Scientific Errors in the Quran: Difference between revisions

The Qur'an mentions numerous times that the sun and the moon travel in an orbit (falak - a rounded course), but does not mention once that the earth does too. This is consistent with a earth-centered (geocentric) view of the cosmos that places a motionless earth at the center of the universe and all "heavenly bodies" travel around the earth. This was the prevailing understanding of the universe prior to the 16^th century when Copernicus helped explain and popularize a sun-centered (heliocentric) view of the universe. Tellingly, the sun's orbit is almost always mentioned in the context of night and day (13:2 is the only exception) and is always mentioned with that of the moon, which does in fact orbit the Earth each month, and to a naive observer seems to traverse the sky each night when it is visible.

Some try to explain away the Qur'anic description of the sun moving in an orbit as a reference to our sun orbiting the black hole at the center of the milky way galaxy every 225 million years. This is an [[w:Ad hoc hypothesis|Ad hoc hypothesis]], of no relevance to human time scales, and nothing from the text implies that the sun is orbiting anything other than the earth. If the author had knowledge of the sun orbiting a black hole then it is conspicuous that he never mentions it explicitly nor in any way differentiates the sun's orbit from that of the moon. See also the [https://wikiislam.net/index.php?title=Scientific_Errors_in_the_Quran&stable=0#The_similar_size_and_distance_of_the_sun_and_moon Similar Size and Distance of the Sun and Moon] section below.