The Qur'an Leads the Way to Science

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The Qur'an Leads the Way to Science

The Qur'an Leads the Way to Science.jpeg
Author    Harun Yahya
Language    English
Subject(s)    Islam, Science, Propaganda
Publisher    Global Publishing, Istanbul
Released    January 15, 2004 (2nd ed.)
Pages    191
ISBN    978-9756426425

This article discusses the book, "The Qur'an Leads the Way to Science", by Harun Yahya.

Introduction

Many of the articles regularly cut and pasted into Muslim websites and forums on the Internet come originally from Harun Yahya. Among the most ironic of his generally scientifically incompetent works is the book, The Qur'an Leads the Way to Science. One would imagine from the title that the book would be about how the Qur’an actually lead somebody to science, or to a scientific discovery. Wouldn’t you?

Scientists of Faith

Nowhere within its 191 pages are we provided with an examples of anything like that. Instead, we are presented with what consists mostly of lists of “scientists of faith.” But there is an interesting problem with his lists.

They contain almost no Muslims. They are composed almost entirely of Christians and Jews, people who doubtlessly did not find the Qur’an useful, since they all reject it as false.

List 1

Below for example is the entire list of “scientists of faith who lived in the past” from the second part of this book. There are 100 scientists on the list.

And not a single one of them is a Muslim.

  1. Roger Bacon (1220-1292)
  2. Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
  3. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
  4. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
  5. Johannes Baptista von Helmont (1579-1644)
  6. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
  7. John Ray (1627-1705)
  8. Robert Boyle (1627-1691)
  9. Antonie von Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723)
  10. Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
  11. John Flamsteed (1646-1719)
  12. John Woodward (1665-1728)
  13. Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778)
  14. Jean Deluc (1727-1817)
  15. Sir William Herschel (1738-1822)
  16. William Paley (1743-1805)
  17. George Cuvier (1769-1832)
  18. Humphrey Davy (1778-1829)
  19. Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873)
  20. Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
  21. Samuel Morse (1791-1872)
  22. Joseph Henry (1797-1878)
  23. Louis Agassiz (1807-1873)
  24. James Prescott Joule (1818-1889)
  25. George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903)
  26. Rudolph Virchow (1821-1902)
  27. Gregory Mendel (1822-1884)
  28. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)
  29. William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) (1824-1907)
  30. J. J. Thomson (1856-1940)
  31. Sir William Huggins (1824-1910)
  32. Joseph Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)
  33. John Strutt (1842-1919)
  34. George Washington Carver (1865-1943)
  35. Sir James Jeans (1877-1946)
  36. Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
  37. Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966)
  38. Sir Alister Hardy (1896-1985)
  39. Wernher von Braun (1912-1977)
  40. Max Planck (1858-1947)
  41. Charles Coulson (1910-1974)
  42. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
  43. Georgias Agricola (1494-1555)
  44. John Wilkins (1614-1672)
  45. Walter Charleton (1619-1707)
  46. Isaac Barrow (1630-1677)
  47. Nicolas Steno (1631-1686)
  48. Thomas Burnet (1635-1715)
  49. Increase Mather (1639-1723)
  50. Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712)
  51. William Whiston (1667-1752)
  52. John Hutchinson (1674-1737)
  53. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
  54. Richard Kirwan (1733-1812)
  55. Timothy Dwight (1752-1817)
  56. James Parkinson (1755-1824)
  57. William Kirby (1759-1850)
  58. Benjamin Barton (1766-1815)
  59. John Dalton (1766-1844)
  60. Charles Bell (1774-1842)
  61. John Kidd (1775-1851)
  62. Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855)
  63. Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864)
  64. Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869)
  65. William Buckland (1784-1856)
  66. William Prout (1785-1850)
  67. Edward Hitchc*ck (1793-1864)
  68. William Whewell (1794-1866)
  69. Richard Owen (1804-1892)
  70. Matthew Maury (1806-1873)
  71. Henry Rogers (1808-1866)
  72. James Glaisher (1809-1903)
  73. Philip H. Gosse (1810-1888)
  74. Sir Henry Rawlinson (1810-1895)
  75. John Ambrose Fleming (1849-1945)
  76. Sir Joseph Henry Gilbert (1817-1901)
  77. Thomas Anderson (1819-1874)
  78. Charles P. Smyth (1819-1900)
  79. John W. Dawson (1820-1899)
  80. Henri Fabre (1823-1915)
  81. Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866)
  82. Joseph Lister (1827-1912)
  83. John Bell Pettigrew (1834-1908)
  84. Balfour Stewart (1828-1887)
  85. P.G. Tait (1831-1901)
  86. Edward William Morley (1838-1923)
  87. Sir William Abney (1843-1920)
  88. Alexander MacAlister (1844-1919)
  89. A.H. Sayce (1845-1933)
  90. James Dana (1813-1895)
  91. George Romanes (1848-1894)
  92. William Mitchell Ramsay (1851-1939)
  93. William Ramsay (1852-1916)
  94. Howard A. Kelly (1858-1943)
  95. Douglas Dewar (1875-1957)
  96. Paul Lemoine (1878-1940)
  97. Charles Stine (1882-1954)
  98. A. Rendle-Short (1885-1955)
  99. L. Merson Davies (1890-1960)
  100. Sir Cecil P.G. Wakeley (1892-1979)

List 2

In the third part of his book, Yahya makes a tiny bit of progress. This is the list of “modern scientists of faith” and it is more than 50 percent longer than his previous list; fully 155 named scientists.

And whereas the last list had no Muslims at all in it, this one does a little better.

There is one.

  1. Dr. Henry Fritz Schaefer
  2. Isaac Bashevis Singer
  3. Malcolm Duncan Winter, Jr.
  4. William Phillips
  5. Prof. Dale Swartzendruber
  6. William Dembski
  7. Prof. Stephen Meyer
  8. Prof. Walter L. Bradley
  9. Earl Chester Rex
  10. Dr. Allan Sandage
  11. Prof. Cecil Boyce Hamann
  12. Paul Ernest Adolph
  13. Lester John Zimmerman
  14. Enrico Medi
  15. Wayne U. Ault
  16. Prof. Michael P. Girouard
  17. Prof. Edward Boudreaux
  18. Prof. Kenneth Cumming
  19. Prof. Carl Fliermans
  20. Prof. David Menton
  21. Prof. John Morris
  22. Arthur Peacocke
  23. Albert McCombs Winchester
  24. Mehdi Golshani (the lone Muslim)
  25. Prof. Edwin Fast
  26. Charles H. Townes
  27. John Polkinghorne
  28. Hugh Ross
  29. Prof. Dr. Duane Gish
  30. Dr. Pierre Gunnar Jerlstrom
  31. Dr. Stephen Grocott
  32. Dmitry Kouznetsov
  33. Dr. Emil Silvestru
  34. Dr. Andre Eggen
  35. Dr. Ian Macreadie
  36. Prof. Andrew Conway Ivy
  37. Dr. Raymond Jones
  38. Jules H. Poirier
  39. Michael J. Behe
  40. Philip Johnson
  41. Charles Birch
  42. S. Jocelyn Bell Burnell
  43. Prof. Owen Gingerich
  44. Prof. Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker
  45. Prof. David Berlinski
  46. Prof. William Lane Craig
  47. Dr. Kurt Wise
  48. Siegfrid Hartwig Scherer
  49. J.P. Moreland
  50. Paul A. Nelson
  51. Prof. Jonathan Wells
  52. Dr. Don Batten
  53. Dr. John Baumgardner
  54. Prof. Dr. Donald Chittick
  55. Dr. Werner Gitt
  56. Dr. Gary E. Parker
  57. Dr. Margaret Helder
  58. Prof. Dr. Jonathan D. Sarfati
  59. Prof. Robert Matthews
  60. Dr. Claude Tresmontant
  61. Dr. Don Page
  62. Dr. Andrew Snelling
  63. Dr. Carl Wieland
  64. John K.G. Kramer
  65. Dr. Jerry Bergman
  66. Dr. Kimberly Berrine
  67. Jay L. Wile
  68. Prof. Vladimir Betina
  69. Dr. Andrew Bosanquet
  70. Dr. David R. Boylan
  71. Dr. Clifford Burdick
  72. Robert Kaita
  73. Alexander V. Lalomov
  74. Prof. Dr. Steve Austin
  75. Prof. Robert Newman
  76. Prof. Siegfried Scherer
  77. Dr. Russell Humphreys
  78. Dr. Geoff Downes
  79. Dr. Larry Butler
  80. Prof. Linn E. Carothers,
  81. Prof. Sung-Do Cha
  82. David Dewitt
  83. Prof. Dr. Eugene F. Chaffin
  84. Dr. Choong-Kuk Chang
  85. Prof. Chung-Il Cho
  86. Dr. Harold Coffin
  87. Dr. Jack W. Cuozzo
  88. Dr. Malcolm Cutchins
  89. Dr. Lionel Dahmer
  90. Dr. Raymond V. Damadian
  91. Dr. Chris Darnbrough
  92. Dr. S. E. Aw
  93. Dr. Thomas Barnes
  94. Dr. Paul Ackerman
  95. Dr. Douglas Dean
  96. Dr. Don DeYoung
  97. Prof. Danny Faulkner
  98. Prof. Dennis L. Englin
  99. Prof. Robert H. Franks
  100. Dr. Donald Hamann
  101. Dr. Barry Harker
  102. Dr. Charles W. Harrison
  103. Dr. Harold R. Henry
  104. Dr. Joseph Henson
  105. Robert A. Herrmann
  106. Dr. Russell Humphreys
  107. Dr. Jonathan W. Jones
  108. Dr. Valery Karpounin
  109. Dr. Dean Kenyon
  110. Dr. John W. Klotz
  111. Dr. Vladimir F. Kondalenko
  112. Dr. Leonid Korochkin
  113. Prof. Jin-Hyouk Kwon
  114. Prof. Myung-Sang Kwon
  115. Prof. John Lennox
  116. Dr. John Leslie
  117. Prof. Lane P. Lester
  118. Prof. George D. Lindsey
  119. Dr. Alan Love
  120. Prof. Marvin L. Lubenow
  121. Dr. Andrew McIntosh
  122. Dr. John Mann
  123. Dr. Frank Marsh
  124. Dr. Ralph Matthews
  125. Dr. John Meyer
  126. Dr. Henry M. Morris
  127. Dr. Len Morris
  128. Dr. Graeme Mortimer
  129. Prof. Hee-Choon No
  130. Dr. David Oderberg
  131. Prof. John Oller
  132. Prof. Chris D. Osborne
  133. Dr. John Osgood
  134. Dr. Charles Pallaghy
  135. Prof. J. Rendle-Short
  136. Dr. Jung-Goo Roe
  137. Dr. David Rosevear
  138. Dr. Young-Gi Shim
  139. Dr. Mikhail Shulgin
  140. Dr. Roger Simpson
  141. Dr. Harold Slusher
  142. Prof. Man-Suk Song
  143. Prof. James Stark
  144. Prof. Brian Stone
  145. Dr. Lyudmila Tonkonog
  146. Dr. Larry Vardiman
  147. Dr. Joachim Vetter
  148. Dr. Noel Weeks
  149. Dr. A. J. Monty White
  150. Prof. A. E. Wilder-Smith
  151. Dr. Clifford Wilson
  152. Prof. Verna Wright
  153. Prof. Seoung-Hoon Yang
  154. Dr. Ick-Dong Yoo
  155. Dr. Sung-Hee Yoon

Purpose Behind the Book

Haran Yahya states in his conclusion to "The Qur'an Leads the Way to Science":

Religion is the primary source for providing man with the most accurate knowledge regarding the creation of the universe and of life. When we say "religion", however, we refer to the "Qur'an" as the true source of information. The Holy Books of other religions have been altered and can no longer be considered as Divine Books.[1]

It is clear from his conclusion that the purpose of presenting these lists was not to prove “faith leads to science,” but, as the title of the book clearly suggests, he is presenting them with the goal to “prove that the Qur’an is true.”

The irony lay in the fact that out of 255 “scientists of faith” that he was able to come up with in order to prove his point, only a single one of them was Muslim.

Since only one scientist on this list believes that the Qur’an is true, and many scientists on this list believe that the Qur’an is false, it does not serve his purposes.

Conclusion

The book, and in particular Harun Yahya's "conclusion", make no sense whatsoever.

Not even one scientist in the first list is a Muslim, and the progress made with scientists in the second list is balanced by the fact that at least 18 of them are members of Christian movements in the United States which openly consider Prophet Muhammad and the Qur’an to be tools of the Devil. Clearly it was not the Qur'an which had led them to science.

We are then told these scientists believe in scriptures that "can no longer be considered as Divine Books", ultimately leaving us guessing as to how Yahya could then logically justify his conclusion that the Qur’an is the "primary source for providing man with the most accurate knowledge regarding the creation of the universe and of life".

This page is featured in the core article, Islam and Science which serves as a starting point for anyone wishing to learn more about this topic Core part.png

See Also

  • Harun Yahya - A hub page that leads to other articles related to Harun Yahya
  • Book Reviews - A hub page that leads to other articles related to Book Reviews/Summaries

External Links

References

  1. Harun Yahya - The Qur’an Leads The Way To Science (page 185) - Global Publishing; 2nd edition, 2004, ISBN 9789756426425