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Magic, Miracles, and the Supernatural in the Qur'an: Difference between revisions
Magic, Miracles, and the Supernatural in the Qur'an (view source)
Revision as of 11:59, 31 August 2025
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{{Quote|{{Quran|20|120}}|Then Satan whispered to him; he said, "O Adam, shall I direct you to the tree of eternity and possession that will not deteriorate?"}} | {{Quote|{{Quran|20|120}}|Then Satan whispered to him; he said, "O Adam, shall I direct you to the tree of eternity and possession that will not deteriorate?"}} | ||
=== Humans agree to worship god before their existence === | |||
Humans are said to have verbally agreed that Allah is their lord, so they cannot say they were unaware on judgment day, most commonly taken by classical Islamic commentaries (and hadith) as a magical temporary pre-existent creation before the current life that we all forget,<ref>See commentaries such as Al-Jalalyan, Ibn Kathir and Maududi on [https://quranx.com/tafsirs/7.172 Q7:172]</ref> though it is hard to know given the forgetting what the purpose of the this agreement is.{{Quote|{{Quran|7|172}}|And when (was) taken (by) your Lord from (the) Children (of) Adam - from their loins - their descendants and made them testify over themselves, "Am I not your Lord?" They said, "Yes we have testified." Lest you say (on the) Day (of) the Resurrection, "Indeed, we were about this unaware."}} | |||
=== The soul is taken away during sleep === | === The soul is taken away during sleep === | ||
Like many other religions, the Qur'an affirms the idea that humans have a 'soul' that is separate to the physical body (the concept itself now a controversial idea now we know so much of what would be traditionally ascribed to a soul such as personality and memory comes from physical processes in the brain,<ref>Valk SL, Hoffstaedter F, Camilleri JA, Kochunov P, Yeo BTT, Eickhoff SB. ''Personality and local brain structure: Their shared genetic basis and reproducibility.'' Neuroimage. 2020 Oct 15;220:117067. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117067. Epub 2020 Jun 20. PMID: 32574809; PMCID: PMC10251206.</ref> and can be damaged by physical actions such as brain trauma<ref>[https://www.charliehealth.com/mental-health/trauma/can-trauma-cause-memory-loss Can Trauma Cause Memory Loss?] Charlie Health </ref> and psychoactive drugs<ref>Treatment for Stimulant Use Disorders: Updated 2021 [Internet]. Rockville (MD): ''Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US); 1999. (Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series, No. 33.) Chapter 2—How Stimulants Affect the Brain and Behavior.'' Available from: <nowiki>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK576548/</nowiki></ref>). | Like many other religions, the Qur'an affirms the idea that humans have a 'soul' that is separate to the physical body (the concept itself now a controversial idea now we know so much of what would be traditionally ascribed to a soul such as personality and memory comes from physical processes in the brain,<ref>Valk SL, Hoffstaedter F, Camilleri JA, Kochunov P, Yeo BTT, Eickhoff SB. ''Personality and local brain structure: Their shared genetic basis and reproducibility.'' Neuroimage. 2020 Oct 15;220:117067. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117067. Epub 2020 Jun 20. PMID: 32574809; PMCID: PMC10251206.</ref> and can be damaged by physical actions such as brain trauma<ref>[https://www.charliehealth.com/mental-health/trauma/can-trauma-cause-memory-loss Can Trauma Cause Memory Loss?] Charlie Health </ref> and psychoactive drugs<ref>Treatment for Stimulant Use Disorders: Updated 2021 [Internet]. Rockville (MD): ''Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US); 1999. (Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series, No. 33.) Chapter 2—How Stimulants Affect the Brain and Behavior.'' Available from: <nowiki>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK576548/</nowiki></ref>). | ||
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==== Sitting upright ==== | ==== Sitting upright ==== | ||
Further adding to the special aspect, Sinai (2023) writes, these anthropomorphisms are further bolstered as literal with him "sitting" on a throne, which angels will carry specifically in the sky, most likely the highest one; i.e. part of the cosmos rather than a separate supernatural "universe" or in a state of indescribable non spatial existence. {{Quote|<i>allāh {{!}} God</i> Sinai, Nicolai. Key Terms of the Qur'an: A Critical Dictionary (p. 74). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.|Qur’an quite literally understands God to possess a countenance, sensory percipience, and limbs capable of touching, grasping, or imparting movement that the Islamic scripture employs various idioms and formulae involving these features. After all, there is no Qur’anic equivalent to Ephrem’s caveat that God only “put on the names of body parts”—i.e., speaks of himself in anthropomorphic and anthropopathic language—due to the weakness of human understanding (Beck 1955, no. 31:1–4). The Qur’anic God, therefore, is not merely a body but also, at least in some sense, an anthropomorphic body: he is endowed with a face, he is empirically receptive to worldly occurrences (rather than just knowing about them), and he can directly, with his own body, manipulate objects in the world. That the divine body has a fundamentally humanoid shape is further accentuated by the use of the verb istawā, “to stand up straight” or “to sit upright,” which is applied both to God, indicating the modality of his being located on the throne (Q 7:54, 10:3, 13:2, 20:5, 25:59, 32:4, 57:4),108 and to humans, who are described as “sitting upright” in a boat or on the back of a mount (Q 23:28, 43:13; see CDKA 142).}} | Further adding to the special aspect, Sinai (2023) writes, these anthropomorphisms are further bolstered as literal with him "sitting" on a throne, which angels will carry specifically in the sky, most likely the highest one; i.e. part of the cosmos rather than a separate supernatural "universe" or in a state of indescribable non spatial existence. {{Quote|<i>allāh {{!}} God</i> Sinai, Nicolai. Key Terms of the Qur'an: A Critical Dictionary (p. 74). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.|Qur’an quite literally understands God to possess a countenance, sensory percipience, and limbs capable of touching, grasping, or imparting movement that the Islamic scripture employs various idioms and formulae involving these features. After all, there is no Qur’anic equivalent to Ephrem’s caveat that God only “put on the names of body parts”—i.e., speaks of himself in anthropomorphic and anthropopathic language—due to the weakness of human understanding (Beck 1955, no. 31:1–4). The Qur’anic God, therefore, is not merely a body but also, at least in some sense, an anthropomorphic body: he is endowed with a face, he is empirically receptive to worldly occurrences (rather than just knowing about them), and he can directly, with his own body, manipulate objects in the world. That the divine body has a fundamentally humanoid shape is further accentuated by the use of the verb istawā, “to stand up straight” or “to sit upright,” which is applied both to God, indicating the modality of his being located on the throne (Q 7:54, 10:3, 13:2, 20:5, 25:59, 32:4, 57:4),<sup>108</sup> and to humans, who are described as “sitting upright” in a boat or on the back of a mount (Q 23:28, 43:13; see CDKA 142).}} | ||
==== Made of light/photons ==== | ==== Made of light/photons ==== | ||
God is described as being made of light, which we now know from modern science would essentially be saying he is made of photons.<ref>[https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/what-is-a-photon?language_content_entity=und What is a photon?] Symmetry Magazine. Amanda Solliday and Kathryn Jepsen. 2021</ref>{{Quote|{{Quran|39|69}}|And (will) shine the earth with (the) light (of) its Lord and (will) be placed the Record and (will) be brought the Prophets and the witnesses, and it (will) be judged between them in truth, and they will not be wronged.}} | God is described as being made of light, which we now know from modern science would essentially be saying he is made of photons.<ref>[https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/what-is-a-photon?language_content_entity=und What is a photon?] Symmetry Magazine. Amanda Solliday and Kathryn Jepsen. 2021</ref>{{Quote|{{Quran|39|69}}|And (will) shine the earth with (the) light (of) its Lord and (will) be placed the Record and (will) be brought the Prophets and the witnesses, and it (will) be judged between them in truth, and they will not be wronged.}} | ||