Stumbling into Islam by Logic

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

I did not come to Islam because of someone I met, or some video, or even a book.  Rather, I stumbled upon it.  Like any young adult, I decided to relook my theological beliefs.  If the afterlife is so important, why should I leave it to the lottery of birth?  And so, over the course of the next several years, I tried to establish my conception of the Divine, and then find a religion that most closely met it, or simply have none.  It was a philosophical exercise before it was a theological one. 

As such, after much thinking and consideration, I came to the conclusion that Creation was Created, therefore, there had to be a Creator.  And such a Creator had to be One, Unique and Absolute to account for the consistency of Divine Laws.  That meant He had to be Omnipotent, and Omnipotence requires Omniscience.  And He has to be Omnipresence, meaning not only beyond space, but time as well.  And it built from there.  As such, I was left with either the theology of Islam or Judaism.  This precluded my prior Christian faith because I was critical of many aspects of the theology.  And this included the belief in the Trinity, as there is no basis of it in the Old Testament. 

I ended up with Islam because the Old Testament, in Song of Solomon, mentioned “Muhammadim”, and it all pointed to the advent of an eschatological prophet.  And in the Gospels, John (a.s.) told Jesus (a.s.) that another would come.  It was mainly an exercise in logic, and learning. 

And now, after almost 20 years, Muslims tell me to leave aside that logic and reasoning and “submit”?  To whom?  To the ideas of men, and their limitations?  To dead scholars and living ones?  To cultural assumption and historical baggage?  I think not.  If a doctrine cannot be explained, then it is not worth following.  If belief is without reason, then it is superstition.  Everything and everyone should be questioned.  Nothing and no one should be so sacred that awe prevents dissection and discernment.  It does not matter the text, or who wrote it.  I respect scholarship, but if it does not convince me, I have no use for it.  That is my conception of Islam.