Islam, science and a vera cause

[cabdirazzaq]

I have intended to write about islam and science, but before I start it is
important to know that I'm not interested in either fabricating a verse nor
trying to modify one so it may fit well with science. Islam is indeed not in
need of such things. This post is meant to reveal the real vera cause opposedb to how others may view it. The vera cause, or the real cause is a phrase that is often used in science which is sometimes used against the ID theory. What they say is basicly that we can see earthquakes and such things but we can't see how the Creator created thus they relay on what they see and feel, ignoring the fact that in order for this earthquake to work there must have been a Creator who made it possible.

Albeit, the following are verses from quran and hadiths from the prophet(peace and blessing of Allah be upon him) In the quran we find not only the fact that the universe was indeed created but also how it was created. Allah(may he be exalted) says (interpretation of the meaning):

"Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together, then We clove them asunder? And We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?" (21:30)

We can find two different issues in this text about the creation.
a) The heavens and the earth were at a ceratin period joined together before Allah(may he be exalted) parted them.
b) All creatures are created from water, indeed we are all in need of water to surviveand for life to continue. It should also be noted that this verse does not support the view that we all evolved from mere bacterias formed in the sea since this goes against other verses of the Quran.

None of these two points I mentioned here are contradicting science.
Alfred Krooner[He is Professor of Geology and the Chairman of
the Department of Geology at the Institute of Geosciences, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany] comments on this by saying:
Thinking where Muhammad came from

. . . I think it is almost impossible that he could have known about things like the common origin of the universe, because scientists have only found out within the last few years,
with very complicated and advanced technological methods, that this is the case. He also wrote:

Somebody who did not know something about nuclear physics fourteen hundred years ago could not, I think, be in a position to find out from his own mind, for instance, that the earth and the heavens had the same origin.

Allah(may he be exalted) also mentions what kind of materia itwas composed of in the beginning (interpretation of the meaning):

Then He turned to the heaven when it was smoke...Quran, 41:11)

Today there is a consensus among the scientists affirming that the universe was composed of some gaseous composition. Dr. Bucaille(author of "The Bible, the Qur'an and Science") explains the connection between
his description and that of the Qur'an as follows:

"Smoke is generally made up of a gaseous substratum, plus, in more or less stable suspension, fine particles that may belong to solid and even liquid states of matter at high or low temperature"

The quran also comments on the structure of mountains but before we show these verses lets see what science says.
Frank Press, the former science advisor to president Jimmy Carter writes in his book "Earth" about the structure of mountains. He illustrates the mountains in a wedge like shape where the mountain itself is but a small part of the whole whose root is deeply entrenched in the ground. Dr. Press writes on the functions of "The Earth". the mountains
and states that they play an important role in stabilizing the crust of the earth. This is exactly how the Qur’aan described mountains 14 centuries ago.

Allah said(interpretation of the meaning):
And the mountains Has He firmly fixed. (Qur’aan 79:32).
And the mountains as pegs. (Qur’aan 78:7).
And he has set up on the earth mountains standing firm, lest it should shake with you. (Qur’aan 16:15).

Once again we may ask our selves if this indeed is another coincidence or lucky guess from Muhammed(peacea and blessing of Allah be upon him). Lets remember that this man could neither write nor read and was raised up without parents in a beduin enviroment.

The quran also gives a detail descreption about our own development in the womb. It says in the very first verses revealed of the quran (interpretation of the meaning):
1.Read in the name of your Lord Who created.
2. Created man, out of [´Alaqah] a (mere) clot of congealed blood

An ´alaqah is in arabic something suspended, it is also very often translated to leech and/or congealed blood.
Now what impressed Dr Keith Moore(one of the world’s most prominent scientists in the fields of anatomy and embryology and is the author of the book entitled The Developing Human) is how this descreption fits with the embroyo. It resembles a leech http://www.islam-guide.com/ch1-1-a-img1.jpg ,
it is suspended and in the first stages it consists mostly out of blood.

Then We made the nutfah (mixed fluids from male and female) into a clot of congealed blood; then of that clot We made a (foetus) lump; then we made out of that lump bones and clothed the bones with flesh; then we developed out of it another creature. So blessed be Allah, the best to create![023.014]

This is the exakt correct order in which we evolve from being only a drop of fluids to a human beings.
Pr. Moore said later in a conference:

It has been a great pleasure for me to help clarify statements in the Quran about human development. It is clear to me that these statements must have come to Muhammad from God, because almost all of this knowledge was not discovered until many centuries later. This proves to me that Muhammad must have been a messenger of God.

It gets even more interesting since the prophet(peace and blessing of Allah be upon him) spoke about the time as well.

In every one of you, all components of your creation are gathered together in your mothers’ womb by 40 days. (Narrated in Saheeh Muslim and Al-Bukhaari).

In another Hadeeth, Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) said: When forty-two nights have passed over the drop (nutfah), Allah sends an angel to it, who shapes it and makes its ears, eyes, skin, flesh and bones. Then he says, "O Lord, is it male or female?" and your Lord decides what he wishes. (Narrated in Saheeh Muslim).

Joe Leigh Simpson, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the North Western University in Chicago studied these two hadiths and concluded:

It follows, I think, that not only is there no conflict
between genetics and religion, but in fact religion can guide science by adding revelation to some traditional scientific approaches. That there exists statements in the Qur’aan shown by science to be valid, which supports knowledge in the Qur’aan having been derived from Allah.

Is this also a lucky guess or did this come from a divine source?
Any(or many) comprehensive book on geology will probably mention the fact that the land of the arabs once, was a land filled with orchards and rivers. This fact was made clear 14 hundered years ago
when the prophet(peace and blessing of Allah be upon him) said in an authentic hadith:

"The last Hour will not come upon us until the lands of the Arabs are once again pasture lands and filled with rivers."

The question mark stands. Who informed him about the fact that this desert they were living on had indeed been a land of rivers before?

There is much more of this, but I do not have much time so I will if God wants to end with a authentic hadith were a jew asked the prophet(peace and blessing of Allah be upon him) alot of
questions and ended with this:

...He then said: I have come to ask you about the child. He (the Holy Prophet) said: The reproductive substance of man is white and that of woman (i. e. ovum central portion) yellow, and when they have sexual intercourse and the male's substance (chromosomes and genes) prevails upon the female's substance (chromosomes and genes), it is the male child that is created by Allah's Decree, and when the substance of the female prevails upon the substance contributed by the male, a female
child is formed by the Decree of Allah. The Jew said: What you have said is true; verily you are an Apostle. He then returned and went away.
The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said:
He asked me about such and such things of which I have had no knowledge till Allah gave me that.
(Translation of Sahih Muslim, The Book of Menstruation (Kitab Al-Haid), Book 003, Number 0614)"

[robostiltzkin]

Many of these statements have their genesis in Dr Maurice Baucille's treatise "The Bible, the guran, and Science", which has since been largely discredited. Let me preface this by saying any religious holy book can generally be used to prove or disprove nearly any principle. That is their beauty, truth lies in interpretation.
No offence to your beliefs, but this does prove nothing of the sort. All of this information is contained an the Jewish scriptures and New Testament of the Crristian Bible. They can be found in the writings of the Greeks and Phoenicians. Furthermore, they are to be found in early middle-eastern (Egyptian, Sumerian, and Hittite writings as well). If we are going to examine the origins of things we should examine the genesis of the quran, much of which is plagiarized from the Jewish and Christian scriptures, which were in existence and well-known from 600 to several thousand years before Muhammed was even alive. He is telling us nothing new. He is reinterpreting existing knowledge into metaphors his target audience may understand. I am not saying he is not a messenger of God, he may very well have been. But your citations do not prove this.

Among the Egyptians for example, it was the involuntary separation of Geb (the earth god) from his wife and sister Nut (the sky goddess) that was responsible for the division of the earth from the sky. The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh likewise describes the moment “when the heavens had been separated from the earth, when the earth had been delimited from the heavens” as a result of the separation of a sky God (An) from a earth Goddess (Ki). If you remove the pagan references, you have the same story as found in the Qur’an. Physicist Dr. Abdus Salam once warned us against people trying to explain Big Bang using verses from Qur'an, saying that the current version of Big Bang is the best known scientific explanation for the creation of the universe. What if a better scientific explanation than Big Bang is found tomorrow? Should the verses be changed to accommodate the new scientific view? Certainly it is not possible; thus it shows the inherent contradiction such attempt leads to. Religious revelations can never vindicate or falsify science. The truth or falsity of a scientific principle lies within science itself. First of all, the universe did not begin as a gas or any gaseous material. From current Big Bang theory we know, the universe began before any matter of any kind existed--it began as pure energy. It took several moments for any matter to form, and then it was a plasma, not a gas. Gases only came later, after the plasma cooled, and yet gasses were still not the only constituent--much of the mass-energy at even that point, as before, was comprised of electromagnetic radiation--light. The fact that the Qur’an fails to mention any of this or any other crucial scientific information is precisely why its claim to scientific accuracy is to be dismissed. It is making vague metaphysical statements, and that is not science.
If we take "gaseous material" as plasma, then also the problem remains unsolved. Smoke is made of ash, predominantly carbon, and is produced from burning (oxidation), not plasma condensation. Smoke looks nothing like heated hydrogen or helium, does not share its elemental mass or other properties, and does not even possess many of the general properties of a gas. Thus, Allah chose the wrong word. He could have used "hot gases" or "hot gases expanding in a vacuum" or anything which is much closer to the truth. If we critically examine this verse, it becomes very clear to us that this verse is far from being scientific to define initial condition of the universe, that verse is really hoax. From verse 41:9 we find that that the earth is made "in two days," and this is the first two days in the list. After the creation of earth, allah describes the next two days of creation, completing the first "four days equal," in which mountains and plants are made in verse 41:10. Thus, we find a gradual order of the Qur'anic creation ie. Allah first created the earth and then filled the earth with mountains and plants (It is quite understandable that mountains and plants could not be made before the earth was made, thus 41:10 follows 41:9 in a quite reasonable order). This is also lifted from the creation tale found in "Genesis" in the Jewish scripture. But then we see that verse 41:11 establishes an undeniable context in which the universe exists as smoke at the same time that the earth already exists, since God "rose over towards the heaven when it was smoke" and spoke to it and to the earth, therefore no Muslim can rationally deny that this verse clearly says the earth existed at the same time as the smoke, which is patently irrational and absurd. Thus the verse mentioned above which is claimed to be a "perfect analogy" describing the initial condition of the universe is nothing but "smoke" and mirrors.
As far as embryological development, the quran tells us nothing new. The Qur'an contains erroneous ancient theories developed by Roman and Greek philosophers about human development. The verse mentions three primary stages of embryonic development: a “seed,” “drop” or “semen” phase (not mixed fluids as male and female as you state) (in Arabic, “nutfah”), followed by a “clot” or “leach-like clot” phase (in Arabic, “Alaqah”), followed finally by a “morsel of flesh” or “chewed lump” phase (in Arabic, “Mudghah”). Some other additional suras can also be cited that deal with this subject, and none seems to disagree with this basic scenario. Again the hadiths, particularly that of Bukhari and Muslim give some relevant information. However, their falsity is made clear when viewed in context of currnet knowledge at the time. The whole idea is completely erroneous in many ways. First of all, the human embryo becomes a fetus around week 9, roughly half the time “Islamic embryology” suggests. Again, there are no developmental milestones which can be mapped to the three times forty day period, even though they are suggested in several authoritative hadiths with full support from from the quran. Also, from medical science we know in human development process living tissue forms first, and then bones grow at a later time, and it continues to gain strength for many years after birth. But by expressing blood clot was turned to bone the quran in fact reveals its one of many scientific inaccuracies. Nowhere in the quran does it speak of the human egg; instead it refers to the drop of seed. This is because most primitive peoples including Arabs thought that the whole child was in the seed of the man. The woman was considered simply as the oven or incubator that fully contained in the father’s seed. They could not figure out its existence as no one could find the eggs of the woman at that time. It is a historical fact that prior to the medical community comprehending that women actually have eggs and men have sperm that must be combined to produce a child, it was widely believed that the whole child was contained in the man's seed. This was also Catholic Church doctrine for hundreds of years. Not "spilling one's seed on the ground" is an admonition against masturbation because it was believed that one's children would be eliminated. The majority of Islamic scholars consider it haram (prohibited) too for having direct support from hadith. It can be pointed out from Islamic culture that the Shah of Iran divorced her wife Soraya because of no children. In rural areas of Bangladesh, in similar fashion, many women gets divorced each year because they are wrongly blamed for not being capable of producing male child.
As regards the mountains being rooted lest it shake with the earth, you neglected to mentions the following: allah fixed the (flat) earth onto the back of a whale, then created the mpuntains as pegs to keep earth from shaking from the movement of the great whale. (Similarities to Atlas, who supported earth upon his great shoulders). The whale is in water, which is upon a rock, which is on the BACK OF AN ANGEL (there Atlas is, I knew he would make an appearance, only in a more implausible way than the greek myth). I could go on, but the scenario gets even more fanciful, involving winds, rocks the size of the cosmos, and a bull with thousands of horns. Citations follow: who has made the earth AS FLAT and comfortable as a bed and placed upon it mountains standing firm... Surah Al-Fatihah, Surah Al-Baqarah, ayat 1 to 141, abridged by Sheikh Muhammad Nasib Ar-Rafa’i [Al-Firdous Ltd., London, 1998 second edition], pp. 79-80). quran 13:3, 15:19, 16:15, 20:53.
It was said that "Nun" refers to a grea whale that rides on the currents of the waters of the great ocean and on its back carries the seven (?) earths, as was stated by Imam Abu Jafar Ibn Jarir. Narrated by Ibn Bashar, narrated by Yahya, narrated by Sufyan Al-Thuri, narrated by Sulayman Al-Amash, narrated by Abu Thubian, narrated by Ibn Abbas who related, "The first thing that Allah created was the pen and He said to it ‘Write’. The pen asked, ‘What shall I write?’ Allah said, ‘Write (the) fate (of everything).’ So the pen wrote everything that shall be from that moment until judgment day. Then Allah created the "Nun" and He caused steam to rise out of which the heavens were created and the earth was then laid flat upon the nun's back. Then the Nun became nervous and (as a result) the earth began to sway, but (Allah) fastened (the earth) with mountains lest the earth should move ... It was narrated by Ibn Jarir, narrated by Ibn Hamid, narrated by Ata’a, narrated by Abu Al-Dahee, narrated by Ibn Abbas who stated, "The first thing my Lord created, may He be Exalted and Glorified, was the pen and He said to it, ‘Write.’ So the pen wrote all that will be until judgment day. Then Allah created the Nun (the whale) above the waters and he pressed the earth into its back. Al Tabarani narrated the same hadith (from the prophet Muhammad) who narrated from Abu Habib Zaid Al-Mahdi Al Marouzi, narrated by Sa’id Ibn Yaqub Al-Talqani, narrated by Mu’amal Ibn Ismail, narrated by Hamad Ibn Zaid, narrated by Ata’a Ibn Al Sa’ib, narrated by Abu Al Dahee Muslim Ibn Subaih, narrated by Ibn Abbas who stated that the prophet (Muhammad) said, "The first things Allah created were the pen and the whale and He said to the pen ‘Write.’ The pen asked, ‘What shall I write?’ Allah replied, ‘Everything that shall be until judgment day.’ Then He said ‘Nun. By the Pen and by what they write.’ So Nun is the whale and al-Qalam is the pen". Ibn Abu Nujaih stated that Ibrahim Ibn Abu Bakir was informed by Mujahid who said, "It was said that Nun is the great whale who is beneath the seven earths." Furthermore, Al-Baghawy and a group of commentators stated that on the back of this whale there is a great rock whose thickness is greater than the width of the heavens and the earth and above this rock is a bull that has 40 000 horns. On the body of this bull are placed the seven earths and all that they contain, and allah knows best. (The History of Al-Tabari: General Introduction and From the Creation to the Flood, translated by Franz Rosenthal, SUNY Albany, 1989, Volume 1, pp. 218-220) If the quran is actually derived from the creator of the universe, why does it support belief that the earth is flat? Consider this sura: Till, when he reached the rising-place of the sun, he found it rising on a people for whom we had appointed no shelter therefrom (Sura Al-Kahf). It is well known that the sun does not need to have any rising or setting place, because, sun neither rises, nor does it set. It is the diurnal motion of the earth which makes appear in every place of earth for sun's rising and setting. But it seems that omniscient Allah does not know the simple scientific truth. Allah thought that sun needs a definite rising and setting place and one does need to go to the end of the world to find it rising or setting. This belief is consistent with knowledge of people during Muhammad’s time who believed that the Earth is flat and the sun moves in the sky rising from one place and setting in another. Additionally, I offer these "scientific" suras: "And made the sun and the moon subservient. Each runs to a turns stated" (quran, part 13, Sura Al-Raad (The Thunder)-13, verse 2)
"And He made the sun and the moon subservient for you which are constantly moving" (quran, part 13, Sura Ibraheem (Abraham) -14, verse 23)
"And each (moon the sun) is floating in an orbit." (Al-Quran, part 23, Sura Yaseen -36, verse 140). These suras support the perceived equality of suna and moon, clearly false, and the islamic use of the lunar calendar (clearly false). Romans even used the solar calendar nearly 700 years before the muslims came into existence, so the knowledge was there. All in all, these verses actually prove the writer was ignorant of basic scientific truths, consistent with people of his time. Why would allah deceive him? All of these attempts to correlate vague islamic teachings to known scientific principles are nothing more than attempts to hoodwink people into accepting clearly flawed teachings.

[cabdirazzaq]

The picture you pain is quite grossly, some of your statements are exaggerated others are down right false but since you write with a kind attitude you should be answered by one like it.

All of this information is contained an the Jewish scriptures and New Testament of the Crristian Bible. I welcomce you to kindly show me where in the bible I might find the following information:
¤ Every creature was created from water.
¤ The heavens and the earth were joined together and then split.
¤ Mountains are like pegs which stabilize the earth.
¤ Man was created from an ´alaqa.
¤ Arabia was once pasture lands and filled with rivers.

If you can't find "all of this" as you your self said then obviously you are giving us false information, aren't you?

If we are going to examine the origins of things we should examine the genesis of the quran, much of which is plagiarized from the Jewish and Christian scriptures, which were in existence and well-known from 600 to several thousand years before Muhammed was even alive. He is telling us nothing new. He is reinterpreting existing knowledge into metaphors his target audience may understand. I am not saying he is not a messenger of God, he may very well have been. But your citations do not prove this. This particular discussion probably wouldn't go far since I would claim it was through revelation this information came and you would emphazise the fact that jews and christians lived in that area.

Among the Egyptians for example, it was the involuntary separation of Geb (the earth god) from his wife and sister Nut (the sky goddess) that was responsible for the division of the earth from the sky. The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh likewise describes the moment “when the heavens had been separated from the earth, when the earth had been delimited from the heavens” as a result of the separation of a sky God (An) from a earth Goddess (Ki). If you remove the pagan references, you have the same story as found in the Qur’an. To tell you the truth. I am no historian, nor do I know anything of pagan scriptures but I do know that this text you posted may look completly different if the context would of followed it. It doesn't matter at all even if people from Egypt knew some of this. Are you seriously suggesting [without knowledge] that the messanger of Allah (peace and blessing of Allah be upon him) studied ancient scripture[he was illerate] in a land far, far away from the desert he grew up in!

Physicist Dr. Abdus Salam once warned us against people trying to explain Big Bang using verses from Qur'an .... He does make a certain point about one thing which some muslims are ignorant of. They try to -by using Quranic verses- give you a description of something scientific which indeed may not have anything related with this at all and this is why I started the post by writing;
but before I start it is important to know that I'm not interested in either fabricating a verse nor trying to modify one so it may fit well with science. Islam is indeed not in need of such things.
This is also why I didn't mention anything about the Big Bang in my post, I'm afraid of writing a lie about the words of Allah(may he be exalted) so instead I only wrote the meaning of the verse and said that there are people agreeing with it.

From current Big Bang theory we know, the universe began before any matter of any kind existed--it began as pure energy. It took several moments for any matter to form, and then it was a plasma, not a gas. Gases only came later, after the plasma cooled, and yet gasses were still not the only constituent--much of the mass-energy at even that point, as before, was comprised of electromagnetic radiation--light.Theorytale.... could be a fairytale. This is only a theory and I can't see how it contradicts the Quran?


The fact that the Qur’an fails to mention any of this or any other crucial scientific information is precisely why its claim to scientific accuracy is to be dismissed. It is making vague metaphysical statements, and that is not science.
If we take "gaseous material" as plasma, then also the problem remains unsolved. Smoke is made of ash, predominantly carbon, and is produced from burning (oxidation), not plasma condensation. Smoke looks nothing like heated hydrogen or helium, does not share its elemental mass or other properties, and does not even possess many of the general properties of a gas. Thus, Allah chose the wrong word. He could have used "hot gases" or "hot gases expanding in a vacuum"
Fails to mention? The quran is not an astrology book, nor is it a biology book and thus I shouldn't feel compelled to respond to vague questions like why is the quran not mentioning this and this and that and so forth.

therefore no Muslim can rationally deny that this verse clearly says the earth existed at the same time as the smoke, I see your point and I did commit a big mistake by refering this to the creation of the universe it self, may the Lord forgive me for that.

The verse mentions three primary stages of embryonic development: a “seed,” “drop” or “semen” phase (not mixed fluids as male and female as you state) (in Arabic, “nutfah”),The nutfah is the mixted fluids of the man and the women.

I do not agree with you concerning your reply on the creation of man as the famous embryologist Prof. Moore said:

"The intensive studies of the Quran and hadeeth in the last four years have revealed a system for classifying human embryos that is amazing since it was recorded in the seventh century A.D. Although Aristotle, the founder of the science of embryology, realized that chick embryos developed in stages from his studies of hen’s eggs in the fourth century B.C., he did not give any details about these stages. As far as it is known from the history of embryology, little was known about the staging and classification of human embryos until the twentieth century. For this reason, the descriptions of the human embryo in the Quran cannot be based on scientific knowledge in the seventh century. The only reasonable conclusion is: these descriptions were revealed to Muhammad from God. He could not have known such details because he was an illiterate man with absolutely no scientific training.”


The majority of Islamic scholars consider it haram (prohibited) too for having direct support from hadith. Firstly, you need to bring your proof that the quran or the hadith claims that there is a tiny human inside the sperm which later grows inside the womb. Acually, the scholars often use these verses to denounce masturbation:
5. And those who guard their private parts
6. Except from their wives or their right hand possessions, for then, they are free from blame.
7. But whoever seeks beyond that, then those are the transgressors.

allah fixed the (flat) earth onto the back of a whale, then created the mpuntains as pegs to keep earth from shaking from the movement of the great whale. (Similarities to Atlas, who supported earth upon his great shoulders). The whale is in water, which is upon a rock, which is on the BACK OF AN ANGEL WHERE IN THE QURAN DOES IT SAY THIS? I have -all praise be to Allaah- memorized two thirds of the quran, letter by letter, and I would love to know where it says this. "Nun" in surah Qalam is a arabic letter. I know not the authencity of interpretations about it, this should be investigated before you lay any verdicts. The Quran does mention the fact that the earth has been flattened for us, so we may live on it and it is 100% correct. Do you not agree that the earth is round(sphere like) and flat at the same time? When we walk here, everything is made flat otherwise it would have been hard to live wouldn't it?

Do not change the meaning of surah Kahf, its meaning is clear, Ibn kathir says in his tafsir:
"(Until, when he reached the setting place of the sun,) means, he followed a route until he reached the furthest point that could be reached in the direction of the sun's setting, which is the west of the earth. As for the idea of his reaching the place in the sky where the sun sets, this is something impossible, and the tales told by storytellers that he traveled so far to the west that the sun set behind him are not true at all. Most of these stories come from the myths of the People of the Book and the fabrications and lies of their heretics"

"And each (moon the sun) is floating in an orbit." (Al-Quran, part 23, Sura Yaseen -36, verse 140)The sun does go in an orbit and so does the moon, they are floating and this is not a contradiction of any sort.