Science in the Qur’an?
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By: Harry Foundalis
By: Harry Foundalis |
0. IntroductionI admit it wasn’t originally my intention to write this article. I was nearly forced to write it. The reason is that, earlier, I wrote a few more articles on the religion of Islam (here), which were read — among other people — by Muslims. Some of my Muslim readers wrote to me, and in the ensuing discussion many of them made a well known claim, which is one usually made exclusively by Muslims: that, supposedly, there are scientific facts revealed in the Qur’an, which have been discovered by scientists in recent times only; therefore this proves the divine origin of the Qur’an and the truth of their religion. Their claims vary, and include such statements as that Muhammad couldn’t have known such-and-such scientific facts in his time, or that the Qur’an contains no statements that conflict with modern science. Since my Muslim readers make such claims often, I resorted to writing this article so that by referring them to it I minimize the time needed to reply to each one of them individually. I would like to start by pointing out that those Muslims who make the above claims violate the deepest and strongest foundational pillar of science; specifically, this one:
What Muslims do is the opposite: they have the “theory” that their Qur’an is Allah’s direct word (which was revealed and passed on to Muhammad’s mind, then dictated by him and written in the Qur’an), and then they try to find the data that — they think — support their theory. That’s an entirely unscientific endeavor. By doing so they show that they don’t understand science, the subject that they try to subjugate under their religious yoke. In what follows I prefer to use the second person and talk directly to my Muslim readers, for whom, after all, this article was written. So, my dear Muslim reader: You adopt, as I just said, the wholly unscientific approach of trying to find data (verses in your Qur’an) that support your theory (that Allah is the author of your Qur’an). If you want to show that you’re not scientifically illiterate, and that you understand what you’re doing, I suggest that you follow the scientifically correct approach of first looking at the data (your Qur’anic verses) and then trying to see which theory best explains those data: theory #1, according to which Allah is the author of the Qur’an, or theory #2, according to which the author of the Qur’an is Muhammad, who produced the Qur’an out of his own mind, without Allah’s guidance. So I invite you to do this exercise with me: let’s examine together the data, and see which of the two theories explains them best. But I must warn you that if you want to have a scientific attitude (because science is our focus of discussion, right?) then you must be objective. To be objective means that you must not assume from the outset the thing that you are trying to prove, which is that Allah is the author of the Qur’an. It means that you must assume, even temporarily only, that you don’t know who the author of the Qur’an is, and that you try to find this out from what the Qur’an says, and from what we know today about Muhammad, and about the world that surrounds us. Can you do that? If you can, then you will be objective and your conclusion will be scientific. But I believe you can’t do it, because assuming — even for a second — that you don’t know who the author of the Qur’an is would be a sin for you. So if you really cannot, then this text is definitely not for you. You could be concerned with other things, such as praying and fasting, but not with trying to discover science in the Qur’an; because, before doing that, you must have understood what science is, and how it works. However, if you agree with the scientific principle of objectivity, which means that we must not assume beforehand as true the thing we are trying to prove, but we must temporarily suspend our beliefs, must look at the evidence — the data — first, and on the basis of the evidence decide which theory explains it best, then let’s examine together some of the data in the Qur’an. Specifically, I would like us to examine the truth of the following idea first:
We’ll examine the above idea in the context of cosmology (how the world was made):
After that, we’ll examine some of the other claims made by my Muslim readers, most of which rely on another idea:
The topics that exemplify this idea are the following:
The above is like a table of contents of this page, so that clicking on those links you move directly to the topic. But I suggest that you read this text sequentially, because once I introduce some idea I might refer to it later, so the topics that follow are not self-contained. |
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| إِمَّا | عِندَهَا | وَوَجَدَ | حَمِئَةٍ | عَيْنٍ | فِي | تَغْرُبُ | وَجَدَهَا | الشَّمْسِ | مَغْرِبَ | بَلَغَ | إِذَا | حَتَّىٰ |
| a people | near it | and he found | (of) dark mud, | a spring | in | setting | he found it | (of) the sun | (the) setting place | he reached | when | Until |
It is important to know the exact Arabic words, for the discussion that follows.
Then in verses 18:89–90 we learn that Zul-qarnain traveled also to the East, and he saw that the Sun rises from another place over there, which is also inhabited by some other tribe of people:
18:89 “Then followed he (another) way,”
18:90 “Until, when he came to the rising of the sun, he found it rising on a people for whom We had provided no covering protection against the sun.” (That “We” is Allah, of course; so Allah gives us a direct account of what Zul-qarnain found there.)
Then Zul-qarnain goes on to other places, and the chapter finishes with another barrage of promises and threats of doom (91–110).
Now, I hope you understand that even little children today know that the Sun cannot dive into the Earth during sunset, nor can it rise from within the Earth during sunrise, for the simple reason that the Sun is a fiery ball much-much larger than the sphere of the Earth. If the Sun’s sphere is like a soccer ball, then the Earth is like the head of a pin. Can you imagine a fiery soccer ball diving into a pinhead? What sense can you make of verses 18:86–18:90?
Do you think the bright fellow in the picture is getting ready to dive into a muddy spring?
But before answering the above question, remember the scientific principle: you must not assume that your theory is correct, and then try to twist the data so that they fit in your theory. If you do so, you show your ignorance of science; so you should stop talking about science existing in your holy book and do some fasting instead, or some other thing that you understand well. Here is an example of twisting the data: you might say, “Oh, but in verses 18:86–18:90 Allah was speaking not literally, but allegorically! Allah didn’t literally mean a muddy spring and some real people; this was all an allegory!” My answer: what evidence do you have that Allah was speaking allegorically? How can you know that everything else in the Qur’an is not an allegory? How can you know, for example, that when Allah says that an adulterer or fornicator (man or woman) must be flogged with 100 lashes (24:2) he means that literally, or when he doesn’t allow you to eat pork he also means it literally, but when he talks about a muddy spring and the Sun setting into it he means that allegorically? Your only motivation for interpreting the data of 18:86–18:90 as “an allegory” is your present-day knowledge that the idea that the Sun sets by diving into a muddy spring is plainly idiotic, combined with your theory that Allah is the author of the Qur’an. (Besides, an allegory of what? What is the real thing or situation that is allegorically referred to by verses 18:86–18:90?)
Another desperate attempt at re-interpretation, very popular and encountered most often among Muslim apologists, goes as follows: “Oh, but when the Arabic text says that Zul-qarnain ‘found’ the setting of the Sun, it doesn’t mean that he literally found the Sun setting in a spring, but that he saw the reflection of the Sun on the surface of the water! He saw the Sun as if setting in a pond!”
Oh, really?
Then why is the same root, وجد (“found”), used also in the next sentence to tell us that Zul-qarnain found a people near the spring? Did he also see the reflection of those people? Was Zul-qarnain able to see directly anything at all, or was he always seeing in reflections?
Surely you’re joking, Mr. Muslim.
I hope you understand that, since the same Arabic word (وجدَ) is used in both cases, you can’t translate it sometimes like this, other times like that, whichever way it suits you, so that you twist the data and make it fit your theory that the Qur’an is faultless.
For, that is precisely what we are investigating, based on the evidence: is the Qur’an faultless? We say we’re examining in the present article whether the Qur’an is scientifically correct. Therefore we cannot assume it as a given, a priori, that it is correct! That’s exactly what we want to investigate.
A third, rather pathetic attempt at reinterpretation: “Oh, but when the Arabic text says ‘when he reached the setting of the sun’ it means this in a temporal sense: he reached the muddy spring at the time the sun was setting, not at the place where the sun was setting!”
Pathetic. First of all, the text says: “Until when he reached the setting place of the sun” (حَتَّىٰ إِذَا بَلَغَ مَغْرِبَ الشَّمْسِ). The word مَغْرِبَ is translated as “the setting place” in all authoritative translations, not as “the sunset time”. (See, for example, this word-for-word translation, specifically for مَغْرِبَ, from an authoritative source.) And second, and most important, nothing really changes even if you force مَغْرِبَ to mean “at the time of the sunset”. Try it:
“Until when he marched up to the time that the sun was setting, he found it (هَا – “her”) setting in a muddy spring [...]”
Did you notice any difference? Nope. The poor Sun was still setting in a muddy spring. The pronoun هَا , which is translated as “it” in English, is actually “her” in Arabic because the Sun is of feminine gender. And there is no candidate other than the Sun for the pronoun هَا to refer to, due to a rule of the Arabic language that says that a pronoun always refers to the noun that is closest to the pronoun and has already appeared in the sentence. The only such candidate noun is the feminine Sun. Ergo, Zul-qarnain found the Sun going down in a muddy spring (وَجَدَهَا تَغْرُبُ فِي عَيْنٍ حَمِئَةٍ ...). Temporal-interpretation-or-not, the Sun still dived in a muddy pond!
Besides, there is another problem with this reinterpretation, which is independent of language — Arabic or otherwise — and concerns its deeper meaning. According to the said reinterpretation, the sentence says that Zul-qarnain marched up to the time of the sunset, when he found such-and-such things. Nothing in this interpretation implies that Zul-qarnain walked all the way up to the far ends of the Earth. Probably he walked for one day only, until the sunset happened. That’s what this “temporal interpretation” implies. But now, please ask yourselves: how important is it that some person (Zul-qarnain) and his army walked only until sunset, and found whatever he found? Why should Allah tell us about this trivial event? How many other times in history has it happened that a military leader marched with his army until sunset? An innumerable number of times. It simply doesn’t make sense that Allah chose to speak about an army leader who marched until sunset in the “most important book of humanity”. Big deal! But if that army leader marched to the faraway place where the Sun sets, that’s really worth mentioning, as it’s a rare event, not done by anybody else or on a daily basis. At least, that’s what the author of the Qur’an seems to have thought, without understanding that there is no place where the Sun sets (or rises), and that sunset and sunrise are only optical illusions.
I counted three desperate attempts at reinterpretation of 18:86, above. Really, does Allah’s “perfect language” require so much reinterpretation? Why did Allah speak in ways that today provoke us to burst into laughter with what we read? Didn’t Allah know that if he speaks in such ridiculous ways then today we would seriously doubt he is the author of the Qur’an? If he were the real author, of course he knew — Allah is assumed to know everything. But then why was his language so sloppy as to make Muslims feel that so many desperate attempts at reinterpretation are necessary?
Besides, no matter how much Muslims with present-day knowledge try to reinterpret the Qur’an and speak clearer than Allah (which is blasphemous in and of itself), Muhammad has already falsified them, preemptively! Yes, it’s true. In one of the relatively trustworthy (OK, so-and-so) ahadith in the collection of Abu Dawud, Muhammad himself gives a simple and straightforward interpretation of 18:86:
Sunan Abu Dawud, 3991:
Abu Dharr said: “I was sitting behind the Apostle of Allah who was riding a donkey while the sun was setting. He asked: ‘Do you know where this sets?’ I replied: ‘Allah and his Apostle know best.’ He said: ‘It sets in a spring of warm water.’ ”
Now what can you say? Muhammad is supposed to be speaking here, giving you his knowledge about where the Sun sets, in a context totally independent of Zul-qarnain and his peregrinations on earth. Muhammad says that the Sun “sets in a spring of warm water”! Are there any “reflections” of the Sun on the water in this case? Is there any confusion about the time vs. the place of the setting of the Sun? No, nothing of the sort. Muhammad revealed to Abu Dharr his vast knowledge about how the world works: the Sun, a fiery ball that’s about 1.3 million times larger in volume than the Earth, goes and dives into “a spring of warm water.” Thus Spake Muhammad, a presumably divinely inspired man. Given this, and thinking scientifically — meaning that you must examine the data first and then try to judge objectively — which of the following two theories fits the data best?
Try theory #1: is it ever possible that Allah didn’t know the true sizes of the Sun and the Earth, and how they stand in relation to each other in space? Of course not. Then why did Allah speak such nonsense? To impress the Bedouins, but simultaneously to make us today laugh and question his sanity? That’s impossible. Theory #1 is untenable.
Now try theory #2: is it possible that Muhammad, without having any guidance from Allah, came up with such nonsense? Of course it is. The ancient peoples had no idea how large the Sun is. The ancient Greeks, for example, — at least one philosopher among them — thought that the Sun is as large as the area of Peloponnese, the hand-like southern part of Greece. (Still better than Muhammad, of course, who thought the Sun fits to sink into a spring.) Knowledge about the size of the Sun had not advanced at all until Muhammad’s time, and even later. In addition, Muhammad had no idea that the Earth is a sphere and that the Sun is another sphere, completely separate from the Earth. On the contrary, in verse 15:19 (“And the earth We have spread out (like a carpet); set thereon mountains firm and immovable; and produced therein all kinds of things in due balance.”) we get the impression that the author of the Qur’an (whoever he is: Allah himself, or Muhammad’s alter ego) thinks that the Earth is flat, spread out like a carpet. If the author of the Qur’an thought that the Earth is spread out like a carpet, he must have considered it natural that the Sun meets the flat plane of the Earth somewhere in the west (sunset) and somewhere else in the east (sunrise). This wrong geometry matches perfectly the knowledge of Muhammad (the illiterate), and not the knowledge of Allah (the all-wise).
Interestingly, in another hadith that comes from one of your most authoritative ancient Muslims authors, Sahih al-Bukhari, we get further glimpses of Muhammad’s knowledge about the sunset. The following sounds like a different version of Abu Dawud’s narration, which was given earlier:
Sahih al-Bukhari 3199 (Book 59, Hadith 10) (V4B52N421):
Narrated Abu Dharr:
The Prophet asked me at sunset, “Do you know where the Sun goes (at the time of sunset)?” I replied, “Allah and His Apostle know better.” He said, “It goes (i.e. travels) till it prostrates Itself underneath the Throne and takes the permission to rise again, and it is permitted and then (a time will come when) it will be about to prostrate itself but its prostration will not be accepted, and it will ask permission to go on its course but it will not be permitted, but it will be ordered to return whence it has come and so it will rise in the west. And that is the interpretation of the Statement of Allah: ‘And the Sun runs its fixed course for a term (decreed). That is The Decree of (Allah) The Exalted in Might, The All-Knowing.’” (36.38)
Such was the miserable state of Muhammad’s knowledge. He thought that the Sun is an animate and cognitive being, so that it can prostrate itself, ask permission, and so on; and that Allah would give “orders” to that anthropomorphic Sun! If you are a carpenter, do you ever give orders to the chairs that you make? If you are a construction worker, do you give orders to your bricks? Why, if you were the creator of the Sun, would you give orders to it? Such thoughts can be entertained today only by little children, and even children stop thinking such nonsense after they learn what the Sun is, in the first years of elementary school. In addition, as you know very well, the Sun does not “go” anywhere at the time of sunset. It is the Earth that turns; the Sun merely travels within our Galaxy, and we follow its course, twirling around it once per year. But Muhammad didn’t have the slightest clue about all that, and thought instead that the Sun needs to go somewhere (and even ask permission from Allah)! If Muhammad was divinely inspired by Allah, why did he speak such factually wrong things, such plain nonsense, as we learn from Abu Dharr through Sahih al-Bukhari?
This hadith shows us what Muhammad really believed. But he didn’t even invent by himself what he believed. He wasn’t smart enough to come up with original ideas. Muhammad simply made a salad in his mind out of ideas that already existed in ancient cultures of that region of the world. For example, most ancient cultures believed that the Sun and Moon were gods who cruised along the dome of the sky. The ancient Egyptians believed that the sun-god Ra was born every morning, growing in strength until noon, and cruising the sky on a boat. At noon he would switch to another boat that carried him to the entrance to the nether world, where further boats carried him through the night. Does that bring to mind Muhammad’s wondering: “Do you know where the Sun goes (at the time of sunset)?”? Of course it does, because Muhammad’s knowledge about what happens to the Sun at night rested on mythological beliefs of ancient and pagan peoples, such as the Egyptians and Greeks. (In Greek mythology, too, the Sun was personified as a god, the god Helios, who, during the night hours crossed the sea — “Oceanus”, encircling the earth — in a boat from West to East.) So it is not surprising at all that Muhammad personified objects such as the Sun and the Moon, when his beliefs are compared against the background of legends and mythologies of peoples that surrounded him and his culture. This observation, however, should make every pious Muslim wonder: how could Muhammad ever be considered “divinely inspired” if he believed in such falsehoods?
In conclusion, theory #2 explains all our data (both the Qur’anic, and those that are in the above ahadith) and makes perfect sense. At least that’s how it seems to me. What is your view?
Also, no matter which theory (1 or 2 above) is correct, the idea that there are places of sunset and sunrise on the Earth is nonsense. That is, whether Allah said this nonsense (theory #1), or Muhammad said it (theory #2), it is nonsense anyway. Allow me to put it in different words, please: your Qur’an, in the above-mentioned verses, speaks nonsense, no matter who created them. There is no way to escape from this conclusion, no matter how much you would — understandably — wish it. Today, verses 18:86–90 sound so silly that they can make even little children laugh.
In verses 36:38–40 we read the following (my emphasis):
36:38 “And the sun runs his course for a period determined for him: that is the decree of (Him), the Exalted in Might, the All-Knowing. 36:39 And the Moon, — We have measured for her mansions (to traverse) till she returns like the old (and withered) lower part of a date-stalk. 36:40 It is not permitted to the Sun to catch up the Moon, nor can the Night outstrip the Day; each (just) swims along in (its own) orbit (according to Law).”
What? “It is not permitted to the Sun to catch up the Moon?” The above verse is either ridiculous or wrong, depending on whether we try to understand it from the modern perspective or from the Bedouins’ perspective, respectively. Here is why:
From the modern perspective, to say that the Sun tries to catch up the Moon (but is not permitted to do so) is laughably naïve. The Moon’s orbit around the Earth has no overlap with the Sun’s location in space, since the Moon orbits the Earth once in around 27.3 days (the “sidereal month”), and the system Earth–Moon orbits the Sun once per year (see diagram).
The orbit of the Moon (gray) around the Earth’s orbit
(blue circle) and around the Sun (red, center).
Note: not drawn to scale! The orbit of the Moon does
not loop as depicted but is rather wavy, following the Earth
at a much closer distance than the one shown. Also, the Moon completes
approximately 13 turns in a year, not exactly 13.
Observation from this diagram: to say that the Sun, in reality,
“tries to catch up the Moon”, makes no sense at all.
So, because according to what we know today it is just plain stupid to say that the Sun tries to catch up the Moon, there is only one possibility: that verse 36:40 was said that way for the Bedouins to make some sense of it. But in that case,... it’s wrong again!
Oh, no! The Sun caught up the Moon! (Or the Moon
caught up the Sun, depending on your perspective.)
It happens every once in a while, contrary to what Allah (or was it
Muhammad?) boasted about in verse 36:40, and it’s called a
solar eclipse!
Now, part of our data is that ancient peoples did not understand what happens during a solar eclipse. They thought that the Sun simply darkens, and they panicked. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus describes how two ancient armies, the Lydians and the Medians, stopped fighting and agreed to make peace, terrified during a solar eclipse that took place while they were engaged in battle (Herodotus: Histories, Book 1, §74). Ancient people could not understand that the dark region of the Sun during an eclipse is the Moon, which the Sun “catches up” and overtakes from the viewpoint of the observer on the Earth, contrary to the claim of verse 36:40. There is evidence that even Muhammad was terrified by a solar eclipse, as the following hadith tells us, again from the trustworthy source of Sahih al-Bukhari:
Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 2, Book 18, Number 167:
Narrated Abu Musa:
The sun eclipsed and the Prophet got up, being afraid that it might be the Hour (i.e. Day of Judgment). He went to the Mosque and offered the prayer with the longest Qiyam, bowing and in prostration that I had never seen him doing. Then he said, “These signs which Allah sends do not occur because of the life or death of somebody, but Allah makes His worshipers afraid by them. So when you see anything thereof, proceed to remember Allah, invoke Him and ask for His forgiveness.”
What we see is that, terrified and clueless as he was, Muhammad could not understand that during an eclipse the two heavenly bodies, Sun and Moon, catch up each other on the sky, from the Earth-bound observer’s viewpoint. He recorded his ignorance in the Qur’an.
And I want to ask you: if Muhammad was guided by Allah, why was he terrified like a schoolboy who thought that he saw a ghost? Today, are you terrified during a solar eclipse, knowing that it is just the natural phenomenon of the Sun going right behind the Moon? What’s so scary about that? You are not scared because you know what is going on. But if Muhammad was terrified, it was because he didn’t know. But how could your prophet not know, if he was a real prophet of Allah’s? How could he say that an eclipse is a sign that Allah sends, when we know exactly when an eclipse will happen, just as we know exactly when it will be Friday? Would you ever say that “Allah sends Fridays as signs”? No, it sounds stupid. Similarly, to say that “Allah sends eclipses as signs” is equally stupid, because we know exactly when there will be an eclipse. A “sign” is something that cannot be predicted by science or any person. But science predicts eclipses with absolute precision. How could your prophet sound so ignorant, so unguided by Allah?
Now, of course, we cannot be 100% sure that the above hadith is true. But, equally important, you should not reject it as false merely because you “don’t like it”, because what it says disturbs you. You cannot put your theory — that Muhammad was wise and would not say the above nonsense — ahead of the data (i.e., Sahih al-Bukhari’s excerpt). Muhammad was illiterate, and had the knowledge (or lack thereof) of ancient peoples about eclipses; those are your data. You may assign a less-than-100% certainty that the above hadith is true, but remember that all the ahadith of Sahih al-Bukhari have been given a high degree of trustworthiness by Muslim scholars. Merely “not liking” a hadith because of your personal preferences is a knee-jerk reaction, and a very unscientific one.
By the way, the continuation of that phrase in verse 36:40 is also wrong. It says: “nor can the Night outstrip the Day”. Yes, but in Arabia, in Muhammad’s latitudes. If you move to the far north, somewhere in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, the islands of northern Canada, or most of Greenland, you’ll witness the night outstripping the day (called a “polar night”), at some time in late November or early December (depending on your latitude, i.e., how far north you are). In those latitudes, during that time of the year, the night becomes longer and longer, and the day shorter and shorter, until the day vanishes, “outstripped” by the night. Night then lasts until some time in late January. The same phenomenon occurs practically anywhere in Antarctica, but around June and July.
This is not just a linguistic objection. It has serious implications in the lives of Muslims. Two of the so-called “pillars of Islam”, namely, praying and fasting, are based on the cycle of the Sun, i.e., on when the Sun rises and sets. What about Muslims who now live in very northern latitudes? In their places, the daytime can last for such a short or long time (or even vanish entirely, “outstripped” by the night, or persist for several 24-hour periods), that regulating fasting and praying according to the Sun is impossible. So, Muslims in such places resort to following the rhythms of the Sun in Arabia. (But not simultaneously with Arabia, because they might be in a very different time zone.) Why did Allah — if that’s the author of the Qur’an — establish such parochial rules, such rules that are good for some part of the world only? Didn’t Allah know that Islam would spread one day beyond Arabia?
Back to 36:40. How could Allah have said so many factually wrong things in so short a sentence?
And if Allah was trying to impress only illiterate Bedouins who knew nothing about what happens during solar eclipses or in polar latitudes of our planet, then why should we today take seriously a book written for those clueless people of that time? We are neither Bedouins, nor illiterate, nor do we live in the Dark Ages.
Given the above, don’t you think that the theory that Allah is the true author of the Qur’an is wrong? Don’t you think that the theory that the Qur’an was the product of Muhammad’s mind (without inspiration from Allah) explains better what we read in it? (Remember to be objective like a scientist: data from observations go first; explanatory theories follow, and depend on the data.)
In verse 21:30, as well as elsewhere in the Qur’an, we read what ancient peoples thought was the correct cosmology, which, however, has absolutely no relation to what today we know is true:
21:30 “Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them, and we made every living thing of water? Will they not then believe?”
No, sorry. They will not believe (in Islam, at least), because the idea that the “heavens” (which is an illusion, as we said in §1.1) and the Earth were united in one piece (which then God split asunder) is: (1) not original (the ancient Jews also believed the same thing, and it is described in Genesis of the Jewish Bible), and (2) false anyway, conflicting with everything we know today. How can something nonexistent as the “heavens” be thought of as united with the Earth? And if by “heavens” one understands “everything else in the universe except the Earth” (a silly idea, given the unimportance of the speck of dust that we call Earth in relation to the entire universe), then didn’t Allah know that around eight and a half billion years passed after the Big Bang and before the Earth was formed? How can Allah have said that “the heavens and the earth were of one piece” if for 8.5 billion years the Earth did not exist, but the “heavens” existed? (If “heavens” refers to the rest of the universe; but read §1.5.1, below, to see that “heavens” cannot refer to that.) Even I, a mere mortal, can do a better job: “Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens existed before the Earth, for a time longer than you can imagine, then We formed the Sun and the Earth out of swirling dust from the heavens?” That wording definitely would not sound strange to the rational and cosmologically oh-so-sensitive Bedouin mind, would it? But it would certainly convert us all to Islam. Why did Allah choose such sloppy and inaccurate language in the Qur’an?
As for the phrase “and we made every living thing of water”, that, too, is incorrect. Living beings were not made of water. Water is important for the evolution and maintenance of life as we know it here on our planet, but so are several other chemicals that form the bodies of all living organisms. One of them is carbon. There is no living being that has no carbon in its body. If only the Qur’an could have mentioned carbon (you know, “coal”) as indispensable for life, all people today should convert to Islam, because that would be indisputable evidence of the deeper knowledge revealed in the Qur’an. Instead, the author of the Qur’an said that Allah “made every living thing of water”. Out of plain water, only water can arise, not life. Nor is it true that life evolved in the sea or lakes. Again, this is an ancient idea that was (1) not original, and (2) scientifically inaccurate. The ancient Jews believed that God created life first in the seas (just read the first few verses of Genesis); also the ancient Greek philosopher Anaximander (~ 6th C. BC) proposed that life originated in the water, and he stated this more than 1000 years before Muhammad was born. Today we believe that water played a vital role in the evolution of life, but to say that “we made every living thing of water” is scientifically inaccurate. Certainly Allah, in his infinite wisdom, could have chosen a scientifically more accurate phrase to express the idea that water is important for life. Here is one, for example: “and we made almost every living thing dependent on water”. (I said “almost” because there are some living things, namely bacteria, and more specifically some among those called “archaeobacteria”, that do not depend on water nor use it at all.)
Given the above, dear Muslim reader, and always thinking objectively, which of the following theories do you think is true?
Allah said things that were already believed by ancient Jews and Greeks (long before your religion was established), and said them in such a way so as to sound today either downright wrong, or scientifically sloppy.
Muhammad, the true mind behind the Qur’an, said the above things because that’s what he had heard. What he said agrees with what was believed by ancient peoples, but is wrong — or at best scientifically inaccurate — by today’s knowledge.
I remind you that to think objectively means to temporarily abandon your conviction that theory #1 is correct, examine the data (what the Qur’an says, what ancient peoples believed, what we know today), and, based on the data, draw your conclusion about whether theory #1 or theory #2 explains the data best.
By the way, why is it that I can always say things more accurately than your Qur’an? It can’t be that I know more than Allah, because Allah is supposed to be infinitely wise. Then could it be that it’s because I benefit from modern knowledge, which is highly more accurate than Muhammad’s knowledge? But, in that case, doesn’t that imply that Muhammad did not draw his knowledge from Allah, but from his own culture, which in turn received it from other ancient cultures?
Sometimes Muslims try to impress non-Muslims by giving their own, totally ad hoc and unjustified translations of the Qur’an. Such translations sound as if they agree with some key feature of modern science. But they are not just bad, but deceptive translations. For example, take verse 21:30, as stated above. See here for a deceptive translation of it, where it is given as follows (my emphasis):
21:30 “Do the unbelievers not realize that the heavens and the earth used to be one solid mass that we exploded into existence? And from water we made all living things. Would they believe?”
Excuse me? “that we exploded into existence”? Did anyone translate the Arabic words as “exploded” before there was knowledge of the Big Bang — which is wrongly imagined by non-scientists as an “explosion”? Please show me one such translation of the Qur’an, which was written before the mid-20th C., and uses the word “exploded”. Here is what well known translations of 21:30 say (again, my emphasis):
21:30 (translator: Yusuf Ali): “Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before we clove them asunder? We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?”
21:30 (translator: Pickthal): “Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them, and we made every living thing of water? Will they not then believe?”
21:30 (translator: Shakir): “Do not those who disbelieve see that the heavens and the earth were closed up, but We have opened them; and We have made of water everything living, will they not then believe?”
Can someone please explain to the idiot who translated 21:30 as “one solid mass that we exploded into existence” that explosions were unknown in Muhammad’s time and place? Gunpowder was discovered only in the 9th C. by Chinese alchemists, whereas nitroglycerin and hence dynamite were manufactured in Europe in the 19th C. The only explosions that could occur in Muhammad’s time were the natural ones, of volcanoes. Unfortunately, southern Arabia has no volcanoes. Thus, the language of the Qur’an couldn’t possibly have a word for referring to an unknown, nonexistent concept.
In addition, the Big Bang event was nothing like an explosion — in spite of the “Bang” in it. In an explosion, thermal energy dissipates violently by expanding into an already existent space; in the Big Bang, space itself was distended, decreasing in curvature, without expanding into some other pre-existing space. That’s quite unlike an explosion, but whoever translated 21:30 as above (in red letters) obviously knew so little of physics that he thought Allah would refer to the Big Bang as an “explosion”.
The above is one such example, but not the only one. I think that the attempt to translate Qur’anic phrases in any way one wishes, so that they look like they’re in agreement with present-day knowledge, is a particularly stupid way to trick those who can’t read in Arabic. Do the believers not realize that in the West we don’t rely on the Imam’s or on X’s authority to learn something, but we search the Internet and expose such silly attempts at deception? Don’t those Muslims who act in such ways realize that they exhibit intelligence that proves insufficient for those people whom they want to trick? (I suppose not, because the dumb cannot perceive his dumbness.)
At various places in the Qur’an there are references to “heaven”. I propose to you that we read together those verses that refer to “heaven”, dear Muslim reader, and try to infer what the author of the Qur’an thought the heaven is, without us being influenced by present-day knowledge. You see, if you assume that the author of the Qur’an already knew what we know today, then you put the cart in front of the horse once again (the theory before the data). Forget what you know today about astronomy. Forget the fact that the blue sky that we see over our heads is not a real thing but an illusion, and come to the position of the ancient Bedouin, who crosses the Arabian desert atop his camel one sunny day, and raises his head skywards. What would he see? What would you see if you were in his position? You would see a blue dome, the sky, the “heaven”, the same object that seems to be traversed by the Sun at daytime, by the Moon usually at nighttime, and which is filled up with stars during nighttime. Look now how several verses in the Qur’an describe precisely that illusion, that nonexistent thing, the “heaven”:
21:32 “And We have made the heaven a guarded canopy and (yet) they turn aside from its signs.”
So, the heaven is a canopy, which means a roof over the heads of people. (Indeed, other translations use the word “roof”.) You, of course, know today that there is nothing like a roof over your head. But the Bedouin didn’t know. Therefore, I can think of two theories to explain the above verse, and also all those that will follow soon:
It is really Allah who is speaking in the Qur’an and who, although of course knows that there is nothing like a canopy, he uses that false image to reinforce the wrong idea of a roof in the Bedouin’s mind.
It is actually Muhammad who is speaking in the Qur’an, perhaps genuinely believing that Allah is talking to him, but in reality saying things from the perspective available to him by his Bedouin’s knowledge.
If theory #1 is correct, we conclude that Allah is talking to the Bedouin of those times, not to us today.
Let’s see which of the above two theories is best supported by the data. Remember, data for us is certainly what is included in the Qur’an (with 100% certainty), and to a lesser extent what is included in the ahadith (with less than 100% certainty).
Now, that canopy, the supposed roof that stands over our heads, Allah says that he holds it so that it doesn’t fall on earth! Here it is:
22:65 “Do you not see that Allah has made subservient to you whatsoever is in the earth and the ships running in the sea by His command? And He withholds the heaven from falling on the earth except with His permission; most surely Allah is Compassionate, Merciful to men.”
The phrase “except with His permission” might mean one of the following two things: (a) except when Allah determines that the Day of Judgment has come, or (b) except when it rains. So we have two theories here, (a) and (b). Theory (b) seems more reasonable to me, because elsewhere in the Qur’an we read that it is Allah who allows the rain to fall and water the crops, which is beneficial to people, and so this all ties in with what follows: “most surely Allah is Compassionate, Merciful to men.” And also, when looking at rain from faraway it really looks as if the heaven is falling on earth at that place where it’s raining, as seen in the following picture.
Rain, in a faraway distance: is this “the sky falling” with Allah’s permission?
In any case, we see that this canopy, the “heaven”, is withheld by Allah so that it doesn’t fall on earth (hence, on our heads). Elsewhere, Allah boasts that the canopy, the roof, has no visible pillars that support it:
31:10 “He [Allah] created the heavens without any pillars that ye can see;”
If Allah knew that the Earth is a sphere, and that its atmosphere (responsible for the illusion of “heaven”) surrounds the globe and is held around it by gravity, why would he boast that there are no visible pillars that support it? Pillars are used only to support ceilings, roofs, or other solid surfaces. But the atmosphere is no solid surface.
By the way, doesn’t 31:10 tell us that “heaven” means the atmosphere, and not the abstract notion of “rest of the universe except Earth”? For, if Allah meant this last idea by “heaven”, why did he need to boast about “no visible pillars”? How can the vast, endless “rest of the universe” fall on the speck of dust that is Earth (22:65) — wouldn’t that be astonishingly ridiculous? This tells us without any reasonable doubt that by the word “heavens” the Qur’an means the Earth’s sky, its atmosphere.
But there is a further interesting detail in 31:10.
When someone tells you: “I built this house without any heating devices that you can see!”, what do you understand? That there are no heating devices in his house at all? That such devices are missing? No, of course not. By the qualifier “that you can see” you understand that there are heating devices, but they are hidden from view, so you can’t see them. Maybe there are pipes behind the walls, heating the walls and the entire house. And that’s why this person sounds so boastful: because he knows that for you the common situation is that such things as heating devices are visible somewhere in the rooms of houses; so if he tells you that you can’t see them in this house that he built, you are bound to admire him: “Wow, how did you do that? How did you hide the heating devices?” Similarly, if someone tells you that he built a roof without any pillars that you can see, this means that the pillars are not readily visible; but not that they are non-existent!
Allah is telling us, in 31:10, that the supposed “roof” of the earth, the sky, has pillars! But you just can’t see them! (“Wow!”)
Moving on now to verse 7:40 we learn that not only is the canopy of the heaven a physical thing with invisible pillars, but that it even has gates! (You know, as in doors?) And people like me, who are unbelievers, will never pass through those heavenly gates. Here:
7:40 “Lo! they who deny Our revelations and scorn them, for them the gates of heaven will not be opened, nor will they enter the Garden until the camel goeth through the needle’s eye. Thus do We requite the guilty.”
As you see, the evidence is mounting that the author of the Qur’an thinks of the heaven as something physical. More evidence exists in verse 21:104, where the author thinks of the heaven as something that can be rolled up like an ancient scroll for writing:
21:104 “The Day [of Judgment is] when We shall roll up the heavens as a recorder rolls up a written scroll. As We began the first creation, We shall repeat it. (It is) a promise (binding) upon Us. Lo! We are to perform it.”
If you are a fan of the interpretation that the “heaven” is the rest of the universe except planet Earth, tell me please, what sense does it make to think of it as a scroll that can be rolled up?
But if you think of heaven in the way a Bedouin would think of it, then of course 21:104 makes sense: the heaven is a physical dome, a blue canopy over our heads, supported by invisible pillars and having gates from which one can enter into the Garden. So it can be thought of as rolled up like a scroll on the Day of Judgment. Sure, it makes sense; but to the ancient, illiterate minds; not to ours.
That the author of the Qur’an thinks of heaven as something solid is also evident from 78:19:
78:19 “And the heavens shall be opened as if there were doors”
How can the “heaven” as we understand it today be “opened”? Only physical, solid things open up. But the ancient Bedouins thought that the sky is exactly such a solid piece, so “opening it up” was a sensible thought in their minds.
Further interesting evidence of the physicality of heaven exists in 50:6:
50:6 “Have they [the unbelievers] not then observed the heaven above them, how we have made it and adorned it, and there are not in it any rifts?”
Pardon me? “Rifts”? As in gaps? But only solid chunks of matter can have gaps! How can the air, the Earth’s atmosphere, have gaps? And, given that the sky is filled with air, why should anyone admire the fact that it has no rifts? Unless the author of the Qur’an could not understand that the sky is simply air, and thought of it — as he repeatedly implied in all these verses — as a solid blue dome.
In summary: according to the author of the Qur’an, the lowest “heaven” (the sky) is a solid blue dome, made of pieces that fit perfectly together (without rifts), a canopy over our heads that Allah holds so that it doesn’t fall on Earth, which is supported by invisible pillars (wow! how could He ever do that!), has gates through which only pious people who died and go to the Garden pass, is flat because it will be rolled up like a scroll on Judgment Day, and is even decorated with little lights (the stars), as we shall see in §1.5.3!
Why does Allah — if he is the true author of the Qur’an, according to theory #1 — keep speaking in ways that show such endless ignorance, which today would make even schoolchildren roll on the floor laughing?
In contrast, theory #2 doesn’t suffer from such problems. According to theory #2, Muhammad is simply projecting to Allah his cluelessness about what he saw as “heaven”. He puts his ignorance into Allah’s mouth, making Allah sound as if Allah is saying things that show a blissful ignorance about the surrounding atmosphere of the Earth and its nature. But in reality it is Muhammad who speaks. That’s what theory #2 says, and I don’t find any datum that contradicts this theory. If you can find any, dear Muslim reader, please make it known to me.
However, no matter which theory is correct (#1 or #2), you must admit that somebody is speaking nonsense in your book; somebody is saying sometimes false things (heaven as a canopy withheld by Allah so it doesn’t fall on our heads), and sometimes laughably stupid things (heaven–roof supported by invisible pillars, with gates that lead to “the Garden”, without cracks, adorned with little lights (see §1.5.3), and destined to be rolled up like an ancient papyrus scroll). I repeat: someone wrote rubbish. This conclusion is independent of the question of who the author of the Qur’an is.
Reading the various verses in the Qur’an that talk about objects that make up our solar system (Earth, Sun, Moon, etc.), a modern reader can’t avoid feeling somewhat strange upon seeing that, together with the other heavenly bodies, there is a persistent reference to “Day” and “Night”. From our modern perspective, day and night are completely uninteresting events in the context of cosmology. First of all, we understand they are conditions, not objects that require a creation, as many Qur’anic verses suggest. Once there is the Sun and a planet like Earth that rotates around its axis and thus shows half of itself to the Sun, inhabitants of the planet are bound to experience day & night — what can be more mundane and uninteresting that that, we’d think today. But ancient peoples didn’t have the correct model of a round Earth rotating around its axis in their minds. Moreover — and quite surprisingly for us — they couldn’t make the connection between Sun and daylight! They couldn’t “get it” that the Sun causes day, and the absence of Sun causes night. Instead, they observed “Day” starting to appear at some early time, whereas the Sun came out later, as a “crowning jewel” of “Day”. Likewise at sunset: they saw the Sun disappearing, but “Day” (the object) was still there for a while; so — naturally — they thought that the “Day” does not depend on the Sun, since it can exist even after the Sun is gone. From their perspective, the Sun didn’t cause the day but was merely a bright object cruising along the blue dome, the “heaven”, while “Day” was present. So in their view of things, ancient peoples treated “Day” and “Night” not as conditions but as objects that required creation, like all other objects. Here is a characteristic verse that tells us precisely that “Day” and “Night” were created, independently and before the creation of the Earth.
79:27 “Are you the harder to create, or is the heaven that He built? 79:28 He raised its canopy, and He hath given it order and perfection. 79:29 And He made dark the night thereof, and He brought forth the morning thereof. 79:30 And after that He spread the earth.”
Notice how the Sun doesn’t seem worthy of any mention in the above verses; Allah “raises” the canopy of the heaven (what sense does this really make if by “heaven” we understand “everything else in the universe except the Earth”?) and creates night and day on the heaven. Subsequently, Allah spreads the Earth. (And note please that if you want to create a sphere you don’t spread it, which is what you do if you create a flat, planar surface.) So the Day and Night are objects created, associated with heaven, but not associated with Earth, which comes afterwards. But what sense do the notions of day & night make in the absence of planet Earth?
Some Muslim readers might object that the Arabic word used in the original text doesn’t have to be translated as “after that” (as translators Pickthal and Shakir translate it), but as “moreover” (as Yusuf Ali translates it). But this doesn’t make any significant difference. Try to read the text using “moreover”: 79:29 “And he made dark the night thereof, and He brought forth the morning thereof. 79:30 Moreover, He spread the earth.” Still, day and night sound like two separately created objects. If you have the correct, modern model of our solar system in your mind, and you say that the Earth was created, what sense does it make to say that the day and night were also created? And even mention their creation in the text (79:29) before the creation of the Earth (79:30)? With the correct model in your mind, you should mention the Sun first, then the Earth, and then (possibly) the day and night, although that would be redundant. Verses 79:29–30 sound as if you were a carpenter and you say something like this: “And I made the dark surface, and the bright surface. Moreover, I spread out the table.” Would you ever say an incoherent thing like that? Would you talk about the making of surfaces before mentioning the object to which those surfaces belong? Worse, would you talk about creating the darkness and brightness when you, being a carpenter, know very well that darkness and brightness are not independent objects, but conditions, properties of the surfaces of your table, resulting from the position of some external bright object, such as a light bulb? Shouldn’t you know that darkness and brightness do not require creation, but what you need to talk about is where you put the table in relation to the light bulb? And why would you talk about “spreading” the table, when what you actually created is a sphere? How can you claim to be a carpenter, an expert in making furniture, and make it evident from your choice of words that you are clueless about your profession?
The verses of Chapter 79 are of course not the only ones that show a lack of understanding of what day and night is, and what causes them. Here is a verse showing again a separation between day & night on one hand, and the Sun and other heavenly bodies on the other hand:
7:54 “Lo! your Lord is Allah Who created the heavens and the earth in six Days, then He mounted the Throne. He covers the night with the day, which is in haste to follow it, and has made the sun and the moon and the stars subservient by His command. His verily is all creation and commandment. Blessed be Allah, the Lord of the Worlds!”
Can the “Lord of the Worlds” please speak in a way that shows he understands some fundamental features of his creation? Specifically, that the night and day are not independent creations, separate from one of the objects (the Sun) which he created? Why does he speak like an ignorant, illiterate person? If your answer is that he wanted to be understood by Bedouins, then my counter-answer is that Allah, being all-wise, could always choose to speak so that he was both understood by tribesmen, and also make sense to us today. A very simple way to do that in 7:54 is this one: “Lo! your Lord is Allah who created the heavens and the Earth in six Days. He has made the stars, the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon [in that order, please!], and has let the Sun to shine during the day, which is covered by the night after sunset, and the night in turn is covered by day in haste before sunrise. His verily is all creation [blah-blah, but I would prefer less boasting and bragging from a truly wise Allah].” I don’t think the extra-sensitive Bedouins would have a hard time to swallow the above, given that they swallowed far more difficult ideas, such as that their many other gods were false gods, and that Muhammad had a special direct communication channel with the one God, Allah. I mean, if you are so naïve and gullible(*) as to believe a person who says Allah talks to him in a cave through the angel Gabriel, and you believe him just because that person tells you so, then do you think it is that hard to accept the sentences I wrote in blue color? Would you have any difficulty to understand them? I don’t think so, unless you are truly retarded. And, in any case, since Allah is infinitely wise, he could find many different — and superior to my — ways for expressing the same ideas.
(*) Please note that when I say “naïve and gullible” I don’t refer to today’s Muslims but to Muhammad’s tribesmen, so make sure you read this footnote(*).
By the way, why does the Qur’an say that the day covers the night “in haste”? Do you know that this reveals something about the place of the Earth where the Qur’an was written?
The day appears relatively quickly after the night only in latitudes of the Earth that are near the equator! And, as everyone knows, such are the latitudes of Southern Arabia! In southern latitudes, the dawn is short; ditto for the twilight. That’s because the Sun’s arc on the sky, as the Sun rises or sets, is closer to the vertical direction than in more northern latitudes, where the Sun’s arc is closer to the horizontal direction (see pictures, below). If you move to the far north of the Earth (in northern Canada, Scandinavia, or Siberia), you’ll see the Sun taking a looooong time as it sets, and then remaining equally long under the horizon, but near it, so the twilight lasts very long in those places; for the same reason, the dawn lasts equally long. So, whether the night is covered by the day “in haste” or not depends on where you are on Earth. We thus see that the Qur’an, when studied carefully, with its little phrases and words, reveals the fact that it has a very narrow-minded idea about how the world actually is. It really seems to have been written for the Bedouins of Arabia — and, most likely, by a Bedouin of Arabia.
 |
 |
|
| The Sun sets like this in southern
latitudes, like that of Arabia. Consequently day & night follow each other “in haste” (7:54) |
But, unbeknownst to the Bedouins, the Sun
sets like this in the North. As a consequence, dawn and twilight last really long. |
Another point: in 7:54, Allah could avoid the phrase: “He mounted the Throne”. What “Throne”? Does Allah need a throne to sit on? A throne is a physical thing, especially if it is mounted somewhere. Does Allah have a physical body (with the necessary part that humans use when they sit somewhere), which he uses while sitting on a throne? What does this tell you about what the author of the Qur’an thought about Allah? (Think, and then re-read this quote from Sahih Al-Bukhari, to see what the author really thought about that throne and where it is located.)
As I mentioned, I don’t find it appropriate that Allah boasts about himself and asks to be blessed all the time (“Blessed be Allah, the Lord of the Worlds!”). Is this the example you want to follow? Boasting continually about what you have created? But I am not going to complain about the Quran’s distasteful moral attitude here, because that subject belongs to a different article. Let’s go back to the subject of cosmology. Here are a few more verses that show the dissociation between day–night and Sun:
5:1 “All praise is due to Allah, who created the heavens and the earth, and made the darkness and the light; yet those who disbelieve set up equals with their Lord.” The “darkness and the light” were created by Allah, but the Sun — the main heavenly body responsible for the light and its absence — is nowhere to be seen in this verse.
21:33 “And He it is Who created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon. They float, each in an orbit.”
36:40 “It is not permitted to the Sun to catch up the Moon, nor can the Night outstrip the Day: Each (just) swims along in (its own) orbit (according to Law).” If you understand that night and day are simply caused by the illumination of the Earth from the Sun, what sense does it make to boast about not permitting night to outstrip the day? How else could it be on a spherical body like the Earth?
41:37 “Among His Signs are the Night and the Day, and the Sun and the Moon. Do not prostrate to the sun and the moon, but prostrate to Allah, Who created them, if it is Him ye wish to serve.”
78:8 “And We have created you in pairs, 78:9 And have appointed your sleep for repose, 78:10 And have appointed the night as a cloak, 78:11 And have appointed the day for livelihood. 78:12 And We have built above you seven strong (heavens), 78:13 And have appointed a dazzling lamp, [i.e., the Sun]” Again, we see a dissociation: night and day in 78:10–11, but Sun in 78:13.
I don’t think I need to continue with more examples.
Looking again at all the above verses we have two theories, as before:
Allah, the carpenter of the universe, says that (a) he raised the ceiling as a canopy over the heads of the ants that live on a table, giving to that canopy order and perfection, (b) he made a darkness and a brightness, and (c) subsequently (or moreover), he made the table for the ants to dwell on. But actually the “darkness” and “brightness” are mere conditions of the two surfaces (lower and upper) of the table, as they are illuminated by a lamp, which the boastful carpenter failed to mention. Worse, the table is not a table, but a spherical object.
Muhammad, the illiterate Arab nomad, not understanding that brightness and darkness are conditions of the table that depend on the existence of an external light source (a light bulb), claimed that Allah, the real carpenter, said things in a way that shows a basic misunderstanding of brightness, darkness, surfaces, tables, light bulbs, and the relations of those objects to each other.
Which of the two theories explains better what we read in all the verses that I quoted? Which theory would you choose if you were a scientist, trained to look at the data first, without pre-selecting the theory that you’d emotionally wish to be true?
On one hand, in section §1.1 we saw that the “heaven” is a nonexistent entity, an illusion caused by the dust particles when those are lit by sunlight at daytime, scattering the blue light of the rainbow more than the other colors, thus giving to the sky the appearance of a blue dome. We can see that “dome” in the second of the pictures of this document (here). It is the atmosphere, a spherical “shell” that surrounds the Earth, only a few hundreds of miles high. Please take a note of this phrase: “only a few hundreds of miles high.” Specifically, the outer layer of the atmosphere where matter still behaves like a gas is called the “thermosphere”, and reaches only up to 700 km high (440 miles).
On the other hand, we also learned about the vast distances at which the stars are from the Earth. We saw that even the closest star — other than the Sun — which is called “Proxima Centauri” (“closest of the [constellation of] Centaurus”) in the skies of the southern hemisphere, is astonishingly far away, at a distance of 40,519,553,200,000 km. Here is a useful comparison: if the farthest layers of the Earth’s atmosphere were at a hair’s width away (at 0.08 of a millimeter), and this hair was located at Mecca, Saudi Arabia, then the closest star (Proxima Centauri) would be at London, UK! Such is the enormous difference between the one distance and the other.
And yet, in the Qur’an these two vastly different distances are confused and merged into one: the distance to the “nearest of the seven heavens”. Worse, the stars themselves — which, by human standards, are extremely large fire-balls made mostly of hydrogen and helium — are confused with the “shooting stars”, which are specks of dust (often as large as a grain of sand) that enter the Earth’s atmosphere and are ignited due to friction, leaving a fiery trail behind them that lasts no more than a few tenths of a second on the night sky. (See the picture that follows.)
A “shooting star” against the background of real stars
in the night sky. The bright line (“shooting star”) that exists for a
split-second
happens right here, in our atmosphere. The bright dots (real stars)
exist “forever”, and are unbelievably far away from us.
Here is the “wisdom” by which those vastly different distances and objects are confused:
37:6 Indeed, we have adorned the nearest heaven with an adornment of stars,
37:7 and as protection against every rebellious devil,
37:8 who may not listen to the exalted assembly [of angels] and are pelted from every side.
As usual, ideas are repeated ad nauseam in the Qur’an, and the above is no exception. So there is another chapter and verse where the same idea is repeated — just in case we didn’t digest it completely in Chapter 37. Here it is again, in Chapter 67:
67:5 And certainly we have beautified the nearest heaven with lamps, and we have made them as missiles for the devils, and we have prepared for them the punishment of the Flame.
What do we learn from the above verses? That the “nearest heaven”, the one closest to the Earth, is adorned with stars. (In §1.1 we saw that this implies that the Moon is at least as far away as the stars, so let’s not repeat this problem here.) The stars are there as mere ornamentation of the sky, but also to protect us against “every rebellious devil”! How do the stars protect us? By being “pelted from every side” against the rebellious devils!
In other words, the shooting stars — those specks of dust that enter the Earth’s atmosphere as our planet orbits the Sun — are confused in the Qur’an with real stars, which lie at truly “astronomical” distances away! Please note:
Who could have confused the two, vastly different objects, just because, to the Earth-bound observer, the shooting stars look like stars that are suddenly pelted in one direction?
Theory #1: Allah, the all-knowing, confused stars with shooting stars. Why? To impress Bedouins, again? This explanation has become really boring, you know. Theory #2: Muhammad, a person living in times when there was zero knowledge about the fact that stars and shooting stars cannot be more different and that they exist at vastly different distances from us, confused the two, because it looks like some stars are shot on the sky at unexpected times. Which theory makes more sense? You be the judge.
And, as an aside, think a bit of the humorous side of all this: the “rebellious devils” are trying, night after night, by the dozens, to come and cause harm to us. But we are protected by the “stars”. In spite of the huge number of failed attempts of those devils to harm us (because a fairly large number of shooting stars can be seen every night, as Muhammad for sure could notice), those bedeviled devils keep trying, again and again! The imagined devils cannot have more intelligence than that of in insect! How robotic, how plainly dumb can such “rebellious devils” be, to be trying and failing, night after night, learning nothing at all from a vast number of failures? Well, the right question actually is: how plainly dumb could a person be, who imagined that the supposed rebellious devils try and fail dozens of times every night, without seeing any problem with the logic of this idea of his (or of his culture)?
More evidence that the author of the Qur’an thinks of the stars as “little lights” (which are up there “for decoration” — see §1.5.3) exists in 81:2, in a sura that starts by describing events that will happen on Judgment Day:
81:1 When the sun is folded,
81:2 and when the stars fall, losing their luster,
81:3 and when the mountains are moved away, ...etc.
So, the stars will “fall”, and will be dimmed, losing their luster, like decorative Christmas lights that are turned off when the celebratory season is over. They will “fall” where, exactly? Objects fall on the surface of our planet Earth. How can stars, which are fireballs of enormous sizes (almost all the ones visible by the naked eye are larger than the Sun) fall on Earth, or anywhere else for that matter? The statement of 81:2 is of a magnitude of stupidity analogous to that of 18:86, which says that the Sun sets into a muddy spring. The only difference is that the reader needs just a little bit more of astronomical knowledge to understand the idiocy of 81:2.
In an exchange of messages that I had with a Muslim who had read parts of this document, I was trying to convey to him the idea that the Qur’an does not distinguish between stars and planets. The author of the Qur’an talks only about “stars”, giving the impression that he doesn’t know that those little lights on the night sky (which he thinks are there “for decoration” — see 37:6, 67:5) are of two very different kinds: stars, and planets. In the ensuing discussion I realized that my Muslim interlocutor, too, — just like the Qur’anic author — did not have a clue about what planets are! When I told him that the Qur’an does not refer at all to the concept of “planet”, he told me that, no, the Qur’an mentions planets in many verses, because it talks about the Sun and the Moon!
He knew that the Sun is a star (note that the author of the Qur’an doesn’t give us the slightest indication that he knows this), but he thought the Moon is a planet! From the words that he used I concluded that this was not simply an English language problem (that he didn’t know what the word “planet” refers to), but that he genuinely had no idea what the planets are.
Hard to believe, but true; such can be the ignorance of the person who relies on a religious book to know about the natural world. Now, the problem here is that by being ignorant, people like my Muslim interlocutor agree with what they read in the Qur’an! Think about it: one ignorance meets another; the ignorant reader agrees with the ignorant author, and even admires him for his wisdom!
Thus, after I became aware of the fact that to talk about the distinction between stars and planets I must assume that the reader knows what the planets are, and considering that the Muslim I just mentioned might represent my average Muslim reader, I thought it is necessary to explain here what a planet is. I ask those readers who already have this elementary knowledge to bear with me, considering that other readers, who lack this knowledge and for whom this text is mostly written, cannot otherwise appreciate the inadequacy and emptiness of the Qur’anic information.
So: today we say there are the following eight (8) planets orbiting the Sun:
Mercury (عطارد)
Venus (الزهرة)
Earth (الأرض)
Mars (المريخ)
Jupiter (المشتري)
Saturn (زحل)
Uranus (أورانوس)
Neptune (نبتون)
Here are the eight planets placed next to each other, as if they are balls on a table, so as to understand how they differ in size:
 (Source: "Size planets comparison" by Lsmpascal - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.) |
The two large balls at the back, left-to-right, are Jupiter (المشتري) and Saturn (زحل). Next in size, the two blue balls in front of them, also left-to-right, are Uranus (أورانوس) and Neptune (نبتون). Finally, the last four planets in decreasing size are: our Earth (الأرض), Venus (الزهرة), Mars (المريخ), and Mercury (عطارد). |
Note that, up to 2006, Pluto (بلوتو) was considered to be the 9th planet. But in that year the International Astronomical Union decided that Pluto must be called a “dwarf planet”, because it doesn’t satisfy the definition of a planet.
But although we can arrange the planets and show them like balls on a table as in the previous figure, when we look at them with the unaided eye (as the observer of the 7th century would see them, without the help of a telescope or even binoculars), they look just like stars! See the picture that follows: planets can be easily confused with stars.
 (Credit: photo by Mike Weasner, taken on Aug. 10, 2012, at ~19:00 MST; used by owner’s kind permission.) |
Not all dots in this picture are stars. Of the three “stars” that form the right triangle at the center, two are planets: Saturn (زحل) up, and Mars (المريخ) at the right angle, whereas the third one is a true star: Spica, or α Virginis (its scientific name) at left. The unaided eye cannot easily tell stars from planets apart. |
However, the ancient observers who had enough patience, and watched the night sky throughout the year, and even over several years, could see that the planets change their positions on the sky (contrary to stars). And that’s why they are called “planets”: from the Greek word “planétes” (πλανήτης), meaning “wanderer”; because they wander (move) on the sky. Also, stars twinkle due to small-scale irregularities in the Earth’s upper atmosphere;(*) whereas planets don’t twinkle, because they are extremely close to us compared to the stars, and their shapes are like tiny disks, not point-like as stars appear to us from the Earth.
But it looks like at least one ancient observer of the 7th century AD, preoccupied as he was with his wars against neighboring tribes, did not have enough patience to observe the sky and notice that some “stars” move from day to day, month to month, year to year, and that they don’t twinkle; nor did he have the ability to read about all this, as it was well-known: many ancient peoples (much more ancient than him) in the vicinity of Arabia, knew about the planets and their motions on the sky, including the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and many more. Other peoples at different parts of the world, such as the Chinese, Indians, various tribes of American Indians, and many more, had all the necessary knowledge and could tell the difference between a planet and a star. The author of the Qur’an, however, probably couldn’t; what is certain is that he didn’t give us the slightest indication that he could, since he used only one word: “star”. In fact, the “ontology” (the set of objects) of the Qur’anic astronomy recognizes only three kinds of entities in the sky:
the Sun,
the Moon,
and the stars.
(Plus, as I already mentioned, it doesn’t seem to know that the Sun is a star.) But reality is much more complex than that. Today we have the following, much richer ontology of objects that are (or can be) in the sky and belong to our solar system:
The Sun (the star of our solar system)
Planets (one of which is Earth)
Satellites (of planets; the Moon is Earth’s only natural satellite)
Asteroids (the bulk of them exist between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter)
Comets (they visit our neighborhood from time to time)
Dwarf planets (like Pluto, Eris, and others)
Debris, “dust” (making up the rings of Saturn and of the other giant planets, but also responsible for the “shooting stars” — those that the author of the Qur’an thought they are stars thrown against “rebellious devils” — see §1.5.3).
The above list seems just too sophisticated for a book like the Qur’an. Incidentally, it is interesting to remember that, before the destruction of the Library of Alexandria by the Muslim army of Amr ibn al `Aas in 642 AD, it is said that Amr asked Caliph Omar whether the books of the library should be preserved or destroyed. Omar answered thus: “If those books are in agreement with the Qur’an, we have no need of them; and if they are opposed to the Qur’an, [they are wrong, so] destroy them.” Thus, following Caliph Omar, the world could stay at this astoundingly “deep” level of astronomical knowledge : “Sun, Moon, and stars”.
One wonders who the author of the Qur’an could be, who could speak only of Sun, Moon, and stars: the All-Wise Allah, or someone illiterate, lacking even the knowledge of other peoples of his time?
A reader of this text (different from the one mentioned above) wrote:
“Verse 37:6 has been mistranslated, ‘We have indeed decked the lowest heaven with an adornment, the stars.’ the word كواكب in the verse means planets and not stars as translated here.”
No my dear, you are wrong. The word كواكب means “planets” today, but not in ancient Arabic. Today, the word كواكب is used for planet, and the word نجم is used for star. But in classic Arabic, in the language of the Qur’an, no distinction is made between stars and planets. The word كواكب is used in the Qur’an to refer to either stars, or planets. How do we know this? There is evidence from other ancient Arabic literature. The pre-Islamic Arab poet Al-Nabigha (c. 535 – c. 604), who composed his poems just a few decades before Muhammad, wrote:
“فإنكَ شمسٌ، والملوكُ كواكبٌ ... إذا طلعتْ لم يبدُ منهنّ كوكبُ”
Meaning: “You (the king) are the sun and the other kings are كواكب stars ... when you (the king) shines, the others (kings – stars) disappear.” Obviously, Al-Nabigha did not use كواكب to compare the king with planets. However, in modern Arabic the two words are never mixed as they are in the Qur’an and in old Arabic literature. Now, the Earth is كوكب (a planet) and the Sun is نجم (a star).
In any case, if modern speakers of Arabic are in doubt, all they have to do is locate a single Qur’anic verse in which كواكب clearly refers to planets and not to stars.
The most detailed Qur’anic verses that tell us how Allah created the world, and what he created first, what next, and so on, are in Chapter 41 (“Fusilat”, or “Explained in detail”). In 41:9–12 we read the following (translation by Pickthal, with my emphasis, and with a few archaic words turned into more common and understandable ones [e.g.: “loth” → “unwillingly”]):
41:9 “Say (O Muhammad, unto the idolaters): Disbelieve ye verily in Him Who created the earth in two Days, and ascribe ye unto Him rivals? He (and none else) is the Lord of the Worlds.”
41:10 “He placed therein firm hills rising above it, and blessed it and measured therein its sustenance in four Days, alike for (all) who ask;”
41:11 “Then He turned to the heaven when it was smoke, and said unto it and unto the earth: Come both of you, willingly or unwillingly. They said: We come, obedient.”
41:12 “Then He ordained them seven heavens in two Days and inspired in each heaven its mandate; and We decked the nether heaven with lamps, and rendered it inviolable. That is the measuring of the Mighty, the Knower.”
I will refrain from complaining about the arithmetic, which sums up to 2+4+2=8 days (contrary to the 6 days of creation mentioned in several other verses in the Qur’an), because I want to grant the “benefit of doubt” to those Muslims who claim that the first 2 days must be merged into the next 4, thus yielding the sum of 4+2=6 days. All right, all right... we know Muhammad was illiterate, but it’s hard to believe he was worse than a first grader, who knows that two-plus-four-plus-two doesn’t add up to six. Of course, if it is really Allah speaking in verses 41:9–12, this is still a question: Why did Allah choose to speak in such a way so as to allow non-Muslims today to exclaim: “The author of the Qur’an didn’t even know basic arithmetic!”? Couldn’t Allah, being so wise, predict this and make the arithmetic in 41:9–12 sound more accurate and less like that of an illiterate person? But, anyway, let’s skip this moot point.
Nor will I insist in commenting much about the really-really childish: “Come both of you, willingly or unwillingly”, which Allah said to heaven and earth, and the equally childish: “They said: We come, obedient.” Can you imagine that you are, for example, an ironsmith, and that you speak to your hammer and anvil, giving them orders? And also imagine that the hammer and the anvil answer back to you, expressing their obedience? How old do you think a child can be today and still imagine talking to inanimate objects, and that those objects answer back? 10 years old? 11 years old, at most? I think that by 12 years of age, today, the children that I know find that talking to objects is just silly. And if you answer that the anthropomorphic view of heaven and earth in 41:9–12 is there by “poetic license”, then I’d reply that poems for grown-ups are one thing, and poems for children are quite another. A Western poem for children, for example, has the child talking to a star: “Twinkle, twinkle, little star / how I wonder what you are!” That’s how 41:11 sounds. Now, we grown-ups find that the “Twinkle, twinkle...” poem is cute, because we know it’s a poem for children only, and only children sing it. But the verse in 41:11 is — unfortunately — taken seriously by you, grown-up Muslims. Do you understand that by taking the “poem” of 41:11 seriously it makes you appear as if you have the mentality of a 10 year old (or less)?
But the above are mere details. What I really want to comment on is the total mess in the order in which Allah says he created things, an order that comes to a headlong collision with modern scientific knowledge; and about the duration of Allah’s creation, which also contradicts modern knowledge, in two ways. So, let’s see:
In verse 41:9 we learn that Allah created the Earth in two days.
In verse 41:10 we receive confirmation that the finishing-up of the creation of the Earth took some time, as it took Allah a total of four days to adorn the Earth with mountains, etc. So, let’s say that in the first four days of creation Allah was concerned with the Earth, no matter what other things he might be doing at the same time. That’s an unassailable conclusion from 41:9–10.
Verse 41:11 tells us that Allah “turned to the heaven”. Translators Pickthal and Shakir say “Then He turned to the heaven”, whereas Yusuf Ali says “Moreover He...” Whether the meaning is “then” or “moreover”, our datum is that the Earth was the first object that Allah created. If the meaning is “then”, then of course Allah finished with the Earth (in 4 days) and then turned to the heaven. But even if the meaning is “moreover”, still it cannot be that Allah created the heaven before the Earth, because in 41:11 he speaks to the heaven “when it was smoke”, i.e., unformed yet. Allah converts the unformed heaven into a formed structure of seven heavens in 41:12, in the next two days.
Let’s write our datum down again, so that it is fully appreciated: the Earth was the first object that Allah created. No matter how much the imagination is stretched and logic is twisted, we cannot conclude something different from the chronology given in 41:9-12. Beyond any doubt is that the heaven acquired its structure (of seven layers) in the last 2 of the total 6 days of creation, whereas the Earth with its mountains was already ready in the first 4 of the 6 days. Any objection to that?
Yes, modern science objects to that — completely, absolutely, and as certainly as an objection can be made. It is beyond any scientific doubt that the Earth is no older than around 4.5 billion years. The Sun is a little older than the Earth, as it was already partly formed at around 5 billion years ago. And, more important, much before that time, stars existed, both in our galaxy (the Milky Way) and in the many other galaxies of the universe. The universe itself has an age of around 13.7 billion years. So, the Earth was clearly not the first object that was created, and “heaven” (if we interpret that word to mean “everything else except the Earth” — although we saw what “heaven” really meant for the author of the Quran in §1.5.1) existed long before the Earth was formed; specifically, for around 9 billion years.
To argue against the above scientific knowledge today is as silly as to argue that the Earth is flat. We know that the age of the Earth cannot be greater than the age of the Sun, because when our solar system was in the process of formation the Sun gradually formed first at the center of the turning and swirling dust. (How do we know this? By seeing other planetary systems while they are being formed, with our telescopes.) That the age of the Sun is around 5 billion years is inferred by — among other ways — the percent of hydrogen that has been “burnt” (fused) into helium. Finally, the age of distant stars, and in particular of those that belong to other galaxies, is calculated by the time their light has been travelling through space. (The longer light travels, the more the wavelength of its photons is increased, and thus the color is shifted toward red.) Thus we know that the most distant objects of the universe that we can see (the “quasars”) have an age of around 13 billion years. That’s a long-long time before the Earth was formed. To sum it up:
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Qur’an: the Earth was
the first object that Allah created; the heaven was formed
later. |
That sounds like a blatant difference of opinions, doesn’t it? But there is more.
The second problem concerns the durations reported in the Qur’an. They conflict with modern scientific knowledge both absolutely and relatively. First, here’s what the absolute conflict is:
The Qur’an tells us that Allah created the world in six days (in several verses, and I said I am not going to argue that the verses in 41:9-12 describe a creation in eight days). The Jewish Bible has essentially the same duration of six days in its creation story (and the Bible is much older than the Qur’an, a datum that’s merely pointed out here), but the difference is that the Bible doesn’t explain what it means when it says “day”. (Of course, the simplest interpretation is that it means literally one period of time during which the sky is bright, because the Bible exhibits the same dissociation between the notion of “day” and the Sun as that of the author of the Qur’an, which was pointed out in §1.5.2; but let’s be generous and assume that a “day” is not just that, otherwise the two “holy books”, Qur’an and Bible, drop to the level of comics books for children.) Contrary to the Bible, in the Qur’an Allah attempts to tell to Muhammad how long an “Allah’s day” lasts, although Allah gives two different estimates. In verses 22:47 and 32:5 Allah says that a “day” for him is like 1000 years for people:
22:47 “And they ask you to hasten on the punishment, and Allah will by no means fail in His promise, and surely a day with your Lord is as a thousand years of what you number.”
32:5 “He regulates the affair from the heaven to the earth; then shall it ascend to Him in a day the measure of which is a thousand years of what you count.”
Notice that although 32:5 talks about a specific day, in contrast, 22:47 talks about “Allah’s day” in the abstract. So, from 22:47 we may conclude that when Allah says “day” in general he means a span of 1000 years. However, in verse 70:4 Allah muddles the issue a bit, as he talks about a specific type of day (the day it takes for angels and the spirit to ascend to him), which is equal to 50,000 years for people:
70:4 “To Him ascend the angels and the Spirit in a day the measure of which is fifty thousand years.”
There is no other verse in the Qur’an that tells us how long an “Allah’s day” is besides the verses listed above.
The problem is that even if we take the longer duration of 50,000 years for a day, then six days will add up to no more than 300,000 years. Of those, 4 x 50,000 = 200,000 years should be the time that Allah was creating the Earth and placing mountains on it. That, as an absolute number, is almost nothing compared to the around 4,500,000,000 years, which is the scientific estimate of Earth’s age. Given that mountains keep forming (they always do, they never stopped being formed), we should compare this large number, 4,500,000,000, against Qur’an’s 200,000 to see the magnitude of error. But even if we want to be generous and consider the initial period of Earth’s formation (without mountains, when the Earth’s surface was mainly molten rock), we still end up with an egregious error, comparing Qur’an’s 2 x 50,000 = 100,000 against around 500,000,000 in reality. And of course, if we consider the entire duration of the creation, then we must compare the Qur’an’s 300,000 against 13,700,000,000 years in reality. I will not even mention how ridiculous the Qur’an sounds if an “Allah’s day” is only 1,000 years (as 22:47 tells us), instead of 50,000. That’s called a “reality check” for the Qur’an, in absolute numbers.
But also in relative numbers, the conflict with science is not much easier to swallow. Whereas in the Qur’an the ratio of the creation of the Earth to the creation of the entire world (Earth and everything else) is 4 days / 6 days, i.e., 2/3, or ~0.666 (the symbol ~ means “approximately”), the true (scientific) value of the same ratio is the following number: 4,500,000,000 / 13,700,000,000 = ~0.328. That’s not even half of the Qur’anic ~0.666. Notice that this error — the relative one — is independent of how long a Qur’anic “day” is.
Given all the above data, we may now consider the following two theories (to explain the data):
Allah, the true author of the Qur’an, claims that the Earth was created first and the heaven later, or at best concurrently with the Earth, but certainly not before it; whereas scientifically we know that the rest of the world existed for around 9 billion years before the Earth started being formed. Allah tells us that it took him at most 200,000 years to complete the creation of the Earth, and at most 300,000 for the entire universe, whereas science tells us that the corresponding numbers are 4,500,000,000 and 13,700,000,000. Finally, Allah tells us that the ratio of earth-to-universe creation is ~0.666, whereas science tells us that the same ratio is ~0.328. Allah, although infinitely wise (and therefore knowing about all these discrepancies with reality and errors in magnitudes), stated things as above for no reason at all, because even the Bedouins of Muhammad’s time couldn’t disagree on the basis of some numbers, since they had no personal opinion of any numbers involved in the creation of the world.
Muhammad, the true author of the Qur’an, and without divine inspiration, claims all the above, which — quite expectedly — conflict with everything we know from modern science today.
Which of the two theories seems more plausible, dear Muslim reader? We must take into account that Allah is assumed to be infinitely wise, whereas Muhammad was illiterate. Regarding cosmology, Muhammad had the knowledge of his fellow ancient Arabs, who had some traditional beliefs that circulated in that region of the world, and which included the Jewish belief of a creation in six days. Given an infinitely wise mind on one hand, and an illiterate and uninspired one on the other hand, from which of the two minds would you expect such factual errors?
Notice also that, no matter who the true author of the Qur’an is, the above errors exist anyway. Whether Allah expressed them, or Muhammad, they constitute errors. Trying to explain them away with various arbitrary assumptions implies employing the unscientific attitude of first believing a theory as true, and then twisting the data and inventing new and arbitrary data in order to support the theory that you love so much. If you do that don’t bother talking about science please, because you don’t understand what it is.
To explain why the creation is reported in total disorder and disagreement with modern knowledge, theory #1 asserts that Allah was trying to please the Bedouins of Muhammad’s time. But would the oh-so-sensitive-in-cosmology ancient Bedouin feel disbelief against Muhammad if the Qur’an had said that stars were created before the Earth, that the creation lasted for as many “days” as are needed to agree with reality (i.e., current knowledge), and that the ratio of the duration of the creation of the Earth to the creation of the universe (“heaven”) was like ~1:3? What could go wrong with the Bedouins’ reaction to Muhammad, since they had already accepted such an incredible idea as that Muhammad was directly communicating with God? How can you be so sophisticated as to reject a revelation because of some numbers (which are just numbers anyway), and at the same time to be such an exemplar of naïveness and gullibility as to believe a man who tells you to reject your other gods and believe him because he talks to the only God? You can’t be extra smart and extra stupid at the same time, can you? Something doesn’t compute in theory #1.
To explain the data that we have from verses of the Qur’an that concern cosmology, and those from scientific observations, we have the following two theories:
Allah is the author of the Qur’an, and what he says disagrees with modern knowledge because he wanted to please the ancient Bedouins (although most probably they couldn’t care less if Allah was consistent with reality), disregarding the present-day conflict with scientific knowledge, but also our present-day ability to argue about that conflict.
Muhammad is the author of the Qur’an, which he conceived of without divine inspiration, and what he says disagrees with modern knowledge because it reflects Muhammad’s knowledge of the world as it appeared to his uninformed mind.
If theory #1 is correct, then Allah surely enough succeeded in pleasing the illiterate Bedouins, but simultaneously succeeded in making young children of today “laugh their brains out” (as children say) with the stupidity and egregious errors of the Qur’anic “cosmology”.
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| Γαληνός (“De Semine”): | Qur’an, sura 23 |
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Πάλιν δ’ ἐπὶ τὴν πρώτην τοῦ ζῴου σύστασιν ἐπανάγωμεν τὸν λόγον· καὶ ὅπως γε ἡμῖν εὔτακτός τε ἅμα καὶ σαφὴς γίγνοιτο, διελώμεθα τέτταρσι χρόνοις τὴν σύμπασαν τῶν κυουμένων δημιουργίαν. πρῶτος μέν, ἐν ᾧ κατὰ τὰς ἀμβλώσεις τε καὶ κατὰ τὰς ἀνατομὰς ἡ τοῦ σπέρματος ἰδέα κρατεῖ. κατὰ τοῦτον τον χρόνον οὐδ’ Ἱπποκράτης ὁ πάντα θαυμάσιος ἤδη που κύημα καλεῖ τὴν τοῦ ζῴου σύστασιν, ἀλλ’, ὡς ἀρτίως ἠκούσαμεν ἐπὶ τῆς ἑκταίας ἐκπεσούσης, ἔτι γονήν. ἐπειδὰν δὲ πληρωθῇ μὲν τοῦ αἵματος, ἡ καρδία δὲ καὶ ὁ ἐγκέφαλος καὶ τὸ ἧπαρ ἀδιάρθρωτα μὲν ᾖ καὶ ἀμόρφωτα, πῆξιν δ’ ἤδη τινὰ καὶ μέγεθος ἀξιόλογον ἔχῃ, δεύτερος μὲν οὗτος ὁ χρόνος ἐστί, σαρκοειδὴς δὲ καὶ οὐκέτι γονοειδής ἐστιν ἡ ουσία τοῦ κυήματος. οὐκοῦν δὲ γονὴν ἔτι προσαγορεύοντα τον Ἱπποκράτην τοιαύτην ἰδέαν εὕροις ἄν, ἀλλ’, ὡς εἴρηται, κύημα. τρίτος ἐπὶ τῷδε χρόνος, ἡνίκα, ὡς εἴρηται, τὰς μὲν τρεῖς ἀρχὰς ἔστιν ἰδεῖν ἐναργῶς, ὑπογραφὴν δέ τινα καὶ οἷον σκιαγραφίαν ἁπάντων τῶν ἄλλων μορίων. ἐναργεστέραν μὲν γὰρ ὄψει τὴν περὶ τὰς τρεῖς ἀρχὰς διάπλασιν, ἀμυδροτέραν δὲ τὴν τῶν κατὰ τὴν γαστέραν μορίων, καὶ πολὺ δὴ τούτων ἔτι τὴν κατὰ τὰ κῶλα. ταῦτα γὰρ ὕστερον, ὡς Ἱπποκράτης ὠνόμαζεν, ὀζοῦται, τὴν πρὸς τοὺς κλάδους ἀναλογίαν ἐνδεικνύμενος τῇ προσηγορίᾳ. τέταρτος δ’ οὗτός ἐστι καὶ τελευταῖος χρόνος, ἡνίκα ἤδη τά τ’ ἐν τοῖς κώλοις ἅπαντα διήρθρωται, καὶ οὐδ’ ἔμβρυον ἔτι μόνον, ἀλλ’ ἤδη καὶ παιδίον ὀνομάζει το κυούμενον ὁ θαυμάσιος Ἱπποκράτης, ὅτε καὶ ἀσκαρίζειν καὶ κινεῖσθαί φησιν, ὡς ζῴον ἤδη τέλειον. |
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| Galen (translation: author) | Author of the Qur’an (transl.: Pickthal): |
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But let us talk again about the beginning of the formation of the living being; and so as to make the account both orderly and clear, we will divide the whole creation of the fetuses into four stages. The first stage is when, as seen in abortions and dissections, the form of the sperm [semen] prevails. At that stage, not even Hippocrates, the all-wonderful, does call the constitution of the living being a fetus, but, as we recently heard in the case of abortion on the sixth day, [he] still [calls it] semen. But when it is filled with blood, the heart and the brain and the liver are still unarticulated and unformed, yet they have some solidity and considerable size; that is the second stage, during which the substance of the fetus is flesh-like and no more semen-like. Hence, you will not find Hippocrates calling the form “semen” anymore, but, as mentioned, a “fetus”. The third stage follows those, as was said, when it is possible to see the three main parts clearly, a kind of outline, and some sort of silhouette of all the other parts. You will see the formation of the three ruling parts clearly, that of the parts of the belly more dimly, and even more [dimly] than those [you will see the formation] of the limbs. For, later those form “twigs”, as Hippocrates called them, wanting to show their resemblance to branches. And the fourth and final stage is when all the parts of the limbs have been articulated, and the wonderful Hippocrates calls the fetus not just an embryo anymore, but already a child, when he says it jerks and moves, like a being already fully formed. |
13. Then placed him as a drop (of seed) in a safe
lodging; 14. Then fashioned We the drop a clot, then fashioned We the clot a little lump, then fashioned We the little lump bones, then clothed the bones with flesh, and then produced it as another creation. So blessed be Allah, the Best of creators! |
What I see is that both accounts divide the process of fetus formation into four stages. Qur’an’s stages are: (1) drop of seed (“nutfah”), (2) blood clot (“alaqa”), (3) little lump of flesh (“mudghah”), and (4) bones clothed with flesh (“another creation”). Galen’s stages are: (1) sperm form, (2) flesh-like with blood, (3) three main parts and a silhouette of the other parts, and (4) limbs (with bones) articulated, a fully formed child. There is another account of the “four stages” theory, given in verse 40:67 as follows: “He it is Who created you (1) from dust, then (2) from a drop (of seed) then (3) from a clot, then (4) bringeth you forth as a child,” Though the stages here differ, they remain four stages.
If two students of mine had given me the above texts in their exams, I would charge the one on the right for plagiarism and give him a big round zero (0) as a grade. His text sounds like a badly conceived summary, a caricature of the text on the left, which is more detailed, well thought-out, and well written. The author of the text on the left makes several references to his source (Hippocrates), which he names — as every scientific text should do — and even praises. In contrast, the author of the text on the right praises only himself (“So blessed be Allah, the Best of creators!”). What an immoral(*) show of bombastic arrogance! And what an enormous distance from what scientists today consider as morally correct scientific ethos!
Muslims make a lot of fuss about a certain medical doctor, Keith Moore, who, having been paid in the 1980’s by the Saudis in order to accept a position in an Arabic institution, claimed that modern embryology agrees with the four stages described in the Qur’an. Muslims speak of Moore as if he is the only scientist whose opinion matters. Never mind that there are thousands of other embryologists in the world, and that Moore himself rejected his early Islam-friendly opinions in a more recent book of his (after he returned to the West and stopped being paid in petro-dollars). What Muslims do not understand is that Moore’s earlier opinion did not support the Qur’an, but Galen, the ancient Greek doctor, who is the true author and originator of the idea of a four-stage embryonic development.
Interestingly, however, both Galen and — of course — the Qur’anic text that plagiarizes him are wrong regarding the first stage of the embryo. As every semi-literate person knows today, the first stage of the embryo is not the “form of the sperm” (or the “drop of seed” in Qur’anic parlance), but the woman’s fertilized ovum. Why do neither the Qur’an, nor of course its source, Galen, mention at all the woman’s ovum, which is just as important as the single sperm cell that fertilizes it?(*) Could it be because microscopes were developed only in the 17th century? But if Allah was the author of the Qur’an, he shouldn’t be hindered by the non-existence of microscopes! Don’t you agree? And don’t tell me again about those extra-sensitive Bedouins, because I’d accuse you of lower wit than even theirs. Would they really freak out if the Qur’an had said in 23:13 “Then We placed him as a pair of two seeds, from man and woman, in a safe lodging.” They didn’t freak out when Muhammad abolished their other gods; why should they do so upon hearing about “two seeds, from man and woman”? Don’t pretend to be dumb, my dear Muslim reader; you are intelligent, therefore you should be able to understand that Allah could talk in ways that would sound harmless to illiterate ancient Arabs, and at the same time make us unbelievers convert to Islam, because we would see immediately today that Muhammad’s information was revealed to him by a Higher Wisdom. Instead, the Qur’anic text is just as it should be if it were conceived of by an illiterate ancient Arab.
One question remains: if Muhammad plagiarized Galen, who lived four centuries before Muhammad, and since Muhammad was illiterate, how could Muhammad be aware of Galen’s theory of a four-stage embryonic development?
And yet, nothing remains a secret forever, hidden from the light of scientific search. In this page, the author of which is someone with the pen name of “Dr. Lactantius”, we read the following:
“[S]ome 26 books of Galen’s work were translated into Syriac as early as the sixth century AD by Sergios of Resh’ Aina (Ra’s al-Ain).[3] Sergios was a Christian priest who studied medicine in Alexandria and worked in Mesopotania, dying in Constantinople in about AD 532. He was one of a number of Nestorian (Syriac) Christians who translated the Greek medical corpus into Syriac. The Nestorians experienced persecution from the mainstream church and fled to Persia, where they brought their completed translations of the Greek physicians’ works and founded many schools of learning. The most famous of these by far was the great medical school of Jundishapur in what is now south-east Iran, founded in AD 555 by Anusharwan.
The major link between Islamic and Greek medicine must be sought in late Sasanian medicine, especially in the School of Jundishapur rather than that of Alexandria. At the time of the rise of Islam Jundishapur was at its prime. It was the most important medical centre of its time, combining the Greek, Indian and Iranian medical traditions in a cosmopolitan atmosphere which prepared the ground for Islamic medicine. The combining of different schools of medicine foreshadowed the synthesis that was to be achieved in later Islamic medicine.[4]
According to Muslim medical historians, including ibn Abi Usaybia and al-Qifti, the most celebrated early graduate of Jundishapur was a doctor named al Harith ibn Kalada.[5] Faced with the collection of Syriac manuscripts of Greek physicians which had recently been introduced to Jundishapur, it is inconceivable that he would not have been aware of Galen’s theories. Furthermore, al Harith was an older contemporary of Muhammed and became one of the Companions of the Prophet. We are told by Muslim historians that Muhammed actually sought medical advice from him[6], and his "teachings undoubtedly influenced the latter" [i.e., Muhammed].[7] Cyril Elgood writes:
"Such medical knowledge as Muhammed possessed, he may well have acquired from Haris bin Kalda [sic], an Arab, who is said to have left the desert for a while and gone to Jundishapur to study medicine ... On his return Haris settled in Mecca and became the foremost physician of the Arabs of the desert. Whether he ever embraced Islam is uncertain, but this did not prevent the Prophet from sending his sick friends to consult him."[8] ”
The numbers in square brackets refer to the sources of the above text, which the reader can examine after visiting the above-mentioned web page.
Whether the above is true or not, it certainly suggests a plausible way in which information from ancient Greek literature could have reached Muhammad, by way of hearsay; information which later Muhammad might have attributed to Allah, perhaps even genuinely believing that it comes from Allah, and not from his own mind. Yet that information is, as we saw, incomplete and inaccurate. Certainly it doesn’t look like the kind of “divine knowledge” that we’d expect from Allah.
So, given all the previous data, once again we have two theories to explain them:
Allah is the author of the above-mentioned verses. He described the development of the embryo in four stages, in a way which is suspiciously similar to that of the famous ancient Greek medical doctor Galen, perhaps because Allah also inspired Galen (?), who however was a pagan. Nonetheless, the four stages described in the Qur’an are wrong on several counts, most serious of which is that Allah neglects to mention the existence of the woman’s ovum. In general, Allah does not mention anything that requires a microscope to be seen, for reasons unknown and unexplained by this theory.
Muhammad is the author of the above-mentioned verses. He described the development of the embryo in four stages, plagiarizing the work of the ancient Greek medical doctor Galen, perhaps after having a hearsay acquaintance with it from doctors who had studied the ancient literature. Naturally, Muhammad’s four stages have errors, and do not mention anything that requires a microscope to be seen, for the obvious reason that the microscopes were developed only in the 17th century. This implies that Muhammad did not really receive information from Allah, but thought he received it.
As before, the question persists: given the evidence, and using your rational and objective judgment, which of the two theories appears more plausible to you?
Some verses of the Qur’an claim that all “fruits” of the earth, or living beings in general, exist in pairs: male and female. Some of those verses, although they obviously mean to talk about biological things (living beings) given the context in which they are embedded, are however so vague that — out of context — sound as if Allah is saying that all things (in the universe) come in pairs. Some Muslims grab the opportunity to claim that Allah must have meant things like matter & antimatter, pairs that have been discovered in quantum physics in the 20th century. This is a silly argument, logically argued against as follows: if Allah said “all things come in pairs” (without meaning all living beings, i.e., disregarding the context), then it should be all things, not just those that suit our preconceived theory; therefore it suffices to find one counter-example (something that does not belong to a pair) to invalidate the idea of “all things”. Indeed, as we’ll see, there are plenty of “things” in nature that do not belong to pairs. But even if we restrict the meaning to “all things biological”, i.e., all living beings, again we find that it’s not true that all living beings come in pairs of male and female. Let’s see the relevant verses (my emphasis):
13:3 “And He it is Who spread out the earth and placed therein firm hills and flowing streams, and of all fruits He placed therein two spouses (male and female). [...]”
36:34 “And We have placed
therein gardens of the date-palm and grapes, and We have caused springs
of water to gush forth therein,”
36:35 “That they may eat of the fruit
thereof, and their hands made it not. Will they not, then, give thanks?”
36:36 “Glory be to Him Who created all
the sexual pairs, of that which the earth groweth, and of
themselves, and of that which they know not!”
43:10 “Who made the earth a
resting-place for you, and placed roads for you therein, that haply ye
may find your way;”
43:11 “And Who sendeth down water from the
sky in (due) measure, and We revive a dead land therewith. Even so will
ye be brought forth;”
43:12 “He Who created all the pairs,
and appointed for you ships and cattle whereupon ye ride.”
51:48 “And the earth have We
laid out, how gracious is the Spreader (thereof)!”
51:49 “And all things We have created by
pairs, that haply ye may reflect.”
Now let’s examine each verse carefully.
Verse 13:3 talks explicitly about “fruits”. Now, if “fruits” is meant literally, i.e., apples, pears, peaches, bananas, kiwis, etc., then this verse is evidently wrong, because none of the fruits just mentioned is either male or female. (When you eat an apple, you eat an apple, not a “male apple” or a “female apple” — I hope that’s obvious and part of common knowledge.) And if “fruits” is used figuratively to mean “plants” (by a figure of speech called “synecdoche”, as when we say “brain” to mean “very intelligent person”), then verse 13:3 is wrong again, because there are some plants that are neither male nor female; they don’t multiply sexually, but asexually, through a biological process called “apomixis”. Some such plants are extremely common. One of them is the humble dandelion (see picture), which, being so widespread throughout the world, must have existed just under Muhammad’s nose — except that he couldn’t “sniff” the fact that that lowly plant would stand as evidence against his verse 3 of sura 13.
The humble dandelion, Qur’an’s asexual nightmare
So we see that no matter which way we interpret “fruits” in 13:3, we find that verse to be contradicting reality. Either Allah was sloppy when he said “all fruits” come in pairs of male and female — a sloppiness not befitting an all-wise being like Allah — or somebody who had a very superficial knowledge of nature came up with 13:3 (guess who).
Moving on to verses 36:34–36, we see that (34) Allah talks about creating gardens with date-palm fruits, grapes, and waters, (35) for people to eat and not toil to make, asking them to be thankful, (36) glorifying himself for having created all the sexual pairs, those that grow out of the earth, i.e., the plants. This of course logically does not imply that all plants are sexual. Then the phrase “and of themselves” has been interpreted as referring to people by some interpreters, or referring to animals by other interpreters, because the animals move by themselves (well, at least most of them, barring some aquatic species that really behave like plants). Then follows “and of that which they don’t know.” The pronoun “they” here must refer to people, who can be the only ones who don’t know. But the word “that” has been used by some Muslims as a reference to such exotic things as subatomic particles, matter and anti-matter, and so on. This is a completely arbitrary interpretation, because all the discussion (the context) from 36:34 up to this point was about things of the earth; why should Allah make suddenly a conceptual jump and talk about nuclear physics? The phrase would then be incoherent, and you wouldn’t want your Allah to think incoherently. The phrase “and of that which they don’t know” is called a blanket statement, which means that it’s so general and vague that it can cover anything that can be forced under it. Why should our minds go to nuclear physics and not to ideas much more accessible to Muhammad, such as that there are living beings that come in male–female pairs and which Muhammad didn’t know of? If I were in Muhammad’s position, thinking shrewdly, and knowing that I know next to nothing, I would think that there might be other living things besides those that I know, so I should cover that possibility with a blanket statement, so that my “revelation” does not become obsolete by later knowledge. Why is this explanation not as satisfying as the other one, if we don’t already have the theory that Allah is the originator of the Qur’an? Objectively, either of the two interpretations seems equally plausible. And, frankly, if Allah’s purpose was to persuade us, present-day unbelievers, why did he use such an ambiguous and vague phrase? “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, says a dictum. To claim that “that which they don’t know” refers to nuclear physics is an extraordinary claim; the ambiguous phrase in 36:36 is anything but extraordinary evidence to support it.
An exactly parallel argumentation holds for verses 43:10–12: there is not enough evidence (let alone an extraordinary one) that the phrase “created all the pairs” refers to anything other than the male–female pairs that Muhammad could witness.
As for the verses of sura 51, although the context is again the earth (in 51:48), we read: “all things We have created by pairs” in 51:49. This is false no matter which way the word “things” is interpreted. If “things” refers to anything in the world, then there are many things that do not exist in pairs. I do not see the paired counterpart of the Grand Canyon, for example, or of hydrogen, gravity, Mars, Saturn, Sun, the real number π, the imaginary number i, the human feeling of sarcasm, and a host of other “things” that are one-of-a-kind. And if “things” refers to living beings, and therefore “pairs” refers to the male–female notion, then first, Allah is being sloppy in his language once again, saying “things” when he means “living beings”; and second, he is wrong, because there are plenty of living beings that do not come in pairs of male–female, such as the bacteria, many protists, fungi, and among animals, some species of rotifers — all of which are types of beings that escape the attention of someone who has only a superficial knowledge of the biological world.
As usual, two theories are available:
Allah, who is indeed the author of the Qur’an, chose to be sloppy in his language and/or wrong in his statements. Allah of course knows that neither “things” nor “beings” always come in pairs. He opted to say wrong or inaccurate things so that the average Bedouin would agree with him, but billions of non-Muslims today would find that Allah spoke like an illiterate person.
The author of the Qur’an is Muhammad (without divine guidance from Allah), and everything fits into place. Muhammad could very well be sloppy in his language, because he was only a human; and he could very well be wrong in what he said, because he talked only about things he could see with his bare eyes (lacking microscopes and lenses) and could not understand properly.
Which of the two theories makes better sense, explaining best the data?
There is a Qur’anic verse the context of which is not — strictly speaking — biology, but something like aviation and aerodynamics. But, lacking such a specific section in this article, and since the issue concerns birds, I’ll comment on it in the context of biology. So, there is the following verse in the Qur’an that explains to us what makes birds fly, or rather, who helps them be suspended in midair:
16:79 “Do they not look at the birds, held poised in the midst of (the air and) the sky? Nothing holds them up but (the power of) Allah. Verily in this are signs for those who believe.”
The author of the Qur’an makes a very strange statement, indeed. He doesn’t seem to know what it is that holds birds “in the midst of (the air and) sky”! Clueless, he attributes that to the power of Allah. But the answer is known to anyone who has a most rudimentary understanding of the medium of air (which was not well-understood in antiquity — it was conceived as “nothing”), and of the body structure of birds. And it doesn’t take scientific knowledge to understand the answer. Here, we prefer to give a “no comments” answer, by means of a short video that uses the words of a Bob Dylan song:
A wild duck stays nearly still in midair.
“The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind...”
Of course, there is more to the answer than just “The wind blows, so the birds are lifted by it.” There is a bit of biology needed to fully comprehend why birds can fly but we can’t, even if we flap our arms fast, or even if we attach wing-like structures to our arms. The biological knowledge is that the bones of birds are hollow, which gives them a very small weight-to-volume ratio, and that’s what makes them lift themselves easily in the air, even if there is no wind blowing. But one doesn’t need to have such sophisticated knowledge to know that no God is needed to keep the birds poised in midair. The author of this text, having access to classes of school children of ages between 10 and 12 in the USA, asked several of them: “What makes birds fly in the air? Why can’t we fly, but they can?” The following answers were noteworthy (children’s answers in red, author’s further questioning in blue):
A 10-year-old boy: “They fly.” “Okay, they fly, but what makes them stay in the air? Why don’t they drop on the ground?” “They flap their wings and stay.” “But why, if we jump from a height and flap our arms we drop down and don’t stay in the air?” “Because we are heavy.”
Another child, a girl, 11 years of age, following approximately the same series of questions and answers as above, differentiated her reply in only the last part: “Because we don’t have wings, only arms.”
A 12-year-old boy: “They fly because they lift themselves with the wind.” “But what if there is no wind blowing, why don’t they drop down then? Why can a bird lift itself even inside your room?” (After some thinking:) “Because it creates some wind by flapping its wings.” (Ah! So it creates wind. This child thought that wind is necessary, probably making a distinction between air and wind.)
Interestingly, a 10-year-old Gypsy girl, one who had never gone to school before but started her formal education at that age, and who had never had any contact with Muslims or the Qur’an (her religion is Christianity), gave the following answer: “Because God holds them.” In the author’s reply, “Why doesn’t God hold us in the air?”, after first raising her shoulders, she finally answered: “God loves the birds.” That was the opinion of an illiterate child.
Perhaps the conclusion from the above discussions is that the less one knows, the more likely it is that one will see the flying of birds as an act of God. An illiterate person is prone to seeing God’s interventions everywhere, in every inexplicable phenomenon.
The confusion of identifying air with nothing seems to have pervaded ancient thought. A notable exception was ancient Greek thinkers, who elevated air into one of the four fundamental elements of nature (fire, air, water, earth — the theory of Empedocles, with ether adder later as a fifth element by Aristotle), and even earlier, as the only fundamental element (Anaximenes, 6th C. BC). But, generally, non-philosophers and the laypeople thought that what stands above solid objects on earth is nothing (see the book: “Nothing: A Very Short Introduction”, by Frank Close). This confusion lasted until the times of Galileo (17th C. AD) and the invention of the barometer. In summary, whereas philosophers and thinkers in general could understand the notion of air filling up space, laypeople and especially the illiterate among them identified the air with nothing.
That seems to explain the Qur’anic phrase: “Nothing holds them [birds] up” in verse 16:79 under the theory that the author of the Qur’an was Muhammad. But given the theory that Allah is the author of the Qur’an, verse 16:79 is hard to explain. Still, an attempt can be made, claiming that “(the power of) Allah” that holds birds in midair is the design of body structure of birds, which can be attributed ultimately to Allah. But, by this logic, everything can be attributed ultimately to Allah, so there is no reason why the reader of the Qur’an is asked to admire specifically the suspension of birds in the air in 16:79, and is expected to discover Allah in it.
Of importance is not only what the Qur’an talks about in the realm of biology, but also what it fails to talk about. What it omits is just as revealing as what it includes.
You see, if a knowledgeable individual examines the biological life of our planet today, he or she will be impressed more by what cannot be seen by the bare eye, rather than by what can be seen.
If we examined the living beings of Earth we should conclude that Earth is a planet inhabited primarily by bacteria, and on which some larger forms of life also exist.
The most stunning observation is that if we could put all the bacteria on one scale of a balance, and all other forms of life (animals, trees, etc.) on the other scale, then the balance would tip toward the side of the bacteria. The total mass of bacteria weighs more than all plants and animals put together!
The reason is that one gram of soil contains an average of 40,000,000 bacteria, and one milliliter of fresh water (natural, not from the aqueduct), contains an average of 1,000,000 bacteria. As for the total number of bacteria of our planet, it is — hold on to your seats —about five nonillion (5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000), forming a biomass that exceeds the biomass of all plants and animals (source)!
But the Qur’an is completely mute regarding such stunning facts.
Why? Why isn’t the existence of bacteria even hinted
at in the Qur’an?
Could it be because its author couldn’t see them?
No!... That can’t be true! Right? Because if the author of the Qur’an couldn’t see the all-important (for our lives!) bacteria of Earth, then he couldn’t have been Allah. He must have been Muhammad; Muhammad, the illiterate and clueless nomad, who couldn’t imagine microscopes even in his wildest dreams, and thus couldn’t ever know about what he couldn’t see!
Why doesn’t the Qur’an mention the DNA, this molecule
that turns out to be all-important in biology, and essentially
determines how life is on our planet? Don’t give me
again the dumb old argument about those extra-sensitive Bedouins,
because you’ll force me to come up with a verse that would sound
innocent to them, and yet reveal the DNA structure to us. I’ve done
similar things numerous times in this text so far, so you wouldn’t risk
insisting that I can’t do it again, would you? And I’m not even anywhere
near as wise as Allah. Surely Allah could do it a zillion times
better than me. So, tell me please, how can the Qur’an tell us
anything interesting about biology when it omits referring even
indirectly to the most important biological concept, the molecule that
defines life, the DNA?
Why doesn’t the Qur’an mention anything about animals or
plants that Muhammad couldn’t have known? Why, for example, doesn’t it
mention the marsupials, such as the kangaroos? Could it be
because the marsupials live in faraway continents, like Australia and
South America, and Muhammad knew as much about kangaroos as kangaroos
knew about Muhammad? And it’s not just the marsupials. Why does the
Qur’an fail to refer even indirectly to anything like penguins
(Antarctic, southern hemisphere), turkeys (North American), pumas
(American), iguanas (Pacific), zebras (sub-Saharan), pandas (Chinese),
eucalyptus trees (Australian), watermelons (sub-Saharan), bananas
(Southeast Asian), tomatoes (South American), or potatoes (South
American)? Instead, the Qur’an constantly talks about camels, dates, and
grapes. Didn’t Allah know of any other animals and plants besides those that
Muhammad could see? How “timeless” and “universal” can be a book the
author of which does not give the slightest hint of fauna or flora that
can be found outside of Arabia?
Why doesn’t the Qur’an refer even indirectly to the fact
that living beings on Earth are not just plants and animals? Did you
know that? There are living beings that are neither plants nor animals.
Indeed, according to an older classification scheme in biology, there are five “kingdoms” of living beings, of which the
plants are one kingdom, and the animals another one; but there are three
more kingdoms. One of them is the bacteria, mentioned earlier. A fourth
kingdom is the protists, which include such tiny one-cell creatures as
the amoeba and the paramecium, visible only with a microscope. (With the
bare eye, a paramecium on a piece of glass looks like a barely visible
dot, so tiny that you can’t understand it’s a living thing.) And the
fifth kingdom is the fungi, which includes such things as the moulds and
the mushrooms. Certainly Muhammad must have seen some mushrooms — at
some oasis, stuck in some wet and shadowy corner, away from the hot and
arid desert sand of Arabia — but he
knew so little that he couldn’t understand that the mushrooms are not
plants. (Mushrooms lack chlorophyll, that’s why they’re not green; so
they don’t synthesize nutrients from the sunlight — as plants do — but
receive ready-made nutrients from decomposing organic material.) But
Allah certainly knows that there are other living beings besides plants
and animals on Earth. If the Qur’an was given to Muhammad by Allah, why
does it sound as if Allah knows nothing about those other forms of life?
I could continue like this with more examples, but I don’t want to tire you. The less you know about the biological world, the more you think that the Qur’an is fine in what it says about earthly biology. That’s because the less you know the more your mind is similar to Muhammad’s mind, so the more you agree with him. On the contrary, the more you learn about biology, the better you see the gap between the simplistic, childish view of the Qur’an, and the complex reality. The more you know, the more distant your mind becomes from Muhammad’s mind, and the closer it gets to the all-wise Allah’s Mind. Don’t judge the Qur’an as an ignorant, illiterate person. Learn first, see how much there is in this world, see how much is omitted from the Qur’an, see how many miles away the complex reality is from the Qur’anic 10-year-old’s worldview, and only then issue your judgment. If you are ignorant and untrained in science, do me a favor please: stop talking arrogantly about science, which you do not understand, open up your mind to scientific knowledge, and start reading and learning about our planet, the world, and reality.
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5. What the Author of the Qur’an Never Heard ofIn the previous sections on Cosmology (§1) and Biology (§2), several concepts were mentioned that the Qur’anic author seems to have no idea that they exist. The examples of such concepts in Cosmology (and Astronomy) are so many that listing them here could fill an entire page (what with satellites, asteroids, comets, nebulae, neutron stars, black holes, galaxies, supernovae, globular clusters, open clusters, dark matter, dark energy, the expansion of the universe, the Big Bang, and on, and on...); and in Biology, examples of conspicuously absent concepts are the DNA, the cells, the bacteria, fungi, protists, dinosaurs, evolution by natural selection, mitosis, meiosis, any of thousands of animals and plants that are not found in Arabia, and a lot more. But there are other concepts that are missing from the Qur’an and do not belong to the scientific domains examined so far. Some such concepts are:
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Does the Qur’an say that Allah put the stars on the lowest heaven?
), an
activity naturally accompanied by earthquakes. Thus, the mountains are
not “stabilizing factors” that exist due to Allah’s benevolence to human
beings (“lest [the earth] should shake with you”),
but necessary and unavoidable results of tectonic plate motion.
Just as the wrinkles of the dough, mountains will still form whether
Allah likes it or not — unless Allah had placed us in an entirely
different universe, with a wholly new and different set of laws of
physics. But with our laws of physics, Allah has no choice: once
there is tectonic plate motion, “wrinkles” will be created no matter
what. And those “wrinkles” do not stop the earth from shaking, as
mentioned earlier and as concluded from data, which show that the most
earthquake-prone regions of the earth are the mountainous areas that
exist at the borders of tectonic plate collision (see maps).
