Scientific Errors in the Quran: Difference between revisions

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 creation sequence is: Heaven and Earth; seven heavens; the lowest heaven adorned with stars.

The verse below further confirms that heaven was only made into seven heavens when the Earth already existed according to the Qur'an.

The word lamps (masabeeha مَصَٰبِيحَ) in {{Quran|41|12}} and {{Quran|67|5}} with which Allah adorns (zayyanna زَيَّنَّا) the lowest heaven 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}}).

Some websites attempt to reconcile the Qur'anic description with modern science by denying that the word 'Then' in the verses above indicate sequence, and instead claim that it means 'moreover'. They claim this despite the fact that these words (thumma in 41:11 and 2:29, and fa in 41:12 - all translated as 'Then') generally are used to indicate sequence. In other contexts thumma was sometimes used to mean 'moreover', which is generally clear from those contexts, but the passages quoted above describe a process - the creation of the heavens and Earth.

Modern perspectives typically claim that the following verse is compatible with the [[w:Big Bang|Big Bang]] theory. According to this theory, the Universe was formed about 13.8 billion years ago due to a [[w:Chronology of the universe|rapid expansion]] from singularity. The earth was formed 4.54 billion years ago from [[w:History of the Earth|accretion]] of debris that surrounded the precursor of the Sun. There was no "separation" of the "joined" earth and heavens. In [[w:World egg|cosmic egg]] myths, an egg-like structure was split into two halves, the lower half forming the earth and the upper half forming the heaven. The verse itself assumes that the listeners are familiar with the concept.

There is no scientific theory in which the Earth and heavens were torn apart from each other. The verse says that "We clove them" (dual pronoun 'huma'), not "We clove it", thereby indicating that the Earth and heavens are distinct after the cloving. To imagine that verse 21:30 describes the big bang, the atomic particles that would later form the Earth would at the beginning have to be separated from those that would go on to form everything else in the universe. This bears no resemblance to scientific cosmology, wherein the material that forms the Earth passed through at least one earlier generation of star, and more recently was part of various asteroids, comets and planetesimals orbiting the sun (which could all be described as being in the 'heavens') that sometimes collided and merged with each other, sometimes split apart, and gradually coalesced under gravity to form the Earth and other planets.

The very next verse {{Quran|21|31}} speaks of mountains being placed on the Earth. Here 'the Earth' must mean an actual world, yet in the modern interpretation of the previous verse 'the Earth' refers merely to atomic particles at the time of the big bang.