Islam is knowledge itself

[mustajab]

Why don't you believe in fairies and unicorns?

If someone believed in fairies and unicorns, would you say their belief was unscientific?

I would ask them to prove to me why they believe in such. And again I believe in jins and angles because i believe the narrators that trasminted that knowledge to be truthful. I really don't feel like going around this circle. I've explained why I believe in what i believe.

We've talked about the Quran's notion that the sun and the heavenly bodies "swim in orbit."

Now, the Quran could have easily said that the earth orbits the sun, but it did not. It used the same exact imagery that every other mythology does to talk about the sun and its motion across the sky.

Note that there were no Muslim heliocentrists before Copernicus' time. Every Muslim scholar—before science proved otherwise—believed such verses in the Quran meant that the sun orbits the earth. Muslims interpret the verses differently today, much the same way that Christians interpret the Bible verses about the sun being set in the sky and stopping its motion in Joshua differently today—you interpret your holy texts to conform to what we know by science. At least about heliocentrism.

I don't really care if they belived in it or not. Quran is a book for all time. Allah doesn't look at a certain point in time and give a book for just that time. Allah sees the big picture. It would've made no sense to give the Arabs of that time this information. And even if Allah did, we'd be here arguing why Allah didn't revile to us about something like black holes. The Quran is for peoples spirtuality not for intellectual persuits.

There's also the line where Alexander the Great or whoever he is sees the sun setting in the muddy pool (thus denoting a flat earth), but Muslims on here have argued that the Arabic is figurative, which I'm prepared to accept.
lol, why don't you quote the verse?

Figurativly? You sound like a broken record. It clearly says that he saw the Sun set. Like you, me, and any sane person would see the sun set. That sun setting might not be scentifcally right, but that's how we use it. If that phrase is what you believe is unscentific, then I'm not sure what you're expecting from the Quran... All this proves is that you're trying to find something that does not exist.

What exactly is there to be knowledgeable about?

The Quran says semen (or the gushing fluid that creates men) comes from between the backbone and the hip. As far as I can tell, there are no translation ambiguities with this passage.

We know for a scientific fact that semen does not come from there.

Again I'm not aware of the Quranic verses and especially how the Prophet, companions, or scholars explained it. And I don't believe your someone that I can honestly believe is giving an unbias view. All you've done is told be to believe in something because you believe in it. There is no backing to it. And all this conjucture that you've gotten is from an english translation.

[mustajab]

The problem with this, as I hope I've demonstrated, is that you can apply it to any mythology.

For example, I can claim that Greek mythology is true, that Zeus and Hera and Pegasus and nymphs and satyrs all really exist.

You would respond "but there's absolutely no evidence for any of these things."

But then I could respond, "that doesn't mean it's impossible for them to exist!"

Nevertheless, you still probably wouldn't believe in Zeus and Pegasus and all that. Nor would you believe me if I told you that I have been abducted by aliens on numerous occassions.

If a claim is (1) fantastic, and (2) has absolutely no evidence to support it, then you are going to reject it—even if you can't absolutely disprove it. We probably agree on this for every single preposterous claim ever made in history—from the existence of Zeus and fairies to the historian Josephus claiming that he saw a floating army in the sky in 80 A.D., to the historian Seuteronius saying that the emperor Vespasian magically healed cripples. We're both skeptics for hundreds and thousands of fantastic, unevidenced claims in history, for exactly the same reasons.

I simply reject a few more fantastic, unevidenced claims than you do—the ones made by the religious text you happen to believe in—for exactly the same reasons that you reject hundreds and thousands of similar fantastic, unevidenced claims.

I believe in the narrators that tranmited this knowledge... The evidence is in transmition. One can varify the valdity of Hadith and Quran through there narrations. Just like one varifies history by the one that transmited it, I believe in the Prophet in that way.

Islam is not like Christanity, Hinduism, Budism, or any other type of mytology. Nothing is inserted into this religion unless there is proff via it's transmition.

[Qingu]

I believe in the narrators that tranmited this knowledge... The evidence is in transmition. One can varify the valdity of Hadith and Quran through there narrations. Just like one varifies history by the one that transmited it, I believe in the Prophet in that way.

Why do you believe the narrators of the Quran and the hadith—but not the narrators of the Hercules and Pegasus stories? (Or, for that matter, why not the millions of Americans who claim to have been abducted by UFOs?)

You said you'd believe such stories if they were "proven." Why do you believe the hadith and Quran are proven?

[Qingu]

I don't really care if they belived in it or not. Quran is a book for all time. Allah doesn't look at a certain point in time and give a book for just that time. Allah sees the big picture. It would've made no sense to give the Arabs of that time this information.

Why not? The Greeks, who lived before the Arabs, had philosophers who believed the earth revolved around the sun. Also, the Muslim calendar is seriously flawed, and a heliocentric viewpoint would have helped remedy it.

And even if Allah did, we'd be here arguing why Allah didn't revile to us about something like black holes. The Quran is for peoples spirtuality not for intellectual persuits.

I'm sorry, but this just sounds like an excuse for the Quran being unscientific. I could say the exact same thing about any number or religious/mythological texts (and in fact this is the exact same argument that Christians and Hindus make about the scientific ambiguities in their texts).

Figurativly? You sound like a broken record. It clearly says that he saw the Sun set. Like you, me, and any sane person would see the sun set. That sun setting might not be scentifcally right, but that's how we use it. If that phrase is what you believe is unscentific, then I'm not sure what you're expecting from the Quran... All this proves is that you're trying to find something that does not exist.

Whooooaaa there cowboy. Didn't I say that I accept your interpretation of this verse?

Again I'm not aware of the Quranic verses and especially how the Prophet, companions, or scholars explained it. And I don't believe your someone that I can honestly believe is giving an unbias view. All you've done is told be to believe in something because you believe in it. There is no backing to it. And all this conjucture that you've gotten is from an english translation.

So look at the Arabic yourself (or do you not know Arabic? If you don't, then what translation of the Quran are you reading and aren't you worried that your interpretation of it is based on "conjecture that you've gotten from a translation"?)

Assuming the Quran does say in Arabic what it appears to say in English, will you admit that the Quran contradicts science?

And you didn't answer my question. Let's say the Hindu Mahabharata claimed (in English translation) that a man's blood is pumped around his body by ... his lungs. What would your thoughts be on the innerrency of the Mahabharata upon reading this? Would you withhold judgment until you read the original Sanskrit? Or would you conclude, as I have done with the Quran, that the text was written by people who were unaware of modern medicine and made a mistake?

[mustajab]

Why do you believe the narrators of the Quran and the hadith—but not the narrators of the Hercules and Pegasus stories? (Or, for that matter, why not the millions of Americans who claim to have been abducted by UFOs?)

You said you'd believe such stories if they were "proven." Why do you believe the hadith and Quran are proven?

Because the History of the time of the Prophet is verifiable.

I don't have time to waste but I'll try to explain why I believe in Islam specifically:

The Quran can not be immitated, its prefection, and you can not aruge that untill you learn arabic. The Prophet's character was perfect. He was just when need, for exmaple when he was virtually the King of Madinah meant that he had to take steps to secure the needs of his constiuents. Never did he break a treaty to do so, but it was after the other broke it. And by default he was merciful.

If someone was to learn about Islam I would recommend going to Islamic sources and not they myths and lies christian myssanaries have made.

I would suggest that you read this book: The Life of Muhammad: based on the earliest sources. And then to complement it by listening to the Life of Muhammad by Hamza Yusuf. http://www.ilookisee.co.uk/Lectures/...20Muhammad.htm Listen to Shaykh Nuh's Coherence of Islam: http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/nuh/default.htm

After reading and listening I would be amazed why one wouldn't convert to Islam...

And this is my last post, sorry I don't have the free time to go on and on.

[Qingu]

The Quran can not be immitated, its prefection, and you can not aruge that untill you learn arabic.

Hindus say the same thing about the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Do you know Sanskrit? Then you cannot argue that they are not perfect.

Nevertheless, people who know Arabic (such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali) have indeed argued the Quran is far from perfect.

Also, do you know Arabic? If not, how do you know it's perfect?

The Prophet's character was perfect.

I strongly disagree, but I don't want to get banned again so I won't get into specifics.

In any case, Hindus say that Krishna's and Rama's characters were perfect. Christians say Jesus (as the son of God) was perfect. Have you looked at all of these other claims with as little skepticism as you've looked at your own religion's claims?

If someone was to learn about Islam I would recommend going to Islamic sources and not they myths and lies christian myssanaries have made.

Please believe me when I say I don't learn about Islam from Christian missionaries. I've read the Quran, some of the hadiths, and taken classes and done research myself on your religion.

I would suggest that you read this book: The Life of Muhammad: based on the earliest sources. And then to complement it by listening to the Life of Muhammad by Hamza Yusuf. http://www.ilookisee.co.uk/Lectures/...20Muhammad.htm Listen to Shaykh Nuh's Coherence of Islam: http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/nuh/default.htm

After reading and listening I would be amazed why one wouldn't convert to Islam...

I've read apologetics and seen stuff like this on Youtube. I find such arguments about as convincing as you find Christian and Hindu apologetics.

And this is my last post, sorry I don't have the free time to go on and on.

No problemo, sorry to hear you won't be back. Though I think it's funny that you want me to take 100 hours out of my free time to listen to who-knows-how-many Hamza Yusuf lectures!

[AbdulQahhar]

Qingu,

if you wana talk about scientific claims from the Qur'an, then post the verses (the trnaslation rather) and we'll take one by one . Things like "flat earth", "orbits", etc. but for the start I advise you to read some general stuff on the science in the Qur'an which also gives answer to your ignorance about orbits of the Sun and Moon.

PS pls don't complain that this is taken from some book and are not my words - the book does explain some statements of the Qur'an therefore I can will use it; the same you you refer to the "modern day scientists who agree with evolution".

C. CELESTIAL ORGANIZATION

The information the Qur'an provides on this subject mainly deals with the solar system. References are however made to phenomena that go beyond the solar system itself: they have been discovered in recent times.

There are two very important verses on the orbits of the Sun and Moon:

--sura 21, verse 33:
"(God is) the One Who created the night, the day, the sun and the moon. Each one is travelling in an orbit with its own motion."

--sura 36, verse 40:
"The sun must not catch up the moon, nor does the night outstrip the day. Each one is travelling in an orbit with its own motion."

Here an essential fact is clearly stated: the existence of the Sun's and Moon's orbits, plus a reference is made to the travelling of these bodies in space with their own motion.

A negative fact also emerges from a reading of these verses: it is shown that the Sun moves in an orbit, but no indication is given as to what this orbit might be in relation to the Earth. At the time of the Qur'anic Revelation, it was thought that the Sun moved while the Earth stood still. This was the system of geocentrism that had held sway since the time of ptolemy, Second century B.C., and was to continue to do so until Copernicus in the Sixteenth century A.D. Although people supported this concept at the time of Muhammad, it does not appear anywhere in the Qur'an, either here or elsewhere.


The Existence of the Moon's and the Sun's Orbits

The Arabic word falak has here been translated by the word 'orbit'. many French translators of the Qur'an attach to it the meaning of a 'sphere'. This is indeed its initial sense. Hamidullah translates it by the word 'orbit'.

The word caused concern to older translators of the Qur'an who were unable to imagine the circular course of the Moon and the Sun and therefore retained images of their course through space that were either more or less correct, or hopelessly wrong. Sir Hamza Boubekeur in his translation of the Qur'an cites the diversity of interpretations given to it: "A sort of axle, like an iron rod, that a mill turns around; a celestial sphere, orbit, sign of the zodiac, speed, wave . . .", but he adds the following observation made by Tabari, the famous Tenth century commentator: "It is our duty to keep silent when we do not know." (XVII, 15). This shows just how incapable men were of understanding this concept of the Sun's and Moon's orbit. It is obvious that if the word had expressed an astronomical concept common in Muhammad's day, it would not have been so difficult to interpret these verses. A Dew concept therefore existed in the Qur'an that was not to be explained until centuries later.


1. The Moon's Orbit

Today, the concept is widely spread that the Moon is a satellite of the Earth around which it revolves in periods of twenty-nine days. A correction must however be made to the absolutely circular form of its orbit, since modern astronomy ascribes a certain eccentricity to this, so that the distance between the Earth and the Moon (240,000 miles) is only the average distance.

We have seen above how the Qur'an underlined the usefulness of observing the Moon's movements in calculating time (sura 10, verse 5, quoted at the beginning of this chapter.) This system has often been criticized for being archaic, impractical and unscientific in comparison to our system based on the Earth's rotation around the Sun, expressed today in the Julian calendar.

This criticism calls for the following two remarks:
a) Nearly fourteen centuries ago, the Qur'an was directed at the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula who were used to the lunar calculation of time. It was advisable to address them in the only language they could understand and not to upset the habits they had of locating spatial and temporal reference-marks which were nevertheless quite efficient. It is known how well-versed men living in the desert are in the observation of the sky. they navigated according to the stars and told the time according to the phases of the Moon. Those were the simplest and most reliable means available to them.

b) Apart from the specialists in this field, most people are unaware of the perfect correlation between the Julian and the lunar calendar: 235 lunar months correspond exactly to 19 Julian years of 365 1/4 days. Then length of our year of 365 days is not perfect because it has to be rectified every four years (with a leap year) .

With the lunar calendar, the same phenomena occur every 19 years (Julian). This is the Metonic cycle, named after the Greek astronomer Meton, who discovered this exact correlation between solar and lunar time in the Fifth century B.C.


2. The Sun

It is more difficult to conceive of the Sun's orbit because we are so used to seeing our solar system organized around it. To understand the verse from the Qur'an, the position of the Sun in our galaxy must be considered, and we must therefore call on modern scientific ideas.

Our galaxy includes a very large number of stars spaced so as to form a disc that is denser at the centre than at the rim. The Sun occupies a position in it which is far removed from the centre of the disc. The galaxy revolves on its own axis which is its centre with the result that the Sun revolves around the same centre in a circular orbit. Modern astronomy has worked out the details of this. In 1917, Shapley estimated the distance between the Sun and the centre of our galaxy at 10 kiloparsecs i.e., in miles, circa the figure 2 followed by 17 zeros. To complete one revolution on its own axis, the galaxy and Sun take roughly 250 million years. The Sun travels at roughly 150 miles per second in the completion of this.

The above is the orbital movement of the Sun that was already referred to by the Qur'an fourteen centuries ago. The demonstration of the existence and details of this is one of the achievements of modern astronomy.


Reference to the Movement of the Moon and the Sun in Space With Their Own Motion

This concept does not appear in those translations of the Qur'an that have been made by men of letters. Since the latter know nothing about astronomy, they have translated the Arabic word that expresses this movement by one of the meanings the word has: 'to swim'. They have done this in both the French translations and the, otherwise remarkable, English translation by Yusuf Ali. [ Pub. Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore (Pakistan)]

The Arabic word referring to a movement with a self-propelled motion is the verb sabaha (yasbahuna in the text of the two verses). All the senses of the verb imply a movement that is associated with a motion that comes from the body in question. If the movement takes place in water, it is 'to swim'; it is 'to move by the action of one's own legs' if it takes place on land. For a movement that occurs in space, it is difficult to see how else this meaning implied in the word could be rendered other than by employing its original sense. Thus there seems to have been no mistranslation, for the following reasons.
-The Moon completes its rotating motion on its own axis at the same time as it revolves around the Earth, i.e. 291/2 days (approx.), so that it always has the same side facing us.
-The Sun takes roughly 25 days to revolve on its own axis. There are certain differences in its rotation at its equator and poles, (we shall not go into them here) but as a whole, the Sun is animated by a rotating motion.

It appears therefore that a verbal nuance in the Qur'an refers to the Sun and Moon's own motion. These motions of the two celestial bodies are confirmed by the data of modern science, and it is inconceivable that a man living in the Seventh century A.D.-however knowledgeable he might have been in his day (and this was certainly not true in Muhammad's case) -could have imagined them.

This view is sometimes contested by examples from great thinkers of antiquity who indisputably predicted certain data that modern science has verified. They could hardly have relied on scientific deduction however; their method of procedure was more one of philosophical reasoning. Thus the case of the pythagoreans is often advanced. In the Sixth century B.C., they defended the theory of the rotation of the Earth on its own axis and the movement of the planets around the Sun. This theory was to be confirmed by modern science. By comparing it with the case of the Pythagoreans, it is easy to put forward the hypothesis of Muhammad as being a brilliant thinker, who was supposed to have imagined all on his own what modern science was to discover centuries later. In so doing however, people quite simply forget to mention the other aspect of what these geniuses of philosophical reasoning produced, i.e. the colossal blunders that litter their work. It must be remembered for example, that the Pythagoreans also defended the theory whereby the Sun was fixed in space; they made it the centre of the world and only conceived of a celestial order that was centered on it. It is quite common in the works of the great philosophers of antiquity to find a mixture of valid and invalid ideas about the Universe. The brilliance of these human works comes from the advanced ideas they contain, but they should not make us overlook the mistaken concepts which have also been left to us. From a strictly scientific point of view, this is what distinguished them from the Qur'an. In the latter, many subjects are referred to that have a bearing on modern knowledge without one of them containing a statement that contradicts what has been established by present-day science.


The Sequence of Day and Night

At a time when it was held that the Earth was the centre of the world and that the Sun moved in relation to it, how could any one have failed to refer to the Sun's movement when talking of the sequence of night and day? This is not however referred to in the Qur'an and the subject is dealt with as follows:

--sura 7, verse 54:
"(God) covers the day with the night which is in haste to follow it . . ."

--sura 36, verse 37:
"And a sign for them (human beings) is the night. We strip it of the day and they are in darkness."

--sura 31, verse 29:
"Hast thou not seen how God merges the night into the day and merges the day into the night."

--sura 39, verse 5:
". . . He coils the night upon the day and He coils the day upon the night."

The first verse cited requires no comment. The second simply provides an image.

It is mainly the third and fourth verses quoted above that provide interesting material on the process of interpenetration and especially of winding the night upon the day and the day upon the night. (sura 39, verse 5)

'To coil' or 'to wind' seems, as in the French translation by R. Blachère, to be the best way of translating the Arabic verb kawwara. The original meaning of the verb is to 'coil' a turban around the head; the notion of coiling is preserved in all the other senses of the word.

What actually happens however in space? American astronauts have seen and photographed what happens from their spaceships, especially at a great distance from Earth, e.g. from the Moon. They saw how the Sun permanently lights up (except in the case of an eclipse) the half of the Earth's surface that is facing it, while the other half of the globe is in darkness. The Earth turns on its own axis and the lighting remains the same, so that an area in the form of a half-sphere makes one revolution around the Earth in twenty-four hours while the other half-sphere, that has remained in darkness, makes the same revolution in the same time. This perpetual rotation of night and day is quite clearly described in the Qur'an. It is easy for the human understanding to grasp this notion nowadays because we have the idea of the Sun's (relative) immobility and the Earth's rotation. This process of perpetual coiling, including the interpenetration of one sector by another is expressed in the Qur'an just as if the concept of the Earth's roundness had already been conceived at the time-which was obviously not the case.

Further to the above reflections on the sequence of day and night, one must also mention, with a quotation of some verses from the Qur'an, the idea that there is more than one Orient and one Occident. This is of purely descriptive interest because these phenomena rely on the most commonplace observations. The idea is mentioned here with the aim of reproducing as faithfully as possible all that the Qur'an has to say on this subject.

The following are examples:

--In sura 70 verse 40, the expression 'Lord of Orients and Occidents'.
--In sura 55, verse 17, the expression 'Lord of the two Orients and the two Occidents'.
--In sura 43, verse 38, a reference to the 'distance between the two Orients', an image intended to express the immense size of the distance separating the two points.

Anyone who carefully watches the sunrise and sunset knows that the Sun rises at different point of the Orient and sets at different points of the Occident, according to season. Bearings taken on each of the horizons define the extreme limits that mark the two Orients and Occidents, and between these there are points marked off throughout the year. The phenomenon described here is rather commonplace, but what mainly deserves attention in this chapter are the other. topics dealt with, where the description of astronomical phenomena referred to in the Qur'an is in keeping with modern data.

[AbdulQahhar]

And a bit more about the Sun's orbit:

--sura 21, verse 33:
"(God is) the One Who created the night, the day, the sun and the moon. Each one is travelling in an orbit with its own motion."

--sura 36, verse 40:
"The sun must not catch up the moon, nor does the night outstrip the day. Each one is travelling in an orbit with its own motion."

The Sun (and therefore the Earth and Solar System) may be found close to the inner rim of the Orion Arm, in the Local Fluff, at a hypothesized distance of 7.94±0.42 kpc from the Galactic Center.[24][25][26] The distance between the local arm and the next arm out, the Perseus Arm, is about 6,500 light-years.[27] The Sun, and thus the solar system, is found in what scientists call the galactic habitable zone.

The Apex of the Sun's Way, or the solar apex, refers to the direction that the Sun travels through space in the Milky Way. The general direction of the sun's galactic motion is towards the star Vega near the constellation of Hercules, at an angle of roughly 60 sky degrees to the direction of the Galactic Center. The sun's orbit around the galaxy is expected to be roughly elliptical with the addition of perturbations due to the galactic spiral arms and non-uniform mass distributions. In addition the sun oscillates up and down relative to the galactic plane approximately 2.7 times per orbit. This is very similar to how a simple harmonic oscillator works with no drag force (dampening) term.

It takes the solar system about 225–250 million years to complete one orbit (a galactic year),[28] and so is thought to have completed about 20–25 orbits during its lifetime or 0.0008 orbit since the origin of humans. The orbital speed of the solar system is 217 km/s, i.e. 1 light-year in ca. 1400 years, and 1 AU in 8 days.

[Qingu]

Abdul, other posters have taken the time and effort to write their own arguments in their own words, and I've gladly responded to them.

You've simply copy-and-pasted whole sections from some website. If the author of that website would like to come to this forum and debate with me, I'd be glad to respond, but in the meantime I'm not going to argue with someone who parrots others' arguments. I don't come on here and copy-and-paste 5,000-word chunks of text from talkorigins.com—in fact, if I did do this, I would probably be banned.

If you find the arguments convincing then you can paraphrase them and make them in your own words, and I will gladly respond.

[AbdulQahhar]

Abdul, other posters have taken the time and effort to write their own arguments in their own words, and I've gladly responded to them.

You've simply copy-and-pasted whole sections from some website. If the author of that website would like to come to this forum and debate with me, I'd be glad to respond, but in the meantime I'm not going to argue with someone who parrots others' arguments. I don't come on here and copy-and-paste 5,000-word chunks of text from talkorigins.com—in fact, if I did do this, I would probably be banned.

If you find the arguments convincing then you can paraphrase them and make them in your own words, and I will gladly respond.

Qingu, do I feel a retreat in your steps?
Let's make it simple man, you either can refute the text I posted or not?
Be my guest.

Don't worry where it came from. What if I posted a portion of text from one of the Tafseers of the Qur'an? Are we not entitled to use it? I guess that would be still an issue for you?
Did you not know that also the Qur'an is a commentary of itself (among the other sources)?

Now let's go back to the original text I posted. It has to do with the claim from the Qur'an. Can you refute it? Since you claimed the opposite. Brave enough or not?