follows your religion". This is actually part of a quote in the Qu'ran of "some people of the book", not a commandment. Indeed, the Qu'ran goes on to give a response to this, respectfully explaining why this is wrong. There are a number of other immoral claims of then-Christians who obviously didn't read the Bible carefully enough, which the Qu'ran also goes on to respectfully explain and knock down. Believing that most others are bad is not inherently immoral either. It's a pretty hypocritical argument since my opponent is arguing most religious people are bad, and that she is more moral than them all. Muslim toleranceMuslims are forced by God to tolerate everyone else. In sura 2, verse 256, it states "There shall be no compulsion in religion. " There is literally not one holy book before this that went this far and made so blunt a statement. The prophet Muhammed stated to some "unbelievers", who were the Jews living in Mecca: "I do not worship what you worship, nor do you worship what I worship. .. you have your religion and I have mine" (that's pretty much the entirety of sura 109). He was totally prepared to live in peace with others. Nahju 'l-Balagha relates that Muhammed said "Whosoever does injustice to a protected non-Muslim, then I will be his enemy". At the end of the day, you can't argue with sura 2, verse 83 - "Speak good words to all people. " As sura 41, verse 34 points out, that's how you can become like warm friends, no matter what the faith, what the creed or what the race of them may be. Muslim goodSo if they don't believe in the bad stuff, what do they believe. To cite 33:35, Muslims are those who "submit to God and accept the true Faith; who are devout, sincere, patient, humble, charitable, and chaste" - sounds like a pretty good person. Even if they had just said "sincere, humble and charitable" I would have been impressed enough. So Muslims are generally good people if they follow their religion. If religion has that effect, then antitheism would seek to remove it. The list of good deeds Muslims are commanded by their religion to practice are too long to list here, from making sure guests have enough to eat, to calling others offensive names of any sort, to brushing your teeth. For full accounts of the relevant verses for these things, you can check out . http://www.answering-christianity.com... and . http://www.muslim.org....More to the point, these simple and noble ideals are actually practiced by Muslims. A quick look down what I believe is the most followed Islamic twitter account, with a legendary half a million active followers, reveals that these things are very much in the hearts and minds of Muslims (. https://twitter.com...).My opponent has failed to show that any Muslim laws actually justify antitheism towards their religion. I'm proud to oppose the motion.