Land to water ratio miracle in the Qur'an

According to some apologists, the Qur'an describes the ratio of land to water on Earth. That is approximately 70.8% water and 29.2% land ^[1]. This ratio isn't stated anywhere in the Qur'an, but according to apologists, the ratio is supposed to be hidden in a ratio of word counts.

The counted words are al-barr (ٱلْبَرّ) for "land" and al-bahr (ٱلْبَحْرِ) for "water", but the word al-bahr actually means "the sea".

Al-Barr - land

The trilateral root of the word بَرّ (barr) is برر (b-r-r). From this root we can derive many words. Besides "land", there is the meaning of "righteousness" and "kindness". Al-Barr (The Most Kind) is one of the names of Allah ^[2]. The word barr consists of only two letters ب (b) and ر (r), but there is a shadda sign above the ر, which makes it double length in pronunciation (رّ - rr). Above the ب is a fatha sign which determines the barr vowel (بَ).

This is the list of all the occurrences of words with the root برر in the Qur'an:

The -i ending in al-barri means that the word is in the genitive case.

There is no question about this word count. There are clearly 12 occurrences of this word. They are all exactly the same forms. There are no prefixes, no plural and dual forms, no differences in diacritics, like in word counts for other words. And all other words from the same rott have a totally different meaning. Rarely the word count is so clear.

Al-Bahr - sea (not water)

The root for the word ٱلْبَحْر (al-bahr) is simply بحر (b-h-r). The words land (barr) and sea (bahr) often appear together in a verse.

A list of all occurrences of words with the root بحر in the Qur'an:

• In the verse 5:103, Bahira is a name for a she-camel. ^[3]

We have 34 singular forms of words from the root بحر. One occurrence is a name Bahira, but the other 33 occurrences mean "the sea". The -i, -u and -a endings in the transliteration just determine the case:

• -u nominative
• -i genitive
• -a accusative

This word count is questionable, because there are dual and plural forms. Should the dual be counted as 2? The most reasonable way of counting is probably counting only the singular forms of the word "sea", that is 33 occurrences.

The "land":"sea" word count ratio is 12:33. And 12+33=45. The first question is why is it not 100? Why is it not already in percentage? Wouldn't it seem to be less of a coincidence if there was 71 occurrences of "water" and 29 occurrences of "land"?

Let's do some math and convert the ratio to percentage to see whether we get the desired 29% land and 71% water percentages:

• 12/45 = 0.2667 that means approximately 27% land
• 33/45 = 0.7333 that means approximately 73% water

Well, there is no miracle at all. Not even a coincidence! 27:73 is the word count ratio and 29:71 is the actual land to water ratio. They are clearly not the same.

But we found 41 occurrences of the word "sea" in all its forms. So let's give it another chance with the number 41. And 12 + 41 = 53.

• 12 / 53 = 0.2264 that means approximately 23% land
• 41 / 53 = 0.7736 that means approximately 77% water

Again, 23:77 is not 29:71 and there is not miracle and not even a coincidence.

The only match is that there is more of the words "sea" than "land", just like there is more water than land on earth. Which is not very miraculous, because people live on land, so it is more probable that they will write more about the land, than about the sea. And this coincidence occurs probably in most books.

Conclusions

• The water to land ratio is not stated in any verse of the Qur'an. So the claim that the Qur'an describes the ratio is a lie.
  • How did Muhammad's companions figure out this information about the land to water ratio? If they counted various ratios of word counts, how did they recognize which word count ratio has a significance? And how did they know which counting method to choose, when they didn't know (no modern scientist told them) which number they want to get?
    • The Qur'an needs science, so that people can figure out (after science already told it to them) the ratio from word counts. However science does not need the Qur'an at all to describe the ratio and provides actual evidence. So which one is more valuable?
• Ratio of word counts does not imply the ratio of occurrences of the meanings of the words in the world. This is ridiculous and not scientific in any way.
  • Also the word al-bahr means "sea" and not water. So it should not include rivers. And the Qur'an talks about rivers (أَنْهَٰرٌ, al-anharun) a lot.
  • What other ratios are described this way? Is the moon / earth mass ratio described by the word counts for moon and earth?
• There are floods, icebergs melting.. the ratio of land to water is always changing. But the ratio of the word counts will never change. So even if the Qur'an described the ratio and it was 100% accurate, then it was wrong somewhere in history and will be wrong in the future. Shouldn't the Qur'an rather describe physical or mathematical facts, that are not changing with time? And preferably describe them in a verse and not in word counts, so that we know this is not a coincidence?

References