Is Koran scientifically accurate? And is it important for Muslims to know the truth? Is faith supposed to be above everything? Here below is the link to David Wood's testimony and a small section of the transcript of his interview.
(Former atheist David Wood (of Acts 17.net) shares his testimony about how he became a Christian. The video explains why he left atheism and surrendered to Jesus as Lord and Savior. Hear Apologetics 315's interview with David Wood here: Audio / Transcript.) (David Wood is an American evangelical missionary and philosophy lecturer. He is currently head of the Acts 17 Apologetics Ministry. He has degrees in philosophy and biology, and is pursuing a Ph.D. in the philosophy of religion at an academic institution in the State of New York. He has also been claimed to be a member of the Society of Christian Philosophers.)
..The most popular arguments that Muslims use are the Argument from Scientific Accuracy. So the Koran is supposedly a scientific masterpiece. It contains many scientific insights that were centuries ahead of our time and the Argument from Perfect Preservation which says the Koran has been perfectly preserved. That is a miracle. It is obviously the Word of God.
Regarding the science, I don’t know what book they are reading. I open up the Koran and in Sura 18:86 tells us that Alexander the Great, which the Koran refers to as Zul-Qarnain. Zul-Qarnain travelled so far west, he found the name where the sun sets and found it setting in a pool of murky water.
So according to the Koran if you travel far enough west, you will actually find the place where the sun sets. The sun sets in a pool of murky water. Sura 67:5 and 37:6-10, they tell us that stars are missiles that God uses to shoot demons when they try to sneak into Heaven. The stars you see up in the sky, they are sitting there, they are missiles waiting to be thrown at demons trying to sneak into heaven and then when you see a shooting star, it is because God actually hurled one of these stars at a demon. Now that is wrong in multiple levels. Shooting stars aren’t really stars and shooting stars have nothing to do with hitting demons that try to sneak into Allah’s meeting room.
And you find over and over again in the Koran, these kinds of problems. Sura 65:12 says that there are these seven earths and according to the commentaries they are all flat. They are stacked up like pancakes except they have some space in between them. Sura 88:28 says that the earth is flat. 22:65 says that the sky is actually a solid object that Allah is holding up. If Allah weren’t holding up the sky, the sky would fall on us and over and over again in the Koran, you find these problems at every level. Those are all astronomy but you know, embryological development, Sura 80:6 for instance says that “semen is produced between the ribs and the spine.” So I don’t know what book Muslims are reading when they say it’s a scientific masterpiece. Some of these are really really absurd teachings – the idea that you could travel far enough west and find the place where the sun sets and the stars are missiles. So that’s a really really poor argument.
The other, this argument that the Koran has been perfectly preserved and therefore it is from God, well here again we find an even-if-but-in-fact situation. Even if the Koran were perfectly preserved, that wouldn’t mean that it’s from God. We have books that are older than the Koran. We have manuscripts of books that are older than the Koran. So you have entire manuscripts, let’s say manuscripts of the Bible. You have manuscripts of the Bible that are older than 1400 years and so if it’s a miracle for a book to survive 1400 years then you could prove that any book that has an old manuscript must be the word of God. So even if this were the case, even if the Koran were perfectly preserved, it wouldn’t mean it’s from God.
But then if we actually go to the Muslim sources themselves, we find all kinds of evidence that there were changes, that entire chapters came up missing, that large sections of chapters came up missing, that verses came up missing. Some of it is actually hilarious. For instance, the verse of stoning. We know Muslims stone people for adultery, but that’s not in the Koran. It was supposed to be in the Koran. It was revealed, and so we ask, “Wait a minute. In the Hadith, it says there is this verse in the Koran about stoning. What happened to it?” Well according to their own history books, Aisha, Muhammad’s wife had a copy of it, so it was written down, this verse of stoning an adulterer and a goat came in and ate the manuscript and so they didn’t have it anymore.
And you have all kinds of situations like that in Islam where everyone lost these chapters. We just didn’t recite these two large chapters and now we forgot them. So its situations where Muslims go, walk in and make an argument, let’s say on a college campus, “Hey. The Koran has been perfectly preserved. How is that possible?” And people actually convert based on some of these arguments and they are totally wrong. The slightest bit – 10 minutes of research would show that that is totally totally false...
A common objection from Muslims is the question of how God can die? How can God die? If you believe that God is eternal and something eternal can't die then how can God die?
The answer Wood gave was that Muslims believe something very similar about the Koran. The Koran - the speech of Allah - is one of God's eternal attributes. So it has no beginning. It is co-eternal with Allah.
So according the Islamic theology, the Koran is uncreated. It has no beginning. It cannot be destroyed. So when Muslims raise the objection of God dying - Wood just picks up the Koran and asks "Does this book have a beginning?" Then what are we to make of the copyright in it? Moreover if the Koran has no beginning and cannot be destroyed what do we do with people like Pastor Terry Jones who have burned the Koran?
~ I think that the above is really helpful.
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