Over on a Facebook page that claims to be a hangout for Muslims to debunk Atheism, one guy announced his evidence for the Quran as follows…
I am not dumping the scientific inventions… or discoveries… They are more proof that Islam is the true religion and Quran is the True of Allah…MANY SCIENTIST REVERTED TO ISLAM>>> when they found the same of their discoveries to have been told 1400 years ago in Quran… which would have been possible only by the CREATOR himself.
Well, how can anybody resist, I just had to ask, so I replied …
give us just one single quote from the Quran that is a clear statement of modern science … note, the vague poetical stuff that has been twisted does not count, nor does a link to some YouTube clip … just the exact words from the Quran … if your claim is correct it should be simple to prove it.
And as you might expect, this is what came back:
The best exapmle is Professor Keith Moore http://www.quranandscience.com/human/135-dr-keith-moore-confirms-embryology-in-quran.html
This is a very old chestnut. Just in case you are not familiar with this one, the claim here is that when presented with the detailed description of embryology in the Quran, Dr Keith Moore (a real embryologist) confirmed that it was amazing, aligns with our modern understanding, and so must be from Allah.
Dr. Keith L. Moore, Ph.D., F.I.A.C. of the Department of Anatomy, University of Toronto, Canada, was at one time a favourite of Islamic apologists. He is well-known because he accepted an invitation to produce a special edition of his Embryology Text Book specifically for use by Muslim students in Islamic Universities.
To justify it all, what has happened is a very loose translation of Arabic into terms that no Arabic speaker would consider justified. It also completely ignores the timing of phases dictated by the hadith.
Why did Moore go along with this forward in his book?
Easy $$$ He was quite well paid by the Saudi government for the use of his name.
This all has a couple of interesting additional notes …
- Moore is not a Muslim and so this evidence of a miracle did not convince him, so why should it convince us?
- The Acknowledgments for this book recognize a number of “distinguished scholars” who supported the book with time or money. And number 6 on the list? Osama bin Laden. (Yikes!!)
- If you buy Moore’s sixth edition University textbook called “The developing human”, he actually directs his readers to read an essay by Basim Musallam, who shows that the Koran merely echoes what Greek doctor “Galen” wrote 450 years earlier. (B. Musallam (Cambridge, 1983) Sex and Society in Islam. p. 54)
Another interesting development on this topic concerns Hamza Andreas Tzortzis. Yep, the guy who cornered PZ Myers in June 2011 with a camera crew at the AAI conference in Dublin and made this exact same claim – embryology in the Quran proves Allah is real. When PZ dismissed all that, he was told, “Who are you to dismiss Keith Moore, a real embryologist“, and it is then that PZ explains that he is in fact an embryologist. I blogged about all that in June 2011 here. There you can still find the actual video.
OK, the latest news is that Hamza wrote a 58 page paper on all this to present his claim in great detail, and PZ read it and then blogged a few comments …
I have read the entirety of Hamza Andreas Tzortzis’ paper, Embryology in the Qur’an: A scientific-linguistic analysis of chapter 23: With responses to historical, scientific & popular contentions, all 58 pages of it (although, admittedly, it does use very large print). It is quite possibly the most overwrought, absurdly contrived, pretentious expansion of feeble post hoc rationalizations I’ve ever read. As an exercise in agonizing data fitting, it’s a masterpiece.
Here, let me give you the short version…and I do mean short. This is a paper that focuses with obsessive detail on all of two verses from the Quran. You heard me right: the entirety of the embryology in that book, the subject of this lengthy paper, is two goddamned sentences, once translated into English.
“We created man from an essence of clay, then We placed him as a drop of fluid in a safe place. Then We made that drop of fluid into a clinging form, and then We made that form into a lump of flesh, and We made that lump into bones, and We clothed those bones with flesh, and later We made him into other forms. Glory be to God the best of creators. Seriously, that’s it. You have just mastered all of developmental biology, as taught by Mohammed.”
You can go read his full take-down on it all here. It is hilarious, and truly does illustrate how completely decoupled fanatical believers can be from reality, or as PZ puts it …
Only a blinkered fanatic could turn that mush into an overwrought, overextended, overblown, strained comparison with legitimate modern science. Tzortzis’s paper is risible crackpottery.
Nope! There is no such thing. You are just fabricating things, that is all
Hes wrong . The correct word is congealed blood, dead blood.
Muslims cannot get around the truth , your prophet was wrong.
Muhammad stated clearly :
Semen comes from between the backbone and ribs. Wrong
Semen in conception becomes congealed ( dead) blood. That is the correct word. WRONG
The gender of a child is determined by which partner orgasms first. Wrong. GENDER always is determined by the Father. Orgasm determines nothing regarding gender.
Muhammad claimed he came TO THE PLACE WHERE the actual sin sets in a muddy spring. He wasn’t being metaphorical. The sun as we now know is over 1 million times times the volume of earth. But a real prophet would know that from allah.
Muhammad was a false deceptive, extremely immoral man. Jesus stated you will know a prophet by their fruits. Muhammad was broke all the commandments yet told Muslims allah gave them the Torah.
You have 10 different Qurats , revelations. You have over 30 different Qurans worldwide and 93000 differences between them all.
If you are smart, you’ d leave Islam
Muhammed hijab tries to answer the claim that the blood clot is an error, it’s about 2/3 through 3hour video .
Wrong, faith is for the weak minded, the sheep, the gullible, the mindless cowards that obey people dressed in funny clothes.
Sufia, the quran is preserved by Allah? not very well hadiths talk of sheep eating a who chapter on stoning (thank you sheep) which was lost forever, other Chapters lost, Qurans collected revised and edited by Uthman then those copies burned, thousands of men charged with remembering sections of the quran killed in battle and what they remembered lost forever. Then we have discovered atleast 37 different Qurans not just dialectally different but major differences.. and your top scholars have admitted that there are differences in the different qurans so?
Moor said he was a Christian so you`re wrong about that
So he`s a Christian…..So why so many muslim videos claiming he converted?
Faith is only for who open mind and sincere heart to obey their creator, even for his own needs in this short life.
Of course the creator always gives signs for people who want to think, about the creation. There is no compulsion. All will return to themselves.
I checked Moore’s sixth edition University textbook called “The developing human” and i didn’t find anything mentioned about Basim Musallam or his works.
https://www.amazon.com/Developing-Human-Clinically-Oriented-Embryology/dp/0721669743
(Professor) Dr. Emeritus Keith Moore:
If I was an agnostic or I didn’t strongly believe in God I would accept Islam. But since my father was a minister and I was raised as a strong Christian, I will remain a Christian.
It’s just struck me that, given the number of wives he had and the penchant for killing foes and taking their women folk, he probably could have had access to a fair number of miscarriages. That would have easily given insight into stages of foetal development.
Hi
Thanks for replying re. Our ‘Pork etc’ discussion
Please
I know it’s hard
And you’ve probably been a Muslim since birth
Dropping or even revising/reforming set ideas can upset a person!
But….
The essays you sent soundrd to me like the stuff I sometimes read from, say, jehovas witnesses or mormons or evangelist christians
WHACKY in other words!
PLEASE read this ‘reply’ to the Moore embryology article with an open mind
Mike
ps and the ‘evidence’ certainly didn’t convince Moore
He remains an Atheist!
Moore said in one interview tht he was a Christian.
For Muslim claims for embryology see http://islampapers.com/embryology-in-the-quran/
A link to, hopefully, all this Moore embryology propaganda.
http://www.answering-islam.org/Index/M/moore.html
Islam is a complete code of life . Islam manifest and flourish inshallah, because it is a true religion.Quranic verses are preserved and are in its original form since its time of revelation. Allah ( God) has preserved it in the heart of people. Scientist , intellectuals and truly guided people take guidance from it . May Allah give mankind guidance and bring all of us together . Islam is open for criticism and we accept criticism.
Sufia, I have often heard the saying “preserved and in its original for since its time of revelation”. Though there is some dispute that there were several different versions of Quran in the past, what is of more importance is that, while words may be the same, it is the meanings of words that change with time. For example, I have tried to read some of Shakespeare, but frankly cannot get the meanings he intended (other linguists tell us what he really meant). And Shakespeare’s writings are not as old. A complete code of life? Are you aware that Muhammad received “special privileges” so that he and he alone was exempt from the complete code of life? Even one of his wives, Aisha, (he had many more wives than allotted others), even she noticed that he seemed to be granted his every wish when he but asked of Allah
Oh?
The quran HAS been changed.
https://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=22828.0
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