Headings
Pre-Historic Cosmological Model
The Qur’an’s cosmology is on par with beliefs of the type that originated the creation myths, the origins of which are lost in the mists of pre-history and seemingly even fed into the Genesis narrative. This ancient cosmology is superseded in the Western world, especially with the advent of the Greeks, but of course, preserved in the backward societies of the Middle East, still untouched by that progress being made in the West.
The usual counter-argument is that all this is meant to be metaphor. But there is a deeper problem: Why would God use metaphorical language that is scientifically regressive for the time? It is one thing for God to use metaphorical language at a time when no on knew any better and in fact specifics would be jarring to the listeners, but for a document written in the 7th century AD delivered by God to be stuck in pre-historical metaphors seems odd, given that this document would be used in the spread of that religion to those advanced societies.
If God were to reveal himself in the 21st century for example, he would hardly be likely to say (and this is a summary of the pinnacle of knowledge of cosmology in the Qur’an):
“I created Seven heavens and seven earths. The stars decorate the lowest heaven (which is a ceiling for you). we throw stars at demons that try to spy on us in the highest heaven where I sit (see picture). The mountains keep the earth from shifting as you walk along. The moon follows the Sun swimming across the sky, the Sun rests in its abode worshipping Allah from its muddy pool. …”
There is a place for creation myths and ancient cosmology, and the seventh century AD is not it. There is seemingly no good reason why a “prophet” in the 7th century CE should have knowledge of the same level of ancient Sumerians or Akkadians etc. and not even up to his contemporaries.
We have not a single accurate cosmological fact in the Qur’an. His cosmological framework that does not conceive of outer space, rather of Earth, very likely a flat one, as distinguished from a supernatural realm when one looks at the sky above, as a principle in all Quranic cosmological allusions, as we shall see. We also look at comparative study of the contemporaneous knowledge of the Greeks.
Seven Earths and Heavenly Domes
With regards to counting things in the night sky, this is all he numbers that we get to work with in the Qur’an:
(Q 65:12) “it is God who created seven heavens, and earths as many.“
Ptolemy in 100 AD described the orbits of 7 planets. Modern astronomy has identified eight planets, which all the kids know the names of, not including Pluto which has recently been declassified. Wikipedia states of the knowledge of the Greeks: “Five extraterrestrial planets” can be seen with the naked eye: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, the Greek names being Hermes, Aphrodite, Ares, Zeus and Cronus. Sometimes the luminaries, the Sun and Moon, are added to the list of naked eye planets to make a total of seven.”
What are these “seven Heavens”? These multiples “heavens” and “earths” and so on is common in ancient cosmology. There are in fact billions of planets, even in the known Universe. Muhammed’s knowledge of the number of “earths” might be contemporaneous with that of the Greeks, but his cosmology is far from it.
It very much feels like Muhammed is describing a glassy dome when we read passages like this:
“He created the heavens without pillars you (can) see” (31:10, also 13:2)
“Even if they saw lumps falling from heaven, they would say, ‘A massed cloud!’” (52:44)
“we could let fall upon them pieces of sky” (34:9)
This “piece of sky” is precisely what lends to the glassy dome model. Further an atmospheric sky does not require pillars to hold it up, rather gravity prevents it from drifting off into outer space and causing it to be a dead planet like all our planetary neighbors. The “heavens” if by that he means outer space, then that is travelling away from the Earth at faster than the speed of light, in the expanding Universe model. There is no possibility of “seven” anywhere, except in the dome model with multiple levels of magical mysterious heavens. Muslims apologists have argued that this might be referring to the layers of the atmosphere. The Earth’s atmosphere has 5 primary layers, but can he subdivided into also several secondary layers. There is no necessary notion of “seven” in it.
Muhammed’s cosmology simply cannot be reconciled with any aspect of the modern version, we get neither an atmosphere, nor outer space. Except for perhaps two places: he calls the sky “smoke” prior to its formation, and he states that man cannot cross the “limits” of the heavens, as we shall see later.
The Greeks on Sky, Clouds, Thunder, Lightning, Wind and Rain, Climate etc.
Anaximander (6th century BC) Greek philosopher, is often called the first scientist because he was the first to explain that order in the world was due to natural forces, not supernatural ones. He is the first person known to understand that the Earth floats in space; to believe that the sun, the moon, and the stars rotate around it seven centuries before Ptolemy; to argue that all animals came from the sea and evolved; and to posit that universal laws control all change in the world. Anaximander taught Pythagoras, who would build on Anaximander s scientific theories by applying mathematical laws to natural phenomena. In the award-winning Anaximander and the Birth of Scientific Thought, Rovelli restores Anaximander to his place in the history of science.
Taken from: Ancient Greece: Atmospheric Physics (hellenicaworld.com)
An explanation for other atmospheric phenomena was given more than two centuries earlier by Xenophanes (570-478 AD) of Colophon who stated:
“…the clouds are formed by the sun’s vapor [i.e. vapor caused by the heat from the sun’s rays] raising and lifting them to the surrounding air” Diogenes Laertius (A1.24-5).
“…(says that) things in the heavens occur through the heat of the sun as the initial cause; for when the moisture is drawn up from the sea, the sweet portion, separating because of its fineness and turning into mists, combines into clouds, trickled down in drops of rain due to compression, and vaporizes the winds.” Aëtius (A46)
“The sea is the source of water and of wind, For without the great sea, there would be no wind Nor streams of rivers, nor rainwater from on high
But the great sea is the begetter of clouds, winds, and rivers.” Xenophanes B30
“Flashes of lightning come about through the shining of the clouds because of the movement” (A45).
His comments about the “Iris” or rainbow:
And she whom they call Iris, this too is by nature a cloud. Purple, red, and greenish-yellow to behold.” Xenophanes B32
In the sixth century BC, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (570-495 BC) recognized the sphericity of the Earth and the dominance of latitude in explaining climate variation (Sanderson 1999). Two centuries later Aristotle expanded on Pythagoras’s foundation and introduced five climate zones, ranging from tropical to northern frigid. It is not coincidental that in the early 20th century German scientist Koeppen also used 5 climate zones in his classification, identified with the letters A-E.
From Epicurus (Epicurus of Samos 341-270 BC) we have the following comments in one of his letters:
“Clouds may form and gather either because the air is condensed under the pressure of winds, or because atoms which hold together and are suitable to produce this result become mutually entangled, or because currents collect from tile earth and the waters ; and there are several other ways in which it is not impossible for the aggregations of such bodies into clouds to be brought about. And that being so, rain may be produced from them sometimes by their compression, sometimes by their transformation; or again may be caused by exhalations of moisture rising from suitable places through the air, while a more violent inundation is due to certain accumulations suitable for such discharge.
Thunder may be due to the rolling of wind in the hollow parts of the clouds, as it is sometimes imprisoned in vessels which we use; or to the roaring of fire in them when blown by a wind, or to the rending and disruption of clouds, or to the friction and splitting up of clouds when they have become as firm as ice.
As in the whole survey, so in this particular point, the facts invite us to give a plurality of explanations. Lightning too happens in a variety of ways. For when the clouds rub against each other and collide, that collocation of atoms which is the cause of fire generates lightning; or it may be due to the flashing forth from the clouds, by reason of winds, of particles capable of producing this brightness; or else it is squeezed out of the clouds when they have been condensed either by their own action or by that of the winds; or again, the light diffused from the stars may be enclosed in the clouds, then driven about by their motion and by that of the winds, and finally make its escape from the clouds; or light of the finest texture may be filtered through the clouds (whereby the clouds may be set on fire and thunder produced), and the motion of this light may make lightning; or it may arise from the combustion of wind brought about by the violence of its motion and the intensity of its compression; or, when the clouds are rent asunder by winds, and the atoms which generate fire are expelled, these likewise cause lightning to appear.
And it may easily be seen that its occurrence is possible in many other ways, so long as we hold fast to facts and take a general view of what is analogous to them. Lightning precedes thunder, when the clouds are constituted as mentioned above and the configuration which produces lightning is expelled at the moment when the wind falls upon the cloud, and the wind being rolled up afterwards produces the roar of thunder; or, if both are simultaneous, the lightning moves with a greater velocity towards its and the thunder lags behind, exactly as when persons who are striking blows are observed from a distance. A thunderbolt is caused when winds are repeatedly collected, imprisoned, and violently ignited; or when a part is torn asunder and is more violently expelled downwards, the rending being due to the fact that the compression of the clouds has made the neighboring parts more dense; or again it may be due like thunder merely to the expulsion of the imprisoned fire, when this has accumulated and been more violently inflated with wind and has torn the cloud, being unable to withdraw to the adjacent parts because it is continually more and more closely compressed [generally by some high mountain where thunderbolts mostly fall]. And there are several other ways in which thunderbolts may possibly be produced. Exclusion of myth is the sole condition necessary; and it will be excluded, if one properly attends to the facts and hence draws inferences to interpret what is obscure.
Fiery whirlwinds are due to the descent of a cloud forced downwards like a pillar by the wind in full force and carried by a gale round and round, while at the same time the outside wind gives the cloud a lateral thrust; or it may be due to a change of the wind which veers to all points of the compass as a current of air from above helps to force it to move; or it may be that a strong eddy of winds has been started and is unable to burst through laterally because the air around is closely condensed. And when they descend upon land, they cause what are called tornadoes, in accordance with the various ways in which they are produced through the force of the wind; and when let down upon the sea, they cause waterspouts.
Winds arise from time to time when foreign matter continually and gradually finds its way into the air; also through the gathering of great store of water. The rest of the winds arise when a few of them fall into the many hollows and they are thus divided and multiplied.
Hail is caused by the firmer congelation and complete transformation, and subsequent distribution into drops, of certain particles resembling wind : also by the slighter congelation of certain particles of moisture and the vicinity of certain particles of wind which at one and the same time forces them together and makes them burst, so that they become frozen in parts and in the whole mass. The round shape of hailstones is not impossibly due to the extremities on all sides being melted and to the fact that, as explained, particles either of moisture or of wind surround them evenly on all sides and in every quarter, when they freeze.
Snow may be formed when a fine rain issues from the clouds because the pores are symmetrical and because of the continuous and violent pressure of the winds upon clouds which are suitable; and then this rain has been frozen on its way because of some violent change to coldness in the regions below the clouds. Or again, by congelation in clouds which have uniform density a fall of snow might occur through the clouds which contain moisture being densely packed in close proximity to each other; and these clouds produce a sort of compression and cause hail, and this happens mostly in spring. And when frozen clouds rub against each other., this accumulation of snow might be thrown off. And there are other ways in which snow might be formed.
Dew is formed when such particles as are capable of producing this sort of moisture meet each other from the air: again by their rising from moist and damp places, the sort of place where dew is chiefly formed, and their subsequent coalescence, so as to create moisture and fall downwards, just as in several cases something similar is observed to take place under our eyes. And the formation of hoar-frost is not different from that of dew, certain particles of such a nature becoming in some such way congealed owing to a certain condition of cold air.
Ice is formed by the expulsion from the water of the circular, and the compression of the scalene and acute-angled atoms contained in it; further by the accretion of such atoms from without, which being driven together cause the water to solidify after the expulsion of a certain number of round atoms.
The rainbow arises when the sun shines upon humid air; or again by a certain peculiar blending of light with air, which will cause either all the distinctive qualities of these colors or else some of them belonging to a single kind, and from the reflection of this light the air all around will be colored as we see it to be, as the sun shines upon its parts. The circular shape which it assumes is due to the fact that the distance of every point is perceived by our sight to be equal; or it may be because, the atoms in the air or in the clouds and deriving from the sun having been thus united, the aggregate of them presents a sort of roundness.” Epicurus of Samos, Letter to Pythocles...”
Demetris Koutsoyiannis, in his lectures of “Water resources technologies in the ancient Greece”, School of Civil Engineering National Technical University of Athens provides the following information:
The Pythagorean philosopher Hippon (5th century BC) recognizes that all waters originate from the sea.
Anaxagoras of Athens (500-428 BC) and together with Empedocles, is recognized as the father of experimental research, clarified the concept of hydrological cycle: the sun raises water from the sea into the atmosphere, from where it falls as rain; then it is collected underground and feeds the flow of rivers. He also studied several meteorological phenomena, generally supporting and completing Anaximenes’s theories; his theory about thunders, which fought the belief that they are thrown by Zeus, probably cost him imprisonment (430 BC). In particular, he correctly assumed that winds are caused from differences in the air density: the air, heated by the sun, moves towards the north pole and leaves gaps that cause air currents. He also studied Nile’s floods attributing them to the snow melt in Ethiopia. The “enigma” of Nile’s floods (which, contrary to the regime of Mediterranean rivers, occur in summer) was also thoroughly studied by Herodotus (480-430 BC), who seems to have clear knowledge of hydrological cycle and its mechanisms.
Aristotle (384-323 BC) in his treatise Mereorologica clearly states the principles of hydrological cycle, clarifying that water evaporates by the action of sun and forms vapor, whose condensation forms clouds; also, he recognizes indirectly the principle of mass conservation within hydrological cycle.
Theophrastus (372-287 BC) adopts and completes the theories of Anaximenes and Aristotle for the forming of precipitation from vapor condensation and freezing; his contribution to the understanding of the relation between wind and evaporation was significant.
Epicurus (341-270 BC) contributed to physical explanations of meteorological phenomena, contravening the superstitions of his era.
Archimedes (287-212 BC), among other significant contributions, founded hydrostatics introducing the principle named after him.
Hero of Alexandria (after 150 BC) is recognized (U.S. Committee on Opportunities in the Hydrological Sciences, 1992) as the first who formulated the discharge concept and made flow measurements.
References:
U.S. Committee on Opportunities in the Hydrological Sciences (1991) Opportunities in the Hydrologic Sciences. National Academy Press, Washington, DC.
Sanderson, M., 1999. The classification of climates from Pythagoras to Koeppen. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 80, 669-673
Space Flight Impossible?
The first space ships and travel beyond the atmosphere of earth occurred over 60 years ago. With current technology, humankind has already explored the end of the solar system, dropped probes on asteroids, and set spacecraft in orbit around Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Pluto. The Qur’an clearly implies that the “zones…of the earth” cannot be passed. This turns out to be a bad guess, the earth’s atmosphere which is the last reach of the Planet which can be called as part of the planet, has been breached.
Do American, Chinese, and Russian astronauts fly to the Heavens “with Allah’s authority, while Muslims barely managed to put a person in space using their technology?
“O ye assembly of Jinns and men! If it be ye can pass beyond the zones of the heavens and the earth, pass ye! Not without authority shall ye be able to pass!” (Q 55:33)
The Moon as a Light Source, same as Allah
“and set the moon therein for a light (“الْقَمَرَ فِيهِنَّ نُورًا- al=qamara fihinna nuran) and the sun for a lamp (sirajan)?” (Q 71:16)
“desiring to extinguish with their mouths God’s light (يُطْفِئُوا نُورَ اللَّهِ – yut’fiu nura l-lahi); and God refuses but to perfect His light, though the unbelievers be averse.” (Q 9:32)
The same root word “nur” is used in association with none other than the light of Allah in multiple other verses:
Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. [Quran, 24:35]
“ And the earth will shine with the Light of its Rabb. [Quran, 39:69]”
“There has come to you from Allah a light and a clear Book.” [Quran, 5:15]
This is a contradiction because the moon is here being treated as a light source, a superior term is attributed to it than is to the Sun itself, and that term is used in relation to the light of Allah himself.
If there is any doubt about about the usage then consider that an-Nur (ٱلْنُّورُ) is one of the 99 names of Allah himself.
Check out some of the hadith too, which corroborate this usage of “nur” with relation to Allah:
“The Prophet salallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam stated about Allah’s attribute of nur: You are the Light of the heavens and the earth.[Al-Bukhaaree]
He salallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam also said the very weighty words: Light is His hijaab (veil), if He uncovers it then the subuhaat (brightness and splendour) of His Face would burn His creation so far as His Sight reaches. [Muslim]”
Muslim responses: the responses from Muslims seem to mostly allude to the fact that “nur” can indicate a “guiding” light and in this sense the Moon too is a guiding light by night. Also that nur is used for other lights (perhaps referring to “fire” in 2:17). My issue here is that in the order of “sourceness”, there is nothing higher than nur, since it is accorded to Allah himself. Hence the fact that it is attributed to the Moon rather than the Sun seems to be a strong indication that there is not the awareness of which is the primary light source for the planet.
Further they point to this verse, and the fact there there is a difference between “lamp” in the case of the Sun and “nur” in the case of the Moon: “It is He who made the sun a radiance (diyaan), and the moon a light (nuran), and determined it by stations, that you might know the number of the years and the reckoning. God created that not save with the truth, distinguishing the signs to a people who know.” (Q 10:5)
the other response is that in Q 25:61 the Moon is described as muniran which is “shining”. The Arabic reads sirajan (lamp) wa waqamaran (moon) muniran. It is not even clear if the muniran which is a participle should not refer to both nouns rather than only to the Moon. Further, there is an obvious difference between the Sun and the Moon in that the Sun is obviously literally a ball of fire while the Moon is not. That’s the reason the Sun is described as “lamp”. But I’m not seeing any sense of “reflection”, shining is a different thing, it can be both reflected or not:
“Blessed is He Who made the constellations in the heavens and made therein a lamp and a shining moon.”
The Orbits of the Sun and Moon
“…By the sun and his morning brightness, and by the moon when she follows him…” (Q 91:2)
“It is He who created night and day, the Sun and the Moon, each floating (yasbaḥūna only used with this meaning here and 36:40, all other 90 occ. form “glorify”) in its orbit (f-l-k root, generally denotes something round or circular eg. “in their own circle”)” (Q 21:33)
see lexical entry here: http://lexicon.quranic-research.net/data/20_f/185_flk.html
” It is not allowable for the sun to reach the moon, nor does the night overtake the day, but each, in an orbit, is swimming.” (Q 36:40, SI)
The moon does not in anyway “follow the Sun”, it is subject to the gravitational pull of the Earth, and the Earth is what it follows. From Newton’s laws, the force of gravity felt by an object is proportional to its weight, and inversely to its distance. An apple on a tree feels very little gravity from the Earth and even less from the Sun, that’s why it stays exactly where it is, in the same way, we are not pulled towards the Sun ourselves. In the same way the Moon is primarily attracted to the Earth, which it follows.
The classic modern Muslim counter is to state that “the orbit of the Sun” refers to its orbit around the Black Hole in the Milky Way galaxy (The Solar System as a unit orbits the Black Hole at the center of the galaxy, at 230km/sec., 1/1300th the speed of light, taking around 250 million years to complete the Orbit, having thus completed it only 50 times since the beginning of time). While all of this might be true in isolation, when you put all of Muhammed’s views together, the sky-dome model is the only coherent one that one is getting. Whatever else one might say, the key to heliocentrism is missing- the Earth’s orbit.
The Rising and Setting Place of the Sun
The Sun is said to have a place on Earth from where it sets as well as from where it rises, as well as a resting place. Mohammed is seemingly stuck copying from obscure legends of Alexander the Great Muslim. People who live close to the place where the Sun rises need a veil to protect them. This is absurd, if there is any place that such protection is required, it is in a tree-less desert where Muhammed lives himself:
“until, when he reached the rising of the sun, he found it rising upon a people for whom We had not appointed any veil to shade them from it.” (Q 18:90)
“Till, when he reached the setting-place of the sun, he found it setting in a muddy spring, and found a people thereabout. We said: O Dhu’l-Qarnain! Either punish or show them kindness.” (Q 18:86)
“Abu Dharr said: I was sitting behind the Apostle of Allah who was riding a donkey while the sun was setting. He asked: Do you know where this sets? I replied: Allah and his Apostle know best. He said: It sets in a spring of warm water.” (Sunan Abu Dawud 4002)
“And the sun runneth on unto a resting-place (limus’taqarrin (n) – multiple occ.: dwelling place, abode, place of rest) for determined him. That is the measuring of the Mighty, the All-Knowing.” (Q 36:38)
The above hadith has a second version: Narrated Abu Dhar: The Prophet asked me at sunset, “Do you know where the sun goes (at the time of sunset)?” I replied, “Allah and His Apostle know better.” He said, “It goes till it prostrates Itself underneath the Throne and takes the permission to rise again, and it is permitted (…) that is The Decree of (Allah) The Exalted in Might, The All- Knowing.” (ref Q 36.38)” (Bukhari 3199)
Comets are Stars?
Mohammed conceives comets as shooting stars which is a laypersons’ impression of the night-sky. He places them as adornments on the lowest of the “seven Heavens”, and states that they are for God to throw at pesky demons that attempt to spy on him who is himself seated in the higher levels of the heavens. This model locates God and his High Council inside the Universe, perhaps in a galaxies, far, far away…
“And we have, (from of old), adorned the lowest heaven with Lamps, and We have made such (Lamps) (as) missiles to drive away the Evil Ones, and have prepared for them the Penalty of the Blazing Fire.” (Q 67:5)
“We have indeed decked the lower heaven with beauty (in) the stars and for guard against all obstinate rebellious evil spirits (satan/shaytan ). (So) they should not strain their ears in the direction of the Exalted Assembly (الْمَلَإِ الْأَعْلَىٰ- l-aʿlā l-mala-i, or “High Council”) but be cast away from every side. Repulsed, for they are under a perpetual penalty. Save him who snatcheth a fragment, and there pursueth him a piercing flame.” (Q 37:6-8)
This is again referred to in Chapter “Al-Jinn” (these are actually jinni speaking):
“And we stretched towards heaven, but we found it filled with terrible guards and meteors. And when we heard the guidance, we believed in it. And whoever believes in his Lord will not fear deprivation or burden.” (Q 72:8,9)
Bukhari, gives the narration of by Abu Qatada himself, one of the companions of Muhammed and the “enlightened ones”:
“Qutaadah said: “Allaah created these stars for three purposes: to adorn the heavens, to stone the devils and as signs by which to navigate. Whoever seeks anything else in them is mistaken and does not benefit from them, and he is wasting his time and effort in seeking something of which he has no knowledge.” (Saheeh al-Bukhaari, Baab fi’l-Nujoom, 2/240)
It was narrated from Abu Hurairah that: The Prophet said: “When Allah decrees a matter in heaven, the angels beat their wings in submission to his decree (with a sound) like a chain beating a rock. Then “When fear is banished from their hearts, they say: ‘What is it that your Lord has said?’ They say: ‘The truth. And He is The Most High, The Most Great.” He said: ‘Then the eavesdroppers (from among the jinn) listen out for that, one above the other, so (one of them) hears the words and passes it on to the one beneath him. The Shihab (shooting star) may strike him before he can pass it on to the one beneath him and the latter can pass it on to the soothsayer or sorcerer, or it may not strike him until he has passed it on. And he ads one hundred lies to it, and only that word which was overheard from the heavens is true.” Sunan Ibn Majah 194, graded sahih (Darussalam)
What the Greeks already knew about the Solar System
Aristarchus of Samos (c. 270 BC) is the first person known to have proposed a heliocentric system, was . He used the phenomenon of parallax to make some of these measurements. Aristarchus calculated the size of the Earth, and measured the size and distance of the Moon and Sun. From his estimates, he concluded that the Sun was six to seven times wider than the Earth and thus hundreds of times more voluminous. Aristarchus believed the stars to be very far away, and saw this as the reason why there was no visible parallax, that is, an observed movement of the stars relative to each other as the Earth moved around the Sun. The stars are in fact much farther away than the distance that was generally assumed in ancient times, which is why stellar parallax is only detectable with telescopes.
Though the original text has been lost, a reference in Archimedes’ book The Sand Reckoner describes another work by Aristarchus in which he advanced an alternative hypothesis of the heliocentric model. Archimedes wrote: “…Aristarchus has brought out a book consisting of certain hypotheses…that the fixed stars and the Sun remain unmoved, that the Earth revolves about the Sun on the circumference of a circle, the Sun lying in the middle of the orbit…” (Arenarius, I., 4–7).
In Europe too, there were occasional speculations about heliocentrism before Copernicus. In Roman Carthage, the pagan Martianus Capella (5th century A.D.) expressed the opinion that the planets Venus and Mercury did not go about the Earth but instead circled the Sun. Capella’s model was discussed in the Early Middle Ages by various anonymous 9th-century commentators and Copernicus mentions him as an influence on his own work.
What was created first?
This seems to be again a weak contradiction. There seems to be no way in which 2:29 might be interpreted other than a chronological sequence, unless it can be taken to mean that the heavens antedated the earth primordially, not yet being fashioned into seven. Then one can work this interpretation into surah 79 to claim that the “spreading out” is in some manner applying the finishing touches to creation, the solidification of the crust, and overall in both verses there is room for simultaneity, which means that there is no direct contradiction with the scientific model.
2:29- the earth was created first, then the heavens. There is a pre-existent heaven, however it is not yet fashioned into seven heavens yet, so it cannot be stated that the lowest heaven which is adorned with the stars, sun and moon exists yet:
“It is He who created for you all of that which is on the earth. Then (thumma) He directed Himself to the heaven, and made (fawawwahuna- always fashioned/proportioned, eg. Adam from clay) them seven heavens, and He is Knowing of all things.”
The lowest heaven is adorned with lamps. this would mean that is the seven Heavens are seven “universes” or “realms” in that the other realms than ours are available only to celestial beings than ours (since only the lowest is adorned with stars).
79:27-30- the heavens were created first, then the earth. This is obviously talking about the lowest heaven, since it has the day and night. Thus this really is a contradiction.
“…Are you a more difficult creation or is the heaven? Allah constructed it. He raised its ceiling and proportioned (fasawwaha) it. And He darkened its night and extracted its brightness. and the earth-after that (ba’da dhalika) He spread it out (dahaha)…”
Again at this stage we are seeing that the earth is fully formed and mature with vegetation.
“Say: ‘What, do you disbelieve in Him who created the earth in two days, and do you set up compeers to Him? That is the Lord of all Being. And He set therein firm mountains over it, and He blessed it, and He ordained therein its diverse sustenance in four days, equal to those who ask. Then He lifted (thumma is’tawa) Himself to heaven (l-samai) when it was smoke, and said to it and to the earth, “Come willingly, or unwillingly!” They said, “We come willingly. And He completed them (faqadahuna) as seven heavens within two days and inspired in each heaven its command. And We adorned the nearest heaven with lamps and as protection. That is the determination of the Exalted in Might, the Knowing.” (Q 49:9-12)
Note: the “highest heaven” is sometimes taken as jannah itself, as also the place to which Allah throws comets.
Biological Errors
Talking Ants?
This is an important contradiction, and this is the reason: It is one thing for animals to be used in a metaphorical or allegorical manner in religious books, where the intent is to convey a certain teaching by means of the story such as one might come across in the Bible. However in the case of the Qur’anic story of Solomon, all that occurs is that he eavesdrops on what is seemingly a normative ant-conversation. The point of the verse is to display Solomon’s ability to listen in on these conversations. This is where the contradiction lies- an ant brain does not have the ability to hold the cognitive content of the quote in the verse ““O ants, enter your dwellings that you not be crushed by Solomon and his soldiers while they perceive not.” It cannot comprehend human names, understand human hierarchies, and perhaps most of all human intentionality “they perceive not” which requires the ability to construct a mental model of self.
Let us first look at the verse. In it, Solomon appears to hears an ant mention him by name while cautioning his fellows to shelter from his army lest it unwittingly trample them underfoot:
“And gathered for Solomon were his soldiers of the jinn and men and birds, and they were [marching] in rows. Until, when they came upon the valley of the ants, an ant said, “O ants, enter your dwellings that you not be crushed by Solomon and his soldiers while they perceive not.” So [Solomon] smiled, amused at her speech…” (Q 27:17-19)
Ants don’t even have lungs or vocal chords that higher animals do. Rather they breathe oxygen in through spiracles, a series of holes located on the sides of their bodies. These in turn are connected through a network of tubes which help distribute the oxygen to the cells in their body.
Rather than communicate with vocal sounds therefore, ants communicate using other methods like the secretion of pheromones in response to certain stimuli like stress which are sensed through their antennae, touch through their antennae again, and possibly through body language and posturing, like raising their abdomen into the air (like humans giving a thumbs up), and even some sounds, which many insects can produce through rubbing of the legs or wings, for example.
Ants’ brains are complex enough to allow them to collect food and survive, but not complex enough for them to feel emotions or form complex thoughts. They contain around 200,000 to 250,000 neurons in contrast to the human brain which has 83 billion.
Ant colonies function more as a collective intelligence where each and every member is responsible for contributing to the existence and survival of the colony as a whole.
Collective intelligence is nothing but the intelligence or information obtained from each and every member of the group as a whole and then taking actions based on that information. It is something which cannot be obtained on an individual basis. Ant brains function more like singular neurons of the human brain and the collective intelligence of the whole colony acts as one big highly functioning brain. There is no one particular lead ant which is in charge of the whole colony but still all the major day to day decisions within the ant colony are taken in unison and each and every ant knows their role. The queen is just there to lay eggs, it doesn’t pass on any orders regarding anything within the ant colony. This is why as per Stanford scientists, the ant colonies are analogous to the human brain where each neuron only performs simplistic tasks but it is the action of these small neurons that allows the whole brain to function properly. So it’s like none of the neurons can think on their own but the brain can think on its own.
So when an ant colony is threatened, for example, they can use whatever combination of these techniques to signal about the presence of approaching danger and triggering the response to retreat. If we were to translate that into human language it would be something like “danger! warning! take evasive/defensive action”. They are ants, after all, it’s not like they’re apes.
It does not also make sense to consign this to metaphor because the whole point of the verse is seemingly that something is being understood by the human listening in as it were, on the ants.
Ant’s brains are nowhere near the complexity or size required to conceive thought or self-consciousness.
The idea is taken from the Bible where is states that Solomon had learnt the speech of the birds and the animals, but birds and the animals do have higher levels of communication, not ants, this is a step too far, and in any case does not relate literal conversations. This means that in the case of the Bible, the “understanding” would certainly imply that Solomon had genuine knowledge of animal communication along the lines of today’s naturalists like Franz Van der Waal, famous for his work with primates, particularly chimps and bonobos. The Qur’an, on the other hand, takes this to the level of a Jungle Book or Chronicles of Narnia or any multitude of children’s stories. In fact that is the most likely cause of the existence of this story in the Qur’an, the fact that a children’s story involving the same species of non-human communicator is seen in the Jewish Midrashic writings. These writings are difficult to date which makes it difficult to make the association with any certainty, but see it here: https://www.sefaria.org/Legends_of_the_Jews.4.5.115?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=bi
The content of “the soldiers perceive us not” implies that the ants understand the soldier’s lack of understanding of the danger to them. This would in turn would require that they have a mental model of mind and self-awareness as conscious agents whereby they can perceive the in turn the presence of other minds mental processes based upon their own mental model. That they might understand the motive behind the soldier’s acts display an understanding of intentionality, and thereby responsibility and moral agency. a creature capable of this is really fully rational and should be able to comprehend the Qur’an, were it read to them in the “ant-tongue”. As it stands, that “tongue” is no more than a combination of hormonal secretions, as we have already said.
There is one place in the Bible where an animal speaks, Balaam’s donkey (Num.22:28-30). Here the animal is very clearly given temporary speech by God for the specific purpose of conveying a message to Balaam, who is beating it, through a misunderstanding. Through this message, Balaam is made to spare the poor beast, and also his “eyes were opened” (v.31) to the presence of the Angel of the Lord whose invisible presence was the real reason that the donkey would not proceed, and who in turn has shown up in order to prevent Balaam from pursuing a reckless course contrary to God’s wishes. The other animal one could see as talking is the serpent in the garden, however once again, that incident is being used in order to teach a moral lesson of obedience to God. It is obvious that there is a great deal of allegorization in the incident because there is no indication in the Bible, unlike in the Qur’an that earthly animals are capable of the highly complex conversation that the serpent produces, which even most humans today would first of all be incapable of, and on top of that they would fall for it “you can be like gods, knowing good and evil”. It is a special case in the Garden which does not transfer onto the real world. But the clincher really is that this entire conversation in the Qur’an is then placed on the lips of Iblis, exactly in the manner that assigned in the Bible to Satan. The whatabout argument can be made, but that does make Qur’ans the ant rationality correct.
that It is very clear that this is not Animals do speak meaningfully in C.S. Lewis’ excellent Chronicles of Narnia series, though. But then that’s just fiction.
IN SUMMARY, as in many of these examples, it is possible to allegorize to a degree, but if we are trying to get into the mind of the author, then one must also try to pick up on certain indicators if present, that allegory was not implied after all. After all to imply allegory where it was not intentioned would be unfair to the author. In this example, it seems that Solomon perceives the literal content of the conversation. If that was the case, then it is also unfortunately an impossible conversation for an ant to have at their level of “consciousness”. Most pertinent in this is the ability to know Solomon’s name, and an understanding of intentionality. In the end, a Muslims requires to ask themselves whether an ant “brain” is capable of the cognitive content of ““O ants, enter your dwellings that you not be crushed by Solomon and his soldiers while they perceive not”. On the other hand if this is meant to be no more than a case of Solomon watching a bunch of ants scurrying around in response to the human presence and deducing in words what the actions of the ants denote, which is obviously a fear response, then it is not clear what the point is of this verse is, since most persons would have been able to deduce that without adding the colorful details.
That is to say, if it is a metaphor, it is not clear what this is a metaphor for. This tends to be a good rule to apply for many of the odd occurrences in the Qur’an- metaphors require to have some import, spiritual fruit and teaching value, other than the blanket refrain “Allah can do whatever he wants”. If that is so, then he can certainly also make sense and teach.
Fruits have mates?
“and from all the fruits he made two mates” (Q 13:3)
We’ve all learnt in school that plants are androgynous, the anther and stamen are classically the same flower which forms the fruit when fertilized, so there’s no question of a “mate”. Many plants like dandelions also reproduce asexually. There’s no way of reconciling this verse with reality that I can think of, especially since its a universal claim “all the fruits”.
Production of Semen
“Semen is formed between the spine (l-sulbi) and the ribs (wal-taraibi).” (Q 86:7)
The production of semen is quite intricate. It is a mixture of fluid from the testicles (2-5%), seminal vesicles (65-76%), prostate (25-30%), and the bulbourethral glands (<1%). This would be a really difficult fact to ascertain for a nomadic herdsmen, and Muhammed is predictably nowhere near the mark, he gets none out of 4 right. One does wonder what Muhammed thought testicles are for, I guess we’ll never find out.
But saying that the sperm is “between the spine and the ribs” is somewhere between the back and front of the body, i.e. inside a human being. It is like saying “Ahmed is somewhere between the front door and the backdoor of the house”. Not only the back, but even the ribcage predominantly lies posteriorly, as it slope backward from the bottom of the breastbone. The lower ribs do not even reach the anterior (front-facing) aspect, as can easily be seen in any diagram of the skeleton. The point is this, that even if it “l-sulbi” is held to be the lower part of the back that is in the region of the pelvis, saying “between the pelvic backbone (or sacro-coccyx) and the ribs” locates the origin wholly posteriorly. The testis and even the seminal vesicles lie forward in and the lowest point of the pelvis. Lane’s Lexicon states that it was an Arabic phrase to use l-sulbi poetically for loins. Personally I would presume that this usage arises from the Qur’an itself. But even were we to allow for such poetic usage, it does not explain why the ribs are being drawn in. This is the Lane’s lexical entry. The first paragraph describes the first sense of the meaning which refers to something hard, while the second paragraph refers the backbone, which is a primary meaning:http://lexicon.quranic-research.net/data/14_S/078_Slb.html
We see one of the greatest Islamic scholars interpret this to mean the back-bone. The link also contains other traditional commentaries: https://quranx.com/Tafsirs/86.7
I don’t think we can buy that. Muhammed may have got the “spine” bit from Hippocrates, which is erroneous, anyway:
“Hippocrates taught that semen comes from all the fluid in the body, diffusing from the brain into the spinal marrow, before passing through the kidneys and via the testicles into the penis.” (Hippocratic Writings (Penguin Classics, 1983) pp. 317-318)
Embryological Errors
All the following verses represent the Qur’ans attempt at embryology:
(Q 22:5) “You people!…we created you first from dust, then from a living germ, then from a clot of blood, and then from a half formed lump of flesh…and We cause whom We will to rest in the wombs for an appointed term, then do We bring you out as babes.”
(Q 23:13) “we placed him as (a drop of) sperm (nutfah) in a place of rest, firmly fixed;…”
(Q 23:14) continues… “then We made the sperm into a clot of congealed blood (alaqa); then out of that clot We made a (foetus) lump (mudghah), then We made out of that lump bones and clothed the bones with flesh; then We developed out of it another creature.”
75:37 Was he not a drop of ejaculated semen? He became a clot of blood; then God formed him and moulded him, and gave him male and female parts…
75:38 also says man becomes an alaqa (congealed blood) and 96:2 says we came from alaq. 96:2 – from a blood clot
The First Stage “Nuqfah”- Semen:
The first stage completely neglects the contribution of the mother to the growing foetus. The function of the female egg in fact was not known or understood until the 18 and 19th centuries.
Second Stage “Alaqah”- Clot:
Every woman knows about passing bold clots, and an early miscarriage looks just like one anyway. Some translators use “leech-like”. The leech oc course, is an animal which gorges itself with blood of its victims. Muslim apologists might argue that the developing somites of the human embryo give it a segmented structure similar to the internal structure of the leech (this is true for all worms, the class of animals known as echinaceae). In fact, the segmented somites are ubiquitous in most of animal embryonic development. Further Muslims apologists will also draw the comparison to the leech sucking its victim’s blood and the foetus drawing nutrition from the blood of its mother, which is unkind to the baby really. A baby is not a blood sucker, it does NOT suck blood of its mother, rather ONLY nutrients from the placental bed, into its blood-stream.
I was no bloody leech at any point of my life, my mother loved me and nourished me in my first home, her womb. I listened to Dr. William Campbell talk about this in a debate. From his research of the word: “alaqah”, he states that there are ten possible meanings, though they are all taken to mean “blood/congealed blood/ blood clot” in some for or other. Further, in the “gerund” form (verb that is used as a noun eg “I love swimming”), it can be taken as a thing that clings, or a “leech-like thing that clings” (Sahih International accordingly translates this into “clinging clot”). He speaks of his own medical practice in the Middle East where women come to him for an early term termination of pregnancy and when he told them he could not do it they would reply “but its only an alaqah (clot)!” The translation of alaqah as “leech like thing” gets exploited by Muslim apologists, even though the translations only ever use “clot”.
The embryo is not formed “from blood/clot” nor is the embryo itself ever a blood clot. The blood of a foetus develops the same as all its other organs, as part of a developing body, within its developing blood vessels, where it belongs. the foetus is not dripping in blood like an open wound, that’s a miscarriage, as we have already said.
Third Stage: mugadah “chewed up thing/chewed up piece of meat”
presumably a stage when the humanoid form has not quite differentiated yet, and everyone knows that when you spit or vomit out food that it looks like an undifferentiated mess. That’s the extent of the information the Qur’an contains with respect to this stage.
Fourth Stage– “bones are clothed with flesh”.
There is no such stage, the bones and flesh of a foetus develop simultaneously, along with all the other body systems, and this is an error.
Conclusions: The description of the developing embryo in the Qur’an range from being completely unhelpful uninformative to completely wrong. The entire embryology of the Qur’an can be summarized as “something grows from a blob to a human”, we really didn’t need anyone to tell us that the products of conceptus are bloody or that human beings have bones inside their flesh. Let us now compare this to the manner in which the Greeks describe their Embryology.
Greek Embryology
Contribution of the Female to the foetus was known to Greeks
The great step forward shown in some of the Hippocratic (460-370 BC) writings, in one of which the surprising idea is expressed that all plants and animals have to some extent the same ground plan, and that one should therefore be able to apply the story of the development of the chick to that of other animals.
Galen (129-210 AD) wisely argued, as had Aristotle, that if the male and female did not, in some measure, both share equally in procreation, inheritance could not occur from both parents. He went on to say that if there were only male sperm there could only be inheritance through the male, and if only female sperm then only through the female.
Although Aristotle had regarded the ovary and testis as unimportant organs, Galen regarded them as important and as equivalent, and emphasized their role in the body as indicated by their loss in castration. He concluded that female semen formed the allantois and that coagulation of male and female semen in the uterus resulted in the formation of the chorion. This was because Galen found material which looked like semen in the uterine tubes of animals killed while in heat, and it is much to his credit that he carefully described this fluid. It should not surprise us that Galen confused the tubal, uterine and cervical secretions with semen
Greek Gross Embryology far more detailed than that of Quran
He spoke of four stages in prenatal development supplies impressive anatomical detail including details of the formation of the liver, brain, heart and vascularization. He even recognized and carefully described the foramen oval and the ductus arteriosus and venous, in the heart, the existence of which was forgotten for a long time until they were rediscovered and described by Botalli and Aranzi about the middle of the sixteenth century. However he seems to have also described the “flesh growing around the bones” in the later stages of development, which is the same as the description in the Qur’an, in other words, Galen’s error is parroted.
Wikiislam does the best possible job of presenting the Greek understanding of embryology with additional excerpts from Aristotle and Hippocrates, which while rudimentary, are more detailed than the Qur’an. I’ve reproduced the passage from Galen which is the most detailed and most recent below
Claudius Galenus (129-210 AD) “let us divide the creation of the foetus overall into four periods of time.
The first is that in which. as is seen both in abortions and in dissection, the form of the semen prevails [Arabic nutfah]. At this time, Hippocrates too, the all-marvelous, does not yet call the conformation of the animal a foetus; as we heard just now in the case of semen voided in the sixth day, he still calls it semen. But when it has been filled with blood [Arabic alaqa], and heart, brain and liver are still unarticulated and unshaped yet have by now a certain solidarity and considerable size,
this is the second period; the substance of the foetus has the form of flesh and no longer the form of semen. Accordingly you would find that Hippocrates too no longer calls such a form semen but, as was said, foetus.
The third period follows on this, when, as was said, it is possible to see the three ruling parts clearly and a kind of outline, a silhouette, as it were, of all the other parts [Arabic mudghah]. You will see the conformation of the three ruling parts more clearly, that of the parts of the stomach more dimly, and much more still, that of the limbs. Later on they form “twigs”, as Hippocrates expressed it, indicating by the term their similarity to branches.
The fourth and final period is at the stage when all the parts in the limbs have been differentiated; and at this part Hippocrates the marvelous no longer calls the foetus an embryo only, but already a child, too when he says that it jerks and moves as an animal now fully formed.”
“… The time has come for nature to articulate the organs precisely and to bring all the parts to completion. Thus it caused flesh to grow on and around all the bones, and at the same time … it made at the ends of the bones ligaments that bind them to each other, and along their entire length it placed around them on all sides thin membranes, called periosteal, on which it caused flesh to grow” Corpus Medicorum Graecorum: Galeni de Semine (Galen: On Semen) (Greek text with English trans. Phillip de Lacy, Akademic Verlag, 1992) section I:9:1-10 pp. 92-95, 101
Diocles of Carystus 240-180 BC “on the ninth day a few points of blood, on the eighteenth beating of the heart, on the twenty-seventh traces of the spinal cord and head”
If that wasn’t enough, there are also several variation on the theme of what exactly is the stuff man is created from:
19:67- man is created from nothing 21:30 – from water 16:4 – from a small seed
15:26 – from clay and mud, 3:59 – from dust, 11:61 – from earth
Sex Determination hadith
“…He then said: I have come to ask you about the child. He (the Holy Prophet) said: The reproductive substance of man is white and that of woman (i. e. ovum central portion) yellow, and when they have sexual intercourse and the male’s substance prevails upon the female’s substance, it is the male child that is created by Allah’s Decree, and when the substance of the female prevails upon the substance contributed by the male, a female child is formed by the Decree of Allah. The Jew said: What you have said is true; verily you are an Apostle. He then returned and went away. The Messenger of Allah said: He asked me about such and such things of which I have had no knowledge till Allah gave me that. (Muslim 315a)
There are two other hadith which state that the offspring “resemble” the parent which orgasms first (Muslim 311 and Sunan an Nasa’i 201)
Trans-speciation
In surah 7:166 “Allah” turns a group of Israelites into apes because they are disobedient.
Two hadith corroborate Muhammed’s belief in trans-speciation as a form of divine punishment. Not only that, some of them are the animals around us. We can contemplate this while we eat them, just out of interest:
“It was narrated that Thabit bin Yazid Al-Ansari said: “We were with the Prophet on a journey. We stopped to camp and the people caught some mastigures. I took a mastigure and grilled it, and brought it to the Prophet. He took a palm stalk, and started counting his fingers with it, and said: ‘A nation from among the children of Israel was turned into beasts of the Earth, and I do not know what kind of animals they were, I said: ‘O Messenger of Allah, the people have eaten some of them.’ He did not tell them to eat it, and he did not forbid them from eating it.” (Sunan an Nasa’i 4320)
“Narrated Abu Huraira: The Prophet said, “A group of Israelites were lost. Nobody knows what they did. But I do not see them except that they were cursed and changed into rats, for if you put the milk of a she-camel in front of a rat, it will not drink it, but if the milk of a sheep is put in front of it, it will drink it.” I told this to Ka`b who asked me, “Did you hear it from the Prophet ?” I said, “Yes.” Ka`b asked me the same question several times.; I said to Ka`b. “Do I read the Torah? (i.e. I tell you this from the Prophet.)”” (Bukhari 3305)
Oceanographic Errors
A Permanent Barrier between Seas?
“It is He Who has let free the two seas (l-baḥrayni- 42 occ. always “sea”) : One palatable and sweet, and the other salt and bitter; yet has He made a barrier (barzakhan – a land barrier, confirmed in Ibn Kathir and various hadith) between them, a partition (waḥij’ran- “partition”, same root h-j-r as “forbidden”) that is forbidden (maḥjūran) to be passed...” (Q 25:53)
“He released the two seas, meeting side by side; between them is a barrier neither of them transgress (la= “not” labghiyani- usually translated as “seek”, but “cross/encroach” in this context)…” (Q 55:19-20)
The Qur’anic author is making a clear statement about two seas forbidden from mixing. This is what makes it scientific error, because there is no such natural occurrence. Even if there is a boundary visible at the surface and a difference of colors, this is not a static boundary.
The Science
When a fresh water river flows into the sea or ocean, there is a transition region in between. This transition region is called an estuary. This is called brackish water with a gradation in salinity levels until the two eventually homogenize. This process is called “mixing”. This is purely a natural result of fresh water coming down from the mountains and glaciers to the low-lying areas and into the sea. Its like pouring water into your kitchen sink, the water in the vessel you are pouring it out from obviously does not get dirty. This does not mean that there is an incredible barrier, present, it is as natural as gravity and the reason we do not float upwards!
Is there a special case at the Strait of Gibraltar?
Around 5.9 million years ago, the connection between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean along the Betic and Rifan Corridor was progressively restricted until its total closure, effectively causing the salinity of the Mediterranean to rise periodically within the gypsum and salt deposition range, during what is known as the Messinian salinity crisis. In this water chemistry environment, dissolved mineral concentrations, temperature and stilled water currents combined and occurred regularly to precipitate many mineral salts in layers on the seabed.
Through the Strait, water generally flows more or less continually in both an eastward and a westward direction. A smaller amount of deeper saltier and therefore denser waters continually work their way westwards the Mediterranean outflow, while a larger amount of surface waters with lower salinity and density continually work their way eastwards the Mediterranean inflow. These general flow tendencies may be occasionally interrupted for brief periods by temporary tidal flows, depending on various lunar and solar alignments. Still, on the whole and over time, the balance of the water flow is eastwards, due to an evaporation rate within the Mediterranean basin higher than the combined inflow of all the rivers that empty into it. At the Strait’s far western end is the Camarinal Sill, the Strait’s shallowest point which limits mixing between the cold, less saline Atlantic water and the warm Mediterranean waters.
The Mediterranean waters are so much saltier than the Atlantic waters that they sink below the constantly incoming water and form a highly saline (thermohaline, both warm and salty) layer of bottom water. This layer of bottom-water constantly works its way out into the Atlantic as the Mediterranean outflow. On the Atlantic side of the Strait, a density boundary separates the Mediterranean outflow waters from the rest at about 100 m (330 ft; 55 fathoms) depth. These waters flow out and down the continental slope, losing salinity, until they begin to mix and equilibrate more rapidly, much farther out at a depth of about 1,000 m (3,300 ft; 550 fathoms). The Mediterranean outflow water layer can be traced for thousands of km. west of the Strait, before completely losing its identity.
Thermohaline Currents
But apart from that all the oceans are connected by thermohaline currents (THC). The network literally cobwebs the oceans. There is a global continuum of flow in the oceans. Thus the waters from Arctic Ocean is coming to Atlantic, then to Antarctic and then to Indian and Pacific and so on so forth to complete the cycle. If they didn’t, our climate and the marine ecosystem would have been very different, and not even suitable for life.
All the oceans and seas are density stratified (light water at top and heavy salty cold water at bottom) as shown in Figure 3. The light water at the top (surface layer or mixed later, of depth on average around100m from the sea surface) is affected by sun and wind (ambient conditions) and that’s what creates surface currents. Surface currents affect 10% of the ocean circulation. Sunlight cannot penetrate to deep waters (the average depth of oceans are around 4-5 km), neither wind has the ability to move the deep waters. So the deep waters are unaffected by local conditions. The movement of deep water is caused only because of Thermohaline Circulation (THC). These deep ocean currents constitute 90% of the circulation of water in the oceans.
What is the cause of the line of separation?
Surface water (which constitutes only around 2-5% of the ocean at mid-depth) properties of two seas are not same, and hence the two seas scatter blue light in different amounts and we see different shades of blue. Different shades of blue can even be seen in the same sea. As one moves from the coast towards open sea, the depth of the sea increases and the shade of blue slowly gets deeper. These things have nothing to do with the deep water (which constitutes 95-98% of the ocean at mid-depth) movements, governed by THC, which constitute 90% of the oceanic circulation. But this does not mean that surface water doesn’t get about! Surface waters on the long term follow the THC, but in short term or instantaneously they have all kinds of motion patterns which are affected by various factors in the environment. The Gulf Stream, for example, which shifts more than 4500 times the water in the Mississippi river, is a surface current.
Geology- The Mountains
“And He has set firm mountains in the earth so that it would not shake with you…” (Quran 16:15)
Mohammed in other verses has already stated that the “earth is spread our like a carpet”. This is confusing until one realizes that perhaps he is speaking of the manner that a carpet in an Bedouin Arab’s tent would shift unless it had some furniture etc placed upon it. We all hate shifty carpets!
(Surah 78:7) Dawood: “Did we not…raise the mountains as supporting poles?”
Other translations: Yusuf Ali: “…….as pegs?” Pickthall “……bulwarks?”
Mountains are formed because of the collision of continental plates. This every school boy knows, I hope. The main function of the mountains is the redistribution of water in the water cycle (Rivers flow to the sea, clouds give rain etc) and the formation of dry land as a result of the elevation. If the Earth was flat, then its entire surface would have been covered by a kilometre of water and life would have been impossible.
Here are three verses from the Bible:
Job 28:9: People assault the flinty rock with their hands and lay bare the roots of the mountains.
Psalm 18:7: The earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains shook; they trembled because he was angry.
Jonah 2:6: To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, LORD my God, brought my life up from the pit.
This is taken from a good discussion from the Answering-Islam site:
http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/vargo/mountains_pegs.html
The most obvious problem, with the idea that mountains prevent the earth from shaking, is that there are earthquakes each and every day on planet earth. Anyone can go on the United States Geological Survey site Latest Earthquakes in the World – Past 7 days to see where Magnitude 4.5, and above, earthquakes have occurred. Please go to this site and notice where the past week’s earthquakes have taken place: western North and South America, the Aleutian Islands, the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, and the Himalayas – all are regions with large mountains! Also, take a look at the Latest Earthquakes in the USA – Last 7 days and notice where these take place – in the Rocky and Cascade Mountains in the west and in the Appalachian Mountains of the east!
Mountains are created and formed by the movement and collision of tectonic plates and by volcanic forces – not by Allah placing them on the surface of the planet. Tectonic plates collide, creating mountains such as the Himalayas and the heat generated from one plate sub-ducting (or sliding) under another plate creates volcanoes such as the Cascade Mountains. These areas, as can be plainly seen in the USGS map, are where earthquakes occur.
Conclusion:
It is not the function of mountains to counteract the plate tectonics that lead to earthquakes as it is claimed in the Qur’an “so that it (the Earth) will not shake with you”, rather quite the opposite, mountains are the product of those very plate tectonics and the activity in the earths magma layer. The mountain ranges were formed when continents separated crashed into each other from the original two continent earth over millions of years, and volcanic activity continues to occur at the fault lines between these plates. There is no reason such activity will ever abate, just as it never abates on planets like Mars.
Conclusion- “Miraculous Science”?
There are claims that some of the scientific observations in the Qur’an are indeed ahead of their time, and I have tried to have a fair look at these here: Miraculous Claims of the Qur’an Examined.