Story said:
I suppose due to the ambiguity of the verse, and not having a very lucid definition of what the word "revelation" (Iyah) in Arabic actually means, that is certainly ambiguous enough to warrant any interpretation one may favour, however the fact remains that the Quran is anachronistic. There is no way to tell from it's original texts, which verses came first and which verses come after. There are also verses which contradict this verse, though, that's another debate for another time.
That being said, the Quran does have one method of determining which verses come first and not, which is the title of the chapter is named "Makkan" or "Medinan". Makkan chapters, were early in Muhammed's career, whereas Madinan verses were later. I did you an injustice in my previous post, saying that you provided no evidence for your claims, because I didn't elucidate how you were actually correct at one point. See, the Makkan chapters do not contain anything about fighting non-Muslims at all (at least, not to my knowledge), but the Madinan chapters (the later ones) is where all the violent verses are. That being said, the Makkan chapters do not give any prohibitions against harming non-Muslims either, but the Madinan chapters do.
What does this mean?
Basically you're right in saying that the bad stuff comes up later in the book, but as this bad stuff is mixed up with good stuff AND there's no way of telling which stuff came first or second. How do we know which good and bad stuff came up earlier or later.
Here's another problem. Even if a chapter is labeled Makkan, it may have Madinan (later) verses mixed in with it. There's no way to determine if it has or hasn't been. Furthermore if a chapter is Madinan, it can be mixed with Makkan verses too. So we actually don't know if the Makkan surahs have no violent verses or not.
That being said, we can take Islamic traditions and mix them in with the verses to build an incomplete timeline of what verses were where and it does tend to match up with the idea that Madinan surahs are the violent ones, however Islamic tradition is actually where the idea that the violent verses are later in the book came from and the traditions themselves were recorded some 100+ years after Muhammed died, before then it was only transmitted orally.
Basically, this claim is confusing, I've only heard it being made by Muslim extremists or people criticizing Islam, because there is good and bad in the Madinan section and no way to determine which came first.
Story said:
Fair enough, but pretty much anyone would lie to further their heinous aims, why is it relevant in a discussion about Islam?
Story said:
Again, I'm only talking about what the Qur'an actually says because it's interpreted in so many different ways. Almost everyone I meet has interpreted a different verse in his own special way. Even I used to do that. If we address interpretation then you could come and say "My Muslim friend told me X" and make that a valid criticism of the Quran if there is a verse that remotely resembles what he says.
Story said:
I'm sorry if I offended you and I mean that genuinely. I take issue with this point because I remember being a Muslim and wanting to not be one, but searching for criticism on my beliefs only led me to incredibly biased sources which didn't really address the Quran logically at all. I stayed Muslim for an extended period of time calling myself "emotionally atheist but forced Muslim". I didn't think of god or Allah as my imaginary friend, he actually became my imaginary dictator and I disliked it, but I wasn't allowed to dislike it. It amuses me that a person can be emotionally vehement against something and defend delusion as if they thought it was truth (even if that person was myself). This demonstrated to me how much a biased perspective can actually work against your favor.
Now I don't mean to insult you and say you're biased, because I actually don't believe you are. I only think that you, alike I was, have been exposed to biased perspectives of Islam and as Islam isn't of particular interest to you it didn't bother you enough to question it, regardless of whether that is true or not, the only thing I would like to achieve is creating an argument against something that doesn't specifically attack one perspective/interpretation of how that works. In the end, the Muslim extremist is the least likely to listen to reason while the Muslim half-atheist moderate (like I was) will, but you estrange that kind of person with aggression and using interpretations of his book that he does not agree with against him... against the old me...
But I could not deny that the Quran ordered men to beat their wives, chop off the hands of thieves and declare that men had superiority of women and any argument I tried to make in it's favor made me feel dirty.
If there is anyone else out there that dislikes Islam, like I did, I would like to help them, but using arguments about taqqiyah and abrogation will just go out in a puff of smoke. They're empty... The Quran does not permit Muslims to lie in order to benefit Islam, but it does permit Muslims to pretend to recant their faith to save themselves from danger, which isn't something I disagree with.