This post is to explain better the 'question' of whether Muslims understand the Quran and/or accept scientific evidence, when examining specific verses.
The verses are introduced and explained on the website, in English as well as other languages, with reference to the text/book "A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam".
The following is being introduced as evidence, about something of a controversy regarding Richard Dawkins blind belief that the Quran is wrong and his only proof is that a young Muslim girl/student in a science classroom doesn't know how to explain the verse(s) in question.
Unlike other scientists, such as Maurice Bucaille, or Doctor of Medicine, Keith Moore, Dawkins doesn't bother to investigate the original source before condemning the Quran to the 'fairytales' corner of the library.
"So I think there's a very, very pernicious influence that is lasting up to the university years. That must be coming from certain schools." [Muslims, who he reserves special dislike for]
He said that he noticed the "utterly deplorable" effect they were having first hand after visiting a Muslim school in Leicester as part of a documentary he made last year called Faith Schools Menace?
"Every single person I met believes if there is any disagreement between the Koran and science, then the Koran wins," he said. [Understandable, though it is considered wrong and a form of "child abuse" to promote Islam in schools, or the 'creation' idea]
"I spoke to a group of girls, and to a senior science teacher who believes the world is 6,000 years old. [I am highly suspicious here, because the end of the sentence doesn't have a quotation mark... did he really say this? or is he being misquoted? Notice that all the other sentences have proper quotation marks on both ends of every sentence.]
"It's just utterly deplorable. These are now British children who are having their minds stuffed with alien rubbish."
Mr Dawkins said he was not so worried about the expansion of faith schools if they were the kind that "vaguely" have a kind of Church of England-style assembly.
But he was holding "his fire" for the ones that are teaching "total nonsense".
This is a link to the original article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8814298/Richard-Dawkins-attacks-Muslim-schools-for-stuffing-childrens-minds-with-alien-rubbish.html
"So I think there's a very, very pernicious influence that is lasting up to the university years. That must be coming from certain schools." [Muslims, who he reserves special dislike for]
He said that he noticed the "utterly deplorable" effect they were having first hand after visiting a Muslim school in Leicester as part of a documentary he made last year called Faith Schools Menace?
"Every single person I met believes if there is any disagreement between the Koran and science, then the Koran wins," he said. [Understandable, though it is considered wrong and a form of "child abuse" to promote Islam in schools, or the 'creation' idea]
"I spoke to a group of girls, and to a senior science teacher who believes the world is 6,000 years old. [I am highly suspicious here, because the end of the sentence doesn't have a quotation mark... did he really say this? or is he being misquoted? Notice that all the other sentences have proper quotation marks on both ends of every sentence.]
"It's just utterly deplorable. These are now British children who are having their minds stuffed with alien rubbish."
Mr Dawkins said he was not so worried about the expansion of faith schools if they were the kind that "vaguely" have a kind of Church of England-style assembly.
But he was holding "his fire" for the ones that are teaching "total nonsense".
This is a link to the original article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8814298/Richard-Dawkins-attacks-Muslim-schools-for-stuffing-childrens-minds-with-alien-rubbish.html
IF you don't have an English explanation of the Quran, you might be able to borrow one in your public library; Muslims sometimes ask for permission to place Quran copies free of charge in their local libraries.
The video does show that the girls come to the same conclusion, and the teacher suggests this is because of their free choice and their ability to think for themselves, despite the environment in which they are studying (Islamic school). But she also says they are told the right opinion from an Islamic perspective, because the Quran teaches that God created human beings (in their human form).
Of course, people have a problem with this 'teaching method'. Yes, religious schools teach science in schools but not through a secular lens.
The Quran's position on human evolution is clearly that there was no human evolution.
Is the Quran a good source of scientific information?
It isn't a science text. It is a religious text. The girls say "yes" it is a "good source" of scientific information.
There are verses which do speak about natural phenomena or point the way to facts which were not known during the Prophet Muhammad's time nor for many centuries after that, in many instances.
This is really what the children are alluding to. They do not view the Quran, a holy scripture, as a purely scientific resource, and their understanding is that the Quran is the truth. Therefore, they do not accept the theory of evolution, but there are many interesting verses of a scientific nature that should not be dismissed outright.
Dawkins dismisses some of the verses outright, and in fact, he dismisses the Quran, even though he has not studied it. Like many non-Muslims, he does not take the claims made by the Quran at all seriously. There are many non-Muslims in the past who did not have this dismissive attitude, and in fact they travelled to Arabia to study the Quran, and non-Muslims learned Arabic so that they could study at Islamic Universities, in Spain at Cordoba and elsewhere, throughout the centuries after the spread of Islamic knowledge and following the propagation of Islam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2IEvykdCpQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2IEvykdCpQ
Richard Dawkins says that "respectable" scientists believe in evolution, "as all respectable scientists do". In other words, Christian scientists who do not accept the theory are not necessary of the same 'caliber'. He doesn't outright accuse them of being not "respectable" but he doesn't appear to give their opinion any weight, maybe because the Bible appears to be merely 'nonsensical' stories, and contains factual errors, or scientific errors. In places, it contradicts itself.
Perhaps the six days is not really six days, but six periods of time, which is how I would probably interpret the Biblical text about Creation. But the existence of light and dark before the creation of the sun and the moon, is less easy to explain away.
Evolution could occur by natural selection; but he says this isn't very obvious.
Islam doesn't specifically say anything against 'natural selection' but this needs further study, Muslim researches and an Islamic contribution, too.
Where did the one cell (for all life) come from? Asks one student.
"That's a rather more difficult question" (between 4.5 and 3 billion years ago)
"The first replicating entity... that means copying". DNA makes copies of itself, but with mutations, because without mutations you couldn't have evolution.
"a chemical event..." is the origin of life, therefore, he says.
with some "mistaken" chemical versions of a molecule (then you have the origin of competition, he says).
The Quran doesn't accept this "simple" beginning, but the Quran speaks about the "big bang", which one male student then asks about, after this origin of life explanation.
"From bacteria you could get groupings of complicated cells", he adds.
@comments
Steve McRae 3 months ago
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@comments
Steve McRae 3 months ago
+BOB OVER "If a group of Humans went to mars and stayed away for 100,000 years they would probably no longer be homo sapiens"
What what??? Of course they still would be homo sapiens, a species doesn't just morph into a new species...while they may diverge, there still will be homo sapiens and even the divergent group will still be in the genus homo. A new species does not mean that the ancestral species can not still be extant.
Steve McRae 2 months ago
+KoolBreeze420 Yes, they would still of course be primates...but in speciation from phylogenetic lines we can say subspecies still retain their lines of phylogeny, but if the race of homo sapiens diverged to the point of being biologically reproductively isolated to be a new species the would in the Linnaean classification system be given probably a new name since we would have two independent species sharing common ancestry.
mikejackey 1 week ago
+Steve McRae Well probably more than 100,000 years, but on top of that, there still would most likely be homo sapiens. Also, the population would also have to be fairly large to increase the likelihood of a viable gene mutation.
In the video (see the corresponding link below) with the atheist professor (now a Christian) one of his student's questions is about this problem, e.g. how can something with defects become perfect or better; I ask, how can something more simple become more complex. If we consider the male and female cells, they join and produce a viable fetus by the will of the Creator, therefore they must be very complex, compared to cells that don't differentiate, for example the liver, or skin cells. I know that this is 'explained' by the role of DNA and genetics, etc. but it isn't a complete or satisfactory explanation.
Therefore, though the Muslim student "doesn't understand" the Big Bang, doesn't mean that the Quran doesn't mention it, or even propose the Big Bang theory, which it does.
His physicist friends don't ask about "before the Big Bang", admits Dawkins. He disagrees that one shouldn't ask the question; here he will differ with many others, including most Muslims I dare say.
The Earth's beginnings, like the Universe's beginnings is the Big Bang. Some argue on websites, that the Quran (actually, the English explanation) falls short of science, because the Earth is much younger than the Universe.
The earth actually came out of the same materials as the Universe, and it took millions or billions of years to "evolve". What we know as the Earth today, is very young compared to the Universe but it's beginnings nonetheless were at the instance of the beginnings of our Universe. This certainly isn't as big a problem for agreement between Islam and Science as the Christian claim of a "young earth" of only several thousand years.
What does the verse actually say? That is disputable, and it isn't at all true that Muslims give an actual estimate for the "creation" of Earth, for example, the Quran says that the Universe came into being in the Big Bang, but the Earth is not yet evolved at that point. God later creates the earth, in Six or Seven Days. This is explained in terms of "long periods" of time. In other words the earth's cooling, and evolution. The development of mountains, the splitting of the plates of the earth, could also be included, for example. After many millions of years AND after the cooling of the earth, sometime God sent Adam and Eve to begin the population of the Earth with human beings.
The fundamental idea, that we are all cousins, was something Darwin says, and Dawkins "doubts" that science will prove later that he was wrong about that. He admits that science doesn't have a holy grail or a book such as a religious book, which proves all the things that science says today. He knows that science hasn't proven without a doubt the connection between apes and humans for example, yet he insists that 'human evolution' is true.
He would immediately change his view if the evidence was there that really disputed the current evidence of evolution.
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See the above link for a video where the Biologist speaks in New York in 2009, about his book,
"The Greatest Show On Earth".
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Do you really believe the world started a few thousand years ago? asks Dawkins; He tells a student if your RE teacher believes that "I would be really surprised". Meaning that since the teacher has studied science at University she can't possibly believe something (that most ppl assume the Quran teaches e.g. a young Earth).
He doesn't know that Muslims DON'T believe that the earth is a few thousand years old (actually the age of the Earth is not addressed at all in the Quran), but that is what some Christians (not all) and some Jews (not all) believe; this just shows his ignorance about Muslims' beliefs about Earth history.
I wager there are no texts by Muslims during all of history that stated that the earth is a few thousand years old only.
The salty water and sweet water don't mix.
This video will explain something about this natural phenomenon. The reason, which is found in the Quran, is proven by science. An experiment mixing two glasses of water, one salty the other sweet, doesn't prove scientifically the 'halocline' found in nature, or the phenomena of the barrier or also the non mixing in the estuaries, which is another phenomena which hasn't been explained in this video.
See the above link for the text which explains both of these natural phenomenon, as described in the Holy Quran.
Ask yourself, is the Quran at odds with science on this, or is Dawkins at odds with Muslims?
