Statement from a Muslim:
How can the Qur’an knows this 1,500 years ago, when recently science has just come to realise that iron came down to earth from outer space from asteroids. Also science has just recently realised that the Universe is expanding: Stephen Hawking in his book ‘A Brief History of Time’ writes, “The discovery that the universe is expanding was one of the great intellectual revolutions of the 20th century.”
I would love to hear atheists argue against this.
So he’s saying or claiming the Koran knew this FIRST that the unverise is expanding. Which is FALSE. Proving that the Koran is NOT 100% ACCURATE as so many Muslims claim. 🙂
The winning argument:
Hipparchus of Nicaea
Hipparchus of Nicaea discovered and measured Earth’s precession, copiled the first comprehensive star catalog of the western world, invented the astrolabe and the armillary sphere,studied the motion of the Moon and confirmed the accurate values for two periods of its motion. Aristotle’s theory that the universe was finite in size was complemented by Aristarchus’ heliocentric theory and later modified by Claudius Ptolemaeus, hinting at the possibility of an expanding universe. Ptolemaeus was active in the second century CE and was the only one of the above mentioned philosophers/scientists who was alive after the BCE/CE barrier. All of their observations were derived from scientific observation- erroneous conclusions came from lack of information and tools, but nevertheless the rarefied Hipparchian theory was a sound one, despite its flaws, as was the modifications by Ptolemaeus.
Considering that the Quran was not written until 632 CE, and that the Library of Alexandria’s texts were sacked as late as 391 CE under the decree of Pope Theophilus and its final demise came around the time of Omar ibn Al-khattāb in 640 CE, it is not just probable but factual that the Greek texts had already been taken to the Middle East and translated. Indeed, Muslim medieval scholars regularly described Aristotle as the “First Teacher” (al-mua’llim al-thani, Aristutalis.) The author of the Quran was not divinely inspired in his cosmology- a good number of the Muslim scholars were extremely familiar with the Greek philosophers and scientists, and it was their translation of Aristotle and others that Aquinas used for his own Commentaries.
Finally, there’s the issue of the ‘Black Stone’– a simple meteorite that superstition has enshrouded in magic and mystery, but it is not so. Anyone who had direct contact with the ‘black stone’ and had a keen eye would know that stones that ‘fell from the sky’ contain certain metallic properties. The black rock is said to have been set into the Kaaba’s wall by Mohammed in the year 605 CE’, conveniently five years before Mohammed’s first revelation, so he had direct contact with the meteorite and could observe its properties as he worked to set it into the wall. Thirty years later- voila, the mysterious mention of meteorites is present in the quran, as well as the Aristarchean-Ptolemic theory of universal expansion, which had been known to astronomers for over four hundred years.
Revelation sort of pales, when one follows the evidence trail, doesn’t it?
Muslims got owned HARD… No way to out smart the above counter statement.
Stop Islam 247 