In my readings for The Albatross on how Muslims reconcile science and the Qur’an, I found a strong strain (not so prevalent in Christianity) of sycretism, or rather what I call “coincidentalism,” an accommodaitonist tactic I describe in my book. Muslims will parse the Qur’an or the hadith, find something that sounds vaguely scientific, and then claim that Muhammad anticipated all of modern science. These claims include the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, evolution, and even quantum mechanics. Christians sometimes do the same thing, saying that the Genesis story supports the Big Bang or (because of the order of creation, which of course varies between Genesis I and II) even evolution. This pathetic endeavor shows that religionists really do want empirical support for their faith, for why else would they try to show that their God accurately prophesied the findings of science?
Here’s an excerpt from The Albatross showing how far this endeavor can go:
Muslim accommodationists, who, like most Muslims, take the Quran literally, have their own form of scientific creationism, asserting that the book is not only scientifically accurate on all issues, but actually anticipated every finding of modern science. The results are both pathetic and amusing. Dr. Halûk Nurbaki, for instance, collected fifty verses from the Quran, striving mightily to show that they predicted the discovery of gravity, the atomic nucleus, the Big Bang, and quantum mechanics. He translated one such verse as, “The fire you kindle arises from green trees.” Nurbaki sees this as a divine indication of the oxygen produced by plants and consumed by fire, adding, “It was impossible 14 centuries ago for unbelievers to understand the stupendous biological secret this verse contains, for the inside story of combustion was not known.” All this shows is how far some people can twist scripture to comport their faith with science.
But today’s attempt to reconcile Islam and science is even more ludicrous. Reader Dermot sent me a clip from MEMRI showing not only that the hadith and Qur’an are scientifically inaccurate (proving that Allah didn’t know squat about science), but are positively injurious. Click on the screenshot below to see a short clip on a “Koranic scientist” claiming, well, listen to the short clip yourself or read MEMRI’s transcript below:
Following are excerpts from a program featuring Dr. Ahmad Al-Muzain, a Palestinian expert on Koranic science, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on September 19, 2008: [JAC: my emphasis]
Ahmad Al-Muzain: The Prophet Muhammad said: “If a fly falls into your drink, you should dip it in the drink, and then dispose of the fly, because one of its wings bears a disease, and the other wing bears the cure.” This hadith was included in the Al-Bukhari collection. This hadith makes it absolutely clear that the Prophet Muhammad confirmed a clear scientific fact: If a fly falls into a vessel – before a person drinks from this vessel, he should dip the fly in his drink, before disposing of it. Then he should drink the beverage, because it won’t do him any harm. Why? Because one of the fly’s wings bears the disease, and the other one bears the cure.
. . . In Germany, the Church paid a very large sum of money to two scientists to disprove this hadith. Since this hadith appears in the Al-Bukhari collection, we cannot claim that it is unreliable or anything, and so they thought that if they could prove that this hadith contradicts science, they would be dealing a devastating blow to Islam.
. . . The scientists took samples from the wings of flies, and began to examine them, analyze them, and take samples from their surface, in order to expose what existed on each wing. The devastating result constituted a slap in the face. The truth was devastating, and it backfired on them. The two scientists reached an astounding conclusion. They said that on one of its wings, the fly carries a huge amount of different types of bacteria, which adhere to it when it lands on rotting pieces of food that it eats. As for the other wing, Allah has given the fly the great ability to carry antidotes to these microbes.
. . . When Bayer, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, learned about this study, it derived great benefit from it. It established biological breeding farms, where they would raise flies and extract antibiotics from their wings – the strongest antibiotics in the whole world. This antibiotic was made into a course of five pills, which is given to the patients, and it is used – believe it or not, my brothers – to treat AIDS patients. It strengthens their immune system, and destroys all types of microbes with which they are afflicted. This is all thanks to the power of this antibiotic. Obviously, this antibiotic is very expensive, and one course costs more than $500, but it is very strong and effective. How did they discover it? From this hadith.
. . . Did the Prophet Muhammad have labs to carry out research? Did Abu Bakr know anything about entomology, parasitology, or bacteriology? Of course not. Absolutely not. So how did they make all these scientific accomplishments? The only logical conclusion is that this science was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad by the Creator.
Oy vey! First of all, I strongly doubt the assertion about Bayer, and in fact I’ll give anybody an autographed hardback copy of WEIT (now out of print) who can substantiate the claim about Bayer, the antibiotics from fly wings used treat AIDS, and the $500 pills. I guess Allah didn’t know that AIDS is caused by a virus (yes it is, Deepak!) rather than a bacterium. Allah should have put antivirals on that fly wing (is it the right or the left wing, or is there fluctuating asymmetry)?
And of course dipping a fly in your drink is a good way to get sick. Allah should have known better! What he should have said, which many have noted before, is to give us a little information about washing our hands after defecating and before eating. Was that beyond Allah or the Christian and Jewish God? Instead, Allah tells us how to infect ourselves.
sub (the sound of a fly dunked in a beverage)
🍹
🐞 There were no emoji flies so I put this lady bug because Allah probably doesn’t much like ladies.
He sure seems to be scared of ladies and lady-parts.
There weren’t microscopes available at the time to facilitate/expedite ladybug FGM.
You might say they really bug him.
Maybe it would be a bit healthier if the fly was dunked in 100 proof scotch. We should suggest that to Dr. Al-Muzain.
Johnny Walker Black of course.
Heh.
That would, presumably, be for black flies. You might need Blue Label for a more aristocratic fly.
Aristocratic? With a name like Calliphora vomitoria?
Then again, calliphora might translate as ‘bearer of beauty’.
Huh … Ardbeg of course 🙂
Must admit that the idea of suggesting that to the “good” doctor made me smile …
I enjoyed a wee dram of Ardbeg just last night.
That whole “Bayer scientists ” story very much looks like the common apologetic tactic of embellishing an incredible claim to achieve a “they wouldn’t have this level of detail if it wasn’t true” effect. I guess it works for the gullible, but these things always, always turn out to be false when people who know how to, conduct proper research.
Sadly, there may be no culture in existence or that ever existed that is not replete with the gullible. (Except perhaps for America with it’s exceptional educational system – *wink*).
You might say that it’s merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
In other words, bullshit.
The washing of hands is there in the hadiths : http://sunnah.com/urn/1273680
This is one of the traditional adabs (etiquettes) of Islamic way of eating food.
Ha ha, good one … wait, you were serious?
How is “perform ablution (wash hands) when his breakfast is brought to him and when it is taken away” any better a description of “washing our hands after defecating and before eating” than the ‘Koranic scientist’ description of antivirals as antibiotics? Is it considered valid because while it is fully opaque it helps 1/6th of the time (assuming frequency of defecation is roughly the same as frequency of eating)?
Also, and this appends to the video ‘scientist’ as well, the hadith is a scattered collection of oral tradition that were collected long after the purported religion founder was supposed to live, and there exist no consensus between various traditions on what collections are valid. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadith ]
In addition, re sunnah of the quoted context, religious norm, “How far hadith contributes to sunnah is disputed and highly dependent on context.[citation needed] Classical Islam often equates the sunnah with the hadith. Scholars who studied the narrations according to their context (matn) as well as their transmission (isnad) in order to discriminate between them were influential in the development of early Muslim philosophy.”
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunnah ]
So how can we attribute this as valid and/or normative tradition?
Was it the left wing or the right?
(insert political pun here)
right – clean; left – dirty.
Well, be fair. Allah did say to eat with one hand and wipe your ass with the other. That’s something.
see above
The obvious idea to “eat with one hand and wipe your ass with the other” arises from our wholly natural revulsion to decay. It’s obvious to a two year old to avoid eating with the hand used to “wipe your ass”. If that is the best health advice found in the Koran then my dogs are prophets since they know better than to shit where they sleep.
Oh my word! It seems that the Muslims were in fact the first Mormons.
Shouldn’t you have removed the middle ‘m’ from Mormon?
It is the feet I would avoid dipping in a drink!
Surely that’s what Allah meant! Hold the fly by the feet and dip the wings in your drink. Thus, Allah predicted the invention of tweezers small enough to hold said fly, without touching its feet, and fly spray to aid in the process of capture.
Small booties might do the trick.
Meantime, we have an imam telling us wearing bikinis causes earthquakes. Or did he get confused – seeing someone in a bikini made the earth move for him?
I’ve mentioned before that the creation story in the Qur’an is now interpreted so that the water Allah used in making the clay to make Adam was actually a drop of semen, proving that Allah told Muhammad how babies are made. Because a bit of sperm mixed with the dirt would have made all the difference in the recipe.
Islamic semen is truly miraculous. The more there is, the cleverer the foetus. To make your baby more intelligent husband and wife should indulge in multi-rumpo in the first 40 days of pregnancy, this imam says here. (I won’t bother with the link, you’ll just have to take it on faith.)
Sometimes you just have to admire these clerics’ imagination. Allele Akhbar! x
Thank you Koranic Science for saving the lives of so many infidels; especially, the homosexuals.
I personally am of the view that a fly in the drink would not likely make a healthy person sick. Look at all the birds and reptiles that eat them. Yum.
The bacteria (or viruses) it may carry will be diverse, and the numbers of any species pathogenic to humans would be small. Running them through your stomach would dispose of most.
I would still remove the fly before drinking, of course.
Mark, you are well on your way to writing your own hadith. 😎
Couldn’t find the alleged Bayer study, but as with most good lies (I’m not sure that this Hadith interpretation is one of those), there seems to be a grain of truth to it:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2002/10/01/689400.htm
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/some-insect-wings-are-natural-antibiotics-678824/?no-ist
Not sure how dipping a fly into your drink would work to kill bacteria, still. Especially given that flies may be carrying antibiotic resistant bacteria: http://aem.asm.org/content/early/2014/04/01/AEM.00600-14
Won’t work is BOTH wings have the cure!
Seems it is the texture of the wings which is antibiotic, not a chemical compound to make pills out of.
But yes, it is a published hook to hang a lie on.
The problem with arguing about the Quran, with its devoted followers, is it does not matter even if you quote them a pernicious verse, they will always say, that you either misinterpreted it or you are not reading it correctly, it’s not in the original language, you have an inadequate copy, ya-da,ya-da ya-da. If then you find an Arab scholar and use their own copy of the Quran and point out the word “Kill”, they often resort to saying something like, “This is a newer word and that in ancient Arabic it actually meant “forcibly hug” and that you are supposed to tightly hug the infidel until he changes his ways”. Of course, if he dies in the process, that then it would be Allah’s will. I say that the word kill means kill. If you want to convey a different meaning then use another word. Kill does not mean Kiss.
Haven’t you heard the term, “I could love you to death”?
I’d be interested in whether you personally performed this experiment, referencing an Arab scholar’s own copy of the Quran and pointing out the work “kill”. If so it might be worthy of some kind of award we could come up with. What was the look on his face? How did he respond? I’m conjuring up a dramatic scene.
“It was impossible 14 centuries ago for unbelievers to understand the stupendous biological secret this verse contains, for the inside story of combustion was not known.”
Em, professor, shouldn’t that be “believers”?
Oh, and for everyone speaking German: The author of this blog entry claims to have directly asked the press service of Bayer, getting the answer that Al-Muzain’s claim is not true.
https://koptisch.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/31431/
This reminded me of the 1965 movie the Satan Bug, based on a novel by Alistair MacClean (writing as Ian Stuart). The movie was about the deadliest virus ever made, and it’s theft from the lab by a lunatic.
I seem to recall the commercial for the movie saying the virus was extracted from the bodies of flies.
Of course, since I was a child I found the idea of extracting a virus by squishing flies to be completely believable.
I never squished a fly for years after.
Does that say something about the mental acuity of the Muslim in the video?
I’m not sure if it is a lack of mental acuity so much as simply obsession with an ideological.
Oh, I used to love that film, which was often on telly when I was in my early teens (Long before cable and satellite).
I hadn’t remembered the bit about the flies, though.
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How does that joke go?:
Customer: Waiter, there is a fly in my soup.
Waiter: Oh, its only taking a swim.
Customer: Waiter, now there is a fly in my ice cream.
Waiter: Oh, now its doing winter sports.
It goes — waiter, what is that fly doing in my soup? Answer – the back stroke.
Thanks!
There once was a diner at Crewe
Who found a dead fly in her stew.
Said the waiter, “Don’t shout
And wave it about
Or the rest will be wanting one too!”
Notice how there’s not one single equation in any holy book (other than the Boomer Bible)?
Test.
I find the part about $500 pills completely believable. After all, Bayer does produce a cancer drug Nexavar which costs $69,000 for one year supply (while a generic costs $177 for a year)
Wait… Nexavar costs $69,000 per year but there’s a generic available? Color me skeptical. Citation?
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/31/1273942/-Bayer-CEO-Actually-Said-This-Cancer-Drug-Is-For-Rich-Westerners-NOT-Poor-Indians
That was my source, and there was a NYT article about this case, too.
So India was just trying to order Bayer to licence a generic for that price, but I don’t know if it became a reality.
Obviously, they wouldn’t have set the price at $177 (a month, not year, I believe) if a year supply of the drug really cost $50,000-$60,000 to make.
Ah. Apples/Oranges. I assumed we were talking about the same market.
I think this is the same market, just not the North American one. I’d say it’s rambutans to rambutans. 🙂
It isn’t a real comparison. Clearly nobody would pay $69K when $177 will do the trick. The big number exists because it is legally protected in most markets. If this was a real choice the would be no point to the objection in the first place. Who cares if one guy wants to charge a fortune if it is available at a low price elsewhere. You might as well complain about a $6,899 power cord.
Amuricuns go to India for surgery, eh?
An amusing case of Christians claiming the Bible anticipated modern science is Conservapedia’s article Biblical scientific foreknowledge. You have to read it to believe it.
Some howlers:
– God putting Adam to sleep before removing his rib was an example of anesthesia. Apparently, had “scientists and physicians been more openminded about Genesis 2:21… they may have discovered anesthesia far sooner, and saved many more lives.”
– The Bible anticipated quantum mechanics. In fact, when Jesus turns water into wine he is collapsing the wave function (seriously, that’s there).
– Also, Jesus passing intro a room with closed doors was an example of quantum tunneling. Their son of God sounds more like a comic book superhero who has special quantum powers.
– The Bible can also be used to disprove modern science. Certain Bible verses describe simultaneous action-at-a-distance, therefore Einstein’s theory of relativity is wrong. The website’s founder is Andy Schlafly (spawn of Phyllis), a relativity crank, so it’s no surprise he’d try to use his Bible to disprove it.
Messed up the link. Here it is:
http://www.conservapedia.com/Biblical_scientific_foreknowledge
Jesus Hermitian-conjugate Christ!
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The kindly Southern Baptist pastor of my youth suggested words to the effect that predators, prior to the downfall of Adam and Eve, were vegetarians.
This suggests the lions and tigers and bears lacked the ability to taste meat. The umani flavor. But would have possessed taste buds for sweet fruits or dark leafy vegetables. So, Yahweh would have had to redesign their digestive systems starting from the teeth and tongue. Not such a well thought out story is it?
As a high school math teacher I used to bring up the Bible when going over solving inequalities. Now class we all know that if you multiply both sides of an inequality by a negative number you must switch the inequality symbol around, so where does the Bible tell us this?
Matthew 20:16 “So the last shall be first, and the first last.”
But I used it as a joke.
On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 10:01 AM, Why Evolution Is True wrote:
> whyevolutionistrue posted: “In my readings for The Albatross on how > Muslims reconcile science and the Qur’an, I found a strong strain (not so > prevalent in Christianity) of sycretism, or rather what I call > “coincidentalism,” an accommodaitonist tactic I describe in my book. > Muslims w”
I did come across this, but have no idea how kosher it is : http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2002/10/01/689400.htm
Of course it is not what the guy is saying but perhaps it sort of got garbled in an attempt to “prove” the hadith?
As a high school math teacher I used to bring up the Bible when going over solving inequalities.
Now class we all know that if you multiply both sides of an inequality by a negative number you must switch the inequality symbol around, so where does the Bible tell us this?
Matthew 20:16 “So the last shall be first, and the first last.”
But I used it as a joke.
Just like one of my biology instructors once said in a lecture on surface tension exploitation by organisms something like – And so, the waterskater can use this to walk on water! I heard that some guy did this 2000 years ago too, but frankly I’m skeptical.
sub
“What he should have said, which many have noted before, is to give us a little information about washing our hands after defecating and before eating. Was that beyond Allah or the Christian and Jewish God? Instead, Allah tells us how to infect ourselves.”
As with the left and right wings of the fly, so I infer with the chopping off of the right hand (if I correctly understand) of the thief, so as to force him to eat with his left hand, the use of which was previously restricted to wiping.
Wonderful thing, that Sharia. Or whatever the heck mandates the chopping off of the right (“non-sinister”) hand.
I had an uninteresting ‘debate’ with an apologist on this very topic. Despite all the evidence against the wings of a fly serving as antidote to each other, and no evidence for it, this guy was adamant against recognizing the mistake. And then it went on to the Quran saying that comets are actually missiles which shoot down demons, and I pointed out that it’s not what comets do. Then this guy actually testified of demons and jinns, and said just because I haven’t seen them does not mean they do not exist. Then I had to stop the conversation. It is difficult to argue with fools who are convinced of their smartness.
There are whole websites devoted to show that the Qur’an and Hadith (or indeed the Bible, -as mentioned) are in line with modern science.
Most of the arguments are easily shown to be false, even by an informed layman.
Say the Prophet compared the Earth to an egg, so he *knew* that the Earth was not fully spherical, however, the very slight deviation from a sphere is in the opposite direction of an egg, not elongated at its axis of symmetry, like an egg, but flattened.
Most of it is on that level.
Quote-mining and/or misrepresenting some, often obscure, scientist is also rife on these sites.
It really is wishful thinking. It must be a willful ignorance of what science, and scientific knowledge really is. As though science is just a range of ‘claims’ and ‘assertions’. Of course the reality with science is that for any seeming simple (or complex) claim or notion, there are reams and reams of evidence. If you start to look at any given topic in science you will end up with piles and piles of books and articles and so on. Not to mention the math.
How can one vague reference to an atoms weight (without knowing even what is meant by atom) can compare to the endless depth and breadth of knowledge particle physics?
Let alone any other physics, or science or knowledge.
If you look at any scientific claim properly you will be able to go deep and wide, especially deep.
It is never just a vague single sentence.