(I originally published this Article in June 2011)
In every debate where Mr. David Wood participates you can almost be 100% sure of one thing: He will most assuredly bring the "argument" (against the Qur'an) of the sun setting in a sea of murky water (Qur'an, Chapter 18, Verse 86).
Murky water everywhere! Drowning in it. To be honest, it is getting tiresome. Needless to say that expressions like "sun setting in the sea" are self-explanatory. Even a small child knows that the sun does not actually dive in the sea, it just looks so, from its point of view on the beach.
Still, Mr. Wood keeps bringing this up, time and time again. To tell you the truth I would be ashamed to bring up an "argument" like that. But, Mr. Wood, apparently thinks that his audience is not "smart enough" and might buy into it.
I would understand his first time, maybe he read some Qur'an translation and thought it literally said that Dhul-Qarnain saw the sun "diving" into a murky water, but his repeating of this, even after he has been refuted so many times, is just inexcusable. For all of you unfamiliar with the verse in question, I will bring it here, so you can judge yourself if Wood's argument is valid:
Until when he reached the place where the sun set, he found it going down into a black sea/spring of murky water, and found by it a people. We said: ‘O Dhulqarnain! either give them a chastisement or do them a benefit.
The Qur’an is obviously describing what Dhul-Qarnain saw: the image of the sun setting in a dark body of water. From Dhul-Qarnain’s point of view it would have seemed as if the sun is "going down" into the sea/lake/body of water. The location of this body of water is thought by some scholars to be either the Black Sea or the Oher Lake, which both seem very dark (e.g. from the high presence of microalgae).
Why would anyone, in his right mind, make such a fuss about this verse, is a mistery to me, but it would seem that David really likes the subject. Or beating the audience with it, over and over again, until they believe it, if they don't fall dead out of sheer agony first.
![[Image: cc-davidwood.png]](https://web.archive.org/web/20160417040054im_/http://1islam.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/cc-davidwood.png)
David Wood and his travesty
There are many other jewels Mr. David "Murky Water" Wood uses to (in his opinion) discredit the Qur'an as being scientifically unreliable, but we can merge them all in this one example of the Infamous Murky Water Case. He basically uses the same semantics in trying to brush off qur'anic claims about the astronomy, embryology etc. as "not at all in accordance with modern science, but a mere muslim reinterpretation". In this, one can see his atheistic roots actually, although he would like to think of himself as an evangelical Christian now.
Since he usually fires up 150 billion words per second, he is mostly "done" after the opening statement, then he turns, irrelevant of what the subject is about, to his other most beloved subject on Islam - the Person of Muhammad, peace be upon him. I won't even start on his claims about this matter. Suffice it to say that David seems to suffer from an acute case of hatred towards Muhammad, although, on his website, and his speeches, he claims that is not the case. Logically, derived from this are all his attacks on Islam and the Qur'an. I sincerely hope his obsessional hatred doesn't cause him to forget to swim and he drowns in that infamous murky water.
In every debate where Mr. David Wood participates you can almost be 100% sure of one thing: He will most assuredly bring the "argument" (against the Qur'an) of the sun setting in a sea of murky water (Qur'an, Chapter 18, Verse 86).
Murky water everywhere! Drowning in it. To be honest, it is getting tiresome. Needless to say that expressions like "sun setting in the sea" are self-explanatory. Even a small child knows that the sun does not actually dive in the sea, it just looks so, from its point of view on the beach.
Still, Mr. Wood keeps bringing this up, time and time again. To tell you the truth I would be ashamed to bring up an "argument" like that. But, Mr. Wood, apparently thinks that his audience is not "smart enough" and might buy into it.
I would understand his first time, maybe he read some Qur'an translation and thought it literally said that Dhul-Qarnain saw the sun "diving" into a murky water, but his repeating of this, even after he has been refuted so many times, is just inexcusable. For all of you unfamiliar with the verse in question, I will bring it here, so you can judge yourself if Wood's argument is valid:
Until when he reached the place where the sun set, he found it going down into a black sea/spring of murky water, and found by it a people. We said: ‘O Dhulqarnain! either give them a chastisement or do them a benefit.
The Qur’an is obviously describing what Dhul-Qarnain saw: the image of the sun setting in a dark body of water. From Dhul-Qarnain’s point of view it would have seemed as if the sun is "going down" into the sea/lake/body of water. The location of this body of water is thought by some scholars to be either the Black Sea or the Oher Lake, which both seem very dark (e.g. from the high presence of microalgae).
Why would anyone, in his right mind, make such a fuss about this verse, is a mistery to me, but it would seem that David really likes the subject. Or beating the audience with it, over and over again, until they believe it, if they don't fall dead out of sheer agony first.
David Wood and his travesty
There are many other jewels Mr. David "Murky Water" Wood uses to (in his opinion) discredit the Qur'an as being scientifically unreliable, but we can merge them all in this one example of the Infamous Murky Water Case. He basically uses the same semantics in trying to brush off qur'anic claims about the astronomy, embryology etc. as "not at all in accordance with modern science, but a mere muslim reinterpretation". In this, one can see his atheistic roots actually, although he would like to think of himself as an evangelical Christian now.
Since he usually fires up 150 billion words per second, he is mostly "done" after the opening statement, then he turns, irrelevant of what the subject is about, to his other most beloved subject on Islam - the Person of Muhammad, peace be upon him. I won't even start on his claims about this matter. Suffice it to say that David seems to suffer from an acute case of hatred towards Muhammad, although, on his website, and his speeches, he claims that is not the case. Logically, derived from this are all his attacks on Islam and the Qur'an. I sincerely hope his obsessional hatred doesn't cause him to forget to swim and he drowns in that infamous murky water.
Not a leaf falls without His knowledge. | Q:6:59
(Edited 08.10.2024, 12:05 by sHuRuLuNi.)