Saturday, October 14, 2017

The Qur'an and Science

My best friend in secondary school was a devout Sunni Muslim. When we were 14/15, I remember him trying to convince me of the truthfulness of the Qur'an based on its alleged scientific accuracies, none of which Muhammad (570-632) or any of his contemporaries could have known about.

Indeed, the purported scientific information in the Qur'an and other important sources such as the Hadith are touted as one of, if not be, best evidence for the Qur'an and Islam. However, when examined carefully, many of these alleged "evidences" are based on eisegesis of the Qur'an and/or are scientific inaccuracies. One example is how the Qur'an directly conflicts with biology vis-a-vis the production of semen in 86:5-7:

Man should reflect on what he was created from. He is created from spurting fluid, then he emerges from between the backbone and breastbone. (M.A.S. Abdel Haleem translation [Oxford, 2010])

David Wood has just posted a 30-minutee video which discusses and refutes, in a non-polemical manner, this claim:

Countering Muslim Claims 8: Is the Quran a Scientific Miracle?



As an aside, I have plugged this book before, but it is a very well done volume that is very important for studying the origin of the Qur'an:

Andrew G. Bannister, An Oral-Formulaic Study of the Qur'an (Plymouth, United Kingdom: Lexington Books, 2014)