evidence for religion

Thank you for your response. -- Rebuttal section -- Point 1: Preservation of the Qur'an Con asked me to prove that the Qur'an is the only preserved religious book. I say that the burden of proof is not only on me. As a matter fact he is the one who should tear apart my claim by putting forth a challenge to the Qur'an. There are religious books in the amount of water drops in the oceans, and I fail to realize how I can describe them all right now, right here. To my opponent: if you disagree then refer to another religious text which is supposedly uncorrupted. How can I prove that the Qur'an is preserved? There is this phenomena called the challenge of time that threatens everyone and everything. If you analyze, there are disturbingly and quite fascinatingly very few things which can pass the challenge of time. Has any person lived for centuries? Has any long period of time been free of violence and bloodshed? Has any specie evolved to a point where it has become biologically static? Ad infinitum. We clearly see that very few things can actually remain original and simply unchanged for long periods of time. I claim that the Qur'an has passed the challenge of time. In order for the text of a book to remain authentic, it must match many criteria. It should be easily distinguished between its original form and possible corrupted copies, have independent historical sources confirming its text, and in later times, it must be confirmed original by e.g., archaeology. The Qur'an meets all these criteria. Old manuscripts: There are various archaeological discoveries concerning old copies of the Qur'an. There are literally thousands of old copies of the Qur'an that perfectly match the texts of one another. Not all of the old manuscripts are full, but the parts they share with other manuscripts are confirmed, and in this cycle the dozens of old Qur'anic manuscripts keep confirming each other. http://www.saudinf.com... It should also be noted that the Qur'an is the only book which is the exact same. If you restore a copy from the very deep ground, visit an alienated Muslim village in China, or whatever else you can think of, you will not come across a single Qur'an in its original language (Arabic) that is different in the text than any other Qur'an in the world. Not even the numerous sects in Islam disagree that we only have one Qur'an today. I would also like to clarify something which some people easily misunderstand. It is true that we can find books older than the Qur'an being in their true form, but they are only fragments and in no way fully preserved. A small tablet from some century BC that is partial, one sided, and named a "book," that is not being fully original and preserved. 7 ahruf: My opponent mentioned so-called seven versions of the Qur'an. What he is referring to is, in fact, not the term 'version' but 'reading.' It is true that the Qur'an was revealed in seven ahruf that basically means seven readings. This is not a corruption of the Qur'an since it was intended to be revealed in seven readings. When the Angel Gabriel recited the Qur'an to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), the Prophet asked the angel to read it in another way, all until the angel came with seven readings of the Qur'an and did not continue anymore. It is also true that we today only have one reading of the Qur'an. Now why is this? After the death of the Prophet, the Arabs spread Islam across Arabia. Naturally people started translating the Qur'an into their native dialects, so they eventually mixed the 7 ahruf. The close companion of the Prophet, Uthman, who also happened to be the caliph, became worried that the Qur'an would be distorted. So, he had the power to call all Qur'anic copies and burn them all except the one that those who memorized the Qur'an and heard the Prophet recite it agreed upon. There was no longer confusion about the Qur'an, and now we have it in the dialect of the Prophet himself. If the Bible was compiled by the closest companions of Jesus, or the Buddhist texts by Buddha himself or even one person who lived in this times, I would drop this point. But no such thing happened, except with the Qur'an. Also, while the seven readings were different, the meaning was and remains the same. You can name a color whatever you want, but a term does not change its appearance. Point 2: Corruption of the Bible The very fact that the Bible was revised and translated into Latin, revised and translated back to Hebrew and Greek, ultimately proves that the Bible has been corrupted and is not entirely authentic. In fact, the contradictions in it and the many grammatical and terminological discrepancies in it even in the Hebrew and Greek point toward no more, no less than corruption. Point 3: Contradictions in the Qur'an My opponent wants me to demonstrate that the Qur'an has no contradictions. That is like counting every strain of grass on the planet. I cannot compare every sentence and say, "You see, I told you no contradictions!" You have to put forth a challenge, I have to accept it and either concede to your point or dismantle it. -- Arguments section -- Point 1: The mathematical complexity of the Qur'an Imagine an engineer constructing something that is extraordinarily complex, and is dependent on such a perfect structure that if only one part of it became distorted or changed, the entire invention would fail. Can you in this regard simply replace one part with another, and still let it function perfectly? No, not in this given scenario. Now, we have the Qur'an that has deep meanings in each of its over 6,000 verses. If you remove one word from a verse, not only would the meaning most probbly be distorted, but the entire melodic structure of the verse and the verses next to it would be broken. In the Qur'an we find that numerous words are mentioned in specific amounts. The words "man" and "woman" are both respectively mentioned 24 times each. The words "patience" and "hardship" are mentioned 114 times each. The terms "zakat" (obligatory charity" and "barakah" (wealth increase) are both mentioned 32 times. "Life" and "death" are mentioned 145 times each. I can go on for ages. Can any human being produce such a mathematically structured book, with very deep meanings, and still contain numerous upon numerous mathematical points that do not distort the meaning, but create such a miraculous system? How could the author of the Qur'an know when to add "life" and when to add "death," and do so by creating deep sentences over 114 chapters? Compare that to dozens of other mathematical points. More to come.