Scientific Errors in the Quran: Difference between revisions

Some apologists will contest these numerous scientific errors in the Qur'an by appealing to metaphor, alternative meanings, or [[w:Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenological]] interpretations of the text. Even if we suppose that alternative explanations were possible in every case, the wording and content of the Qur'anic verses often mimic the popular mythology and unscientific misconceptions of the time in which they were recorded. The author of the Qur’an makes no obvious statements that differentiate his understanding of the natural world from the common folklore of the people living in the 7^th century. If the Qur’an was delivered by an all-powerful, all-knowing being then he would have been able to foresee how such ambiguous and misleading statements would be understood by future generations and the doubts and confusions they would cause. This alone should be reason enough to reject any claims to its divine authorship.

Some apologists try to explain away the Qur'anic description of the sun moving in an orbit as a reference to our sun orbiting the black hole at the center of the milky way galaxy every 225 million years. This is an [[w:Ad hoc hypothesis|Ad hoc hypothesis]], of no relevance to human time scales, and nothing from the text implies that the sun is orbiting anything other than the earth. If the author had knowledge of the sun orbiting a black hole then it is conspicuous that he never mentions it explicitly nor in any way differentiates the sun's orbit from that of the moon. See also the [https://wikiislam.net/index.php?title=Scientific_Errors_in_the_Quran&stable=0#The_similar_size_and_distance_of_the_sun_and_moon Similar Size and Distance of the Sun and Moon] section below.

Some Muslim Apologists have come up with creative interpretations of these verses to say that Dhu'l-Qrnayn only traveled until he reached "the west" or to a spot "at the time" when the sun set and not the "place" where the sun set. Unfortunately, these alternative interpretations are severely undermined by the [[Dhul-Qarnayn_and_the_Sun_Setting_in_a_Muddy_Spring_-_Part_One#First_interpretation:_He_reached_the_west_and_east|context and Arabic words]] used in these verses, which instead point to a physical location. There is plenty of evidence showing that the early Muslims understood the verse in this straightforward way. Again, we must ask why an all-knowing being would use such misleading verses that mimic the misconceptions and legends prevalent at the time if one of these alternative explanations is correct.

Muslim apologists try and rescue the Qur'an by pointing to an alternative meaning of the Arabic word 'yawm' which typically means 'day' but can sometimes mean 'time period'. However the predominant meaning of the word is day and when a specific number is used, in this case six, the word almost always means a literal 24-hour day. Again, nothing in the context of the verses, nor the Qur'an in general, suggests the universe or earth were formed over long time periods. Secondly, neither the universe nor earth were formed in six long periods of time. It would have been trivial for an all-knowing diety to simply state that the universe was first formed over [[w:Age of the universe|13.8 billion years ago]]. However, this information is conspicuously missing.

Some apologists claim that the following verse is compatible with the [[w:Big Bang|Big Bang]] theory. But according to this theory, the Universe was formed about 13.8 billion years ago due to a [[w:Chronology of the universe|rapid expansion]] from singularity. The earth was formed 4.54 billion years ago from [[w:History of the Earth|accretion]] of debris that surrounded the precursor of the Sun. There was no "separation" of the "joined" earth and heavens as this verse suggests. It is, in fact, a repetition of [[w:World egg|cosmic egg]] myths in which an egg-like structure was split into two halves, the lower half forming the earth and the upper half forming the heaven.

To imagine that this describes the big bang, the atomic particles that would later form the Earth would at the beginning have to be separated from those that would go on to form everything else in the universe. This bears no resemblance to scientific cosmology, wherein the material that forms the Earth passed through at least one earlier generation of star, and more recently was part of various asteroids, comets and planetesimals orbiting the sun (which could all be described as being in the 'heavens') that sometimes collided and merged with each other, sometimes split apart, and gradually coalesced under gravity to form the Earth and other planets.

Some Muslim apologists will claim the view of two ancestral “parents” is consistent with recent scientific findings that show a common female and male ancestor of all modern humans. They often exploit the confusion caused by scientists referring to these genetic ancestors as [[W:Mitochondrial Eve|Mitochondrial Eve]] and [[W:Y-chromosomal Adam|Y-chromosomal Adam]]. These two individuals bear little resemblance to the Quranic account as they are simply the last common male and female ancestors of everyone alive today, not of all humans in history. The Qur'an clearly states Eve was created later than Adam, however [[W:Mitochondrial Eve|Mitochondrial Eve]] lived some 50,000 to 80,000 years earlier than [[W:Y-chromosomal Adam|Y-chromosomal Adam]].[http://biologos.org/blog/does-genetics-point-to-a-single-primal-couple]  Genetic evidence overwhelmingly indicates that humans diverged from earlier species as a population, not a single couple. [http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/how-big-was-the-human-population-bottleneck-not-anything-close-to-2/].

Some apologists believe the Qur'an describes the layers of the earth's atmosphere when it refers to the seven heavens and of the earth, the like thereof, even though another verse (36:7) says that the stars are in the lowest heaven. However, scientists have determined that there are [[w:Atmosphere_of_Earth#Structure_of_the_atmosphere|five principal layers]] in the atmosphere and not seven.