More Proof of the Koran's Divine Inspiration

Introduction

One of the most common arguments for the Koran’s divine inspiration is that its scientific precociousness couldn’t have come from a non-prophetic mind, that there was no way to know all the astounding (in terms of both quality and quantity) scientific knowledge that the Koran contains. Because science is the work of fallible men and the use of it here is to establish the Koran as the infallible Word of God, such an argument can never prove its point beyond any reasonable doubt. But the fact remains that the Koran makes references to scientific facts that people had no apparent way of knowing in the seventh century. For example, it offers a description of the fetus in its early, microscopic stage—many centuries before there were microscopes. How could someone who was not a prophet possibly have known?

Due to the questionable nature of this appeal to mystery, and due to the fact that every brother and sister in the faith I see leave out a crucial element in the facts, I am going to put a new spin on the “scientific miracle” argument by showing you how the Koran’s amazing scientific knowledge contrasted with its alleged author’s scientific ignorance. I am walking the wire here, because a lot of my brothers and sisters in the faith get offended whenever Muhammad (on whom be peace) is mentioned as having any negative trait whatsoever. They either don’t know, or they forget, that the perfection of God’s prophets taught by Islamic orthodoxy applies only to the sinlessness of the prophets and their infallibility of their revelation of God’s will. Since science is not a religious revelation, there is no harm in the scientific beliefs of any prophet being untrue, especially given the ignorance of certain scientific matters that everyone in their times and places had.

I assure you, dear reader (if you are a Muslim dear reader) that I consider Muhammad (on whom be peace) to be an ideal for us to emulate and obey: otherwise I wouldn’t be a Muslim. But like all prophets, he was not infallible about everything, not infallible about things uninvolved in the declarations of God’s will and teachings—things such as science. As such, he held many erroneous scientific beliefs that were typical of the scientific ignorance (relative to more modern advancements in scientific knowledge) that existed in seventh century Arabia. Some of these errors were grossly wrong, and arguably even bordered on the superstitious. Again, this has no bearing on his being a genuine prophet, since prophets are not supposed to be perfect in that particular way but in other ways. Bear in mind also that the Koran and its scientific knowledge was not revealed all at once but over a period of twenty three years, and that some of the scientific facts stated in it did not become crystal clear in their meaning until the scientific revelations which would come long after these divine revelations stopped.

Note: due to Arberry’s mistranslations and rigidly unnecessarily literal translations in some of the Koranic verses I’m going to cite, I will instead be using Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation for all the Koranic quotations in this article except where indicated otherwise. I have heard that Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation is the most used English rendering in the world, and it is quite possibly most respected translation of the Koran (or, as some would have it, interpretation), at least as renowned as Arberry’s.

The Paucity of Scientific Knowledge of Muhammad (On Whom Be Peace) Compared to the Marvelous Scientific Knowledge of the Book He Dicated

Muhammad obviously didn’t know much about zoology; he certainly did not have accurate information on flies. He said that, “If a house fly falls in the drink of anyone of you, he should dip it (in the drink), for one of its wings has a disease and the other has the cure for the disease.” (Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 54, Number 537) Now compare this bit of quite understandable seventh century ignorance with the precocious zoological knowledge of the Koran, such as its impressive knowledge of precisely where the milk is made inside a cow’s body:

And verily in cattle (too) will ye find an instructive sign. From what is within their bodies between excretions and blood, We produce, for your drink, milk, pure and agreeable to those who drink it.

(- 16:66 -)
Noble Quran

And as for the human body, the Koran somehow knew that semen came from the torso (which is where the prostate is located):

Now let man but think from what he is created! He is created from a drop emitted, proceeding from between the backbone and the ribs.

(- 86:5-7 -)
Noble Quran

The most amazing thing is the way that the mind behind the Koran knew what a human embryo looked like in its initial phase, in which it is so small that it cannot be seen except through a microscope—a machine that was not invented until long after the seventh century!

Was [man] not a drop of sperm emitted (in lowly form)? Then did he become a leech-like clot. Then did God make and fashion (him) in due proportion.

(- 75:37-38 -)
Noble Quran

The Koran also spoke of evolution. In Greek philosophy the idea had already come up, to be sure, but few believed in it, and yet the Koran, taking an enormous chance by endorsing a belief held by few experts and not to be proven until much, much later, and was right as always. The creation of humans through evolution is spoken of unmistakably in Surah 71, Verses 13-14, which I’ll show you in not one, not two, not three, but four respected translations here:

ABDULLAH YUSUF ALI: What is the matter with you, that ye place not your hope for kindness and long-suffering in God, seeing that it is He that has created you in diverse stages?

SHAKIR: What is the matter with you that you fear not the greatness of Allah? And indeed He has created you through various grades.

SARWAR What is the matter with you that you are not afraid of the greatness of God who has created you in several stages?

PALMER: What ails you that ye hope not for something serious from God, when He has created you by steps?

Diverse stages? Various grades? An obvious reference to the evolution of the species. And where did evolution on this planet begin? Where did life first appear, according to the findings of modern science? In the ocean. And wouldn’t you know it, the Koran says, “We made from water every living thing.” (Surah 21, Verse 30) On the other hand, the following verses from the Sunnah shows how much Muhammad (on whom be peace), the man who disbelievers say either forged the Koran or created it under the false notion that he was receiving messages from God, knew about medical science:

“Yawning is from Satan and if anyone of you yawns, he should check his yawning as much as possible, for if anyone of you (during the act of yawning) should say: ‘Ha’, Satan will laugh at him.”

(Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 54, Number 509)

“The effect of an evil eye is a fact.”

(Sahih Bukhari, Volume 7, Book 71, Number 636)

Muhammad (on whom be peace), like all people in the seventh century and quite understandably, doing nothing to negate his knowledge of God’s religion for us, knew very little about astronomy, even to the extent that he thought that the moon was a star:

The superiority of the learned man over the devout is like that of the moon, on the night when it is full, over the rest of the stars.

(Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 25, Number 3,634)

In contrast to this, the Book that disbelievers claim came from his own mind has amazing knowledge of astronomy for a Book written in the seventh century. For starters, the same poetic term (“lamp”) is used to refer to both the sun (Surah 71, Verse 16) and the stars (Surah 67, Verse 5), obviously indicating that the mind behind the Book knew that the sun was a star, whereas the person who dictated the book said no such thing but actually thought that the moon was a star instead. Does this look to you like it came from his own mind, and not a being with superhuman knowledge and intelligence?

In the twentieth century science revealed that all the celestial bodies in the galaxy rotate around its Galactic Central Point. The Koran, which was written thirteen centuries before this discovery, confirmed it when it said: “It is He Who created the Night and the Day, and the sun and the moon: all (the celestial bodies) swim along, each in its rounded course.” (Surah 21, Verse 33) Note how the word “all” is used, not “both”, indicating that all celestial bodies are being referred to and not just the sun and the moon. They all rotate in their rounded course.

The Koran even knew somehow about the Big Bang. It mentions the “singularity”, as it’s called, that is to say, the zero-dimensional point in which the entire universe as we know it was crammed, and the explosion that clove outer space and the celestial bodies in it asunder, in Surah 21, Verse 30, which reads, “Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before we clove them asunder?” And of course, because of the Big Bang, the heavens are expanding, and the Koran even said that as well, and explicitly so, this being extremely clearly translated by Arberry’s universally renowned translation in Surah 51, Verse 47 as, “And heaven—We built it with might, and We extend it wide.” Note the present tense of the verb. The translation simply known as The Noble Qur’an (at least when quoted at Answering Christianity) is even clearer, saying. “And the firmament, We constructed with power and skill and verily We are expanding it.” Again, note the present tense of the verb. This from a man who thought that the moon is a star??

The final example I will cite here of the precocious scientific knowledge in this Book that disbelievers say came out of the mind of a very scientifically ignorant man (and the examples mentioned in this article are certainly not the only ones) is in a miscellaneous category. It is now known that large, deep bodies of water bordering each other (often too deep for diving before the invention of scuba gear) are separated by a physical barrier. Mysteriously, the Koran explicitly says this too in Surah 27, Verse 61: “[God] has...made a separating bar between the two bodies of flowing water.”

Conclusion

Now, we have all this amazing scientific knowledge in the Koran, including things that are microscopic, cosmological facts that only modern physics can uncover scientifically, and the fact of evolution and even where life began, amongst other things. Non-Muslims disbelieve in the Koran’s divine inspiration, and so they’re stuck believing the absurdity that these revelations with all this perfect scientific knowledge about things that could not be known to people in the seventh century came from the mind of a human being (whose infallibility that we Muslims believe in does not apply to non-religious matters like science) who had an obviously poor grasp of science, to the point where he believed things so very flagrantly scientifically erroneous, like that the moon was a star and et cetera. It just doesn’t fit.

The mind of the man dictating the Book and the Mind behind the Book had to be two, different minds, one of them knowledgeable of countless scientific facts that were not and, as far as anyone can tell, could not have been known in the seventh century—in other words, a Being with more knowledge than a mere mortal could have. This Being teaches peace and goodness in the Koran, as I have established in several other articles on this site, thus indicating that this Being is benevolent. So the Koran’s revelations came from a benevolent, super-intelligent Being—a good, albeit brief, synonym for “God”. It is, and must be true, that there is no god but this single God (“Allah” being the Arabic translation of this phrase) and that Muhammad (peace be upon him) was His prophet.