Scientific Phenomena in the Qur'an

[sHuRuLuNi]

I know, many people discuss about these things, and then there are others who go like "no, Qur'an is not a scientific book, we should not ...", as if they are afraid to actually admit that there are in fact clear-cut scientific phenomena described in the Qur'an, which the modern science only discovered and studied many centuries after the revelation of the Qur'an.

I also know some people are adverse to things like abjad values of the arabic alphabet, but that too is a fact.

So, when we see something like the 57th sura of the Qur'an which is called "The Iron" being sort of the middle of the book, and then we know that one of the (in fact also sort of the middle of) isotopes of iron is indeed 57 --- well, one wonders ...

And then if we notice that the name of the surah, that is "iron", in arabic "hadid" has an abjad value of 26 ... we think what significance might this have? Well, it just so happens that the atomic number of iron is exactly 26.

No one, no human being alive in the 7th century could have known this. ZERO CHANCE.

I discussed this years ago in a series of Articles I published, that I will now post in this Thread. Feel free to participate in the discussion, and post other interesting scientific phenomena of the Qur'an.

[sHuRuLuNi]

Here is an Article of mine from 2013:

Refuting the irrefutable

Almost all christian apologists, when confronted with scientific miracles in the Qur'an, try to belittle those, or dismiss them as "interpretations". Some even go as far as to simply refuse to consider them as having anything to do with science.

Do they not then earnestly seek to understand the Qur'an, or are their hearts locked up by them?[1]

A typical response from a christian apologist to verse 30 of Chapter 21 for example is this: "That doesn't say anything about the Big Bang, it only says earth and heavens were together". Well, let us see what does the verse indeed say:

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?

Now, to me, this pretty much sounds like Big Bang. It clearly states that the universe (yes, the Universe, since when God says "Heavens and Earth", throughout the Qur'an, it always means universe, see e.g. a note to 42;29,Muhammad Asad) at one point was a singularity, then God caused it to explode, in the process creating stars, galaxies and planets, including earth. The word which is translated here as "joined together" is actually, in the original, the word [b]رَتْقًا[/b] which means "fused and inseparable".



How would YOU in ONE verse explain the theory of Big Bang, understandable to the arabs of the seventh century AND at the same time sofisticated enough to be recognized as the Big Bang theory from the modern society? The beauty of Qur'an is that it does just that. While the ancient arab simply understood this as earth and the heavens at one time being joined as one, the modern sceintist sees in it the perfect example of the theory of Big Bang. Even the words used in the verse are PERFECTLY chosen to fulfill the meaning in every way - finding the balance in this kind of description is very hard, since, if you color it too much with symbols (to try and explain it to ancient people), it might get too "mythical" and won't be recognized as a scientific statement. On the other hand, if you "scientify" it too much - it would sound totally absurd to ancient people. It's like trying to explain the M-Theory[2] to children.

The absurd claim that the author of the above verse, and as such the creator of this sofisticated double-explanation is Muhammad and not God, gets even more absurd when you consider the fact that this would mean that Muhammad, the unlettered Prophet, was familiar with Big Bang and quantum singularity theories. Since christians of course do not want to say that Muhammad was indeed a Prophet of God, thus making the Qur'an a genuine Revelation from God, and on the other hand they also do not want to say that Muhammad knew quantum mechanics and particle physics, they then apply their "twisting techniques" - trying to imply that the verses like the one in discussion are in fact not saying what they're saying, but that the meaning is only "re-interpreted" by muslims to make them sound scientific. Aha. OK.

This reminds me of a debate between Dr. Zakir Naik and Dr. William Campbell: When Zakir Naik presents his case from embriology in Qur'an and the perfect description of Alaqa[3] - the leach-like look of the embryo at the early stage of development - precisely as described in the Qur'an - Dr. Campbell, shamelessly "refutes" this by showing a picture of the embryo FROM ANOTHER ANGLE with the words "Look, it does not look like a leach at all!". His humiliation, when exposed by Dr. Naik, is a classic in YouTube. This, just as an example, at what lengths will Christian apologists go to try and refute Islam.

In general, if you bring a single verse from Qur'an, a christian apologist will bombard you with words, twisting them, talking around the bush, words, words, words. This is even worse if you dare to refute any christian claim, like the belief in Trinity. You can be sure of one thing, they will talk so much and say so little. At the end of their apology you won't really be any smarter. This is because their case is weak, and they know it, so they try to present it as strong by "making much noise". It is like in a public discussion, the loudest among the speakers will be the one with the weakest case. In Qur'an there is a parable about this:

Hence, be modest in thy bearing, and lower thy voice: for, behold, the ugliest of all voices is the [loud] voice of asses...[4]

Showing the ignorance of some christian apologists is also their attempt to refute another qur'anic verse, which deals with the expansion of the universe. The verse reads:

And it is We who have built the universe with power; and, verily, it is We who are steadily expanding it.[5]

In this case, totally ignoring the fact that one can not rely 100% on any translation of the Qur'an without consulting at least a good dictionary and knowing classical arabic semantics, they take one translation of the verse (e.g. from Yusuf Ali, where the verse is translated slightly differently) and boast: "See, it says nothing about expanding universe! It only says the space is wast. Well, anyone can see THAT."
As Muhammad Assad in the note to this verse says, the phrase "inna la-musi’un" clearly foreshadows the modern notion of the "expanding universe". I can give you for example the albanian version of this verse:

Ne, me forcën tonë e ngritëm qiellin dhe Ne e zgjërojmë atë.

Direct translation of this would be: "We, with power, built the sky, and we are expanding it."

Yet, christian apologists still try to refute this and belittle its significance. Interestingly enough they don't do that with statements in the bible that might be seen as scientific facts. Talk of double standards ...

Anyway, the reason why they "refute" this is, as I said, they pick one (english) translation, e.g. by Yusuf Ali, where, instead of "we are expanding it" it says "we create the vastness of space", without consulting others or the original. Now, why are there different translations anyway?


An excellent explanation of this offered the late Dr. Zaid Ghazzawi (May God have mercy on his soul) in his video Presentation "Why is the Qur'an in arabic?"[6]: Ghazzawi argues that in order to convey as much information as possible in a relatively small book, you would have to compress that information. The arabic language is perfect for this, since one word can have 20 or more meanings. If Qur'an was revealed in english for example, the Sura Al-Ikhlas would not be 15 words long, as it is, rather it would be up to 300 words long! That means Qur'an would not be handy and approachable anymore, since it would be comprised of tomes and tomes of hundreds of thousands of pages.




Having this in mind, we can understand why are there different translations of the words "inna la-musi'un". The base word there is musi' which means: expanded, rich, spacious, vast, wide. Since it is in the active form however (God is applying action on something), then the word musi'un means: to make rich, to make vast, to make wide, to expand. We can analyze this even deeper, if one might say we are making it rich does not mean we are expanding it. OK, think about it: what does making rich mean actually? If you had 10 gold coins, and I give you another 10 every day - i am making you rich - so, after one year you will end up having thousands of gold coins and a huge pile of them in your living room. Logically, the smal pile has become bigger. It expanded.

The beauty of Allah's word is that this one word (musi'un) not only can mean any of the words it means, it can also mean all of those words simultaneously! After applying this, the english translation of the verse could look something like this:
And it is We who have built the universe with power; and, verily, it is We who are steadily expanding it, making it rich, making it wide, making it vast, broadening it, making it spacious.

To convey all of this, the Qur'an uses a single word. 

Let us however land our spaceship, and look if there is something here on earth, scientifically interesting, which we can find mentioned in the Qur'an 1400 years ago.

Since the matter of embriology has been discussed so many times, I won't discuss it here further. Instead I would like to draw your attention to the following verses:

Does man think that We cannot [resurrect him and] bring his bones together again? Yea indeed, We are able to make whole his very finger-tips! [7]

Imagine yourself in Saudi Arabia, let's say somewhere around the year 630. And you hear Muhammad recite these verses. Would you not think something like this: "What is that all about?!" Why does God need to stress that he can make whole the finger tips of a person. I mean, shouldn't he impress people by saying that he can even recreate a persons brain or his heart? That is surely more complicated than a mere piece of skin on his fingers!

What might have sounded as unimportant to people in the 7th century, is very much important today. As you know, the fingerprints of a person, any of the 6+ billion people on earth right now, and any person that has EVER LIVED on earth, are UNIQUE. There are no two persons with identical fingerprints. By stating that he can even recreate his finger tips, GOd is emphasizing that not only will he resurrect everybody, but he will even resurrect everyone with his unique original personal identity. This is the one reason for this verse, and the other of course is to be another proof of the divine origin of Qur'an, since there was no one in the 7th century who knew the importance of the fingerprints.
I would really like to see Christian apologists refute this one. But please, don't use your twisting techniques. Very simple: Just tell us how could Muhammad, if he was the author of the Qur'an, have possibly known about the significance of fingerprints?
(articles series continues)


Footnotes:

1. Qur'an, 47:24 

2. In particle physics, string theory is a theory that attempts to merge quantum mechanics with Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. The name string theory comes from the modeling of subatomic particles as tiny one-dimensional "stringlike" entities rather than the more conventional approach in which they are modeled as zero-dimensional point particles.

Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study, building on contributions of many other physicists, proposed a new set of techniques that refined the approximate equations on which all work in string theory had so far been based. These techniques helped reveal a number of new features of string theory. Most dramatically, these more exact equations showed that string theory has not six but seven extra spatial dimensions; the more exact equations also revealed ingredients in string theory besides strings - membranelike objects of various dimensions, collectively called branes. Finally, the new techniques established that various versions of string theory developed over the preceding decades were essentially all the same. Theorists call this unification of formerly distinct string theories by a new name, M-theory, with the meaning of M being deferred until the theory is more fully understood. "String theory" Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 24 Jul. 2009 

3. The word Alaqa is to be found in the very first verses revealed to Muhammad from God, which read as follows: "Read, in the name of thy Lord who createth. Createth man from Alaqa (a clot, somethings that clings).", Qur'an 96:1-2

4. Qur'an, 31:19

5. Ibid, 51:47 

6. Dr. Zaid Ghazawi, "Why is the Qur'an in arabic?", 2009 

7. Qur'an, 75:3-4 

[sHuRuLuNi]

Refuting the irrefutable (Part 2)



As I expected, after publishing the first part of this article, a visitor jumped to refute basically everything I posted there, and qualifying Qur'an as only "book of signs and teachings", not of science.

Well, first of all, I never said the Qur'an is a Book of science - it doesn't even claim to be that. The Qur'an is a revelation from God, a Guide to Humanity and a Light. It does indeed contain scientific facts which were discovered much later - but it is not Qur'ans function to be a scientific book - these facts mentioned in it function rather as a proof that the book itself is from God.

At the end of the article, I posted a verse where God emphasises, while talking about resurrection, that he can even recreate a humans fingertips - a clear indication of the uniqueness of the fingertips, which are, logically, used to make fingerPRINTS as an identifying marker. The restless user attacked this view by insisting that the Qur'an "does not talk about fingerprints, but fingertips" ...

It is clear that his insisting on this is not based on the ignorance that the fingerprints are indeed made through fingerTIPS - basically EVERYONE knows this - but it is more just an attempt to say ANYTHING just to attack the Truth, and shut the eyes before the light.

The same goes for the description of the development of the embryo in the Qur'an, where they repeat the old LIES that the Qur'an copied that from Galen - where in fact Galen is WRONG while the statements in the Qur'an are absolutely, irrefutably, scientifically, 100% correct. When they have nothing more then they go as far as to say that the world renown embryologist Dr. Keith Moore was "paid" by Muslims to say that the Qur'an is in concordance with modern embryology. Some, even LIE about it, saying that Moore said in his later book [i]The Developing Human[/i], that "Qur'an is also based on the wrong claims on Galen". This is an outright lie, which anyone can check - just read p. 8-9 of the mentioned book.

To this one bashing visitor, and other people who want do deny the truth without ANY evidence, but rather with twisting words, I would like to bring some more "material", that they might dwell in.
Here for example an interesting thing about the Qur'an:


[b]Bedouins and Space Shuttles[/b]

Imagine, there was a guy, living in the 7th century, yet he had a bunch of artificial scanning satellites, a space shuttle, high-precision cameras, a super-computer and highly modern measurement equipment - and he did what with all this? Well, he thought, I am going to scan the earth from orbit!

Doesn't this sound implausible? Indeed it does.

Of course there were no such things as cameras, satellites, etc. in the 7th century. Yet this guy somehow managed to precisely measure the earth, its landmasses and waters. How could he do that without all this equipment which only became available in the late 20th century?
You are right, no "guy" could have done that in the 7th century. It simply defies logic. But then, why do we find this in the Qur'an:

[b]The word "sea" throughout the book is mentioned totally 32 times, while the word "land" is mentioned 13 times. The sum is 45. Now ponder on the following: 32 out of 45 is 71.11111%, and 13 out of 45 is 28.88889%. And what is the ratio of water and land on planet earth? Exactly: 71.1111% to 28.8889%![/b]

How could the Qur'an, being only a writ of "Arab Bedouins" from the 7th century know this?

Anyone trying to "refute" this, in any way, only shows that they have no evidence whatsoever, then out of pure spite and hatred of the Truth, will do anything to fight it, as Qur'an clearly puts it in the 3rd chapter, verse 118:

They only desire your ruin: Rank hatred has already appeared from their mouths: What their hearts conceal is far worse. We have made plain to you the Signs, if ye have wisdom.

Now, let us dig deeper. Literally. Consider this verse of the Qur'an:

And We sent down iron, in which is (material for) mighty war, as well as many benefits for mankind. (57:25)

The likes of some of our denying visitors in the 7th century must have also laughed about Muhammad, peace be upon him, when he recited this verse. "Oh, so your God sent down iron? What, like, from the sky? Riiight ..."
Fools. If they only knew ...

It just so happens, that the modern science, once more, testifies that iron, as an element, is alien to earth - the [i]whole[/i] quantity of iron in the crust of the earth came from outer space, through iron meteors.

While some might say that the ancient people maybe knew iron comes from meteorites, it's quite possible, still, they couldn't have known that [i]all[/i] the iron is alien. In any case, the Qur'an is explicit in saying that it is God who sent it down. No maybes.
But that is not our main interest here. This is:

[b]The iron[/b]

There is an interesting thing in the Qur'an about iron, which most assuredly no ancient civilization could have known: There is a chapter called "The Iron" in Qur'an. It is the chapter no. 57. Well, it just so happens that [b]57 is also an isotope of iron[/b]. Pure chance of course ... And completely incidentally, the word for iron in Qur'an is "El Hadid" - the gematrical value of the word is - what? - also 57!
If we remove the article "El" - the equivalent of the english "The", then the numerical value is 26. And what might that be? Lo and behold, it is the [b]atomic number of iron[/b]!

And did you know, that also totally coincidentally, the Qur'an has 114 chapters, and chapter 57 is sort of the MIDDLE of the book? And iron has 28 isotopes (incl. radioactive ones, from 45 to 72) thus isotope 57 being also in the middle? In fact, even more astonishing: There are [b]12 words[/b] in this verse [i]before[/i] the word "Iron". And there are [b]15 words[/b] [i]after[/i] it. And guess how many isotopes of iron are there before isotope 57 and after isotope 57!

Moreover iron is a group 8 (value of "h"), period 4 (value of "d"), block "d" element (HDD - root word of Hadid)
There are 28 words in the verse where iron is mentioned - the same number as there are isotopes. And iron has 2,8,14,2 electrons per shell. Notice the visual coincidence here: 2 8 | 14*2.

As a side note: Notice how the sum of this verse's position equals 19! (57:25 = 5+7+2+5)
 
[b]The Bee[/b]

What about it? Well, it was for centuries an unknown fact that only the [i]female[/i] bees are workers that gather food. And this is what Qur'an states in the Chapter "The Bee":

And thy Lord taught the Bee to build its cells in hills, on trees, and in (men's) habitations; Then to eat of all the produce (of the earth), and find with skill the spacious paths of its Lord ...

So? Nothing spectacular you say? Not in english, no. But wait, what is the gender of the word Nahl (bee) used here? Yep, exactly.
 
[b]Liars[/b]

Nay, if he desist not (lying), We shall most surely drag him down upon his forehead, the LYING, rebellious forehead! (Qur'an, 96:15-16)

Germany's University of Tübingen recently tested the function of the anterior prefrontal cortex (forehead) - the neuroscience research shows that the apc (forehead) part in the brain is responsible for lying ... My dear unbelievers, how could have Muhammad known that?

(articles series continues)