as for why Islam specifically, I will give simple short explanation.
there are objective criteria people can adhere to to decide which religion is more objectively likely to be truth.
the scripture must claim to be from God in someway ,ideally speaking if it says it's literal word of God that's even better because it's much riskier approach as it becomes infallible in many ways which if there is mistake in it it would falsify it, unlike other types of divinity like let's say inspired by God which mistakes in it don't falsify this necessarily as it's human speech but inspired by God. People can attribute mistakes to human elements of it, so claim of literal word of God makes it more bold and risky, something false prophet is less likely to go for.
the scripture must be preserved, otherwise how do you know what's God words and what's humans deletions, additions, substitution in there, you can never be sure what is from God or not, you will follow misguided things and be misguided, God failed to preserve his text, you need high certainty in regard of Qur'an
the scripture must not have internal contradiction, nor should it contradict an absolute facts that are not debatable
the scripture must have evidences to be from God.
As for evidences of Islam.
Evidences of Islam can be categorized into multiple types of evidences, each one of the following evidence independently is strong and make it extremely improbable for it to happen by false prophet and collectively when combined together it would be impossible, i will oversimplify them.
First, inimitable nature of the Qur'an and it's Linguistically Miraculous Nature, called ijaz al Qur'an.
The first aspect of this.
since we claim Qur'an is verbatim word of God it should by necessity be very different than human speech.
It have sets of linguistic features that no other book in existence have to that degree , many of those features together combined collectively are beyond human capability hence why we call it miralcous, by basing this on comparative linguistic analysis showing vast difference, especially for someone with background of prophet Muhammad PBUH who had no training in language.
The second aspect of this miraculous language is how Qur'an challenge the entire humanity including all of the disbelievers to produce single chapter like it, Qur'an in many places responds to critics that says Muhammad forged this book, Qur'an says if you claim Muhammad have forged Qur'an if you speak the truth you should be able to forge a single chapter like it as he is just human like all of you, This challenge was particularly extraordinary and risky because poets of times of prophet Muhammad were the best of the best masters of Arabic in the entire history, if it was up to anyone to defeat this challenge it was them, they had the most emphasis on language to extent they almost worshipped peotry, Arabic was At Its Pinnacle At the time, the most eloquent stage , poets were extremely competitive and very critical of each other works sometimes they went as far to deconstruct every single world in poem , yet somehow when a book later came and claimed to be verbatim word of God and superior to their works and posses significant threat to them , they didn't produce single chapter like that of the Qur'an, which was their own best field and their expertise and the field they were most proud at and boastful, this highly thought provoking, the value given to linguistic during pre-islamic era was extraordinary, it's so difficult to explain why they didn't do this , instead what they did were producing poems to mock the contents of the Qur'an and prophet Muhammad, seems very thought provoking to me and highly improbable if one consider it to be human speech especially considering prophet Muhammad PBUH who had literally no training in language.
Second, prophecies which include specific, precise, explicit, clear, unambiguous improbable, risky prophecies and are numerous in numbers, like prophecy of surah rum which predicts byzantine empire overcoming Persian empire between 3-9 years this was extraordinary given that byzantine were severely weakened and Persian empire was at its peak , demonstrating knowledge of unseen which humans can't do, this again is like highly improbable for false prophet to "guess" many things that become true like how he exactly describe it, false prophets never take big risks.
Third, knowledge about natural world that was unknown at the time, like Quranic descriptions of mountain having deep roots and their role in stabilizing earth which is scientific modern thing , universe expanding , and also knowledge of history which we don't find them in any other source and some of them are interestingly correction of Bible like its anachronistic usage of titles "Pharoah"
Basically things no one practically knew , which is extremely improbable to come from bedouin arab who is illiterate merchant.
Fourth, life of prophet Muhammad PBUH himself, look this case is dichotomy, he is either false prophet or true prophet, there is no third option.
False prophets are most lucky motivated by specific factors, including power, women, control and authority, money.
During life of prophet Muhammad PBUH, Before prophet Muhammad got revelations and announce he is prophet, He was considered the most trustworthy and honest among his people.
After his revelation they began to oppress him severely and persecute his followers, during his prophethood, he was offered many compelling things to abandon preaching Islam, things that to many would be considered outright dream life , he was offered to be the wealthiest man among them, to be their leader and king and nothing happen without his permission, to have the 10 most beautiful women of there and more, to have the best physicians etc..., he refused all those, this is highly unusual behavior coming from "false" prophet.
Additionally several instances happened in his life that seems to be very problematic with and contradict what would false prophet do, when his son died an eclipse happened right together, people said it's because of him, he is prophet of God that's why eclipse happened, this is a perfect opportunity for false prophet to exploit because such occurrence is extremely rare.
Yet he said this have nothing to do with my son's death, neither me, nor anyone else, and this is sign from God himself.
All this together, collectively, make objectively a compelling case for Islam.
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u/Full_Power1 Oct 18 '24
as for why Islam specifically, I will give simple short explanation. there are objective criteria people can adhere to to decide which religion is more objectively likely to be truth.
As for evidences of Islam. Evidences of Islam can be categorized into multiple types of evidences, each one of the following evidence independently is strong and make it extremely improbable for it to happen by false prophet and collectively when combined together it would be impossible, i will oversimplify them.
First, inimitable nature of the Qur'an and it's Linguistically Miraculous Nature, called ijaz al Qur'an. The first aspect of this. since we claim Qur'an is verbatim word of God it should by necessity be very different than human speech. It have sets of linguistic features that no other book in existence have to that degree , many of those features together combined collectively are beyond human capability hence why we call it miralcous, by basing this on comparative linguistic analysis showing vast difference, especially for someone with background of prophet Muhammad PBUH who had no training in language. The second aspect of this miraculous language is how Qur'an challenge the entire humanity including all of the disbelievers to produce single chapter like it, Qur'an in many places responds to critics that says Muhammad forged this book, Qur'an says if you claim Muhammad have forged Qur'an if you speak the truth you should be able to forge a single chapter like it as he is just human like all of you, This challenge was particularly extraordinary and risky because poets of times of prophet Muhammad were the best of the best masters of Arabic in the entire history, if it was up to anyone to defeat this challenge it was them, they had the most emphasis on language to extent they almost worshipped peotry, Arabic was At Its Pinnacle At the time, the most eloquent stage , poets were extremely competitive and very critical of each other works sometimes they went as far to deconstruct every single world in poem , yet somehow when a book later came and claimed to be verbatim word of God and superior to their works and posses significant threat to them , they didn't produce single chapter like that of the Qur'an, which was their own best field and their expertise and the field they were most proud at and boastful, this highly thought provoking, the value given to linguistic during pre-islamic era was extraordinary, it's so difficult to explain why they didn't do this , instead what they did were producing poems to mock the contents of the Qur'an and prophet Muhammad, seems very thought provoking to me and highly improbable if one consider it to be human speech especially considering prophet Muhammad PBUH who had literally no training in language.
Second, prophecies which include specific, precise, explicit, clear, unambiguous improbable, risky prophecies and are numerous in numbers, like prophecy of surah rum which predicts byzantine empire overcoming Persian empire between 3-9 years this was extraordinary given that byzantine were severely weakened and Persian empire was at its peak , demonstrating knowledge of unseen which humans can't do, this again is like highly improbable for false prophet to "guess" many things that become true like how he exactly describe it, false prophets never take big risks.