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1. THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
The Koran mentions that all life originated from water (Koran 21:30) and that man himself is "created" of water and so are all the animals on earth (Koran 25:54, and 24:45). Now these statements to an Arab would have sounded atrocious in that day and age. Even today such statements in the Koran might cause you to wonder if scientific facts about them are unknown. The fact that all life originated in water is well established by the scientific community today. They have evidence to support the fact that the first living beings were algae, and they existed in water. The fact that human beings and animals are created of water is also well established since cytoplasm the basic component of "life" in any animal cell is over 80% water.
2. MATURITY
The Koran mentions that a human being reaches full maturity at age forty (Koran 46:15). This is a very unusual statement. Even today most people accept that full maturity is reached at puberty and laws usually put it between 18 to 21. However, the Koran is scientifically correct where even modern laws are inaccurate. If we analyze the statement based on psychological tests conducted by scientisits, what we find is that the "overall quantity of stored knowledge in the mind of an individual reaches a peak at age thirty-nine and after that it gradually declines." Arthur C. Guyton, in his standard textbook on physiology, Physiology of the Human Body( 6th ed, pg.207), states this. Guyton's book is used as a standard text in at many pre-medical schools around the world.
3. THE FEMALE BEE
The Koran mentions the bee, which leaves its home in search for food, in the verses that discusses honey (Koran 16:68,69). It uses the female verb in describing the bee, in Arabic faslukee. This, to the Arab, suggests that the bee, which leaves its home in search for food, is female.
Does anyone except an expert know how to differentiate between a male and a female bee? Even today, let alone Muhammad's time, 1400 plus years back, we need a specialist to differentiate between a male and a female bee. The Koran is accurate when it mentions that the female bee leaves its home in search for food; the males never leave their homes for food, it is the females who have to feed them.
4. EMBRYO SEX DETERMINATION
The Koran says that the "ejaculated drop" determines the sex of a human baby (Koran 53:45). It is common knowledge that semen is the fluid that is ejaculated by males during sexual acts. Females do not possess such "ejaculated semen."
The sex of the baby, whether it be male or female, will indeed be determined by the 'ejaculated drop', i.e. the father's sperm, as mentioned by the Koran. It has been scientifically established only recently that the female ovum contains only X-chromosomes. If the ejaculated drop, the father's sperm bears the Y chromosome, the offspring will be male, and otherwise the offspring will be female. No one living at the time of Muhammed or even Darwin for that matter had any knowledge of such genetics foretold centuries earlier in the Koran.
5. THE INVISIBLE BARRIER
The Koran states that there are two seas that meet but don't intermingle because of a barrier between them (Koran 55:19-20).
It is a necessity that seas intermingle through straits between them. The Koran however is aware of a very unusual phenomenon, which scientists discovered only recently. The Mediterranean and Atlantic oceans differ in their chemical and biological constitution. The French scientist Jacques Yves Cousteau conducted various undersea investigations at the Strait of Gibraltar and explaining these phenomena concluded:
"Unexpected fresh water springs issue from the southern and northern coasts of Gibraltar. These mammoth springs gush towards each other at angles of 45 degrees forming a reciprocal dam. Due to this fact the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Oceans cannot intermingle (as quoted by Nurbaki)."
Did Muhammed do research on the chemical and biological components of seawater to discover this unusual phenomena?
6. THE GASEOUS ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE
The Koran mentions that the universe originated, at a stage, from a "gaseous material." (Koran 41:11). It uses the Arabic word Dukhan, which stands for smoke. A perfect analogy for gas and particles in suspension and the gasses being hot.
Scientists have only very recently confirmed that the universe did indeed originate from a gaseous mass composed of hydrogen and helium, a big mass of hot gasses, a mass over 300,000 times that of the earth. That mass then fragmented to form galaxies. Muhammad, who had no schooling of any kind and was illiterate before the revelation of the Koran, could not have possibly known this.
7. THE BIG BANG
The Koran gives an accurate visual description of the Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe. In the 21st chapter, verse 30 (21:30), the Koran states:
"Do not the rejecters see that the heavens and earth were a unit joined together then we split them apart (21:30)."
This is exactly how the 'rejecter' scientists envision the creation of the universe, from one singularity, which then exploded, termed the 'big bang'. Thus the Koran told us about the "common origin" of everything in the universe much before scientists described it in the 20th century. How do we explain this information in the Koran if it is not what it claims to be, the words of an all-knowing ?
Professor Alfred Kroner, chairman of the Department of Geology at the Institute of Geosciences, Johannes Gutenburg University, Mainz, Germany stated about this verse in the Koran:
"Somebody who did not know something about nuclear physics 1400 years ago could not, I think, be in a position to find out from his own mind for instance that the earth and the heavens had the same origin, or many others of the questions that we have discussed here.(Rehaili 1995)"
8. THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE
The Koran talks about a universe that is continually "expanding" (Koran 51:47).
The concept of an expanding universe is very popular with scientists today, however no one knew of it until recently. Do you know that the universe is expanding? Can you feel or see it expanding? No, the verification of this requires specialized knowledge and instruments, which no one at the time of Muhammad had access to. The Koran states:
"And the sky we built it with might and We cause the 'expansion' of it (Koran 51:47)."
9. THE DEATH OF STARS
The Koran mentions the 'death of stars' (Koran 77:7-8). Astronomers including Dr. Patterson of Southwest Missouri State are surprised at finding this information in the Koran. They know that at the time of Muhammad, people believed that once a thing was formed, it was permanent. The Koran is very accurate when it mentions dying stars. Our own sun is a dying star.
10. PHASES OF THE MOON
The Koran talks about the phases of the moon (Koran 36:38-39). There is no book, to my knowledge, that predates the Koran that mentions the modern term "phase" in connection with the moon. Dr. Patterson confirms this. The Arabic word used for "phase" in the Koran is Manazil.
11. MOVEMENT OF THE SUN
. The sun's movement is not something that is evident to our eyes or experience but requires specialized equipment. The Koran states in chapter 36, verse 39:
"And the sun constantly journeys towards a homing place for it and for the moon, We have determined phases (36:39)."
Modern science has found out that the sun rotates around its axis every 26 days . The Koran mentions the movement of the sun, with its own motion, signified by the verb Yasbahoon in Arabic. Thus according to the Koran the sun is not just flying through space but moving on its own, i.e. rotating. The sun is also continually on a journey in space towards its homing place, the solar apex, just like mentioned in the Koran (36:39). How could Muhammed have known these facts if the Koran is the product of his mind?
12. ISOSTACY AND MOUNTAIN ROOTS
The Koran states that mountains are like "tent-pegs", i.e. they have a root extending down into the earth like "anchors" and this gives stability and balance to the earth.
"Have we not expanded the earth and made the mountains as tent pegs" (Koran 78:6-7)
" We have cast into the earth anchors lest it shake with you" (Koran 31:10 etc.)
This fact was discovered less than 150 years ago by scientists and now accepted as a fundamental law in geology, the concept of isostacy. M. J Selby in a standard-text on the subject entitled "Earth's Changing Surface (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1985) states:
"G.B Airy in 1855 suggested that the crust of the earth could be likened to rafts of timber floating on water. Thick pieces of timber float higher above the water surface than thin pieces and similarly thick sections of the earth's crust will float on a liquid or plastic substratum of greater density. Airy was suggesting that mountains have a deep root of lower density rock, which the plains lack. Four years after Airy published his work, J.H Pratt offered an alternative hypothesis...By this hypothesis, rock columns below mountains must have a lower density, because of their greater length, than shorter rock columns beneath plains. Both Airy and Pratt's hypothesis imply that surface irregularities are balanced by differences in density of rocks below the major features (mountains and plains) of the crust. This state of BALANCE is described as the concept of ISOSTACY (Selby1985:32) ."
13. HUMAN EMBRYOLOGY
The Koran is known to be the first book to give microscopic details of human embryology(Koran 23:13-14 etc.), hundreds of years before the discovery of the microscope! The Koran contains information on embryology, which was not discovered till about 30 years back and certain details were new even to modern scientists but were immediately confirmed as being accurate.
The Koran mentions that at a certain stage, the developing human is like "allaqa", a leech-like clot. If you take a microscopic picture of a human embryo of days 7-12 and place it next to a picture of a leech, they both look identical. Not only do they look the same but they function in the same way too. Just like a leech derives nourishment from its host's blood, the embryo derives nourishment from the decidua or the pregnant endometrium. These facts about the Koran are well documented and listed by Keith L. Moore in his standard textbooks on embryology, books used in such prestigious institutions as the Yale Medical School.
14.RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD
"Nay! I swear by the day of resurrection.
Nay! I swear by the reproachful self (Super Ego?).
Does man think that We shall not gather his bones?
Yea! We are able to make complete his very fingertips.
..What, does humankind think that they will be left to roam at will?
Was he not a drop ejaculated?
Then he was a leech-like structure.
And He (God) created and formed.
And made of him a pair, the male and the female
. What, is He (God) then not able to quicken the dead?"
Koran 75:1-40
The above verse of the Koran questions those who reject the notion of the resurrection of the dead. What is the more difficult task: That you were created from an insignificant drop, which was so small that it couldn't be seen except through a microscope, or that one day you will be formed from your remnants?
Russian scientists recently discussed reproducing an extinct species of elephant by use of a microscopic unit of long-dead gene material. No one in the scientific community said that that was unreasonable. The point is that the resurrection of the dead might be an unusual think but it certainly is not unreasonable. The use of cloning techniques throws further light on the amazing nature of the Koranic verse which compares the resurrection of the dead with human development from an insignificant zygote to the fetus. Cloning provides theoretic and empirical evidence for the resurrection of the dead.
15. CIRCULATION OF BLOOD AND FOOD
"And surely in the cattle, there is a lesson for you. We give you to drink of what is inside their bodies, from between digested food and blood, pure milk, pleasant to those who drink it (Koran 16:6)."
The above verse of the Koran calls our attention to the food distribution function of blood. It should be kept in mind however that a Muslim scientist formally discovered the circulation of blood 600 years after Muhammed's death and it was made known to the west by William Harvey, 1000 years after Muhammed had died. If Muhammed was the author of the Koran how would he have known, at the time that he lived that digested food is transported via blood and then becomes the constituent of milk secreted by the mammary glands?
16.THE "CONSTANTS" AND THE INITIAL CONDITIONS
"Do they [the disbelievers] not see that God has subjected for them whatsoever is in the heavens and on earth (Koran 31:20)? " Indeed We have created everything with a set measure (Koran 54:49)
Compare these statements in the Koran to what the physicist Paul Davies writes in his book, The Accidental Universe (1982):
"The numerical values that nature has assigned to the fundamental constants, such as the charge on the electron, the mass of the proton, and the Newtonian Gravitational constant, may be mysterious, but they are critically relevant to the structure of the universe that we perceive. As more and more physical systems from nuclei to galaxies have become better understood, scientists have begun to realize that many characteristics of these systems are remarkably sensitive to the precise value of the fundamental constants. Had nature opted for a slightly different set of numbers, the world would have been a very different place and we would not be here to see it." (Davies 1982)
At around 300,000 years after the big bang, all parts of the universe, even separated by more than 20 times the horizon distance, and expanding in opposite directions, in causally disconnected regions (i.e.. no cause or physical effect could pass from one region to the other), began to expand with the same expansion rate and temperature.
No natural explanation exists to explain how a chaotic explosion, the big bang resulted in a uniform expansion pattern among causally disconnected regions, expanding in opposite directions. Calculations indicate that when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old, it consisted of 10 to the power 80 causally disconnected regions, and no physical effect could have traveled from one region to another and yet 300,000 years after, cosmic background radiation proves that they all started expanding with the same expansion rate and the same temperature. It was as if they acted upon uniformly communicated intelligent direction. Consider what the Koran says:
"... And He (God) inspired in all the heavens their affair (Koran 41:12)."
The "Flatness" or "smoothness" of the universe is established by modern science and leads scientists to wonder as to how a uniform distribution of matter resulted from the big bang. The Koran is aware of this and presents the "smoothness" of the universe as a challenge to unbelievers:
"[It is God] who has created the multiple skies, one separate from the other (as layers). You cannot see any flaw in the Merciful (God's) creation. Look again, can you make out any rifts?" (Koran 67:3)
If we deny the Koran's claim of being God's revelation, we have to account for the above information, and how it made its way into the Koran, always without error, and always accurate. Justice and truth demand that or we are fooling ourselves alone.
Conclusion
In the face of all the facts that the Koran provides, it is evident that it challenges human intellect and explanation and presents itself as a challenge to traditional religion and skeptical scientists. In the light of this, let us consider this claim that it makes:
If all of humankind and the other intelligent life were to band together to produce the like of this Koran, they would not be able to, even if they backed up each other with help and support (Koran 17:89)
References
1. Miller, Gary. The Amazing Quran. (Video Recording, transcribed, Sept 1990, Asadi, Muhammed. Lahore, Pakistan).
2. Asadi, Muhammed A. 1992. Koran: A Scientific Analysis. Lahore. Pakistan.
3. Asadi, Muhammed A. 1995. The Message of Qur'an and Islam. Lahore, Pakistan: Ferozsons' Ltd.
4. Asadi, Muhammed A. 2000. The Unifying Theory of Everything: Koran & Nature's Testimony.Writer's Club Press. New York.
5. Koran. Translated from the Arabic.
6. Maurice. What is the Origin of Man? 1987. Seghers, Paris.
7. Bucaille, Maurice. The Bible, the Qur'an and Science. 1985. Seghers. Paris.
8. Rehaili. Abdullah. M. This is the Truth. 1995. Riyadh. Saudi Arabia.
