Sunday, January 18, 2009

The Lengths Muslims Will Go

There are hundreds of scientific myth floating around the internet in regard to Islam. Muslims often appeal to them after being deceived by other high profile Muslim evangelists such as Zakir Naik. Anyone quasi familiar with science and the Qur'an can see the flaws in this sort of argumentation. The Qur'anic ayat is removed from its context, manipulated and then parallelled to a poor outdated and incorrect paraphrasing of a scientific concept. At other times, the historical context of the Qur'an is thrown out altogether. We may have a scientific concept predating the Qur'an by thousands of years yet Muslims will insist that the Qur'an testified this before anyone else.

A few days ago I came across one of the worst arguments I have seen in this respect.

"But recently we have discovered, that there are pain receptor present in the skin, which is responsible, Qur’an mentions Surah Nisa, Chapter No. 4, Verse No. 54, that as to those who reject our signs, we will cast them into the hell fire and as often as the skin is roasted, we shall change it with new skin so that they shall feel the pain. Indirectly Qur’an is saying, there is something in the skin, which is responsible for the pain."
(Do note, the above aya usually appears as aya 56 not 54)

The author is claiming that the above aya demonstrates scientific foreknowledge of receptor cells in the skin. I must conceded - the author of the claim is correct in one regard. The aya does in fact indirectly claim that there is something in the skin responsible for pain. But, my challenge is - find me a book out there that does NOT make the claim that roasting your skin in fire would cause pain.

I did not need the Qur'an to tell me that if my skin gets burnt it would hurt. In fact, I learnt this lesson as a child. Is this evidence of my own divine providence? Surely, I hope an individual as errant as myself (or the Qur'an) does not deserve this title.

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