There exists a modern claim that the Qu’ran contains verses that describe things known only to modern science, but since it was all written 1400 years ago when such things were unknown then “Allah did it”. Challenge this and ask for the best example and you usually are given a poetical phrase which has been quote-mined and twisted out of context to enable some modern thinking to be retro fitted in.
Lets have a look at a small example so that you get the idea. If you take this quote …
“I swear by that you see and by that you do not see …” (69:38-39)
So what does this mean?
To a poet of any flavor it is obvious, the speaker is affirming that something is really true and to give that affirmation emphases he is not only including everything you see, but also everything you don’t see to really underline and give stress that what comes next is really really true.
However, this is yanked out of context and we are instead advised that this is proof because this is really describing Gamma Rays, X-Rays, Short waves or microwaves etc… The Islamic response is “Praise be Allah, proof of modern science in the Qu’ran“. However the normal human reply is … “Seriously!! … are you frigging crazy?” because of course it says no such thing at all.
Anyway, moving on, I came across an example today of how some manufacture fraudulent claims like this out of nothing at all. Here is an extract from a claim (that comes from this web site):
We present to you Professor Alfred Kroner who is one of the world’s most famous geologists. He is a Professor of Geology and the Chairman of the Department of Geology at the Institute of Geosciences, Johannes Gutenburg University, Mainz, Germany. We met him and presented several Qur’aanic verses and Ahadeeth of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam (sallAllahu ‘alaihi wa sallam). He studied and commented on them. Then we had a discussion with him.
…
Professor Kroner, so it seemed to us, has a special talent of being evasive. For example, we asked him to describe the geological conditions of Arabia. ‘Was Arabia full of orchards and rivers?’ He said: “During the Snow Age.” And it is further known that the North Polar icebergs are slowly moving southwards. When those polar icebergs become relatively close to the Arabian Peninsula, the weather will change and Arabia will become one of the greenest and wettest parts of the world. We asked him: ‘Will Arabia become the land of orchards and rivers?’ He said: “Yes, it is a scientific fact.”This astonished us, and we wondered how he could state this as a scientific fact while it was related to the future and we asked: ‘Why?’ He said: “Because the new Snow Age has actually started. And we can see the snow crawling once again from the North Pole southwards. In fact, the polar snow is now on the way to get closer to the Arabian Peninsula. We can see the signs of this in the snow blizzards striking the northern parts of Europe and America every winter. Scientists have other signs and information proving the actual beginning of another Snow Age. It is a scientific fact.”
So we said to him: ‘What you have just mentioned has only been known to scientists after a long series of discoveries and with the help of specialized instruments. But we have already found this mentioned by the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam (sallAllahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) 1400 years ago. He said in a hadeeth transmitted in Saheeh Muslim:
The Last Hour will not come upon us until the lands of the Arabs are once again pasture lands and filled with rivers.
At this point we asked Professor Kroner: ‘Who told the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam (sallAllahu ‘alaihi wa sallam), that the lands of the Arabs were once filled with orchards and rivers?’ He immediately replied: “The Romans.” This reminded me of Professor Kroner’s evasive ability. We asked him another question, we said to him: ‘But who informed the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam (sallAllahu ‘alaihi wa sallam), that the lands of the Arabs would once again become pasturelands and be filled with rivers?’. Professor Kroner becomes evasive if embarrassed. But whenever he was faced with the truth, he is courageous enough to state his opinion frankly and thus he replied: “This could have been known to him only through revelation from above.”
Finally, after our discussions with him, he made the following comments: “If you combine all these and you combine all those statements that are being made in the Qur’aan in terms that relate to the earth and the formation of the earth and science in general, you can basically say that statements made there in many ways are true. They can now be confirmed by scientific methods, and in a way you can say that the Qur’aan is a simple science text book for the simple man, and that many of the statements made in there at that time could not be proven but that modern scientific methods are now in a position to prove what Muhammad sallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam said 1400 years ago.”
Wow that sounds convincing, a real professor of Geology confirming that the Qu’ran knew things 1400 years ago only known to modern science. One little flaw, not only is it just an “Argument from Authority” (as opposed to actual evidence) but it is also total nonsense and has been fabricated.
Here now is a video from Professor Kroner in which he confirms …
- He is not now, nor ever has he been a Muslim
- The video of what he said was done in the context of a Geology conference and he was quote mined, he does not in any way endorse the view that the Qu’ran is in any way scientific (and I bet you thought only the Creationists that did that)
All non muslims have very shallow and narrow mosquito brains. Never can they understand the true word of God.
Who will testify that the person in clip is real Alfred Kroner?
Nowwhere in the above extract does it claimthat the Prof was or is muslim.
you can have your own opinion,but i just wanted to say if you want to speak about Quran please don’t read translations ,if you have enough will learn arabic and read it you can’t understand it if not.
there are many scientific facts especially about astronomy and anatomy i can’t mention them here there are to many.
if you like to see if Quran is true or not why don’t you search about the Fact that every step of embryo stage is described in the Quran tell me how would he knew that.
// you can have your own opinion //
and we can also point out the easily verifiable facts.
// there are many scientific facts especially about astronomy and anatomy //
True, and they are all mostly wrong because they are 7th century astronomy and anatomy copied from earlier greek writings.
// i can’t mention them here there are to many //
Actually you can’t really mention them because none of them are credible. Feel free to dip into this pool of “many” and pick the very best strongest clearest example.
// every step of embryo stage is described in the Quran tell me how would he knew that.//
This has been robustly debunked many many many times … by arabic speakers.
http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Embryology_in_the_Quran
Simply read Dr. Keith L. Moore’s reviews
I don’t know why Muslims never discover any thing for themselves, with this scientific!!!!!! book in their disposal! Why do they need infidels’ findings to confirm and understand it themselves?
B’coz you are accepting your laziness by yourself. What did you do? Ain’t you a Muslim? Don’t you really have any idea about Muslim scientists during the darkest period of Christianity and Europeans?
Even if we agree or disagree what professor’s opinion on Quran…… What geologians say about future weather of Arabia ?? Is it possible that Arabia will become full of green trees and rivers in future??? We believe YES. It can be possible and will be possible.
http://www.google.ae/imgres?imgurl=http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/kroener/kroener.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/kroener/&h=256&w=197&tbnid=s2tgaVNFXQ7cSM:&zoom=1&tbnh=160&tbnw=123&usg=__7UZ-Wt-WIypcOlmJXGiG3MPZIfQ=&docid=CsI08kWryFeyzM&itg=1&sa=X&ei=WTKdU5D_JYXHOcDqgeAF&ved=0CJcBEPwdMBA
Is this the same guy??
yeah cept that image is from a long time ago.
Wow ..now it is really snowing in egyp, syria and palestine..the truth always prevails in the end, no one can denied it.
// The truth is very Evident //
It is indeed … it is abundantly clear that Islam is not actually true at all.
// and we can do nothing to make ppl believe the facts in Qur’an //
Not even lying and making fraudulent claims … as illustrated by the post … because the “facts” in the Qur’an are in fact complete fiction.
// if they have big locks of Devil in their hearts //
Must be rather frustrating when faced with all that reason and logic and demands for evidence … it sort of scuppers the daft claims being made.
The whole media is in the hands of non believers and still Islam is progressing very fast…this is a very simple to understand fact about the truth of Islam and Quran. ….
// nd still Islam is progressing very fast //
You have a credible source that can verify that claim … right? If not, then I propose that this claim is simply not true.
Then how come the followers of Islam grew from one person to almost two billions, the second largest faith in just 1400 years?
Have they been descended from heaven, or grown on trees?
“The whole media is in the hands of non believers”
Even if that were true, how is that relevant here? We are discussing science here, and scientific claims by extension, and the only ones who count as credible sources in science aren’t your TV channels or newspapers, but peer reviewed scientific journals, and of course, the world scientific community. Are you going to accuse the world scientific community and all those scientific journals of being biased too? What are the odds of that, pray? If you really want to play the conspiracy theory game anyway, it’s far more probable that the Muslims and other theists are in denial that their religions aren’t compatible with science. So guess what, the conspiracy theory BS works both ways.
Secondly, let’s look at what the word “media” means here. The word media is defined in the OED as ALL forms of mass communication, and as it turns out, there are quite a number of Islamic channels who rather apologize for the irrationalities of Islam and downplay Islamic extremism. Take Al-Jazeera, for example. Is that a non-Muslim media outlet too? Besides, even IF the entire world media is owned by non-Muslims, it still doesn’t prove Islam to be correct, or the non-Muslims to be incorrect. You are committing the genetic attack fallacy here. Something doesn’t become wrong because someone says so. When you make claims of science and when you claims of truth, and especially when you make POSITIVE claims about anything, the burden of proof is on you to prove that you are correct. The Muslims haven’t met their burden of proof.
So here’s the thing: You think Quran is divine? Author scientific papers on it, get ’em peer reviewed, and present the evidence to the scientific community. IF the consensus of the scientific community is that Quran is indeed of divine origin, you have won. You’ll get a Nobel prize at LEAST for solving an age-old question. If you’re so damn sure, what are you waiting for?
P.S: I am an atheist, so pray don’t group with other non-Muslims just because I happen to have just one thing in common with them, and that is lack of belief in Islam.
Being an atheist there was no need to drivel so long gibberish. Just one word is enough “atheist”. Others could’ve well understood.
The truth is very Evident and we can do nothing to make ppl believe the facts in Qur’an if they have big locks of Devil in their hearts
Calling something the truth over and over again doesn’t make it to the truth. How about accepting that many of your Islamic brethren like to deceive you? This article showed that those Islamic goons who fabricated such nonsense got caught red-handed for their lies.
“Facts” in the Quran? Really? Again, calling something a “fact” doesn’t make it so. If you claim something is true, then present evidence for it.
Their hearts are sealed? I know you got that metaphor from the Quran. Well, that’d make sense IF the Quran was ever proven to be actually divine, but it hasn’t been, so this claim is meaningless.
You got to try harder, Muslim apologist.
Okay if you think Bible is true, we will agree, because Quran itself confirms about Bible the word of God.