Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Scientific miracles and Keith Moore's gum picture

Keith Moore is the main character that appeared in that 1982 Saudi documentary that interviewed with several scientists and got them to testify the scientific miracles inthe Quran.

The scientist is interviewed, quoted a certain interpretation of the relevant passage on the Quran, and the scientist proclaims "this kind of knowledge did not exist in the 6th century".

The problem here is, the scientist is only expert in his own field of study and not the history of his field of study. That is, a scientist (of a natural science discipline) is not necessarily a historian (of natural science as a whole or a particular natural science discipline).

What is necessary for a serious and scholarly documentary is not authorities on the particular sciences of the "miracles" in question, such as ermbylogists, astronomers, oceanologists, etc, but rather:

1) An authority on the exegesis of the Quran to testify on the meaning of the passage.
2) An authority on the history of science to testify what kind of scientific knowledge was available in 6th century Arabia.

The documentary uses the interviewer as the authority on exegesis of the Quran and it uses the scientist as the authority on the history of his field.

Of course I am not saying that a scientist would be ignorant of the history of his field of study, but I say that he is not necessarily an expert on it for it is a separate field of study on its own.

So what we have is this documentary video, with several scientists being interviewed and commenting on the passages quoted to them and they appear to be testifying to the miracle.

Something interesting to note in that documentary is that, while all scientists say something that seems like to be testifying to a miracle, only one of them actually says the shahada and accepts Islam. This is strange, because you expect them all to accept Islam, since they all seem to be witnessing to a scientific miracle which implies that Islam is the true religion. So I assume either those scientists are paid to appear on that documentary and they are putting an act, or they are misquoted and taken out of context to made appear they are testifying to the miracle, or they actually see that the Quran contains scientific miracles, but they dont think that is enough reason to believe that the Quran comes from God.

The documentary seems to be relying solely on the authority of scientists, and seem to be saying "if those intelligent men see this miracle, then you should accept it". Because the documentary is not discussing the details of those so called miracles and convincing the reader. It gives a lot of details on the particular field of science though, and at the end posting a verse in the Quran, but never explains the reader or watcher why one should think that all such modern scientific information if expressed in the quoted verse.

There is also this another question comes to mind, when watching Muslims especially Saudis praising science and relying on their authority. These people are against certain sciences, in particular biology, because it contradicts their religious dogma. So it is odd that those men who find no problem in rejecting whole fields of study and scholarly work and evidence just because it is not compatible with dogma. I dont think evolution is taught in schools in Saudi. It is likely it is not taught in biology departments in universities either! It is a scandal. But when it comes to advancing the cause of Islam, they will not hesitate praising science and try and abuse people's respect for scientists, when argueing miracle of the Quran.

The interesting thing about the scientific miracles thing is that one of the scientists there actually wrote a scientific paper too, and it is available on the internet. Keith Moore wrote the paper, and it looks like any scientific paper; the only difference is that it wasn't submitted to any scientific journal! So it is written only to use in dawah missions?

There is a fallacy in that paper that should be obvious to everyone, which I think shuld discredit Keith Moore because I dont believe such a fallacy could be committed unknowingly.

He presents us with a picture of a gum, that is chewed with care to give a specific shape for the purpose of the argument; a shape of a fetus. It is perfect with the way it is shaped and bit on the edges to resemble the spine of the fetus and everything. This picture is prsented to us next to a picture of an actual fetus, for us to compare that that look very much alike. And the argument is, the Quran describes the shape of a fetus but there were no microscopes back then, so this is an impressive feature.

Keith Moore argues that, the word in the Quran that describes the shape of a fetus in a miracuylous way is "mudgha". The word apparently means chewed meat or substance, hence the gum picture. The gum is chewed and it looks like a fetus.

But then the gum in the picture could have looked like in any different shape. Who can say that chewed gums all look like the exact same way? But Keith Moore chose only one specific chewed gum to compare with a fetus.

From what I understand from the word "mudgha" it is connotating a size and not a shape. It doesn't make any sense for having a word in langauge that expresses nothing but a shape of a fetus. And you see, if Arabic language had a word for the spcific shape of the human fetus by the time of Muhammad, then this would be no miracle of Muhammad anyway. Because people already had in mind the shape of a fetus and when Muhamad would tell them "mudgha" they would immediately think of the shape of a fetus, even though none of them ever seen one. That would be the miracle of Arabic language. Anyway this is not the case.

The word apaprently just connotating a size: a mouthful of meat. Keith Moore is using the word to connotate a shape. He makes use of a gum picture to make his case. It is a question of dispute whether this was an honest error on his part or was it a deliberate attempt to create such a false idea.

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