Scientology

[nutball]

To be quite honest Tahir those quotes can only be taken to have the same meaning as their "translation" if you believe the quotes in the first place (ie. you believe in the contents of the Qur'an).

What I'm getting at is that the mapping of quotes from the Qur'an to scientific "fact" seems to have been performed selectively at best, and with more than a little creative input.

I can't speak for some of the other subjects (though they seem dubious to me), knowing a bit about astronomy I question this interpretation:

The Solar Apex

The notion of a settled place for the sun is vividly described in chapter Yaa Seen of the Qur’an:

"The sun runs its coarse to a settled place That is the decree of the Almighty, the All Knowing.â€￾ Qur’an, 36:38

“Settled placeâ€￾ is the translation of the word mustaqarr which indicates an exact appointed place and time. Modern astronomy confirms that the solar system is indeed moving in space at a rate of 12 miles per second towards a point situated in the constellation of Hercules ( alpha lyrae ) whose exact location has been precisely calculated. Astronomers have even give it a name, the solar apex.

The Sun most definitively is not travelling in a straight line toward Hercules! The situation is a great deal more complex than that. The Solar apex is not even an appointed place (it is a direction), and furthermore it will never get there. The Solar apex is the direction in space in which the Sun is moving at this current epoch, and it moves across the sky as the Galactic Disc rotates. Try this on for size: the Solar apex is in a different location in the sky now than it was when the Qur'an was written.

Any basic understanding of Celestial mechanics and the mapping from the Qur'an to the "science" just falls apart.

Personally I'd interpret the Qur'an quote as meaning that night certainly follows day. It makes much more sense!

 

[kyleb]

i didn't really want to go into that because it seems like a touchy subject but i will try to tread lightly as i want to mention that the passage can just as easily be interrupted as "god makes the sun set in the west." i thought the best of the bunch in those selections was the bit about heaven expanding and even that takes some selective interpretation to claim it is reflective of our modern scientific understanding.

 

[MfA]

Tahir, dont mix science with religion ... it will hurt the one or the other. In any real science the jumps of faith taken in that quote would never be accepted.

Nevermind the fact that even an accurate portroyal of astronomy in the Koran could proove a lot of different things.

1. If it had mentioned the earth specifically it woulda been interesting, by leaving it out it suggests a classical cosmology.

2. The Sun aint settling nowhere ... the Solar Apex is a direction, not a destination.

3. thin.

4. A comparison of dynamic faultlines with stakes which keep an expanse taut is nothing to be proud of IMO.

5. thin. BTW, Im curious ... is there any chance that in the original text water could also have been translated as semen?

The problem with this kind of interpretative trickery is that you can always find something to your liking and explain it however it suits you, just like with Nostradum interpretations. If I were to study the Koran I could pick out things which were in contradiction to modern cosmology no doubt ... artfull translation which adds meaning where there was only ambiguity is also always a problem.

 

[Tahir2]

Tahir, dont mix science with religion ... it will hurt the one or the other.

I am of the opinion that without scientific backing from the Universal laws religion is can't exist. If you consider religion just to be myths, legends and superstition then the two cannot mix. But I am of the opinion that two are intrinsically related. If Allah is the All Knowing the Qur'an which is His word therefore MUST contain zero errors.

Mfa you say 'thin' but the quotes I posted from the Qur'an do not contradict what we currently know about the Universe in any way. They may be open to interpretation but nothing contradicts science in any of the Ayat - in fact they are supportive of scienctific knowledge we currently hold. Also the Qur'an is written in prose and under the layers has a wealth of knowledge.

Regarding what the solar apex is here is a definition:

A point on the celestial sphere toward which the Sun and the solar system are moving with respect to the local standard of rest at a rate of about 19.4 km per second (about 4.09 AU per year).

Consider this; a direction also has a point.

I am pleased that this discussion has produced mature replies and good rebuttals. My rebuttal on some of the posts is to follow Insha'Allah.[/quote]

 

[kyleb]

"thin" like it was thin when nvidia said that the 5800u was the fastest graphics card on the planet. sure if you looked at it in a certian perspective they were right but it was generaly not a very convesing argument.

 

[Tahir2]

OK kyleb here is one 'thin' example.

When was the fact that the Universe was expanding first realised?

It was around the time of 1916 when these ideas came to the front, again in 1922 but there was just theory at this stage. It was not until 1929 that Einstein admitted his mistake when Hubble was able to produce evidence of the doppler effect.

How can there be a description of this expansion in a text that is 1400 years old? Where did this knowledge come from?

Or are you going to say that this Ayat:

“I built the heaven with power and it is I, who am expanding it.â€￾ Qur’an,51:47

is 'thin.'

Sceintific fact from the Ayat: Heaven expanding. Heaven = Universe (I bet some of you will say no it doesn't.. hehe).

I fail to see how that is 'thin' and fail to see any other document before or after the Qur'an mention it until it was 'proven' by Edwin Hubble.

So how does this hurt science? It doesn't. How does this hurt religion? It doesn't.

I am not trying to win over an argument here. You make your own minds up, but all I ask is that you dissect each Ayat and tell me why and how it is 'thin' or 'wrong' or contradictory of what we currently know of science.

If you agree with this Ayat find a plausible explanation to the origin of this Ayat.

P.S. I picked this Ayat because I am the most comfortable with it. I will also do the same for all the other Ayat's I quoted unless everyone asks me to stop

 

[Tahir2]

“(God is) the one who created the night, the day, the sun and the moon. Each one is traveling in an orbit with its own motion.â€￾ Qur’an,21:33

Scientific fact revealed: the sun and moon has an orbit with its own motion.

We all know and experience the moons orbit every 29 days. The sun's orbit is never specified even once in the Qur'an as being an orbit around the earth. The sun however does indeed have its own orbit around the Milky Way which is completed once every 250 million years.

Older translations of the Qur'an have met this challenge with great difficulty. The Qur'an however has not contradicted science with any 'ludicrous' statement such as the earth is the centre of the Universe/Solar System.

 

[John Reynolds]

Leviticus 17:11: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood." How many millenia later did it take science to figure that out?

If I quoted that incorrectly, please don't flame me too hard. I'm pulling it from memory and at my age it ain't what it used to be. 8)

 

[kyleb]

Tahir, "expanding heaven" could also easily be described as simply adding to the population which is also something attributed to god but nothing to do with science.


as for Leviticus, that should be rather obvious to anyone who has seen something bleed to death.

 

[horvendile]

I would have greater belief in religious quotations as those exemplified here if they were ever used to predict something in advance. Both the Bible and the Qur'an (is that standard English spelling or is it an attempt to emulate Arabic pronunciation?) are big books written in ambiguous (or rather allegoric) wordings. Given just about any scientific discovery, it should be possible to find a passage that looks like it supports it.

If any of these religious documents really contained God-endorsed knowledge that could not possibly have been known to the people at the time they were written, why is it never put in words that leave no room for doubt? That would not be hard. One example:
"Four planets made out of gases orbit the sun."
No one could question that being a genuine prediction, and it would have been understood even back in the first centuries AD. Nevertheless, it was not verifiable until recently. This is true for many things in astronomy, and supposedly for other sciences as well. Yet, not a single such prediction has emerged. All we have is vague wordings that are pointed to after the relevant discovery, and not even then it's clear that they are indeed predictions.

Thus, I ask myself what I find most plausible: That the texts contain loads of (accurate) scientific predictions, or that it's a case of creative wishful thinking. Until further notice I find the latter alternative the most likely to be true.

 

[nutball]

Regarding what the solar apex is here is a definition:

A point on the celestial sphere toward which the Sun and the solar system are moving with respect to the local standard of rest at a rate of about 19.4 km per second (about 4.09 AU per year).

Consider this; a direction also has a point.
[/b]

That's not true I'm afraid. A direction only has a direction; a point (in this context at least) is defined by a direction and a distance. So a point has a direction, but a direction doesn't have a point.

 

[nutball]

What I find rather strange is that this "traditional" religions (ie. those more than a few hundred years old, with their own scriptures and inherited cultural messages) should even be concerned to reconcile their teachings and scriptures with what modern science says.

Personally I think there are a lot of similarities between modern science (as practiced in the West since the Renaissance) and established "traditional" religions. Yet it is very rare that, for example a Muslim will say "Look, our teachings must be true because they agree with what's written in the Christian Bible".

For example:

Faith: In science you have to believe that there is a scientific truth out there to be discovered, and that the application of the scientific method will ultimately uncover that truth. In practice scientists never question this (that is left to philosophers!). If you don't believe this, trying to do science is pretty pointless. How is this different in believing in a god, and your gods "truth", and whatever path to revelation your personal theism dictates?

Questions: Science attempts to explain the way the Universe around us works, and to document that explanation for others to read and understand. Is this terribly different from the contents of many passages of the received scriptures of other religions? To explain why things around us happen the way they do? Sure, traditional religions tend to resort to "Because it's Gods will" pretty quickly, but if you keep asking a scientist "why is this like this?", eventually he/she'll end up saying "Because that's the way the Universe works". Not a great deal of difference there.

Socio-politics: Many established religions have an associated "church", ie. a socio-political organisation of prophets/priests/scholars, whatever you want to call them. Aside from the social control aspect often associated with the acitivities of these organisations (which I don't want to get into here) these organisations tend to spend their time studying the received scriptures, interpreting them and explaining them to the general populous. Their act of study is often regarded as their path to being closer to their god. How is this different from the activities of scientists involved in pure research, who spend their time studying the works of scientists gone by, and attempting to further their understanding to get closer to the scientific "truth"? This knowledge is then written down to communicate to other scientists, and to the general populous.

That's just a few points, there are others which might spring to mind.

I'm not saying there's a one-to-one mapping of course. Science in general tends not to make moral prescriptions, which traditional relgions and churches do. Maybe this is why it's so appealing to many in the West, you can get all the explanations of what's going on without being told how you're supposed to behave.

Gosh, this is a bit heavy for 9:10am!

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I think you guys have seen 1 too many episodes of teh X-Files.

 

[horvendile]

In science you have to believe that there is a scientific truth out there to be discovered, and that the application of the scientific method will ultimately uncover that truth. In practice scientists never question this (that is left to philosophers!). If you don't believe this, trying to do science is pretty pointless. How is this different in believing in a god, and your gods "truth", and whatever path to revelation your personal theism dictates?

It is a fundamental difference. Strictly speaking, the only thing (yes, only) the scientific method says is that we assume that there is an objective reality that we get information about by means of our five senses. The rest of the stuff associated with the scientific method is basically hints on how to make use of said assumption.

Religion on the other hand (generally) assumes that there is a book that contains the Truth, and that book has right of precedence before just about everything else. This is an authoritarian view fundamentally different from science, not a fine difference of nuance.

Sure, traditional religions tend to resort to "Because it's Gods will" pretty quickly, but if you keep asking a scientist "why is this like this?", eventually he/she'll end up saying "Because that's the way the Universe works". Not a great deal of difference there.

Yes, again, a huge difference. The scientist's answer is equivalent to "we don't know", while the religious person claims to know that there is a supernatural being responsible for whatever can't be explained. That is, again, two fundamentally different positions and not at all nearly the same thing.

From the socio-politics paragraph:

How is this different from the activities of scientists involved in pure research, who spend their time studying the works of scientists gone by, and attempting to further their understanding to get closer to the scientific "truth"?

Scientific research is not conducted in the way you describe.

Edit:
I realise that my tone might seem polemic, but that is not my aim. I'm not trying to instigate a flamewar against religion, but there are fundamental differences between science and religion that should not be ignored.

 

[V3]

Scientific research is not conducted in the way you describe.

They don't look at previous work done in the field ?

 

[zidane1strife]

well ofcorse there is proof all around, like the rainbow for instance. god gave us the rainbow after the flood as a convent that he would never do that again. if you have seen a rainbow then you know that crhistanity is true.

Hmmm, the old testament and the new one don't seem to match together that well in some areas...

How can everyone be killed with a flood for their sinful behaviour in one... and in the other be told to forgive and to love thy neighbor?

 

[V3]

How can everyone be killed with a flood for their sinful behaviour in one... and in the other be told to forgive and to love thy neighbor?

One is Divine Providence, the other is one of God commandment.

 

[horvendile]

Scientific research is not conducted in the way you describe.

They don't look at previous work done in the field ?

Yes, but it was formulated as if that was all they did. Reading previous work is good for catching up, but not for achieving new knowledge (unless the research is an analysis of the text itself, of course). In the religious case, reading previous work genereally is all you do.

I feel a bit stupid writing posts like this one - of course you know these things already!

 

[zidane1strife]

One is Divine Providence, the other is one of God commandment.

Shouldn't one practice, what one teaches? Isn't God supposed to be love?

Anyway I believe that flood story is more of a fable with a moral to it, based on an old event(too many stories based on a flood, something likely happened.)

All these punishment tales in so many religions... real world punishment, hell, torments, going down the evolutive ladder, etc... I don't think anyone deserves eternal punishment... It is true that many times you do reap what you sow, so at least they have real world counterparts...

edited

 

[nutball]

It is a fundamental difference. Strictly speaking, the only thing (yes, only) the scientific method says is that we assume that there is an objective reality that we get information about by means of our five senses. The rest of the stuff associated with the scientific method is basically hints on how to make use of said assumption.

There is nevertheless then a single fundamental assumption which underlies all of science. This assumption is an article of faith without which none of the rest makes sense.

Religion on the other hand (generally) assumes that there is a book that contains the Truth, and that book has right of precedence before just about everything else. This is an authoritarian view fundamentally different from science, not a fine difference of nuance.

Whether or not the Truth is written down a priori doesn't seem to me be an important difference. Point is the Truth is believed to exist.

Scientific research is not conducted in the way you describe.

It's not that far different.

Edit:
I realise that my tone might seem polemic, but that is not my aim. I'm not trying to instigate a flamewar against religion, but there are fundamental differences between science and religion that should not be ignored.

I think there are fundamental similarities between science and religion which are ignored.

(PS. I'm a scientist by profession, and an atheist, just to let you know I'm coming from on this).