Islam and Science: Difference between revisions

Islam stifles scientific progress and nothing demonstrates this as well as the modern-day belief that the Earth is flat. As recently as 1993 the supreme religious authority of Saudi Arabia ''Sheik Abdul-Aziz Ibn Baaz'' declared "The earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is an atheist deserving of punishment."<ref> Sheik Abdul-Aziz Ibn Baaz, supreme religious authority of Saudi Arabia, 1993 - printed in "Muslim Edicts Take on New Force", NY Times, February 12, 1995.</ref> and in a televised debate aired on Iraqi Al-Fayhaa TV (October 31, 2007), Muslim Researcher on Astronomy Fadhel ''Al-Sa'd'' also declared that the Earth is flat as evidenced by Qur'anic verses and that the sun is much smaller than the Earth and revolves around it. <ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F5kYWceTsI The Earth Is Flat and Much Larger than the Sun] - Youtube</ref> As devout Muslims, they have good reason to conclude the Earth is flat; the Qur'anic verses 15:19, 20:53, 43:10, 50:7, 51:48, 71:19, 78:6, 79:30, 88:20 and 91:6 all clearly state this. While many have attempted to explain away this oddity, they prey on their listeners ignorance of the Arabic language. As such, their apologetic claims have been easily refuted by native Arabic speakers. There is no escaping the fact that, according to the Qur'an, the earth is flat.

To demonstrate how ludicrously easy it is to prove that any ancient poetry can be reinterpreted to reveal scientific miracles, we present to you a satiric article that 'proves' that the ''Georgica'', written by Virgil in Golden Latin in the year 28 BC, contains scientific miracles. In the very first eight words alone of the ''Georgics'' we find no less than five (there's probably many more) scientifically accurate statements of which Virgil himself (born in the first century BC) could not have had any knowledge of, due to science only confirming them many centuries later. If we read verses 234 to 237 we find another five miracles. It would seem the ''Georgics'' are full of these divine pearls of wisdom, wherever we look we find them. Is there any other text in the world more densely packed with such scientifically accurate knowledge? What divine source could have whispered all this into Virgil's ear? Virgil was a polytheist, who worshipped many different gods. Is this truly a miracle sent down from the ancient Roman gods? Let the honest reader draw his or her own conclusions. All we request is that you look upon this with an open mind.

Harun Yahya, makes many claims of Qur'anic Science. This article seeks to debunk two such claims, namely that the Qur'an predicted black holes and pulsars. We will show the absurdity of the black hole claim, while showing the pulsar claim to be conjectural and devoid of factual basis. In doing so, we will also show Harun Yahya’s self-contradiction as he used the same Qur'anic verse to ‘prove’ both the black hole and the pulsar. Now, even to the uninitiated, it would seem impossible for something to be both a black hole and a pulsar. However, Islamists do not appear to be inhibited by such constraints of logic.

In an article published in Islami City, Dr. Mansour Hassab-Elnaby claims the verse 32:5 reveals that light in one day travels a distance equal to 12,000 lunar orbits, and upon calculating that distance we find the exact speed of light. This verse clearly has nothing to do with the speed of light. There is no mention of the moon, light or even distance in this verse. If these methods were to be applied to other texts, such as Shakespeare's writings or Virgil's Georgics, they too can be "proven" divine. No matter how we look at Dr. Hassab-Elnaby's calculations, they are mathematically incorrect. Even the notion of measuring the speed of light with the orbit of the Moon or the length of the day is a fallacy. Dr. Hassab-Elnaby also makes many deliberate errors to doctor his scientific miracle, and in his zeal to ascribe miracles to the Qur'an, he throws out of the window the concept of  Allah's omnipresence. The maker of the Universe, according to him, depends on the speed of light to manage his affairs. The fact that Islami City, arguably the most prestigious Islamic site has published this erroneous piece by him proves the intellectual bankruptcy of the ummah, and assuming there really is a miracle in this plagiarized allegory, shouldn't the credit go to the Bible from which it originates?  

Islamists have come up with some extraordinary claims, including the claim that modern Science proves the Qur'an correct in asserting the earth is made of 7 "layers". This article seeks to show the error of the Islamist claim that verse 65:12 shows the earth is composed of 7 layers. In truth, the earth is not composed of 7 layers, but 5. Even if the earth was composed of 7 layers, it doesn't alter the fact that if these Islamists cared to delve a little deeper into their own sources they would discover that the 7 earths being referred to in verse 65:12 are in fact flat islands, one under the other.

Many Islamists propagate the hilarious ‘iron sent down from heaven miracle’ pseudoscience. This is totally devoid of logic and scientific fact. Such Islamist claims may impress the gullible but elicit nothing but laughter among those with even minimal scientific education. A chief proponent of this Islamist pseudoscience is Harun Yahya. There is nothing miraculous about surah 57:26 describing iron being ‘sent down’ by some deity. The ancient Egyptians already derived that concept three thousand years before Islam. They called iron “ba-en-pet” or ‘metal from heaven’. This concept was also shared by the ancient Mesopotamians. We have also shown many of the other 'miraculous' claims in connection with iron to be patent scientific nonsense.

This article refutes the Islamist claim that the Qur'an had foreshadowed the scientific knowledge about Mountains as Pegs stabilizing the crust or even the earth. There are two elements to this ‘Qur'anic Science’ claim: A. Mountains are Pegs. This is untrue as not all mountains have peg-like roots. B. Mountains stabilize the crust or the earth. This is unproven. There is no scientific evidence for this assertion, therefore the Qur'an cannot be validated by scientific evidence that does not exist. The mere fact of isostacy is not proof that mountains stabilize the crust or the earth. The mere fact that collision-type mountains are formed at the edges of tectonic plates is not proof that mountains stabilize the plates. The mere fact that mountains have deep roots is not proof that mountains stabilize anything.

Many Muslims use the recent scientific hypothesis of clay particles as catalysts for abiogensis as evidence of the veracity of their scripture. However, the scientific hypothesis postulates that the clay merely 'match-makes' RNA and membrane vesicles - and therefore does not form a building block. This is contrary to the Islamic Faith which postulates that human beings were created from clay, implying clay was a building block. Notwithstanding this key distinction, is Islam the only religion which postulated the creation of human beings from clay? The answer is no. Many religions pre-dating Islam also carry this 'creation of human beings from clay' story. The earliest are the pre-cursors of the Abrahamic Faiths - namely the early Mesopotamian religions. Other faiths that postulate the 'creation of human beings from clay' stories include the ancient Egyptians, some African tribes and the Incas. In fact, the ‘creation of humans from clay’ stories are common throughout the world, including far-flung places like Australia and the Pacific Islands which were not in contact with Islam or any of the other Abrahamic Faiths until recent times.

Various Islamists make the usual Islamic polemic about how the Qur'an can be proved by modern scientific knowledge, using the old canard about how the Qur'an is the only ancient book that states that gender is determined by the sperm. In this, they may point out the ignorance of the Greeks who thought gender was determined by the relative strengths of sperm from the male and female parents as Hippocrates imagined. This article does not seek to prove that the ancient Egyptians shared some aspects of our modern understanding of gender determination and reproduction. It merely aims to show that the Qur'an was not the first religious text to suggest that gender is determined by the semen of the male parent.

This article refutes the claim that Man did not know anything about the "creation in pairs" at the time of the 'descent' of the Qur'an. Here is one of the Qur'anic verses which speak of this. The case against the Qur'an is really very simple. All one has to do is to show that not all creatures are ‘created’ in pairs. Our opinion is that Muhammad, being who he was, didn’t have access to a microscope or a good Level 1 biology textbook. Therefore, he couldn’t have known about asexual organisms, parthenogenetic organisms, or hermaphrodites.

Several Islamists promulgate Professor Keith L. Moore's Qur'anic Pseudoscience of the lying sinful prefrontal area of the cerebrum (here referred to as the prefrontal cerebrum). There are many web sites that are copy-pasting this proposition, and a search of the internet reveals that all the Islamist claims that the cerebrum is responsible for lying and sin comes from the same source, i.e. from Keith Moore. However, Modern medical research utilizing fMRI conduct brain scans has revealed that the prefrontal cerebrum is not responsible for lying. Other brain regions are responsible, particularly the anterior cingulate gyrus which lies in the medial part of the brain in the frontal-parietal area and not in the prefrontal cerebrum. Thus, the scientific evidence does not support the Islamist's pseudoscientific claim that the Qur'an correctly asserts that the prefrontal region is responsible for lying as it is not the region responsible for the decision-making process of lying.

Muslim apologists believe that Surah 25:53 of the Qur’an is scientifically accurate. They conclude that since the process was unknown to humankind during the time of Prophet Muhammad, this verse (and the Qur’an as a whole) is revealed by Allah. This article will prove that the verse in question is scientifically wrong. Also it will prove that a layman could make a better guess than the allegedly divine author of the Qur'an. In summary, this article will: A. briefly introduce you to a real river-estuary-ocean system. B. make logical deductions based on the verse and see how far only common sense can take us. C. explain what the verse claims on the meeting of fresh and salt water. D. explain what elementary science tells us about the process. E. explain what modern science tells us about the process. F. show you how Islamic apologists "prove" this “scientific miracle” G. state our analysis on the “scientific miracle”.