I recently got this email asking to look at ‘evidence’ that ‘the Quran is supernatural’. I’ll do that after I review ‘evidence’ from my 6 year old that Santa Claus really exists but in case any of you are bored out of your minds, you might want to have a go. If not – gasp, horror – he will note on his website that the ‘ex-muslims declined’. Please, please don’t let it get to that point. Here’s his email:
The reason why I am contacting this exmuslim council is because I would like to get your opinion on our claim that the Quran is supernatural due to the scientific, prophetical and archaeological evidence… which proves that a mere man could not have written it.
I would like to get your views on this and share it with others. Or would there be someone you know who would be interested in participating in looking over our evidences?
You can visit my Islamic apologetic website and click on the evidence for Islam tab.
Upon refusal we will note on our website that you did approach … but exmuslms declined.
I have had some previous debates you can view online, you can see this recent one here.
Please let me know
thanks,
Nadir Ahmed
www.ExamineTheTruth.com
Well, it’s trivially true that what is now the Quran wasn’t written by one man. First, there was no formal Arab script until 200 years later, so all there was was oral passing-on of what Mohammed mumbled and what people remembered from those mumblings, and then bit by bit these stories got written up centuries later by different people.
But they don’t tell Muslims that, as I understand it, and the discipline of critical Quran study is somewhat underdeveloped.
Ditto for the bible/bibble/bile….30-300 years
Why did you post that link?! I clicked on it and lost 15 IQ points! Beyond stupid.
A mere man would not write such atrocious drivel, but sadistic, cruel, vile, monstrous men did.
Quite honestly I’ve read the Quran and I found it more vile than the Bile (intentional misspelling). I can stomach less than the Bile and IMHO, it was written by man, not a supernatural being. I do not need apologetics to convince me differently. Apologetics are nothing more than an attempt to brainwash or at least allow the religious to get their foot into the door to brainwash someone. The idea of a god is nothing more than a human concept and only real in the minds of those who actually buy into such superstition, instead of accepting real science, as well as other legitimate forms of education. Religious texts are nothing more than modern day mythology rewritten for a specific culture and pure literature. They should be taken as nothing more than modern day mythological literature.
If one is so confident about the ‘insights’ offered by one’s faith, why the constant need to measure oneself against science? Why do these insights become evident only against an advancement in science ex-post? Why not come up with a novel prediction from divine revelations? Or use these divine revelations to cure diseases, build skyscrapers and design aircraft. In other words, do something useful instead of performing mental gymnastics.
Lovely critique of religion my friend. Is it any surprise that religious folk tend to suffer from insecurities and use religion as a natural drug for their selfish gain?
Challenge accepted… tentatively.
http://mygodlesslife.blogspot.com/2012/01/challenge-accepted-tentatively.html
I’m paraphrasing someone here:
“Islam and other religions look for coincidental superficial similarities between their texts and some modern science and then declare that the Q’uran is true. It’s transparently foolish.”
Weeeeaksauce. I only got through one argument before I laughed myself off the site.
If you haven’t looked, the basic gist is that a verse in the Koran about “barriers in the seas” is supposedly confirmed by the existence of a feature called the “pycnocline.” Problems?
Well, first, I clicked through the handy link and read the surrounding verses. It’s a frigging poem. A few lines earlier it talks about how the stars and the trees bow down to God, which is obvious hyperbole. It’s ludicrous to claim that the poet would break up this flow of figurative, poetic language (which I imagine sounds really good in Arabic) to explain that a sharp density gradient at 200-300 meters deep sharply limits the natural circulation of water between the deep ocean and the surface.
Second of all, if we do take this passage literally, it’s inaccurate. I don’t know Arabic, but the language apparently implies that the two seas separated by this barrier are side by side, where the pycnocline is a horizontal layer separating two regions above and below. (This might just be an artifact of translation, though.) The Koran passage claims this barrier is set there by God so that the two seas do not “transgress” or cross into the other’s territory, but it’s not like the pycnocline is a solid wall. Natural circulation through it is low, not zero. Is God an imperfect wall-builder? And a later line claims that “from both of them emerge pearls and coral,” which is false. Those products only come from one of the two “seas,” the upper one. Oysters and coral don’t grow below the pycnocline, and even if they did, fishers contemporary to the Koran would have had no way to harvest them.
Third, the fact that this scriptural “barrier” is meant to be the pycnocline, and not some more solid candidate like barrier reefs or the mid-Atlantic ridge, is suspicious. The “evidence” site takes pains to emphasize that this is an invisible boundary. I strongly suspect that we are meant to conflate “invisible” with “supernatural.” In fact, the pycnocline is caused by reasonably well-understood physics (the way the properties of water change at differing pressures.) If this science had not been understood, we wouldn’t have discovered the pycnocline in the first place (certainly not under that name, which literally means “pressure layer.”) The author of this site would have had to elide over the “barriers” line as making a physical claim with no known evidence backing it up, as he does with the line about the jinn in the same poem.
Now, if I could meet a djinni, that would count as evidence. This, though, is some terrible scholarship; they should be embarrassed to have written it. If this is what they think evidence looks like, I see no reason to read the rest.
My favorite koranic gem: Solomon having a casual chat with birds and ants.
http://www.examinethetruth.com/evidence_for_islam.html#plague
Saying that rats, scorpions, kites, crows and rabid dogs are mischief-doers and may be killed does not constitute proof that Muhammad had a cure for bubonic plague or knew how to prevent it.
This reminds me of my experiences with creationists at church youth club as a kid: luckily for me my science education was sufficient for me to see through their misinformation. Probably some children of Muslim parents will have the same kind of experience if they read this site.
Oh wow! That bit really got me. At least it’s not in nauseating moe manga style though:
http://nayzak.deviantart.com/
Just when you thought apologetics couldn’t get any more ridiculous. Don’t click the link unless you’re ready to feel sick.
My brain simply refuses to accept what I’ve just seen. I can feel my subconscious already trying to convince me that it was just some kind of fever dream.
Though I’m deeply amused to see it hosted on deviantart.com, for some reason.
Did you also notice that the artist refers to himself in the third person in the comments?
I browsed through his gallery a few months ago, when one of his works was featured. I nearly threw up.
I thought of posting links to it in the comments here, but [fortunately] I forgot about it.
Thanks to my own curiosity (or is it masochism?) I’ve looked over his work again. His gallery, and his comments seem to be filled with what feels like a sort of saccharine authoritarianism, that seems like it could turn sinister at the drop of a hat.
For all the garbage hosted on dA, there are still decent things like this, at least.
The level of outright delusion, dishonesty, circular argument and utter mangling of facts on that website beggars belief.
As for the obvious pride he holds in his debating skills, as provided by his second link. Try this on for size:
7 arguments why chapter 9:29 is the most magnificent verses of the Quran
Nadir, your lot were persecuted by Christians, not Atheists. Don’t take it personally, they were an equal-opportunity oppressor, in that anybody who didn’t subscribe to their particular creed was fair game for a bit of sadistic torture.
Historical histrionics asides, although I am somewhat concerned about religion’s predilection for bearing grudges that span a millennia and a half, on what grounds can violence against atheists be asserted as a “necessity and moral obligation”?
We are non-believers but, to put it bluntly, what the fuck have we ever done to you?
No wonder irony meters are always in short supply. Even the ones that go up to eleven have a hard time coping with #4
By non-beleivers he means non-muslims, which includes all christians.
Why do these people spend so much time trying to explain to people that their God exists instead of just joining the modern world? Get a grip, Mudslimes.
Just in case anyone has not come across hir yet, although it’s not immediately incontrovertible on the grounds of this post in isolation, PP88 has already established solid credentials as a thoroughly obnoxious troll.
My apologies to Maryam Namazie if we have already been asked to ignore it.
I’m a troll because I refer to Muslims as Mudslimes?
Go away, politically correct kid.
“My apologies to Maryam Namazie if we have already been asked to ignore it.”
Yes, you have inadvertantly become PP88’s whore.
Commiserations.
What the letter writer and his friends need to do is find some new knowledge or science in the Koran that we don’t currently know. To come along after the fact and claim that there are some broad allusions to now known science is entirely unconvincing to sceptics like myself.
It is a source of amusement however. Comedy gold.
And they laugh at the idea that Nostradamus is a prophet…I don’t get it.
Douglas Adams foretold the coming of the portable internet. That make The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy a supernatural book.
The best bit, for me, is on the home page:
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Thanx for the link. It was a good laugh. Cherry-picking and rationalization at its finest.