Why Islam does not clash with modern science, or does it?

[Abdelrahman]

Peace be unto all of you! Believers and Non-Believers alike!

As a Muslim, we put huge regard on scripture not clashing with modern science. We believe that if God created the scripture then it should not contain errors in it when referencing the natural world and what we've come to understand about it.

"Then do they not reflect upon the Qur'an? If it had been from [any] other than Allah, they would have found within it much contradiction." - The Holy Quran (4:82)

Many Christian/Atheist debates exist out there, but I am saddened to see that no atheists debate Muslim scholars who read and write Arabic fluently. When debates are organized between people who don't understand arabic or science it goes no where.

Arabic is my mother tongue. I also speak English at home so I'd say im fluent in both. I am a science university graduate and I love the topic of religion and science.

In Islam, we don't have 'blind faith'. I am not allowed to believe something blindly, I must have reasons. Real reasons. That is why we believe God allowed the prophets to perform miracles - so as to give people a sign. And since we believe the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) to be the last prophet, his sign and lasting miracle is the Qur'an. The Qur'an is meant to be a 'sign' to the end of time and I invite all members to reflect on its verses.

I am looking to debate someone on whether or not Islamic scriptural references to the natural world clash with modern scientific understanding!

[Abdelrahman]

brunumb can obviously reply, but your condescending comments probably won't help you to be taken more seriously. What is ironic is that you are giving English lessons, but don't appreciate that all the passages you keep quoting from the Qur'an are too vague to make the conclusions that you are making. Perhaps you could benefit from reading these passages more carefully, and seeing what is missing from them that invalidates your conclusions as to what they mean or imply.

I'm sorry if my illustrative methods have offended you. I am simply making this fun for people to read and at the same time making a very clear point.

When someone approaches me and just calls it 'vague' I honestly feel like they're not debating me properly and just having fun. So I wanna have some fun too!

I'll debate anyone seriously if they approach me seriously. But when people, like yourself, are throwing comments without evidence or proof or explanations to back their claims im forced to take the situation lightly and maybe make an illustrative point out of it.

If the comments offend you so much, then prove me wrong properly. Come debate me properly. This isn't personal you know. I'm just trying to debate the facts but you keep trying to run and hide behind misunderstood rules, wesbites that deliberately lie (proven) and by calling it vague without an explanation, you are ironically being vague yourself.

I'm looking forward to your reply!

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 40 by Abdelrahman]

And it describes said 'movement' to the 'movement of the clouds' which are very slow, yet appear fixed in the sky - exactly what the verse is saying. That the mountains move slowly and will eventually be no more.

The speed of cloud movement is a function of wind speed ... it is not always "slow" but that is a relative term. But it is never as slow as tectonic plate movement. Again, you're creating an interpretation you like when the text is completely ambiguous.

"And you see the mountains, thinking them rigid, while they will pass as the passing of clouds."

This could just as easily mean that the mountains will "pass" because of erosion over time, or some other unrelated interpretation. That is what vague statements allow, and you could then claim that the Qur'an predicted long-term erosion of mountains by weather and so was ahead of its time and therefore divinely inspired. That interpretation is just as valid as the one you prefer ... but neither are implied by the actual text because it is too vague.

Listen man, until you can see where electrons disappear to when quantum tunneling out of existence, don't tell me God doesn't start the process. We currently have no idea what happens to sub atomic particles which literally disappear out of existence and reappear simultaneously at another point in space. God could have set up the system, the whole system was set up by God. God will not come push the cloud for you, but he created wind, and water, and the whole setup. That's what it means by God sends down rain. It's alot deeper than you think, you just have to be honest with yourself and think hard.

There is no evidence to show that gods of any kind exist now, or did in the past. So attributing natural events to these imaginary beings is a waste of time, whether that relates to electrons or condensation from clouds. Back when the most popular holy books were written, gods were convenient explanations for things that people did not understand. But science has eliminated most of the reasons to resort to imaginary gods to explain things because we can explain how things work without them.

This is why I'm here, to answer your doubts and destroy your suspicions.

Then you're not doing a very good job. I still maintain that every passage from the Qur'an that you've put forth as some kind of scientifically valid prediction way ahead of its time is nothing more than a vague sentence or two that you've interpreted far beyond what is actually in the text so that you can claim it was divinely inspired.

Instead of putting ALL this effort into debating the words with me, why don't you just open a dictionary. Like really. This is a debate after all.

Opening a dictionary won't change the fact that you are taking vague passages and trying to make them mean something they don't necessarily mean. They are not specific enough to draw the conclusions you are making. It is that simple.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 41 by Abdelrahman]

I'm just trying to debate the facts but you keep trying to run and hide behind misunderstood rules, wesbites that deliberately lie (proven) and by calling it vague without an explanation, you are ironically being vague yourself.

No ... I keep repeating the same point that you can't seem to focus on (ie. the passages that you are quoting are too vague to lead to the conclusions you are making). If my comments in post 36 aren't specific enough with the two examples used there, then I'll give up and maybe someone else will chime in from a different angle.

[Diagoras]

[Replying to post 14 by Abdelrahman]

Now tell me. Can you write <...>

I ran your entire post from that point on through an online word frequency analysis and discovered the words 'god' and 'miracle' written exactly six times each (with 6 being as we know, the first 'perfect' number), and 'prophet'/'people' exactly four times (think of 4 compass directions, 4 phases of the moon, 4 seasons, etc, etc.) each.

Plus 'counting'/'sentences' exactly three times each. Three being yet another number with mystical significance in many cultures.

Although a long post by the standards of this message board, it's actually a fairly small piece of text, and yet it's still enough for me to 'find' some patterns. Why? because I'm looking for any patterns indiscriminately. I was sure I'd find something - I just didn't know what.

Another point:

From one site which you may have drawn from to post some of these examples:
http://islam.ru/en/content/story/miracl ... holy-quran

Sea 32, Land 13

Sea + land = 32+13= 45

Sea = 32/45*100=71.11111111%

Land = 13/45*100 = 28.88888889%

Sea + land =100.00%

Why choose 'sea' and 'land'? Why not 'water' and 'earth', or 'sea' and 'earth'? Were plurals included? It wouldn't be too difficult to play around with some slight variations to the theme and come up with very different answers. The fact that you and others trumpet the one which most closely matches the 'ocean/earth' (could have used 'ocean', but didn't?) ratio simply demonstrates the kind of confirmation bias that religious apologists continually perpetuate.

And one further (important) point:

Before (e.g.) 'man' and 'woman' were counted, was there a theory to suggest that they would be equal? Did someone say, "I'm confident that we'll find this pair of words to be equally used, and that number should be (X)."? Did they theorise any other pairs and predict their specific number at all? How about 'meat' and 'fruit'? Or "bless" and 'curse"?

No, of course they didn't. They simply did what I did - cherry-picked the examples that stood out most clearly, and then fitted an interpretation to the results that 'confirmed' what they wanted to find. Any other 'missed pairings' could then be conveniently forgotten, much like a charlatan's 'cold reading' of someone to foretell their future.

There is zero science to these 'amazing numbers', so they are best left as just harmless amusement.

[otseng]

Maybe I should teach you on the English language and the meanings of words. I think that would greatly help you understand the English language.

So far you've done a great job at paying attention Brunumb!! Extra gold stars for effort!!

Before we go I wanted to have another real quick English lesson! It's not boring I promise, we can watch a cartoon after if you pay attention!!

You've done a great job at addressing the details DrNoGods! But just double check your definitions before you dig too deep a hole for yourself.

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[brunumb]

[Replying to post 38 by Abdelrahman]

Before I respond to your comments I would like to point out that I am brunumb, not Brunumb.

It is one thing to know the meaning of words, but another to put them together to produce meaningful sentences that are clear, precise and unambiguous. Your God and his prophet do not seem to be aware of this when it comes to their attempt to describe the universe we live in. Nothing you elaborated on makes the passages in the Qur'an scientifically accurate . Your references to iron do not say what you think they do. Earth formed from matter that contained iron along with all the other elements. Molten iron settled into the core along with the precious metals. Asteroids delivered the small amount of all those metals scattered throughout the crust. A desert numpty doesn't need to know about all living things to make a sweeping statement that all living things require water. When you think of all the really significant things that God could have revealed to his prophet, what he did apparently reveal, in truly ungodly vagueness, is quite trivial and pathetic.

[brunumb]

[Replying to post 38 by Abdelrahman]

Everything in the universe was once a cloud... a hot dense opaque gas...and when we see these pictures online it looks just like smoke.

No, it wasn't. And the universe shortly after the Big bang was not composed of gas and would have been nothing like a cloud, let alone smoke.

[Purple Knight]

Maybe I should teach you on the English language and the meanings of words. I think that would greatly help you understand the English language.

According to this fellow it wouldn't do any good.

Arabic is the only complete straight language, any other language is 'Agam which means "not clear or accurate".

Quran is the words of Allah and His words are miraculous, that's why it is impossible for humans to translate it.
Would you like to try?

My two cents on the matter is that English actually is unclear. Many words can mean multiple things, and many things can be described by more than one word. It relies heavily on both people wanting to understand one another, but if they do it does seem to happen. This means a dishonest debater can always spoil the debate and chalk up a win for himself simply by arguing definitions.

I'm not calling anyone dishonest.

I actually didn't read the whole discussion.

I don't know who started on definitionalism.

[brunumb]

[Replying to post 38 by Abdelrahman]

1) Earth - 'Earth' is the planet we live on. It contains all known life and is shaped almost like an oval.

2) Heavens including the planets and stars - This is defined as all the planets in space above Earth. Have you ever looked outside at a night sky? Those little twinkly things are called stars! Stars also inhabit space along with the planets and black holes and the such..

3) Joined entity - Bear with me, this might be a little tough. This is when two things (or more) become one thing. It's like like when twins are joined together as one body and then surgery is performed to remove the two twins from each other. We say they were once a 'joined entity' and now they are not. We even go above and beyond with the word entity - which is defined as a thing with distinct and independent existence. That maybe the twins when joined together, were a distinct and independent existence, maybe not made of flesh.

4) Were once - 'Once' means at some point in the past and 'were' is the past subjunctive of 'be'. So combined, 'were once' means: at some point in the past something was...

Now, what do we get when we combine all these meanings together? Comon you can do it Brunumb...think hard...what do we get? We get something called a sentence in English. Not meaningless gibberish. In fact a very meaningful statement made decades ahead of its time. This concludes our English lesson!

You avoided my question by giving me your condescending lesson in English. You failed to explain exactly how the Earth and the heavens were once joined and then separated. Here is the passage I asked you to explain:
"Have those who disbelieved not considered that the heavens and the earth were a joined entity, and We separated them and made from water every living thing? Then will they not believe?" [Quran 21:30]

[Abdelrahman]

This could just as easily mean that the mountains will "pass" because of erosion over time, or some other unrelated interpretation. That is what vague statements allow, and you could then claim that the Qur'an predicted long-term erosion of mountains by weather and so was ahead of its time and therefore divinely inspired. That interpretation is just as valid as the one you prefer ... but neither are implied by the actual text because it is too vague.

I showed you the term used means 'movement', not erosion. I even referenced the Cambridge dictionary! If you want to claim it means erosion then reference some evidence buddy. Again, I am here to debate!

This is why I'm here, to answer your doubts and destroy your suspicions.

Then you're not doing a very good job. I still maintain that every passage from the Qur'an that you've put forth as some kind of scientifically valid prediction way ahead of its time is nothing more than a vague sentence or two that you've interpreted far beyond what is actually in the text so that you can claim it was divinely inspired.

Evidence? Explain to us your point of view please. You are entitled to your opinion any day, but this is a debate website. You must back your claims with some evidence. Otherwise my statements backed with evidence take precedent over your baseless claims.

Opening a dictionary won't change the fact that you are taking vague passages and trying to make them mean something they don't necessarily mean. They are not specific enough to draw the conclusions you are making. It is that simple.

Opening a dictionary has shown us that the word in the verse means move - from movement. Not what you claim: erosion, vaporization, disappearing, superfluously generating into Jelly. It just means 'move' simple as that. You are worried the term is too vague and can mean many things, so prove it. Show us what else the Arabic word can mean. See your argument fails the moment one opens an Arabic dictionary and learns the meaning of words. Yes in English, pass means many things, but in Arabic the word used only means 'move'. I've referenced my evidence, now its up to the reader to check my claim. It's that simple. If you want to keep ignoring my evidence that's up to you, but I urge anyone reading this to check for themselves!