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

Creationism, Evolution, and other science issues

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

Post #1

Post by 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!

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DrNoGods
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Post #61

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to post 56 by Abdelrahman]
What piece of text? Maybe I'm missing something here.
You are. He ran the numbers for one of your own posts to illustrate how meaningless this kind of word counting is. Read his first sentence from post 44.
In human affairs the sources of success are ever to be found in the fountains of quick resolve and swift stroke; and it seems to be a law, inflexible and inexorable, that he who will not risk cannot win.
John Paul Jones, 1779

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.
Mark Twain

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Post #62

Post by mms20102 »

[Replying to post 60 by DrNoGods]
I don't want to waste any more time on this subject as it is just going in circles. I made my point in post 36 with two of your examples, and maintain that the quoted passages from the Qur'an are too vague to draw the conclusions you are making. There is no piece of "evidence" to be presented that a sentence is vague ... it is an interpretation of the words used, and that they do not clearly describe something.
Ok again, since you don't know Arabic and you can only speak English, your claim is not valid. Unless you can prove that the Arabic text is vague, you need to listen to us, Arabic speakers. We are not linguists and we provide you with the simplest meaning which might be vague in English, but certainly, it doesn't mean that the original text is vague. Unless you have proof of your claim, please don't repeat the same claim.
Stating that a sentence is too vague to draw a conclusion that is being drawn is not something for which evidence can be presented
The evidence was clear and explained, but you chose not to accept it even after we have presented comments from specialists as references, you still chose not to accept any evidence we present and continued with denial without providing us with a logical reason to your denial.
other than the sentence itself and the words used.
We presented comments from geologists that support the same words and sentences. We have nothing more to present unless you have a contradiction between the Arabic text and the scientific fact.
I made my point in post 36.
It was vague.
Saying that mountains "will pass" like clouds, even if that word does refer to movement, does not allow a claim that the writer was knowledgeable of tectonic plate movement, because no mechanism was provided for the movement. There is no reason to eliminate an interpretation such as ... Allah made the mountains move ... just like he "sent" rain down from the sky. The passage is not specific enough to conclude that the source of mountain movement has anything whatsoever to do with the movement of tectonic plates, or the earth that the mountains are attached to. This is what I mean by being too vague to allow your specific conclusions.
Unless you know Arabic or unless you bring a source for translation that supports your point, your comments are unreliable.

one last thing
Having texts supporting natural fact doesn't prove the divinity of the text but supports its reliability

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Post #63

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to post 62 by mms20102]
The evidence was clear and explained, but you chose not to accept it even after we have presented comments from specialists as references, you still chose not to accept any evidence we present and continued with denial without providing us with a logical reason to your denial.
This website is in English. All dialog is in English. The quoted texts you guys are arguing about were given here in English. The logical reason I've given many times is in English, and is the simple fact that the quoted texts from the Qur'an are too vague and open to various interpretations to allow you to conclude that they mean what is being claimed. You haven't presented any evidence to the contrary, but keep saying that these passages can only be understood in Arabic.

If you don't like my responses then you are free to ignore them, or better yet produce a translation IN ENGLISH of these passages that you think accurately represents the meaning of the original text and discuss that. But don't keep saying that only the Arabic text is legitimate and if we're not debating in Arabic there is no point. If you want to make that argument then you are better off finding an Arabic site and carry on your dicsussion there. If you can't translate these passages into English in a way that preserves the original meaning, then there is no point making arguments on this English website.
In human affairs the sources of success are ever to be found in the fountains of quick resolve and swift stroke; and it seems to be a law, inflexible and inexorable, that he who will not risk cannot win.
John Paul Jones, 1779

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.
Mark Twain

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Post #64

Post by Elijah John »

Abdelrahman wrote:
Ok, if you're going to insult the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) then why did you report me for my condescending tone lol? If it's all fair play then play along! I'm not going to report you though for that comment... it's not new to Muslims.....


Please stop breaking the rules and reference your claims with evidence!!
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My theological positions:

-God created us in His image, not the other way around.
-The Bible is redeemed by it's good parts.
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I am inspired by Jesus to worship none but YHVH, and to serve only Him.

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Post #65

Post by mms20102 »

[Replying to post 63 by DrNoGods]
if we're not debating in Arabic there is no point. If you want to make that argument then you are better off finding an Arabic site and carry on your dicsussion there. If you can't translate these passages into English in a way that preserves the original meaning, then there is no point making arguments on this English website.
I'm not asking you to speak Arabic I'm asking you to clarify why the Arabic text could mean something else to what we are telling you. Where is your sources to justify that it has another translation ?

the Arabic text " أَوَلَمْ يَرَ الَّذ�ينَ كَ�َر�وا أَنَّ السَّمَاوَات� وَالْأَرْضَ كَانَتَا رَتْقًا �َ�َتَقْنَاه�مَا ۖ وَجَعَلْنَا م�نَ الْمَاء� ك�لَّ شَيْء� حَيّ� ۖ أَ�َلَا ي�ؤْم�ن�ونَ (30) "

English translations :

DR. GHALI
And have not the ones who disbelieved seen that the heavens and the earth were an integrated (mass), then We unseamed them, and of water We have made every living thing? Would they then not believe?

SAHIH INTERNATIONAL
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?

ABDUL HALEEM
Are the disbelievers not aware that the heavens and the earth used to be joined together and that We ripped them apart, that We made every living thing from water? Will they not believe?

DR. MUSTAFA KHATTAB
Do the disbelievers not realize that the heavens and earth were ˹once˺ one mass then We split them apart?* And We created from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?

YUSUF ALI
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?
ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
*This probably refers to the event commonly known as the Big Bang.

Now you have several translations to the text

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Post #66

Post by Diagoras »

[Replying to post 56 by Abdelrahman]

Hi, Abdelrahman. I see your question about which text I used to analyse word frequency has already been answered by DrNoGods in Post 61, so hopefully that clears up any confusion.

The point being, we see patterns everywhere. Islam's holy book is not particularly exceptional in this regard.

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Post #67

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to post 65 by mms20102]
I'm not asking you to speak Arabic I'm asking you to clarify why the Arabic text could mean something else to what we are telling you. Where is your sources to justify that it has another translation ?


I've made no such comment. It is you guys who are saying that the English translations do not accurately represent the original Arabic meaning, so I have asked for alternative translations that do. Here you give 5 translations of a passage (which isn't either of the two I used in post 36), and I found many more here:

https://quran.com/21/30?translations=32 ... 2,18,17,95

https://www.islamawakened.com/quran/21/30/

Here is another from the first link:

"Did the disbelievers not observe that the heavens and the earth were closed, then We opened them? And We created from water every living thing. Would they still not believe?"

I can see why you probably left that one out, because saying that the heavens and the earth were "closed" and then opened is a lot different than saying they were one mass, or one entity. Another translation is:

"Did the unbelievers (who do not accept the teaching of the Prophet) not realize that the heavens and the earth were one solid mass, then We tore them apart, and We made every living being out of water? Will they, then, not believe (that We created all this)?"

Now we have the heavens and earth as "one solid mass", which is not at all compatible with the Big Bang which describes the singularity as existing before fundamental particles had cooled enough to even form atoms which have mass. Or will you now conveniently claim that the writers knew E = mc^2 and that mass and energy were interchangeable? I expect the people who translated the original Arabic and used the word mass didn't think of this problem, but the point is that all of these translations are far too vague and nonspecific to claim that the passage implies knowledge of the Big Bang, or any other modern physics. If Arabic is so crystal clear, why these various translations for that one specific description of how earth and the heavens were initially?

It would be interesting to know which of these many translations, if any, were done after the Big Bang hypothesis came about and someone had the idea that this passage could be claimed to represent knowledge of the Big Bang, rather than from a direct and unbiased translation made before the Big Bang hypothesis came about.

I maintain my point that these passages from the Qur'an are too vague to allow the claims you guys are making. The fact there are significant differences in the translations in the links above is just more proof of that, and as I'm sure you know there are plenty of websites where these kinds of claims for the Qur'an (or other holy books ... pick one) are analyzed and debunked because they have been around a long time. People love to imagine that their holy books are special, but only their holy book.
In human affairs the sources of success are ever to be found in the fountains of quick resolve and swift stroke; and it seems to be a law, inflexible and inexorable, that he who will not risk cannot win.
John Paul Jones, 1779

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.
Mark Twain

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Post #68

Post by Abdelrahman »

It's permissible and good to apologize. But the subsequent explanation was not necessary, and in fact can be considered "challenging moderator action". In general when receiving a comment or warning from a moderator, it's best to just take it to heart and move on.

Please review the Rules.
Good point Elijah! Again, sorry everyone! God speed.

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Post #69

Post by Abdelrahman »

This website is in English. All dialog is in English. The quoted texts you guys are arguing about were given here in English. The logical reason I've given many times is in English, and is the simple fact that the quoted texts from the Qur'an are too vague and open to various interpretations to allow you to conclude that they mean what is being claimed. You haven't presented any evidence to the contrary, but keep saying that these passages can only be understood in Arabic.
We live in the 21st century. Muslims don't consider translations the word of God - His word was in Arabic. Translations are just an attempt at translating the meaning.

I posted dictionary links - translating each word for you. But you seem to keep ignoring the evidence and providing your own interpretation.

I showed you how 'pass' is one word in English and can be used for various contexts. I can say, pass the ball, pass the test or pass a car. They all mean different things but the same word is being used. This is simply untrue in Arabic, each type of 'pass' has a unique word. So when we translate the verse into English it says 'pass' hence your confusion because in English it can mean 3 things at once. But in Arabic it is refering to 'pass' the movement, like passing a car.
If you don't like my responses then you are free to ignore them, or better yet produce a translation IN ENGLISH of these passages that you think accurately represents the meaning of the original text and discuss that.
I did. I referenced the Cambridge Dictionary word by word. Or is that a resource you don't trust? You're simply ignoring all the evidence I've posted.
But don't keep saying that only the Arabic text is legitimate and if we're not debating in Arabic there is no point. If you want to make that argument then you are better off finding an Arabic site and carry on your dicsussion there.
Well if you wan't to know which 'pass' is meant you must look at the Arabic. Remarkably enough, 'pass' used here means move.

Now it does not need to say this occurs by plate tectonics, the very statement that mountains move is in an of itself ahead of its time. It's literally saying, 'you think mountains are fixed, but they move' as simple as a translation you'll get. That very sentence is decades ahead of its time. Simple.
If you can't translate these passages into English in a way that preserves the original meaning, then there is no point making arguments on this English website.
I referenced an English website: an English to Arabic dictionary - the Cambridge Dictionary. I've translated the verse word by word using said website into English. But you have chosen to ignore it.

If you don't trust the Cambridge dictionary then say so. I'll reference another dictionary.

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Post #70

Post by Abdelrahman »

There is nothing particularly revelatory in the examples you have quoted so far. The milky Way looks like a cloud with lots of stars in it.
The Qur'an goes one step further and says not only were the heavens and Earth were like a smoke before their formation, it also says they were connected - a joined entity. Looking up at the night sky won't give you such a conclusion.
Meteoric iron was used for thousands of years before the Iron Age began and it is not a big stretch for people to have discerned that it came from the sky.
Albert Jambon, from the National Center for Scientific Research in France says:
Europeans started to understand meteorites only at the beginning of the 19th century. Before that scientists or philosophers would disregard stories about rocks fallen from the sky as tales or witchcraft.
Until the early 19th century most Western astronomers shared Isaac Newton’s assumption that rocks didn’t simply fall from the sky.
So it took the West until the early 19th century to discern that rocks falling from the sky actually happened, but Muhammad (pbuh) 1400 years ago got it from just looking up?
As DrNoGods has said, the Qur'an passages are vague enough to be consistent with primitive knowledge of the day while being somewhat consistent with later discoveries.
Mountains move, common origin of Earth and the heavens - smoke like origin. Water is essential to ALL life.

Name me one scientist or thinker or civilization which knew any of these things 1400 years ago. This knowledge, although primitive to us now, took the West another few hundred years to discern. Could an illiterate man have come up with all this on his own? These are not the only examples either.
When you add in the fact that we don't really know what the author was thinking or what his intentions were when he wrote the passages, there is no definitive correlation to what science has revealed to us.
Well, the author, is posing the question to the reader... have the disbelievers not considered? Like it was a point for people to consider belief in God over. The author is using said fact to prove God's existence.

Again, I've referenced sources that have shown that the early universe was once a hot gas - some scientist even described said gas as a smoke which light cannot penetrate. Completely agreeing with what science has revealed to us.
As for the numbers, I'd be far more impressed if the Qur'an stated the actual percentages of land and water directly and maybe mentioned other continents like America, Australia and Antarctica.
[/quote]

How about the movement of the mountains? No man knew such things 1400 years ago.

How about the verse that details the deep ocean as containing waves above which are waves above which are the clouds - describing the seas internal waves.

How about the verse that says God created the heavens (space) with might and that He is expanding it.

Or that Iron was sent down to Earth. An idea that took the West up to the 19th century to even consider.

Or this verse:
"And We made the sky a protected ceiling, but they, from its signs, are turning away." - The Holy Qur'an [21:32]
Do you not see that it is the subtlety in language, that carries deep meaning. Meaning beyond the ideas and beliefs man held at the time.

How does an illiterate man talk of the oceans internal waves, talk of mountains as moving, space as expanding, Iron as descending and the sky as a protective layer. We know today the significance of all these claims made 1400 years ago.

An illiterate man living in the desert simply cannot guess so much. There must be one place it's wrong, anywhere. Not one description contradicts what we know from modern science.

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