Perhaps counterintuitively, the Quran becomes a more interesting book once you accept it's of human rather than divine origin. As a Quranist Muslim, my relationship with the Quran (particularly in the years following 9/11) mostly involved trying to justify / explain away its...

...harsher and more terrible verses. I think a lot of us back then got embroiled in those sorts of apologetics for the first time.

Now, as an apostate, I can see it as part of the wider late antique tradition, drawing upon / sharing stories with the Alexander Romance...

...the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, and the Infancy Gospels (etc.). I can see where Mohammed used rhetoric and hyperbole to trash his enemies, in the manner of politicians throughout history. I can see where he cynically came up with a verse to achieve something specific (in...

...that regard, 33.53 remains my absolute favourite verse, since it's so brazen).

It's similar to how "aliens did it" removes the true wonder of historical structures and the ingenuity of the ancients who built them. Picking the material over the supernatural makes things...

...less "magical", but at the same time it renders them more intriguing.

"God just wanted it that way!" will never be more fascinating than (e.g.) "Mohammed thought Alexander the Great worshipped Allah because at the time most people knew Alex from the Romance, rather than...

...from Arrian or Quintus Curtius Rufus (etc.), so his belief was very much an understandable product of its time."

With that in mind, it's striking to realise secular historians of early Islam have a deeper and richer understanding of the Quran than any mullah or ayatollah.