Scientific Errors in the Quran: Difference between revisions

The Qur'an assumes a flat earth which has physical places into which the sun sets and rises from. Since the earth is a rotating sphere, the sun does not set in any particular place and you can never travel to "the spot" where the sun sets nor a place where it rises; the sun appears to set or rise on the horizon no matter where you are on the planet. In these verses, the author propagates a popular legend from the 7th century of a man named Dhu'l-Qarnayn who visits the places where the sun sets and rises; here he finds the sun going down into a muddy spring and later rising on a tribe with no coverings.  

Centuries after Muhammad lived, people with better astronomical knowledge than him had to invent creative interpretations of these verses to say that Dhu'l-Qrnayn only traveled until he reached "the west" or to a spot "at the time" when the sun set and not the "place" where the sun set. Unfortunately, these alternative interpretations are severely undermined by the [[Dhul-Qarnayn_and_the_Sun_Setting_in_a_Muddy_Spring_-_Part_One#First_interpretation:_He_reached_the_west_and_east|context and Arabic words]] used in these verses, which instead point to physical locations where the sun did its setting and rising. Plenty of evidence shows that the early Muslims understood the verse in this straightforward way. Again, we must ask why an all-knowing being would use such misleading verses that mimic the misconceptions and legends prevalent at the time if one of the alternative explanations is correct.

The Earth first formed around 9 billion years after the Big Bang. The Qur'an, however, repeats the prevailing Middle-Eastern myth that the Earth and universe were formed in six days.  

In the hundreds of other Qur'anic verses where the Arabic word 'yawm' appears, everyone understands it to mean day. Yet Islamic websites try and rescue the Qur'an by pointing to an alternative meaning of yawm, which almost always means 'day', but can sometimes mean 'time period'. Curiously, and rather conveniently, yawm is only claimed to mean time period rather than day in the verses about the creation of the world. Again, nothing in the context of the verses, nor the Qur'an in general, suggests awareness that the universe or Earth were formed over long time periods. The author makes precisely zero attempt to distingish his description from the prevailing Middle-Eastern creation myths in this regard, which feature six literal days of creation (for example in the Bible we have, "Evening came and morning came: The first day." - Genesis 1:5).

The author of the Qur'an is also unaware that the [[w:Abundance of elements in Earth's crust|elements in the Earth's crust]] and core were first formed in stars by [[w:Nucleosynthesis|nucleosynthesis]]. When those stars exploded as [[w:Supernova|supernovas]], they expelled the elements that were used in future solar systems such as our own. Modern radiometric dating of meteorites and rocks from the Earth and Moon show that these bodies were formed [[w:Age_of_the_Earth|4.5 billion years ago]]. Yet the Qur'an describes the Earth being fully formed before the stars. All rocky and gaseous planets in the universe were formed in a similar manner to the Earth and the Qur'an singling out the Earth only further highlights the author's ignorance of the history of the formation of celestial objects.

Verse 41:12 says that lamps (or more specifically, stars in the similar verse {{Quran|37|6}}) were placed in the lowest of the seven heavens. But before there were seven heavens, while heaven was just smoke, the Earth already existed according to verse 11, and the Earth's creation and completion in the preceeding days is described in verses 9-10 already discussed in the previous section.

The word lamps (masabeeha مَصَٰبِيحَ) in {{Quran|41|12}} and {{Quran|67|5}} would obviously have to include any luminous bodies such as the stars, as does kawakibi (كَوَاكِبِ) in {{Quran|37|6}}, a word that also appears in Joseph's dream ({{Quran|12|4}}) and the destruction of the heavens ({{Quran-range|82|1|2}}) and has a parallel in {{Quran-range|15|16|17}}, where the word zodiacal constellations / great stars (baroojan بُرُوجًا) is used instead.