Science in Islam

bonkey

Following on my previosu post...

The notion of a universal orbit is an impossibility under current scientific (expansionary) models.

I take it that this means the_new_mr is confident that we do not live in an expansionary universe and that the astrophysicists are all wrong.

the_new_mr

bonkey wrote:

Why is it important?

To show that a scientist who disagrees with evolution is not always religiously motivated. I thought this was obvious.

bonkey wrote:

Scientifc fact? There is no such thing. Its all theories. All of it. Arguably, we can say that we're more certain of some theories than others, but at the end of the day, all of science is based on theory. That mightn't be convient, but its true.

Fair enough. If you say so. "More certain of some theories than others" is the statement I liked the most there.

bonkey wrote:

Both cannot be correct, so there is dissonance.

I've stated before that we can't be expected to intepret everything correctly.

bonkey wrote:

The notion of a universal orbit is an impossibility under current scientific (expansionary) models.

My bad. The Quran mentions nothing of a universal orbit or, for that matter, that the sun orbits it. My mistake entirely.

bonkey wrote:

Would you continue to dismiss it if that scientist showed conclusive evidence that it was so?

Let me say this then. If a scientist said that the sun isn't moving, I'd confidently dismiss it.

bonkey wrote:

No, its not. Individuals can be wrong. Gaining the accolade of "scientist" does not remove one's fallability. Indeed, as in any other field, the realms of science are full of scientists of every calibre.

Exactly my point.

Son Goku wrote:

Aside from this the mathematics following from "macro"evolution predicts certain trends in reptilian genetics, which have been observed in the fossil record.

As far as I know, fossil records have gaps in them when it comes to one species changing into another. Mathematical calculations have been wrong before in the past. Best not cotinue this in this thread though.

Son Goku

the_new_mr wrote:

As far as I know, fossil records have gaps in them when it comes to one species changing into another. Mathematical calculations have been wrong before in the past. Best not cotinue this in this thread though.

Eh, the point is that they are right in this case. They predict what we should observe in the fossils at certain intervals and what they predict is what we observe. The gaps don't matter because they predict a continuum of results which only have to be checked at large intervals.
The trend they predict is observed, i.e. they aren't wrong.

Anyway I'll respect the intentions not to continue with this.

Schuhart

FWIW, I’ve googled Bruno Guiderdoni out of an amount of curiosity as to how he reconciles his profession as a scientist with the practice of a religion. He’s actually produced some reasonable articles that give some insight into his thoughts and beliefs. ‘Miracles in the Koran’ don’t play a big part in his outlook. In fact, he plainly sees them as an embarrassment.

there cannot be any actual contradiction between the results of scientific investigation and the religious doctrines, provided they are not a complete illusion. However, and precisely for that reason, the connection of the evolving results of science with the symbolic teachings of religion should be more subtle that the ``cheap concordism'' which would consist in taking the literal meaning of some Koranic verses as alluding to ``scientific facts'', and in interpreting allegorically those whose literal meaning seems to be discrepant.

His reflections on life, the universe and everything seem to take him to that inevitable conclusion that there is no one true faith.

After some reading and travels in Northern Africa, I became aware of the necessity of following a spiritual path, and I embraced Islam. But the choice of Islam also includes the understanding that all religions of humanity come from God and go back to God. That has become an important element of my conversion. All religions eventually converge to the top of the mountain where God stands. Islam is one of the many religions that have been given by God to humanity.

We should not try to make a kind of mix between science and religion, or between all religions. We have to keep the scientific method when we do science. We have to keep religious rituals and dogma when we do religion. And everybody has to be faithful to his own religious roots.

I find I can accept his worldview, while I don’t share it myself.

I might be doing his writings a disservice, and I’m conscious that as his scientific field is how galaxies are formed so studying things that happen over that kind of timescale means he must be painfully aware of how the universe is so much older than us and so much larger than we need to exist. But my problem with what I’ve read of him is he seems to suggest a half-static idea that we are here studying the world about us and understanding God from that. This is fine so far as it goes, but it seems to skip past our place as part of this evolving universe. In a million years time our descendants won’t still be homo sapiens sapiens. That seems to me to be terribly significant in this context.

That said, Islam needs more Brunos and less ‘miracles’.

the_new_mr

Good idea to google Bruno Guiderdoni. He's an interesting guy with interesting thoughts. It's clear that his stuff is deep and is very "sufi" in nature as he talks often of a person's relationship with God which is of course what religion is all about (at least for most religions).

I'd say he'd be a fascinating guy to talk to. Must see if I can do that someday. Maybe when I head over to France some time I'll see what I can do

Anyway, I don't know if he sees them so much as an embarrassment as you put it. It seems to be that he maybe doesn't accept them. Maybe he does see them as an embarrassment. I don't know. You'd have to ask him really. Now, whether that's because he's upset at the idea that religion should be subjected to the judgement and imperfections of scientific discovery and human thought or because of something else I don't know. I'd love to ask him, being a cosmologist, what he thinks of the verses describing the universe as steadily expanding or the verse that describes that the universe will contract again on the Day of Judgement.

As for the idea of all religions coming from God. That is true to an extent. I mean, nobody would get anything unless God wanted them to get it. At the same time, verses in the Quran are clear about how Christianity and Judaism have veered from their original truth.

I wonder if perhaps Buddha was a messenger of God that was mentioned and whose teachings have been distorted. I'm just saying it's a possibility, not for definite. I don't want any Buddhists getting upset. I'm just saying maybe based upon this verse.

Ghafir:78
"We did aforetime send apostles before thee: of them there are some whose story We have related to thee, and some whose story We have not related to thee. It was not (possible) for any apostle to bring a sign except by the leave of Allah. but when the Command of Allah issued, the matter was decided in truth and justice, and there perished, there and then those who stood on Falsehoods."

Going back to the idea of all religions coming from God, I myself have a certain opinion on this. I'm nobody really so who I am I to say any of this and I'd like to point out that my opinion should not be taken as "fact". God forgive if I'm saying something wrong.

But with my knowledge that God is The Most Just, I think that there are good people who, through no fault of their own, would live and die as a non-Muslim and may still go to heaven because it'll come back to their intentions. I think I've said before that it comes back to exposure and sincerity of heart. Then again, I could be talking rubbish. Anyway, this topic is way way waaaaaaaaaaaay out of my realm so I'm gonna leave it there really. God forgive me if I've mentioned anything I shouldn't have.

Schuhart

the_new_mr wrote:

Anyway, I don't know if he sees them so much as an embarrassment as you put it. It seems to be that he maybe doesn't accept them

In fairness, I don’t know if he does find them embarrassing. But he really doesn’t like them.This is about the most blunt comment of his that I’ve read.

Much confusion has arisen recently because of a naive parallelism between Koranic verses and the discoveries of modern science, that betrays some ignorance on the nature of the scientific inquiry and of the religious texts.

the_new_mr wrote:

I'd love to ask him, being a cosmologist, what he thinks of the verses describing the universe as steadily expanding or the verse that describes that the universe will contract again on the Day of Judgement.

Taking his own words, I think he’d worry that this was

a literalistic reading of the Scriptures, which is a double error: It leads us to say things about the world that are wrong, and it makes us forget the symbolic nature of revelation, which concerns the invisible and the ultimate destiny of humans.

the_new_mr wrote:

At the same time, verses in the Quran are clear about how Christianity and Judaism have veered from their original truth.

What original message? Maybe the full truth hasn’t been found yet. As our mate Bruno says

God is not exhausted by creation or by revelation. He does not cease to speak.

To my mind, this isn’t a million miles away from facing that reality that no religion has the final word, because we’re still writing it.

Schuhart

I won’t labour the point, even if I am digging up an old thread. But I think this extract from ‘The Koran for Dummies’ by Sohaib Sultan does a lot to illustrate just what’s wrong with the whole ‘scientific miracle’ approach.

The Koran shows an innate knowledge of astronomy in pointing out that the sun and moon alternate by day and night in a ‘rounded course’ (21:33) which alludes to the fact that both the sun and moon rotate around the earth, a ‘scientific’ discovery that was made well after the Koran’s revelation.

the_new_mr

No offense intended but honestly, I don't see the point of your last post there Schuhart. I think we've already established that such a view is incorrect. You can't hold Islam responsible for the incorrect view of a few. It's like saying that being Catholic automatically makes you part of the IRA (which of course it doesn't).

Schuhart

Perhaps more explanation of what I see in this is necessary. I’m certainly not saying that Muslims believe the Sun orbits the Earth. In fact, someone could equally wonder how that sentence got through the publisher’s editing process and, indeed, several book reviews without anyone, including presumably many non-Muslims, noticing what it was saying. I found it while browsing the religion section in my local library and felt it worth posting as a footnote.

I’d guess the mindset of the author to be of interest. He’s been taught, presumably, that the Quran contains information miraculously predating scientific discovery. He can see the Quran describes the Sun as orbiting the Earth. Hence, he writes something we can all see is pure fantasy.

For me, this is simply a good illustration of the credulity on which those ‘miracles’ claims are based.

the_new_mr

Yeah but didn't we establish that just because someone sees that, it's not necessarily true. Especially since a vast majority (all) of Muslims believe that the earth orbits the sun and that the interpretation of the Quran does not conflict with this idea.

I wouldn't be surprised if it snuck in there as an unintentional error either. Especially since the author writes that it confirms a "scientific discovery". Since science disagrees with this than I doubt that's what he meant.

Anyway, regardless of what he meant, I still don't see it relevant to the subject at hand.

Schuhart

the_new_mr wrote:

and the interpretation of the Quran does not conflict with this idea.

I’d put it more as ‘and there’s no reason to expect confirmation of this from the Quran.’ The key point is that the Quran is not a scientific textbook. The quote from ‘The Koran for Dummies’ illustrates a very good reason for remembering this.

the_new_mr wrote:

I wouldn't be surprised if it snuck in there as an unintentional error either.

That was also my first thought. But I cannot see any way that this can be passed off as a typo. The only explanation is that he came across some garbled version of the ‘miracle’, and saw no reason to doubt it.

I’m not suggesting every Muslim has to be responsible for every mistake by every other Muslim who writes a book. Nevertheless, I do thing this is illustrative of the pitfalls of the miracles approach – hence the post.

There is absolutely no reason why any of that should have any impact on the Quran’s value as a religious text. It only raises problems for anyone who wants to read a literal meaning into the text that it does not support.

the_new_mr

Schuhart wrote:

That was also my first thought. But I cannot see any way that this can be passed off as a typo. The only explanation is that he came across some garbled version of the ‘miracle’, and saw no reason to doubt it.

Even though it's completely besides the point, from a psychological point of view, this kind of thing can happen very easily due to knowing what you expect to see and therefore reading what you expect to see instead of what's really there. That's why you should get someone else to proof-read your own stuff and even then there are no guarantees. That's not to say for sure that what's in the book isn't what the author intended. As I said, it doesn't matter.

I think you've made your point very clear already that you don't think that the references in the Quran are scientific. And you've also said that Bruno Abd Al-Haqq Guiderdoni thinks the same. I've also said that I disagree. To my mind, there are too many verses that appear to me to be too accurate to just be a coincidence. And as I've said before, I think the best approach is somewhere between the opinions of Al-Ghazzali and Ibn Rushd as discussed earlier.

the_new_mr wrote:

Bruno Abd Al-Haqq Guiderdoni wrote:

Al-Ghazali claimed that, in case of apparent disagreement, it is usually the fault of the scientists who go beyond the limits of science when they claim things about the action of God in the world, the nature of fundamental reality, and so on. Whereas for Ibn Rushd, if there is a contradiction between the statements of religion and the statements of science, one has to come back to the Holy Book and make new, more valid, "interpretations" of the text that do not contradict the sound results of science.

I remember thinking at the time that my own opinion (albeit a humble one since I'm miles away from the level of knowledge of such men) is somewhere in between them as well. I think one should keep an open mind on both sides. An open mind that the scientic theory could be wrong and an open mind that the interpertation of the religious text could be wrong.

As far as I could tell, I felt we already agreed on this. Anyway, if you have any new points that I'd be glad to discuss them to the best of my ability but please don't lets go round in circles.

Suff

What bout scientists conversion?
, scientists’ comments on the scientific miracles in the Quran
might emphasis of the Scientific Materials in the Quraan.

Edit:
added a better site for info in the 2nd link

Schuhart

the_new_mr wrote:

As far as I could tell, I felt we already agreed on this. Anyway, if you have any new points that I'd be glad to discuss them to the best of my ability but please don't lets go round in circles.

I don’t mean to go round in circles – I’m just posting something I saw that I thought was of interest. But I think were we end is split on that point of whether its at all reasonable to expect a religious text to be scientifically accurate.

Suff,

Thanks for the links, and I will watch them later.