I)Embryological Data in the Koran:
Consider 1). "He [i.e God] created you in the wombs of your mothers in three fold darkness" (Koran 39:6).
The three fold darkness may refer to: i)Anterior abdominal wall; ii)The uterine wall & iii) Amnio Chronic membrane [Prof Keith L. Moore- University of Toronto].
2). "Then We [plural of majesty for God] placed him [i.e man/woman] as a drop [Nutfa in Arabic] in a safe lodging. Then We made the drop [Nutfa] into a leech like structure [Alaca in Arabic]. Then out of the leech like structure, a chewed lump [Mudghah
in Arabic]. Then out of the chewed lump bones, and We clothed the bones in flesh. Then we developed out of it another creature. therefore, blessed be Allah [God], the best of those that create" (Koran 23: 13-14)
ANALYSIS OF KORAN 23:14
i) "We placed him as a drop in a safe lodging"
The drop [Zygote] divides to form a blastocyst which is implanted in a safe lodging [Uterus].
ii) "Then We made the drop into a leech like structure (Alaca)"
The human embryo [days 7-24] looks and behaves like a leech. Just as a leech derives blood from the host, the embryo derives blood from the pregnant endometrium [or decidua]. The embryo of 23-24 days in its appearance, remarkably resembles a leech. As there were no microscopes available 1400 years back such a statement in the Koran is fascinating indeed. [Adapted from Keith L. Moore]
Embryo Below (Day 24); Leech on top.
iii) "Then out of the leech like structure, we made a chewed lump [Mudghah in Arabic]"
In Arabic Mudghah signifies chewed lump or chewed flesh. This is stated in contrast to intact flesh which is signified by the word Laham [in Arabic].
Towards the end of the 4th week, the human embryo looks like a chewed lump of flesh. The chewed appearance results from somites which resemble teeth marks. [Keith L. Moore]
iv) "Then out of the chewed lump, bones, and then We clothed the bones in flesh"
This is in accord with embryological development. First bones form as cartilage models and then muscles [flesh] develops around them from the somatic mesoderm. [Keith L. Moore]
v) "Then We develop out of it another creature"
After the formation of bones and muscles, by the end of the 8th week, the embryo has distinctive human characteristics and is called a fetus [refer "another creature"].
3) "O mankind! if you are in doubt concerning the resurrection then Lo!, We have
created you from dust, then from a drop [Nutfa], then from a leech like structure [Alaca], then from a chewed lump of flesh [Mudghah], partly formed and partly unformed..."
(Koran 22:5).
The statement "partly formed and partly unformed," may indicate that the embryo is composed of both differentiated and undifferentiated tissue. [Keith L. Moore]
When cartilage bones are differentiated, the embryonic connective tissue [mesenchyme] around them is undifferentiated.
4) "And He [Allah or God] it is who created Mankind of water" (Koran 25:54).
The Ovum cell from which the human being is created has as its main functioning portion the cytoplasm which is between 70%-85%water.
5) "And He [Allah or God] created the two pairs male and female from an ejaculated
drop" (Koran 53:45,46)
The male sperm is the "ejaculated drop". Females do not possess ejaculated semen.
The male sperm carrying [maybe] the Y- chromosome determines sex. Therefore the
ejaculated drop determines sex. There were no microscopes etc to have knowledge of this
1400 years back, the time of the Koranic revelation.
6) "Surely, We created man from a mixed (Amshaj in Arabic) drop.." (Koran 76:2)
The Zygote (drop) forms by the union of a mixtures of the sperm and the ovum.
7) "...And He (God) gave you hearing and sight and feeling and understanding.." (Koran 32:9).
The above verse has as its context the creation of mankind. The special senses of
hearing, seeing and feeling develop in the exact same order as mentioned in the above verse. The primordia of the internal ears appears before the beginning of the eyes, and the brain [the site of feeling and understanding] differentiates last.
II) Other data:
8) "Surely those who disbelieve our signs, We shall burn them at a fire. As often as
their skins are wholly burned, we shall give them in exchange other skins so that they may keep tasting the punishment [i.e keep feeling the pain of burning]." (Koran 4:56)
Full thickness burns destroy nerve endings so that further burning does not cause pain. The pin prick test is used to verify full thickness loss. The Koran informed us about this over 1400 years back when people knew nothing about full thickness and partial thickness burns and their anaesthetic effect.
9) "..And you will see mankind on that day [i.e the day of judgement] as drunken [intoxicated], yet they will not be drunken [intoxicated].." (Koran 22:2)
Effects similar to intoxication can be produced in our bodies even though no intoxicant has been consumed [just as indicated by the above verse of the Koran]. Modern physiology has found this in the case of at least one pathological state, Mania [which involves feelings of intense euphoria and frenzied behavior].
10) "We have charged man(kind) that he/she be kind to his/her parents...; his bearing
and his weaning are thirty months. Then when he is fully developed and reaches FORTY YEARS.." (Koran 46:15)
Psychological tests show that the overall quantity of stored knowledge in a person's mind increases during the first 39 years of his life, reaching a peak at this time (Guyton 207). The Koran said 40 years much before such psychological tests were conducted.
While commenting on the above verses of the Koran, please consider the fact that the Koran was revealed at a time period and place where people had little, if any scientific knowledge and lacked the equipment to provide such accurate descriptions contained in the above verses. As no alternative explanation is found, the "revealed" nature of the above verses is made clear. The Koran claims to be a revelation from God.
References to the Koran eg 22:5 refer to Koran chapter (sura) 22, verse or sentence 5.
WORKS CITED
1. Asadi, Muhammed A. Koran: A Scientific Analysis. IPU, Lahore 1992.
2. Guyton, Arthur C. Physiology of the Human Body. 6th edition. Holt Saunders International Editions.
3. Moore, Keith L. Before We are Born: Basic Embryology & Birth Defects. 2nd edition.
W. B. Saunders Co, Philadelphia 1983.
4. Moore, K. L. A Scientists Interpretation of references to Embryology in Al- Qur'an. 1986.
"READ! IN THE NAME OF YOUR LORD WHO CREATED. CREATED MAN FROM A LEECH LIKE [STRUCTURE]." (KORAN 96:1-20)
THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE
" Do not the rejecters see that the skies and earth were bound together then we disunited [or separated] them In the above statement, the Koran gives an accurate description of the Big Bang, a theory of the origin of the universe widely accepted by scientists today.
(Fataq in Arabic) ..." (Koran 21:30)
The Arabic word used in the Koran to signify separation is Fataq. It means to dis-joint or disunite. It essentially captures, in the description, "symmetry breaking" between particles and forces that modern cosmologists talk about in explaining the complexity of the Universe.
Martin Rees, who is one of the leading cosmologists in the world, states in his book, Our Cosmic Habitat (2001)
"Our universe may once have been squeezed to a single point, but EVERYONE whether on Earth, or Andromeda, or even on the galaxies remotest from us can EQUALLY claim to have started from that point..." (Rees, page 55)
According to the physicist Steven Weinberg: "There was a time in the very early universe....when the forces were all the same-not only mathematically the same...but ACTUALLY the same." (quoted by Ferris, Timothy 1997:215)
The Koran, over 14 centuries before the "Big Bang" theory was presented, confirmed the "common origin" or source of everything in the universe. The criticism by some that it mentions the "earth" erroneously at this stage is unfounded. The Koran is merely stating that the earth and the skies had one common origin. It mirrors the statement by Martin Rees quoted above when it mentions the "common origin" of everything, including you and I, in the Universe. How do we explain this information in the Koran, if it had its origin in the mind of a 7th century man ?
The Koran talks about an "expanding" Universe centuries before scientists described it:
"And the sky We built it with might, and we cause the expansion of it."
(Koran 51:47)
The fact that the Universe is not static but in a state of expansion was discovered by the American astronomer Edwin Hubble in the late 1920s, almost 1400 years after the Koran described it.
The Koran mentions that at a stage in its origin, the universe was "gaseous":
"And also, turned He to the sky when it was as smoke.."(Koran 41:11).
The Koran 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 was indeed, at an early stage, a gaseous mass composed of hydrogen and some helium, a big mass of hot gasses. The Koran is more accurate in describing the gasses as "smoke" rather than the word "mist" or "fog" used frequently by scientists (Rees uses the word "fog" in his book)as the gasses were hot.
The Koran used this analogy centuries before anyone in the world had any idea about helium and hydrogen, yet even today scientists use a crude form of the same analogy. The Belgian cosmologist Georges Lemaitre, lecturing in 1930, fourteen hundred years after the Koran, described this stage of cosmic evolution as: "..the filling of the heavens with smoke."(Ferris, Timothy 1997:109)
The Koran is aware of the phenomenon of "black holes", stars that have collapsed under their intense gravitational field, so that even light cannot escape. The Koran stated over 1200 years before the concept was stated by John Michell in 1767, and 1400 years before John Archibald Wheeler coined the term "black hole" in 1968:
I swear by the sky and (the phenomena of) Tariq.
And what will explain to you what Tariq is?
It is a star that pierces (or makes a hole). (Koran 86:1-3)
The Koran uses the word Thaqib in Arabic, a word that literally signifies a puncture or a minute hole
Martin Rees, states in Our Cosmic Habitat (2001)
"Space is already being punctured by the formation of black holes..."
(Rees, page 120)
Michael Moyer of Popular Science writes :
A black hole is infinitely dense, which means that it pulls the fabric of space-time to the breaking pointcreating a deep pockmark, complete with a tiny rip at the bottom.
(http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/0,12543,211498,00.html)
Black holes are objects literally "cut off" from the rest of the universe. The black hole is wrapped in a zone called the "event horizon". Once the event horizon is crossed, nothing can return. A camel falling into the event horizon would literally be stretched to the dimension of a yarn (Ferris, Timothy 1998:83) and can pass through the "eye of the needle"(Koran 7:40).
Contrary to the New Testament, the Koran uses this terminology in relation to "gates to the sky". Many physicists have conjectured about "gates" or "passages" in space being associated with black holes.
Inside the "event horizon" time itself comes to a standstill. Black holes are exceedingly important to modern physics. All endeavours towards a unifying theory, relating quantum physics to general relativity have come from black hole research.
The Koran accurately describes the sky as having "weavings", or being like a knitted fabric. Space having "weavings" ties in with String Theory in physics. It is envisioned by scientists that at the smallest Planck Scale (10^-35 m), spacetime is indeed "weaved" or "knitted".
"By the sky with all its weavings/knittings (huu-buk)" (Koran 51:7) .
Physicist Lee Smolin, in his book, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity(2001) states,
Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The example of His Light is as a Niche wherein is a Lamp: the Lamp enclosed in Glass: the glass as if it were a brilliant star: Lit from a blessed Tree, (as) an olive, neither of the east nor of the west, whose fuel is luminous even though no fire touches it: Light upon Light! Allah guides whom He will to His Light: Allah sest forth parables for humankind. Indeed Allah has knowledge of all things. (Koran 24:35) The statement of the Koran reproduced above provides a detailed map of quasars and their location within a galaxy. For those who study the light in the heavens (the context of the Koranic statement), the astronomers, the description given by the Koran is very clear and easily discernable. Quasars or Quasi Stellar Objects were first discovered in 1963 (over 1400 years after the Koran). They represent the brightest objects in the Universe. Astronomers discovered that certain faint star-like objects existed in the Universe that due to their large redshifts must lie billions of light years away and emit massive amounts of energy, in order to still be visible. In the most widely accepted model of quasars, they are described as the bright nucleus of an active galaxy powered by a central black hole. The black hole is the niche, as the Koran states, wherein is the quasar, i.e. the lamp
"...space may be 'woven' from a network of loops,...just like a piece of cloth is 'woven' from a network of threads."(Smolin, page 186)
Martin Rees, states in Our Cosmic Habitat(2001)
"According to our present concepts, empty space is anything but simple..., and on an even tinier scale, it may be a seething tangle of strings." (Rees, page 107)
The idea that space is not "nothing" but "something" is a 20th century discovery, i.e.over 1300 years after the Koran. The physicist Paul Davies in his book, The Edge of Infinity (1981), terms it, "One of the great scientific discoveries of the twentieth century (Davies, page18)"
THE COLLAPSING UNIVERSE
If the density of matter in the Universe is sufficiently large, gravitational forces will eventually cause the Universe to stop expanding, and then to start falling back in upon itself. If that happens, the Universe will end in a second cataclysmic event that cosmologists call The Big Crunch
Andrei Linde of Stanford University and his colleagues have shown that according to some theories of supergravity, which try to describe gravity within the context of quantum theory, the dark energy from a scalar field will do more than simply reach zero - it will become negative and possibly even plunge as far as minus infinity. This would slow the rate of expansion of the Universe and then put it into reverse, causing space and time to collapse to a point in a big crunch. Linde and his colleagues calculate that the typical time for the Universe to start this collapse would be in 10 to 20 billion years from now. Its current age is about 14 billion years NEW SCIENTIST
The Koran describes the Big Crunch and what the physicist Heinz Pagels described as the "Cosmic Code" in this statement about the script of the universe:
"The day when We shall roll back the skies, like a scribe rolls up a written document.
As We began the first creation, We shall surely repeat it. It is a promise (binding) upon us.
Indeed it will happen." (Koran 21:104)
QUASARS & GRAVITATIONAL LENS EFFECT: LIGHT UPON LIGHT
Also discovered recently is the fact that when viewed through the galaxy, the galaxy produces a gravitational effect which is similar to the quasar (the lamp) being surrounded by glass. This is exactly what the Koran states, ...the lamp enclosed in glass. NASA astronomers state: The gravitational effect of the galaxy on the distant quasar was similar to the lens effect of a drinking glass on a distant street light - it created multiple images ("light upon light"- the Arabic word used in the statement "Nur" signifies reflected light). But stars in the foreground galaxy have been found to act as gravitational lenses here too. (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950711.html)
Timothy Ferris writes in his book, The Whole Shebang: As light from a Quasar travels towards us
it may pass through either side of an intervening cluster of galaxies. The warped space surrounding the cluster can act as a lens, with a result that we see two images of what is (or was) actually one quasar. (Ferris 1997:61) Allah (God) is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The example of His Light is as a niche (black hole) wherein is a Lamp (quasar) : the Lamp enclosed in Glass (gravitational lens effect of the galaxy) : the glass as it were a brilliant star: Lit from a blessed Tree (the galaxy that feeds the black hole) , (as) an olive (see image above), neither of the east nor of the west (stars and gas as fuel from all sides) , whose fuel is luminous even though no fire touches it (non-fire/oxygen combustion) : Light upon Light(gravitational lens effect)! Allah guides whom He will to His Light: Allah sets forth Parables for humankind. Indeed Allah has knowledge of all things. (Koran 24:35)
"He created the skies and the earth for truth.
The Quasar is powered by the black hole when stars and gas from the galaxy are sucked into it. A tree- the Koran states, powers it. It is not unusual for astronomers to describe galaxies as trees comprised of stars, see the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, reproduced in the Timothy Ferris book mentioned above (Ferris 1997: 188).
Perhaps the most astonishing revelation in the Koran, in that particular verse, is the section that accurately describes the concept of non-fire combustion, the nuclear fusion that produces luminosity. The Koran states, "whose fuel is luminous even though no fire touches it. Since there is no free form oxygen gas in space, no fire-based combustion is possible for stars or quasars to shine as they do, for as long as they do. Stars begin their life composed primarily of hydrogen. As the gas contracts, due to gravity, it heats up; hydrogen atoms collide and combine to form helium while energy is released. This released energy, which gets radiated into space, is the visible light that we see- even though no "fire" touches the fuel. The ancients did not know about non-fire combustion, it is a very recent discovery. It was long believed, even by the Greeks that the sun and the stars shone by burning their material like a fire through combustion. Correcting that erroneous notion, the Koran is the first book on earth to describe accurately the concept of luminosity produced through non-fire combustion. Let us recap the entire statement of the Koran:
THE SUN AND THE MOON
He coils the night upon the day and He coils the day upon the night"(Koran 39:5)
At a time when a geocentric cosmology was in vogue, the Koran not only corrected the erroneous notions associated with that world-view, but made clear that night and day were caused by a coiling motion. The Koran uses the arabic verb Kawarra which in its original usage signifies the "coiling" of a turban around the head. A perfect analogy to the movement that causes night and day, i.e. the earth's rotation.
"He it is who has created the night and day, and the sun and the moon.
They all, in their orbit, swim (yasbahoon)" (Koran 39:5)
To make this notion of a rotating earth causing night and day even clearer, the Koran mentions that the night "merges" into the day and day "merges" into night (Koran 3:27) and that the night and day "interchange" into each other (Koran 24:44). The above statement stated that this change is brought about by orbital motion similar to (in principle) but distinct from the orbital motion of the sun and the moon. "They all" says the Koran, "all" signifies night and day, the sun and the moon. The word translated "swim" above is the Arabic Yasbahoon. It signifies movement with one's own motion. If you refer to a man doing this on the ground, it means he is walking and not rolled by someone else.
"And the sun constantly journeys towards a homing place for it
And for the moon We have determined phases...
It is not for the sun to overtake the moon,
neither can the night outstrip the day.
And they all swim (yasbahoon) in their own orbits (Koran 36:38-40)"
The Koran mentions the movement of the sun. The sun's movement is not something that is evident to our eyes or experience but requires specialized equipment. Modern science has found out that the sun rotates around its axis every 26 days and is continually on a journey in space towards its "homing place", the central nucleus of our galaxy, just like mentioned in the Koran (36:39), in its orbit of around 226 million miles (accurate to within 6 percent), according to Mark Reid, a Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer. Also, the Koran is known to be the first book to use the modern term "phase" (Manazil in Arabic) associated with the moon's appearances.
By stating that the sun is not permitted to "overtake" the moon, the Koran is making clear for astronomers, in their own terminology, that the sun and the moon are not revolving around the same object. It also makes clear that the movement that causes night and day has nothing to do with the movement of the sun and the moon. In the first part of the statement, the sun is mentioned as the one that cannot "overtake" the moon. In the second part it is the night that cannot "outstrip" the day. This is completely contrary to popular earth-centered (geocentric) systems, in which day and night were associated with the sun's movement (popular at the time of Muhammed).
Simon and Jacqueline Mitton, in their book, Invitation to Astronomy (1986), state on page 20:
...a planet travels more slowly the further it is away from the sun. Thus the Earth regularly "overtakes on the inside", the planets that are further out. The overtaking causes the apparent backward loop in the planet's path." (Mitton 1986:20)
Not only this, the Koran completely debunks the geocentric hypothesis when it states:
By the Sun and its brightness
And by the moon when it imitates it (i.e. reflects that brightness)
And by the day which reveals it.
By the night which conceals it." (Koran 91:1-4)
The above statements of the Koran not only reveal the reflected nature of the moon's light but also debunk the erroneous claim of the geocentrists that the sun's movement causes day and night. It is the morning that "reveals" the sun and the night that "conceals" the sun, not the other way around. In other words, the sun is stationary relative to night and day. The movement that causes night and day is not the movement of the sun!
The fact that the earth, sun and moon move with their own motion is a notion that even the "father of gravity", Issac Newton, did not fully understand. It was clarified by Einstein in 1912 (almost 1400 years after the Koran) and formed the essence of his General Theory of Relativity. Physicist Brian Greene, in his book, The Elegant Universe (1999) states on page 71:
...Einstein has taught us that the warping of space is gravity. The mere presence of an object with mass causes space to respond by warping. Similarly, the earth is not kept in orbit because the gravitational pull of some other external object guides it...Instead, Einstein showed that objects move through space along the shortest possible paths- the "easiest possible" paths or the "paths of least resistance". (Greene, Page 71)
ATOMISM
"(God is)The Knower of the unapparent.
Not an atom's weight in the skies or the earth, nor anything smaller than that,
or larger, escapes him, but is in a clear record." (Koran 34:3)
Many centuries before Muhammed was born, there was a well known theory of ATOMISM, advanced by the Greeks, Democritus in particular, who lived in the 4th century BC. Democritus and the people who came after him assumed that the material world is made up of tiny indivisible particles called atoms, the smallest pieces of matter,each having the same mass, the smallest unit mass possible. The Arabs used to deal in the same concept. The word in Arabic, ZARRA, most commonly meant that.
The Koran breaking with that tradition clearly states that there are things "smaller" than an atom (see Koran 34:3 above).
It was not until 1897 that the concept of the 'indivisible atom' was challenged when the English physicist J.J Thomson, working at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge found ways to study bits that had been broken off atoms (Gribbin, John 1998. The Search for Superstrings, Symmetry, and the Theory of Everything)
How could Muhammed have known that particles existed smaller than what was believed to be the smallest indivisible unit known? Then We placed him as a drop (of seed) in a safe lodging. Then fashioned the seed into a leech.. (Koran 23:13-14) The Koran is known to be the first book to give microscopic details of human embryology, 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" (Koran 23:13-14), a leech-like clot.
If you take a microscopic picture of a human embryo of days 7-24 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.
Keith L. Moore, a world authority on embryology, states in his book, The Developing Human (1998):
"Reference (in the Koran) is also made to the leech-like appearance of the early embryo. (The four week embryo shown, looks like a leech or blood sucker.)" (Moore, page 8)
Keith Moore has authored standard textbooks on embryology. Books that are termed "required readings" by prestigious medical institutions all around the world.
"And it is He (God) who has created the two pairs, male and female from the ejaculated drop." (Koran 53:45)
In the above statement, the Koran says that the sex of a human baby is determined by the " ejaculated drop".
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 point is that 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. It has been scientifically established, only recently ,that the female ovum contains only X chromosomes. If the ejaculated drop bears the Y chromosome, the offspring will be male, 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.
In a standard text on Genetics, Elements of Medical Genetics, a book that has gone through eleven editions, Alan E. H. Emery and Robert F. Mueller , write in chapter 1, under, "The Development of Genetics":
"Aristotle in the third century BC suggested that male semen originated from the blood and possessed the ability to give life to the embryo...this idea was generally accepted for nearly 2000 years until the 17th century when William Harvey achieved fame for his studies of blood circulation, demonstrated that in deer killed at various times after mating, there was never any evidence of coagulation of menstrual blood but a small embryo developed that gradually increased in size and complexity throughout the whole period of gestation, a possibility foreseen in the Koran, the Holy Book of the Muslims several centuries earlier. "
The fact is that the Koran foreshadows William Harvey by almost ten centuries, it also described microscopic stages of human embryology before the discovery of the microscope, stages that William Harvey could not describe.
"Those who have been given knowledge see that what is sent down to you from your Cherisher (God) is the truth...(Koran 34:6)"
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).
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. The fact that all life originated in water is well established by the scientific community, today. We have evidence to support the fact that the first living beings were cyanobacteria also called bluegreen 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.
Consider the above two statements in the Koran and compare them to a visual cross-section of a mountain from a modern standard text. Just like the Koran stated centuries earlier, 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. This was discovered less than 150 years ago by scientists and now accepted as a fundamental law in geology, the concept of ISOSTACY. If the photograph isn't enough evidence consider this narration from a standard text: M. J Selby in a standard-text on the subject entitled "Earth's Changing Surface(Clarendon Press, Oxford 1985) states on page 32:
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)
"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."
The Koranic verse quoted above, mentions the expansion/stretching of the earth. Mentioned together with the stretching of the earth are mountains and rivers.The surface of the Earth today is very different than it once was. It is believed that all of the continents we once connected in one giant land mass, named Pangaea (a Latin word meaning "all lands").
"Have We not expanded the earth..."(Koran 78:6-7)
"It is God who has stretched out (Mad-a in Arabic) the earth,
AND made therein mountains (as anchors) and rivers..."(Koran 13:3)
Expansion or widening of the sea floor is one of the main reasons continental plates are always moving, a process called 'continental drift'. Expansion is caused by an up welling of molten material through cracks, fissures, and faults in the Earth's crust.
Currently, continents drift apart at the rate of about one inch per year. The most obvious sea floor expansion in the world is taking place under the ocean between Arabia and Africa, where the two continents are drifting apart three to four times faster than any other continental plates. When expansion occurs on land rather than the sea bed, an ever widening valley is formed such as East Africa's Great Rift Valley.
The idea of the expansion of the earth was first stated in 1912, fourteen centuries after the Koran, by Alfred Lothar, German meteorologist and explorer.
If we get a relief map that covers Utah, Nevada, and California, in the US, we will be able to see the Basin and Range Province. The Utah Geological Survey states:
The ranges and basins have been forming for the past 10 to 20 million years in response to east-west stretching of the earth's crust. Stretching creates tension that is released by slow continuous movement or sudden movement along a fault (a break in the earth's crust), which causes earthquakes. During an earthquake, the mountains rise while the valleys drop along the faults. The stretching continues today.
(Utah Geological Survey, http://www.ugs.state.ut.us/education/tc/tc12-96.htm)
Not only do mountains rise due to the "stretching" of the earth, but according to simulated models of the continents, "stretching" resulted in the formation of the major rivers on earth as well, exactly as implied by the Koran.
"In all cases the greatest stress occurred at the location of the Earth's major rivers. This development suggests that the major riverbeds came into existence as a result of expansion rather than random erosion. Since the continents were fixed on an expanding surface, it may be logically deduced that expansion caused the land masses to stretch and, at the points of greatest tension, to break, thus forming the rivers."
The Expanded Earth, Benchmark Publishing & Design, Windsor, Ontario, Canada, http://www.wincom.net/earthexp/n/rivers.htm
THE INVISIBLE BARRIER
He has made the two seas to flow freely (so that) they meet together:
Between them is a barrier which they cannot encroach.
Which then of the bounties of your Lord will you deny? (Koran 55:19-21)
The Koran states that there are two large bodies of flowing water (Bahr-ain in Arabic) that meet but do not intermingle because of a "barrier" between them, a barrier that doesn't prevent meeting but prevents intermingling (Koran 55:19-20) The Koran, in the verse above, stated over 1400 years ago, that there are internal waves in a deep ocean (note that internal waves are topped by surface waves which are topped by clouds). Also stated in the verse are the layers of darkness associated with the depth of the ocean. The photograph below was taken using remote sensing equipment (satellite imagery). It reveals internal waves a few kilometers east of the Strait of Gibraltar.
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 ocean 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 Ocean cannot intermingle (as quoted by Nurbaki)."
Did Muhammed do research on the chemical and biological components of seawater to discover this unusual phenomena?
OCEANS & INTERNAL WAVES
"..Or (as the example of) darkness in the deep ocean
, covered by a wave, on top of which is a wave, on top of which are clouds.
Darkness one on top of the other (as layers)..."(Koran 24:40)
The average depth of the oceans is 3795 meters (12450 feet). Without protective equipment humans cannot go down below 40 meters. At 200 meters light has been successively absorbed, layer by layer, in all its color frequencies except blue.There is almost no light at 200 meters.(Oceans, Elder and Pernetta, p. 27).
Internal waves in the "deep ocean" have been recognized only in the past two decades (now four) due to remote sensing from space platforms
(Apel et al.Observations of oceanic internal waves from the ERTS , 1975; Fedorov,Observations of oceanic internal waves from space 1976).
Internal waves form at the interfaces between layers of different water density, which are associated with velocity shears (i.e., where the water above and below the interface is either moving in opposite directions or in the same direction at different speeds). Oscillations can occur if the water is displaced vertically resulting in internal waves.
The Koran is the first book on earth to clearly mention "internal waves" and their association with layers of darkness in a "deep ocean". This was fourteen centuries before remote sensing equipment was invented.
CONCLUSION
The ancient Greeks, more learned than the pre-Islamic Arabs, whenever they opined on nature made multiple errors per every accurate statement made.
(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/GreekScience/Students/Ellen/EarlyGkAstronomy.html)
The Bible made multiple errors when it talked about the natural world and the origin of the universe (http://bible.rationalreality.com). The Koran, contrary to that, not only avoids all the errors made by pre-scientific communities prevalent at the time, it made pioneering statements about the natural world that are amazingly accurate and were not uncovered and could not have been uncovered until recently, as documented above.
There is more testable evidence of a scientific nature presented above (Also read the article Scientific Revelation )and in the link pages to support the single hypothesis of the divine origin of the Koran, than has been presented in support of any other single hypothesis in the entire history of science. The Koran offers what has not been offered by any "religious" book: a logical framework, empirical evidence and falsification
If we deny the Koran's claim of being a revelation, from the One who has knowledge of everything, then we have to account for the above information, and how it made its way into the Koran, always without error, and always accurate. Justice, truth and sincerity demands that or we fool ourselves alone.
The more we advance on the road to science in all directions, micro and macro, the arguments in favor of an intelligent designer become increasingly eloquent. The origin of the "laws" of nature and the precise values of the "constants" that prove that our universe is "fine tuned", necessitate intelligent design.
The precision in the "mix" of these constants, that were necessary preconditions for the universe to evolve and for life to emerge, provide mathematical evidence in support of the "God" hypothesis. The odds of obtaining these "constants" without putting "intelligent design" in the equation is one out of 10,000,000,000 to the power 124. To see how impossible it is, compare this number to the total amount of subatomic particles in the whole universe, which has been calculated to be 10 to the power 80.
The alternative "escape" scenario, the only one left, adopted by atheist/agnostic scientists seems to be the evoking of a multitude of other "invisible" universes. Not only is such an escape unscientific in its violation of "Occam's Razor" and that the entities evoked can never be scientifically verified, it runs into absurdities because it has to evoke the other fictitious "universes" to the infinity because of the numbers above, which makes the whole argument collapse, logically speaking.
Given the exact "mix" or "recipe" of these "constants", this "fine tuning", we can logically deduce from inductive premises that they were "intelligently" set by one source, i.e. one God. The "oneness" of this source is observed by the uniformity in the workings of the laws of nature all through the universe, the common origin of everything in the universe and the blueprint of life all across the species.
Physicist, Paul Davies, states 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."
The quote by Paul Davies above summarizes the Anthropic Principle in cosmology, a premise the conclusion of which the Koran mentions in this statement:
Do you not see that God has utilized (or subjected or made subservient) for them whatsoever is in the heavens and on earth (KORAN 31:20)
According to the "Copenhagen" approach to quantum systems (based upon which the singularity of the Big Bang is studied by cosmologists, because Classical physics breaks down at the quantum level), objects are "real" ONLY when an act of observation by an observer "collapses the wave function" granting the system into one or the other of its potential states (Ferris, Timothy 1997:255). The "wave function" of the universe could never have collapsed without the "observation" of an observer, i.e. God. The Koran states:
To God is due the starting point (primal origin, Badeeh in Arabic) of the skies and the earth.
And Whenever He (God) decrees a matter, He says to it, "Be" and it is."(Koran 2:117).
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