The purpose with this blog is to expose the claim of modern Islamic apologists that the Qur'an is miracolous in its prediction of what they claim resembles modern science.

Saturday 24 July 2010

Are included Contemporary Sources Problematic for the Qur'an?

A good question relating the previous thread was asked me on the Answering-Muslim blog, I think it is worth mentioning here:


Fifth Monarchy Man said...
Hey Hogan,

Do Muslims generally have a problem with ideas found in the Quran existing in contemporary sources?

I ask this because as a Christian I have no problem with Jude’s use of non canonical information in his letter.

Just curious

peace
Hogan's reply:

Monarch man,

I agree with you. I am honestly not to sure about how problematic this is.

In fact in this thread, my main intent was to refute those who maintain that this idea was never known of prior to Islam which therefore renders the Qur'an as miracolous. I guess by know it should be obvious that Bucaille, Harun Yahay, Osama Abdallah have simply failed to do their homework or are willingly lying to and deceiving their readers.

Personally I have no problem with holy books utilizing its contemporary terms and language, the Bible does that. Otherwise the contemporary reader or listeners would be unable to perceive the message. That would especially go for OT or NT books which are not revelations but rather inspirations.

However, in this case of the Qur'an, in which the author is utilizing an ancient scientific idea it extends far beyond that.

If the Qur'an simply used these terms to signify cosmogony, I would have no problem with that. However, since the Qur'an refers specifically to the view of the unbelievers and connecting these terms to them, it appears that the Qur'an views cosmogony as an actual separation of the literal heaven and earth from an entity that priorly consisted of these; that is certainly a Qur'anic difficulty.

The second problem concerns those who view the passage as miracolous, since it predicts modern science. Firstly, the passage does not predict modern science, since in modern science the heaven and earth never separate, rather within modern science the earth evolves through accreation within an expanding universe. Furthermore, if the 'separation of heaven and earth' is described prior to Islam, then the idea does not promote the miracolous nature of the Qur'an.

I guess some might also suggest that since the Qur'an is a divine book existing in heaven, completely devoid of human or created interferance, why is the Qur'an then containing and depending on so many ideas that have human origin and that even wrongly postulate cosmological and earthly science. I realise that the Muslim might say that the revelation of God in e.g. Isaiah also contains terms that were perceived by its contemporaries in their scientific understanding, but then again, we do not claim that the book of Isaiah was contained in heaven but rather that the revelations to Isaiah were given to his contemporaries. Furthermore, the science of Isaiah much like elsewhere in the OT is metaphorical, there is no indication that the e.g. the heaven or the earth actually have pillars, while the separation of the heaven and earth in the Qur'an is referred to as an actual occurance.

No comments:

Post a Comment