Let's talk about Islam

[momo666]

I am finding myself in a bit of a maze when trying to "prove" the inaccurate statements in the Quran. You often hear Muslims claim how their book contains scientific knowledge that could not have possibly be discovered in that age, ergo some superior intelligence must have dictated it.
The problem when dealing with this issue often is the constant argument that the translation is simply not good enough. English simply cannot encompass the complexity of the Arabic language. Some words have multiple meanings and therefore a certain verse can mean a lot of things. Added to that, is the ever lasting argument of "you are taking it too literally". That verse does not mean that literally, it is merely a poetic expression to show a truth.

You will often hear how some verse that is false when read literally, when read in a poetic way it can express a truth. For example, the Quran does not say that the Earth was created before the stars; it doesn't even mention stars in that verse. The word for "heavens" can also mean "above" so what this poetic verse tells us is that the Earth's atmosphere was created after the Earth formation. You see how there is no contradiction but correct information when you look at it that way ?
Forgive me if the argument is misrepresented, I cannot remember how it goes exactly but as far as I remember, I heard some such defense.

Are there any of our peers dealing with this subject or Islam in particular ? I remember seeing Aron Ra having a brief exchange with that Hamza guy (...what a lunatic) but other than that, not much. Maybe I have not looked enough ?

 

[thenexttodie]

I am finding myself in a bit of a maze when trying to "prove" the inaccurate statements in the Quran. You often hear Muslims claim how their book contains scientific knowledge that could not have possibly be discovered in that age, ergo some superior intelligence must have dictated it.

Right, and this information was retained long enough for Mohamud to copy it from the jews and he pretended to be a prophet. Or maybe Satan gave him this information. Who knows?

It is not enough to show that Allah is the true god and we should all worship him.

The problem when dealing with this issue often is the constant argument that the translation is simply not good enough. English simply cannot encompass the complexity of the Arabic language. Some words have multiple meanings and therefore a certain verse can mean a lot of things. Added to that, is the ever lasting argument of "you are taking it too literally". That verse does not mean that literally, it is merely a poetic expression to show a truth.

Which country where Arabic is the official language do you suggest we all move to?

You will often hear how some verse that is false when read literally, when read in a poetic way it can express a truth. For example, the Quran does not say that the Earth was created before the stars..

Amazing!

 

[Prolescum]

I am finding myself in a bit of a maze when trying to "prove" the inaccurate statements in the Quran. You often hear Muslims claim how their book contains scientific knowledge that could not have possibly be discovered in that age, ergo some superior intelligence must have dictated it.
The problem when dealing with this issue often is the constant argument that the translation is simply not good enough. English simply cannot encompass the complexity of the Arabic language. Some words have multiple meanings and therefore a certain verse can mean a lot of things. Added to that, is the ever lasting argument of "you are taking it too literally". That verse does not mean that literally, it is merely a poetic expression to show a truth.

You will often hear how some verse that is false when read literally, when read in a poetic way it can express a truth. For example, the Quran does not say that the Earth was created before the stars; it doesn't even mention stars in that verse. The word for "heavens" can also mean "above" so what this poetic verse tells us is that the Earth's atmosphere was created after the Earth formation. You see how there is no contradiction but correct information when you look at it that way ?
Forgive me if the argument is misrepresented, I cannot remember how it goes exactly but as far as I remember, I heard some such defense.

Are there any of our peers dealing with this subject or Islam in particular ? I remember seeing Aron Ra having a brief exchange with that Hamza guy (...what a lunatic) but other than that, not much. Maybe I have not looked enough ?

Science is a method used to systematically explain phenomena through observations, religious texts aren't.

That a tract of ancient woo may contain an accurate observation doesn't imply that its verses are a prism through which truth can divined, only that the goat herders who wrote them are capable of recording the wetness of water, how much grain you need to store over winter, and that the Sun and Moon look sort of similar in shape once a month.

I don't know any specific person who debunks a particular religion although there are many threads on this topic around the forum that take the main ones to task. Might find what you're looking for in those.

Right, and this information was retained long enough for Mohamud to copy it from the jews and he pretended to be a prophet. Or maybe Satan gave him this information. Who knows?

Christianity (and therefore its 30,000 variants) is also straight up copied from Jewish cultural woo, which in turn is an amalgam Sumerian and Atenist cultural woo. it's not a new phenomenon.

It is not enough to show that Allah is the true god and we should all worship him.

Allah is the Arabic word for god; it's the same chap.

 

[*SD*]

"you are taking it too literally". That verse does not mean that literally, it is merely a poetic expression to show a truth.

Therein lies the problem. I don't know a huge amount about Islam, but the same problem is prevalent in Christianity and most other religions.

"That bit is metaphorical!"
Oh? Who got to decide that?

"That bit is literal!"
See above.

You get a bunch of Christians together, from separate denominations (or in some cases even the same denomination) and they will disagree on practically every point of doctrine. Christians don't even agree with eachother.
This problem is also present in Islam, although perhaps not to such a great extent as with Christianity. But it's still there.

You'll frequently hear "ah, but what that reeeeaallllyy means is XYZ - when it says nothing of the sort. Post hoc rationalisations and outright spin mixed with a big dollop of denialism.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

I am finding myself in a bit of a maze when trying to "prove" the inaccurate statements in the Quran. You often hear Muslims claim how their book contains scientific knowledge that could not have possibly be discovered in that age, ergo some superior intelligence must have dictated it.

Have them point to something that is in the Quran that is a direct 1:1 match for our modern knowledge that was known before we discovered it with science. This is the problem with prophecy in the first place. Most prophecies are so vague that they can mean anything and are always discovered post hoc. In one of the episodes of the new Cosmos, they point out why Halley has a comet named after him and it was because he predicted when and where it would appear to within a few weeks. That is the type of precision a prophecy should need inorder to impress anyone. Anything short of that type of pricision should be suspect.

Are there any of our peers dealing with this subject or Islam in particular ? I remember seeing Aron Ra having a brief exchange with that Hamza guy (...what a lunatic) but other than that, not much. Maybe I have not looked enough ?

Well, there is The Quran Reloaded, which is always good for a few laughs. I always liked Heina Dadabhoy, since she is an ex-Muslims, but she has fallen off as of late. There is always also Ex-Muslims of North America. Just a few quick ones.

 

[Gnug215]

I am finding myself in a bit of a maze when trying to "prove" the inaccurate statements in the Quran. You often hear Muslims claim how their book contains scientific knowledge that could not have possibly be discovered in that age, ergo some superior intelligence must have dictated it.
The problem when dealing with this issue often is the constant argument that the translation is simply not good enough. English simply cannot encompass the complexity of the Arabic language. Some words have multiple meanings and therefore a certain verse can mean a lot of things. Added to that, is the ever lasting argument of "you are taking it too literally". That verse does not mean that literally, it is merely a poetic expression to show a truth.

You will often hear how some verse that is false when read literally, when read in a poetic way it can express a truth. For example, the Quran does not say that the Earth was created before the stars; it doesn't even mention stars in that verse. The word for "heavens" can also mean "above" so what this poetic verse tells us is that the Earth's atmosphere was created after the Earth formation. You see how there is no contradiction but correct information when you look at it that way ?
Forgive me if the argument is misrepresented, I cannot remember how it goes exactly but as far as I remember, I heard some such defense.

Are there any of our peers dealing with this subject or Islam in particular ? I remember seeing Aron Ra having a brief exchange with that Hamza guy (...what a lunatic) but other than that, not much. Maybe I have not looked enough ?

Well, here's an idea:

First, ask whoever you're talking to if one should take what is written in the Quran literally.

If yes, then I think you'll have no problem.

If no, then ask if one should take it poetically/metaphorically.

If they answer yes to that question, tell them to go shove their fucking poetry up their ass and bring a science book to the discussion.

 

[Deleted member 619]

I am finding myself in a bit of a maze when trying to "prove" the inaccurate statements in the Quran.

The first thing to note is that it's not up to you to prove that they're talking shit, it's up to them to prove they're not.

You often hear Muslims claim how their book contains scientific knowledge that could not have possibly be discovered in that age, ergo some superior intelligence must have dictated it.

This is nonsense from the get-go. There isn't a single scrap of information in the Qu'ran that genuinely correlates to any scientific finding.

The problem when dealing with this issue often is the constant argument that the translation is simply not good enough. English simply cannot encompass the complexity of the Arabic language. Some words have multiple meanings and therefore a certain verse can mean a lot of things.

And this is complete arse-gravy. To begin with English is far, far more complex than Arabic. Indeed, one of the most difficult things in learning English is the fact that not only do words have multiple meanings (crack open a dictionary, and have a look at the entry for the word 'set'; three letters, and definitions running to several pages), but we have multiple words meaning very nearly the same thing, but with tiny variations. In your travels around the counter-apologetics circuit, you'll see just how much trouble people run into when treating words with similar meanings as directly synonymous.

Added to that, is the ever lasting argument of "you are taking it too literally". That verse does not mean that literally, it is merely a poetic expression to show a truth.

You will often hear how some verse that is false when read literally, when read in a poetic way it can express a truth. For example, the Quran does not say that the Earth was created before the stars; it doesn't even mention stars in that verse. The word for "heavens" can also mean "above" so what this poetic verse tells us is that the Earth's atmosphere was created after the Earth formation. You see how there is no contradiction but correct information when you look at it that way ?

I've lumped the last line of the preceding paragraph with this paragraph, because they're saying much the same thing.

This is exactly the same fallacy committed by biblical literalists, but with a slightly different slant. When we point out something that is flatly refuted by science, they say 'oh, you're taking it too literally', and tell you that that bit's meant to be metaphor or allegory. What they can never do is to give any metric for which bits are meant to be taken literally and which are metaphor. In the case of the Muslim apologist, they're doing the same thing but, in this case, they're saying that the metaphor expresses poetically what science has elucidated. The fallacy is no different for this reversal. Whether the passage contradicts science or appears to agree with it, they're still cherrypicking to fit their presuppositions, the presupposition in question being that their holy text represents some sort of truth. Until they can give you some good metric by which to differentiate between the metaphoric and the literal, other than its agreement of disagreement with what science has told us, they haven't a leg to stand on. How can they possibly demonstrate that what Gabriel allegedly said to Mohammed was supposed to be interpreted in this manner? Of course, they can't.

In the case of the Muslim, the cherry-picking also commits another fallacy, the fallacy of affirming the consequent. This is a formal fallacy, and the problem can therefore be exposed nicely by casting it in the propositional calculus:

P => Q, Q
∴P​

Or P implies Q, Q, therefore P.

In natural language, and in the context of the apologist's argument, this says.

P1. Allah (P) implies scientific truth in the Qu'ran (Q).
P2. There is scientific truth in the Qu'ran. (Q)
C. Allah exists. (∴P)

This probably looks fine if you don't have experience with logic but, if we look at another argument with exactly the same form, the problem should become crystal clear:

P1. All men are mortal. (Man (P) implies mortality (Q))
P2. Hitler was mortal. (Q)
C. Therefore, Hitler was a man. (∴P)

This form is invalid, and commits the fallacy known as 'affirming the consequent'. It's fairly easy to see where this goes wrong, not least because men aren't the only things that are mortal, and this conclusion disregards all of them.

Finally, on this bit, there's an interesting point to note. They're pointing at things discovered by humans and saying that this book, written by a human, contains reference to these facts, and that this proves that something other than a human inspired it. I have my own moniker for this bit of horribly flawed reasoning; the da Vinci fallacy.

The reason I call it that might not be immediately obvious, but it's fairly straightforward. Leonardo da Vinci discovered many, many things about the way the world works, yet his writings were lost for centuries, so we didn't know about them. Indeed, it's thought that we've discovered less than half of what he actually wrote down in a long life of making discoveries. His work on hydrodynamics and fluid mechanics was unsurpassed for centuries, and in fact he invented a water seal for a canal lock that is functionally identical to the ones used in the Panama Canal. His work on aerodynamics wasn't matched until the 20th century. He formulated the first rudimentary theory of plate tectonics based on finding fossil marine organisms on a mountain. Bear in mind that plate tectonics wasn't forwarded as a proper scientific theory until mid-way through the 20th century, and was ridiculed until the 1970s.

That should make the fallacy reasonably clear. That somebody works something out before somebody else doesn't indicate divine inspiration, not least when that something is eventually worked out. That humans can discover things only indicates that humans can discover things.

Put all of that together, and you can see that the apologist still has all his work ahead of him.

Forgive me if the argument is misrepresented, I cannot remember how it goes exactly but as far as I remember, I heard some such defense.

Are there any of our peers dealing with this subject or Islam in particular ? I remember seeing Aron Ra having a brief exchange with that Hamza guy (...what a lunatic) but other than that, not much. Maybe I have not looked enough ?

I think it's all too easy to look at one religion and think that the fallacies inherent in it are different from other religions but, ultimately, they all rest on the same fallacies, and none of them, not one, has managed to circumvent the single fallacy inherent in all of them, especially when they expect you to debunk their claims. The name for that particular fallacy is onus probandi, or shifting the burden of proof.

Best from here just to direct you to THIS, which gives a more complete treatment of many of the fallacies listed above.

Hope that helps.

 

[momo666]

Thank you all for the answers ! I hope it's okay that I have not replied to you, I didn't see much to argue with.

On a side note: Could it be said that a claim that lacks critical information is erroneous ? What I mean by that is the description of the formation of the Universe given by the Quran. If one chooses to "interpret" the word "then" (as in a sequence) with the word "moreover", could you then say that the description provided is false by for the fact that it omits critical information and the description is given using inadequate terms ?
So for example: Claim 1 says that the Universe was in a hot dense state, then the galaxy formed, then the Earth formed.
Claim 2 says that the Earth formed, moreover the planets visible on the Earth's sky were formed and moreover all the stars in the Universe were formed.

I don't know if claim 2 is a fit analogy so feel free to find another one.

I feel like I cannot claim that claim 2 is erroneous but I thought it was worth to ask. What do you think ? What about instead of attacking its validity, I attack the assumption that it is a good truth claim/ fit for one coming from a god ? Any angle on that ?

 

[Deleted member 619]

Could it be said that a claim that lacks critical information is erroneous ? What I mean by that is the description of the formation of the Universe given by the Quran. If one chooses to "interpret" the word "then" (as in a sequence) with the word "moreover", could you then say that the description provided is false by for the fact that it omits critical information and the description is given using inadequate terms ?

I'd be careful of saying that it's erroneous. You could simply say that it isn't supported. Saying it's erroneous is saying that it's false, which is in itself a fallacy, the fallacist's fallacy. All you can say is that the argument doesn't support the conclusion.

So for example: Claim 1 says that the Universe was in a hot dense state, then the galaxy formed, then the Earth formed.
Claim 2 says that the Earth formed, moreover the planets visible on the Earth's sky were formed and moreover all the stars in the Universe were formed.

I don't know if claim 2 is a fit analogy so feel free to find another one.

I feel like I cannot claim that claim 2 is erroneous but I thought it was worth to ask. What do you think ? What about instead of attacking its validity, I attack the assumption that it is a good truth claim/ fit for one coming from a god ? Any angle on that ?

I'd say that there's no error in treating a claim regarding a later phenomenon on the basis that no earlier one has been supported. For example, when apologists lump in abiogenesis with evolution, we quite rightly point out that abiogenesis is not evolution, and that we don't need to come up with a mechanism for life to arise in order for evolution to be a good explanation of biodiversity.

All that said, a good theory has to not only explain everything that the current theory does along with something that it doesn't explain, it also has to explain why the existing theory was successful. As we have a fairly complete explanation of the phenomena in the universe, there's a lot of work for any god hypothesis to do. Of course, no approach to this has ever been done.

Ultimately, though, I always think it best to focus on the logic underlying the claims. If you can find errors there, you can dismiss all the arguments on that basis alone, and you really don't need to deal with specifics.

As an example, my latest blog post deals with spurious probability calculations in apologetics. I used an example somebody erected on Twitter. I'll link the post below. The apologist, who I've since blocked, as he was using the comments section as his personal sounding-board and being incredibly abusive, complained that, while I derived the mathematics in his first example to show how probabilities are derived, I didn't address the other two probabilities. I didn't do this for two reasons. The first was that he didn't cite any robust sources from which his figures were derived, rendering them impossible to derive, and the second, and this was the bit he couldn't get his head around, was that the entire point of the post was to show that the assumptions underpinning his numbers were a) not justified and b) rooted in a colossal ignorance of how probabilities work, especially when dealing with serial trials and large sample spaces.

Not sure if that addresses all your quesrtions.

http://reciprocity-giving-something-back.blogspot.com/2017/01/probably-worst-argument-in-world.html

 

[Gnug215]

Thank you all for the answers ! I hope it's okay that I have not replied to you, I didn't see much to argue with.

On a side note: Could it be said that a claim that lacks critical information is erroneous ? What I mean by that is the description of the formation of the Universe given by the Quran. If one chooses to "interpret" the word "then" (as in a sequence) with the word "moreover", could you then say that the description provided is false by for the fact that it omits critical information and the description is given using inadequate terms ?
So for example: Claim 1 says that the Universe was in a hot dense state, then the galaxy formed, then the Earth formed.
Claim 2 says that the Earth formed, moreover the planets visible on the Earth's sky were formed and moreover all the stars in the Universe were formed.

I don't know if claim 2 is a fit analogy so feel free to find another one.

I feel like I cannot claim that claim 2 is erroneous but I thought it was worth to ask. What do you think ? What about instead of attacking its validity, I attack the assumption that it is a good truth claim/ fit for one coming from a god ? Any angle on that ?

I think there's plenty of angles on this.

You could always ask why an all-knowing god would make their descriptions of the universe so vague and "metaphorical". (I use quotation marks there because it's not really metaphorical. Rather, it's downright inaccurate nonsense written in an attempt by goat herders to be poetical and insightful.)
I mean, if you're making descriptions, then I assume it is to convince people of your status as all-knowing or something along those lines. So why not make it spot on?
I always imagined for example making descriptions about the Moon that could be accurate. Obviously not using the metric system or something like that, since that has obvious problems, but more like, "the Moon, is so-and-so many times smaller than Earth, and it is so-and-so many Earth circumferences away from us - although its orbit varies."

There's many ways to make brilliant statements like this that I can think of, but for a god, there would be countless of mind-blowingly brilliant ways, so it's not just odd or weird that a god wouldn't make them, it's downright evidence against these holy books coming from god, at least that's how I see it.

 

[momo666]

Thank you again ! I have one more confusion.

Is there anything wrong logically with saying that you create something for something that does not exist ? What I mean by that is the following:
Some Muslims try to say that "heaven" in the Qur'an might mean "not Earth" or "opposite of Earth". But in another verse it says that when the heaven was created, the lower heaven was filled with planets or stars.
So starting from that point, the implication would be that the planets of the Solar system were created for a yet non-existent Earth.

So just to be sure I'm not spewing nonsense, let me try to put it more clear.
lower heaven=solar system
heaven=opposite of earth

Is there anything wrong with saying that I created the lower heaven (solar system) from the "opposite of earth" (heaven) if the earth does not yet exist ? Doesn't this amount to saying that I created something from the opposite of nothing (non-existent Earth) and doesn't that in turn amount to saying that I created nothing ?

Feel free to point out if this sounds like gibberish. I wrote it and I still find it hard to spell it out.

I think I found a way to nail the "proof" that there is an Error there, no matter how you look at it but I am not sure, I need some time to reflect.

 

[*SD*]

Is there anything wrong logically with saying that you create something for something that does not exist ?

I'm not sure if that's a logical problem as such. I could create a lovely little rabbit hutch for a rabbit I don't have. Pointless? Probably, but I'm not sure if it's illogical.

What I mean by that is the following:
Some Muslims try to say that "heaven" in the Qur'an might mean "not Earth" or "opposite of Earth". But in another verse it says that when the heaven was created, the lower heaven was filled with planets or stars.
So starting from that point, the implication would be that the planets of the Solar system were created for a yet non-existent Earth.

Key word there is 'might' - matter of interpretation, which goes back to exactly what I said in my original reply.

Don't let them shift the burden of proof - it's crucial.

 

[WarK]

Some Muslims try to say that "heaven" in the Qur'an might mean "not Earth" or "opposite of Earth". But in another verse it says that when the heaven was created, the lower heaven was filled with planets or stars.
So starting from that point, the implication would be that the planets of the Solar system were created for a yet non-existent Earth.

So just to be sure I'm not spewing nonsense, let me try to put it more clear.
lower heaven=solar system
heaven=opposite of earth

This is a post hoc rationalisation. Science has discovered how the solar system was created so apologists redefine words in a way that it looks like their holy book of choice had this information all along. All of sudden a circle is synonymous with a sphere so that a holy book doesn't claim that the Earth is flat any more.

It's curious that the religious only know what their holy books are supposed to say only after science discovers a fact about reality.

 

[momo666]

I have another question.

Is there anything wrong with saying that I created the Earth and the Universe ? By "earth" I mean a formed planet. Since the formation of the Earth requires the Universe in the first place, isn't there a fallacy somewhere ?

 

[Deleted member 619]

No. That's exactly the same as the abiogenesis/evolution example. We needn't have an explanation for a precursor in order to provide an explanation for what exists. It would certainly make it more complete, but its absence doesn't constitute a fallacy.

 

[momo666]

So just to be sure. Saying that you create a part of a system (Earth) and the system (Universe) is okay ? I don't know why it sounds weird to me. Perhaps it's the pointless repetition which raises my eyebrows.
I am curious what you think about describing the development of the Universe without any temporal markers. So saying that I created the Earth and in my creation I also included stars/planets. My first thought is gibberish. This is not even a creation story. This is merely pointing fingers and saying you did it. It does not require even the slightest intellectual foundation (knowing what stars are, how they formed, how earth formed etc.)


Also is there a fallacy that describes creating a part of a system (Earth) before the system (Universe) ?

 

[Akamia]

Also is there a fallacy that describes creating a part of a system (Earth) before the system (Universe) ?

I don't see why there would be considering this happens on a much smaller scale all the time – I've never once seen an appliance or a vehicle that didn't use parts that were created prior to the appliance.

But you'd have to ask someone more knowledgeable than I if that holds up at the universe scale. All I'm saying is that the reasoning itself isn't fallacious per se.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

You could try the following sources:

Skeptics' Annotated Qur'an

Contradictions in the Qur'an

Contradictions in the Qur'an (A Christian perspective)

Kindest regards,

James

 

[thenexttodie]

Christianity (and therefore its 30,000 variants) is also straight up copied from Jewish cultural woo, which in turn is an amalgam Sumerian and Atenist cultural woo. it's not a new phenomenon.

If the Genesis is true, I would expect the fact to be reflected to us when studying many ancient cultures.

 

[thenexttodie]

Science has discovered how the solar system was created.

This is absolutely false. I'm sure that there are even other Atheists on this forum who know this is not true but they don't have the balls to tell you that you are wrong.