Can anyone think of other tactics used by skeptics to show supposed scientific errors in the Qur'an?
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The Quran is free from scientific errors, and this is another miracle in itself. No one can extract scientific errors from it except by imposing a biased interpretation from their imagination, or by imposing one possible interpretive aspect that the language or expressions used do not require and making it the intended meaning with 100% certainty while there exists another equally strong possible interpretive aspect that contains no scientific error, or due to ignorance of the Arabic language, or by binding the Muslim to every word and letter mentioned in an ancient commentary as if that ancient commentator lived in an intellectual vacuum on planet Mars unaffected by the prevailing culture and environment, so he sometimes tries to twist words or overuse metaphors to reconcile the Quran with his era's culture, thinking that his era's culture reflects reality and the Quran cannot contradict reality in his opinion, so he interprets it thus with good intention, and finally fragmentation.
Here is an example of each case:
1- Biased interpretations from imagination.
Allah says: "It is not allowable for the sun to reach the moon, nor does the night overtake the day, but each, in an orbit, is swimming."
So someone comes and interprets this verse and tells you that the Messenger thought the sun actually revolves around the earth, and this is pure nonsense - a biased interpretation from the beginning, as you assume beforehand that the Quran is human speech then interpret it according to this bias in line with the prevailing culture of its revelation era. So you say he thought the sun's real, actual orbit was this apparent movement in the sky around the earth.
But the verse itself does not mention or specify the sun's orbit around what? This is an addition from your imagination only.
The verse mentions that the sun is in an orbit swimming. The moon is in an orbit swimming. Night and day are in an orbit swimming. It does not specify what revolves around what?
The sun's orbit is its movement in the sky. The moon's orbit is its movement in the sky. The orbit of night and day is the earth's orbit, as the earth moves in the sky, and since night and day are phenomena attached to planet earth, through the earth's swimming in an orbit, they swim with it in an orbit in the sky.
So swimming in an orbit here means translational movement from place to another place in the sky around something, not rotation around oneself, otherwise the verse's meaning would become the sun and moon rotating around themselves, not their translational movement from place to place in the sky as well. By the way, most ancient commentators mentioned in their commentaries that (each) here refers to the sun, moon, and stars, despite the verse not mentioning stars, because they did not know how night and day could be in an orbit swimming like the sun and moon with translational movement in the sky??? Their culture was earth's fixity. The alternation of night and day is not expressed by such a strange phrase (in an orbit they swim) but was expressed by turning and insertion.
For information: movement is entirely relative and dependent on the inertial reference from which you observe. So even saying that the sun revolves around the earth is not a scientific error as long as you say this is from an earthly observer's perspective only and not an absolute truth - it is indeed a reality and not a mere optical illusion, but from this perspective only if you take the earth as your inertial reference. From an external spatial perspective, the earth revolves around the sun, exactly like the sun's movement - from the perspective of an observer within the solar system, the sun is relatively stationary and the planets revolve around it, but from the perspective of an observer from the center of the Milky Way galaxy, for example, the sun with the planets moves around the galaxy's center and the sun is not stationary from a galactic perspective. Therefore, the Quran does not specify what revolves around what - it only mentions that the sun, moon, and earth (night, day) move in orbits in translational movement in the sky.
2- Forcing one interpretive aspect compulsorily.
Among the most famous examples here are the verses of Surat At-Tariq that say: "So let man observe from what he was created. He was created from a fluid, ejected, Emerging from between the backbone and the ribs." So someone comes and says this is a clear scientific error because semen does not emerge from between the spine bones and chest.
But this is only one possible interpretive aspect, and you cannot assert with 100% certainty that this is the intended meaning. Rather, there is another interpretive aspect no less strong {actually stronger because it is supported by context, as all pronouns in the sura refer to man, not to the ejected fluid - "Indeed, He, to return him, is Able," "Then man will have no power or any helper"} than the other interpretive aspect, which is that the pronoun in "emerging" refers to man, not the ejected fluid, so the verse's meaning would be the fetus emerging from between the spine bones and chest.
This interpretation has support in ancient commentaries as well and is not exclusively modern interpretation. Ibn Atiya says in his commentary: "His saying: 'Emerging from between the backbone and the ribs,' Qatada, Al-Hasan, and others said: meaning: from between the backbone of each of the man and woman and their ribs, and Sufyan and Qatada also and a group said: from between the man's backbone and the woman's ribs, and the pronoun in 'emerging' could refer to man, and could refer to the fluid."
There are also many suspended narrations saying that in the testicle is the growth of creation, which means this was common knowledge.
3- Ignorance of the Arabic language.
An example is someone saying that the Quran made a grave scientific error because it says bees eat from fruits, while the truth is that bees do not eat ripe fruits but feed on flower blossoms.
This is great ignorance of the Arabic language, as fruits in Arabic means everything that emerges from the earth or comes from tree produce, so blossoms are fruits in Arabic. Ibn Faris says in Maqayis Al-Lugha: "Fruit is something that generates from something, gathering, then other things are carried upon it metaphorically."
By the Quran's own text: "Who has made for you the earth a bed and the sky a ceiling and sent down from the sky, rain and brought forth thereby from the fruits provisions for you. So do not attribute to Allah equals while you know."
In Ibn Jarir At-Tabari's commentary he says: "He means by that He sent down rain from the sky, so He brought forth with that rain from what they planted in the earth from their crops and plantings, fruits as provision for them as food." So the meaning of "fruits" in this verse is everything that water brings out and grows from plants, fruits, and flowers.
4- Binding the Muslim to every big and small thing said by an ancient commentator.
For example, he binds you to Allah’s saying: "Then He directed Himself to the heaven while it was smoke" that the smoke here means water vapor, while the first and original linguistic meaning of the word smoke is that which results from combustions and explosions and consists of a mixture of gases with solid materials suspended in it, but of course the nature of gases and suspended solid materials is different in both (fire smoke/cosmic smoke). The word smoke can linguistically be applied to anything resembling fire smoke, meaning a mixture of gases with suspended solid materials. The author of Maqayis Al-Lugha - Ibn Faris says in the entry (dakhan): "(dakhan) The dal, kha, and nun is one origin, which is what comes from fuel, then everything resembling it is likened to it."
All space agencies indeed call these clouds that dominate the universe's volume (most of the volume of baryonic matter in the universe to this hour is in the form of interstellar medium and intergalactic medium, which resulted from primordial gas after the Big Bang - simple proportions of this gas clumped into complex structures while most of its volume remained in gaseous form to this hour as interstellar and intergalactic medium) to this hour the term "smoke" due to the extreme visual similarity between smoke and them. You find on NASA's website, for example, an image titled "Cosmic Smokescreen."
So he diverts the word from its original, first meaning and what comes to any mind when hearing such a word, using the excuse that the ancients were influenced by their era's culture which saw water vapor or water as the universe's origin, not something fiery that produces smoke.
5- Fragmentations.
The solid dome as an example:
The Qur’an presents the sky in ways that cannot be reconciled with the idea of a rigid, solid dome. According to the text:
Foldable: It can be rolled up like scrolls (21:104).
Expanding: It is described as stretching or expanding “and indeed We are its expander” (51:47).
Celestial bodies move within it, “each in an orbit swimming” (21:33), “ya‘ruju fīhā” (57:4), “fa-ẓallū fīhi ya‘rujūn” (15:14). Within and inside its interior, not beneath, not passive motion attached to a solid rotating dome but swimming, active motion.
Unsupported by concrete pillars: It is raised without visible pillars, “He raised the heavens without pillars that you can see” (31:10).
These qualities contradict the notion of a solid rigid structure. Solid rigid matter does not generally fold, expand, contain motion of celestial bodies within itself, or remain suspended without supports. The Qur’an emphasizes natural causes, not arbitrary miracles, in the functioning of the universe. If the sky were a concrete dome, God would have created supports and highlighted them, as He often takes pride in His creation, yet the text explicitly denies such supports.
Therefore, verses like "God holds the sky from falling to earth" cannot be interpreted as supporting the solid dome myth. What God means in this verse is explicitly mentioned in three other verses. Arabs call anything above them "sky": rain is sky, meteors are sky. The Qur'an, in three other explicit verses, explains what it means for the sky to fall: it means something from the sky falling:
"Or you make the sky fall upon us in pieces as you have claimed, or bring Allah and the angels before us" (Al-Isra 17:92)
"Then cause a fragment from the sky to fall upon us, if you are truthful" (Ash-Shu'ara 26:187)
"Do they not see what is before them and what is behind them of the sky and the earth? If We willed, We could cause the earth to swallow them or cause fragments from the sky to fall upon them. Indeed in that is a sign for every servant who turns back [to Allah]" (Saba 34:9)
These verses mean that God prevents what exists within the sky from falling, not the blue thing you see itself, as the word sky means anything above us (outer space itself + things within it). This is basic Arabic language before any revelation; anything above you is called sky in Arabic. This is not modern patching; this is classical Arabic. The Qur'an itself, for example, calls clouds sky: "Have they not seen how many generations We destroyed before them, whom We had established in the earth such as We have not established you? And We sent the sky upon them pouring down abundantly" (Al-An'am 6:6).
It calls the air in which plants grow sky: “A good word is like a good tree—its root is firm and its branches reach into the sky” (Ibrahim 14:24).
It even calls the roof or ceiling of a person’s home “sky,” as in the verse: “Whoever thinks that Allah will not support him in this world and the Hereafter, let him stretch out a rope to the sky, then cut it, and see if his plan will remove what enrages him.” (Al-Hajj 22:15)
And so on, atheists cannot extract errors except by isolating verses and making things up through their biases and imagination.
Verses like “the protected ceiling” or “the splitting of the sky” must be interpreted in harmony with the Qur’an’s broader description rather than forcing the concept of a rigid dome onto isolated passages.
Asked by Ahmed Zayed
(1 rep)
Nov 25, 2025, 06:29 AM