Zap

Hello, a person who is attempting to show me that the Quran is scientific, from quotes in the quran that state that the male determines the gender of the child, not the female... so she is sharing that the quran revealed this 1400 years ago, whey before it was discovered by modren science that DNA has proven that the male has both X and Y in individual sperm. My response was that I believe much of this information is plagiarized since I have learned of library sackings which were a common thing. But lets just say it is of the quran... how is this divine? or is the quote taken out of context.

She also says that the quran already shared how life emerged from water, before evolutionary theory.

but the one thing that she keeps going on about is how the quran is written with mathematical perfection proving through it's mathematical layout that it is of divine origin... she shared this at the following link she sent me that goes into this: http://submission.org/miracle/

but somehow i am not convinced.... to me it's just searching until the most common multiples and denomonators are found... but even if mathematically intricate.. i fail to see how this is divine, but i could be wrong. For example, I took this straight off the site:

"Any reader of this book can easily verify the Quran's mathematical miracle. The word "God" (Allah) is written in bold capital letters throughout the text. The cumulative frequency of occurrence of the word "God" is noted at the bottom of each page in the left hand corner. The number in the right hand corner is the cumulative total of the numbers for verses containing the word "God." The last page of the text, Page 372, shows that the total occurrence of the word "God" is 2698, or 19x142. The total sum of verse numbers for all verses containing the word "God" is 118123, also a multiple of 19 (118123 = 19x6217)."

Someone explain because i am bad at at math, and still don't see how something like this cannot be found in random numbers.

Any insight?

PhilosopherJay

Hi Zap,

Please see this website: http://www.pediatriconcall.com/fordo...hoice/myth.asp

It suggests that it is the female who actually chooses the sperm with X or Y chromosomes and therefore determines the sex of the child.

Aristotle, around 340 B.C.E. wrote that the male determined the sex of the child. He felt that the female child was an imperfect or defective male and the woman did not contribute anything to the child except for a warm and moist environment for the sperm to grow. This belief that man was the sole determiner of the sex of the child was common a 1,000 years before the Koran in that area of the world. So the Koran is simply passing along outdated, male-chauvinist, inaccurate and pre-scientific information.

The emergence of life from water is another idea developed by Aristotle and the pre-socratic philosopher Thales. Again, if the Koran does mention this, it simply shows that one of its writers was aware of Aristotlean ideas that had been dominate in that part of the world for 1,000 years.

As for the number thing, early versions of the Koran are of different lengths, so I suppose that one can get any numeric schema one wishes.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Draconis

I think anything that claims the sun goes and sits under his throne at night is a bit dubious as a "scientific" revelation.

Zap

In addition, I keep referring to these quotes in the quran which say to treat the unbeliever with doom, and then she keeps telling me that I am taking these quotes out of context by not being aware of the times in which they were written for. I find these validly interpretable as instructing violence towards the unbeliever in any era ... accutrately interpreted by the terrorist to apply to this time as well... but again I am told I am taking it out of context. I have also listed tons of cruelty and hell punishment written in a way that would have people understanding to bring terror to infidels but then I am told to not just look at the bad but all the greatness in the quran. Quite frankly, I believe the good is not worth the price of the evil in it.

ughaibu

Ask her to show you something, in the Koran, that science will discover in the very near future but presently has no idea about.

Toto

You may be interested in Cosmology and the Koran: A Response to Muslim Fundamentalists and in following some of the links there:

swizzlenuts

Yeah, isn't this similar to the Historians fallacy? Where someones, of course all of these signs show that X will happen, but before no one could have guessed it?

xunzian

It is very easy to look and read back into a text to see something that agrees with what you now know. But in order for exegesis to really have any meaning, there needs to be a sound hermeneutic explanation. In the case where people claim scientific authority of a Holy Text, they usually are employing exegesis without hermeneutics and, well, they can make the text say anything they want at that point.