Comment by Samia Hurst on September 5, 2009 at 3:22pm

Many of these 'unknown facts' were of course known since Antiquity...the most important one being that the earth was spherical.

Comment by Jānis Ķimsis on September 5, 2009 at 5:38pm

Every living thing is made of water? What? What are you a doctor of exactly?

Comment by Prazzie on September 5, 2009 at 6:07pm

Overly long, pointless, mendacious and with zero "scientific proof" or even a scrap of evidence for your particular god to exist and be the 'Real One, No Really'. Dice? "The only logical answer to the question..."? Logic and science - I don't think it means what you think it means.

"If a non-Muslim believes that Islam is a merciless religion...a religion which does not give rights to women; a religion which contradicts science; in his limited sense that non-Muslim is correct to reject such Islam."

Non-Muslim, check, check, check, conclusions drawn from having Muslim friends and seeing what kind of religion this is with my own eyes. Great, I reject it, correctly.

I would suggest that you and NASHWAN avoid attempts at converting atheists, who clearly harm no one, and turn to your fellow Muslims who give Islam a bad name. Once you have managed to turn current believers in the faith into merciful, rational people who grant women equal rights in reality and not just when you pretend it is so, come back here and give it another go.

Comment by Nelson on September 5, 2009 at 9:04pm

Congratulating an Atheist
in acknowledging that atheists use their intellect to judge the god hypothesis as wholly lacking in justification he seems also to acknowledge the opposite; since apparently not intellect, what does the author use to justify believing in the existence of gods?

Logical concept of God
it's awfully arrogant of the author, and presumably you too since you posted it, to think that atheists only lack belief in gods because they all have the wrong concept of god and that you can quite easily bring them to belief in gods by explaining the "true" concept of god. first of all, the true concept according to who? there are thousands of gods and tens of thousands of different religions built up around the worship of those gods. again, it's pure arrogance to think, if a god did exist, that you have knowledge of the true concept of that god. second, your pen analogy is a total failure. there is evidence of a pen's existence. i need not have a full and proper concept of what a pen is to be able to touch it, see it, feel it, and measure it and thereby have evidence of existence. what difference does it make that the concept you have of your god is one of a universal transcendent omnibenevolent omniscient omnipotent god when you can't produce evidence that your god exists? your concept of god is a construct of an evolved theology that presupposes existence despite the fact that there's no evidence for such an existence. show me some evidence and then i'll be interested in the finer points of the concept. just as with your god, i would care very little of what your concept of a pen is if you were unable to demonstrate objectively that the pen exists. the same is true of this machine you speak of. describing it's mechanism of action comes after establishing that it exists.

Theory of Probability
the claim is made that the Qur'an contains statements of fact that were unknown to science at the time of its writing but have been confirmed by science after the fact into modern times. if that were true it would be impressive. if the Qur'an contains statements of fact that are in stark opposition to the facts of science the opposite would be true; it would indicate that the Qur'an was written by ignorant desert dwelling persons without divine inspiration.
now, does the Qur'an say the earth is "spherical"? first of all, readers might wonder why the word "spherical" is specifically used as opposed to "round." one might wonder as well why there's no accompanying chapter and verse citation. as it turns out the reason spherical is used in the above article is because a minority translation of Qur'an 79:30, "Wal'arda ba'da dhalika dahaha," is translated as "He made the earth egg-shaped." it is argued, according to this translation, that the Qur'an says that the earth is spherical. but when you actually examine the scientific facts of the dimensions of our planet you find that the word round would be a far better description of the earth than is egg-shaped. the earth is an almost perfect sphere that simply bulges at the equator and flattens at the poles. how close to perfect is the sphere and to what extent does the earth bulge or flatten into the shape of an egg? the earth's diameter at the equator is 7,926.69311 miles (12,756.776 km) while the polar diameter is 7,900.00025 miles (12713.818 km), a difference of 26.69286 miles (42.9579941 km). the ellipticity, the flattening of the poles towards the equator, therefore, is actually just 3.3674653 x 10⁻³ km or 2.09244562 x 10⁻³ miles! some egg-shape that is. and anyway, as if i haven't already shown how false this egg-shaped business is, as i began, the translation of the arabic as "egg-shaped" isn't even the accepted translation. what is the accepted translation? "And after that He spread the earth." how minority is that aberrant translation? the website of the Online Qur'an Project lists 33 English Translations of the Qur'an. of those 33 English translations only 4 translate 79:30 using the word egg-shaped. but perhaps more important to the issue of whether the Qur'an contains scientific truths that prop up claims of divine authorship is how the other 29 translations give the verse. they all have it as the earth was spread out, flattened, into an expanse. instead of saying the earth was created egg-shaped, the great majority of translators know that the verse says that the earth was created FLAT! and so we see why there's no accompanying chapter and verse citation either- because the Qur'an doesn't say what it's asserted to.

having shown how silly that assertion is lets move on to the next example then. does the Qur'an say that the moon reflects the sun's light? once again there's no chapter and verse citation. having seen why a citation was left out with the previous claim we are justifiably suspicious with this claim too. and it turns out that suspicion is well-founded. 71:15-16 says, "Do you not see how Allah has created the seven heavens, one above another, And made the moon therein a light, and made the sun a lamp?" confirmed for us then is the reason why once again the chapter and verse citation is left out of the article; the Qur'an simply doesn't say what it's asserted to say. it is of course true that the moon only reflects the sun's light but, leaving aside that the Qur'an doesn't actually say this, is this evidence of divine authorship? well, no. actually, and once again, astronomers going back to the Classical period knew that the moon's light was reflected and not produced. those astronomers included among their arguments for the earth's spherical shape the fact that the earth's shadow cast on the moon was obviously the shadow that would be produced by a spherical object. they argued that if the earth was a flat disk then, at some times, the earth would project a shadow in the form of a line across the moon's surface. going all the way back to Classical Greek astronomers understood that the moon's light was reflected light from the sun that could be blocked to varying degrees throughout the month by the earth as it passed in front of the moon. so even if the Qur'an did indeed say that the moon's light is reflected whereas the sun's light is produced it would be no great feat considering that by the time the Qur'an was written this fact had been known for 900 years!
the argument that 71:16, tortured as it is, says that the moon's light is reflected is that, since the the moon is described in a different way from the sun, the moon being referred to as a light while the sun is referred to as a lamp, this indicates that the moon is reflected light while the sun is produced light. we're of course justified in asking that if Allah wanted to leave evidence of the reality of divine authorship in the text why wouldn't he have simply said, "the moon merely reflects the light from the sun; the sun produces it's own light," rather than simply using light/lamp? there's actually a couple of other verses that describe the moon's light. verse 10:5 says of the moon, "He it is Who made the sun a shining brightness and the moon a light..." 25:61 says, "Blessed is He who appointed houses in the sky and set in it a lamp and a shining moon." this verse seems to indicate that the moon shines with its own light. the same Zakir Naik that wrote this article appears in a video on YouTube where he explains (scroll to 24 minutes in) that "The Arabic word for moon is 'qamar' and the light described there is 'muneer' which is borrowed light, or 'noor' which is a reflection of light." if that were true then, leaving aside, as already explained, that astronomers from Classical times already knew the moon's light was reflected, this would at least be in keeping with scientific fact though it wouldn't be evidence of divine authorship. but in fact it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
the word "muneer" is apparently used 6 times in the Qur'an. four times, in 3:184; 22:8, 31:20, and 35:35 it is the phrase "kitab al-muneer" which translates variously as "the book of enlightenment", "the scripture giving light", and as "the illuminating book." 25:61, already cited, includes the word muneer in the phrase "qamar al-muneer" and is translated, again, as we've seen, as "a shining moon." the Qur'an never says that the moon is not itself a light and never does it say that the moon reflects light from the sun. and if "noor" means a reflection of light then he has some explaining to do. in verse 24:35 we are told: "Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The Parable of His Light is as if there were a Niche and within it a Lamp: the Lamp enclosed in Glass: the glass as it were a brilliant star: Lit from a blessed Tree, an Olive, neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil is well-nigh luminous, though fire scarce touched it: Light upon Light! Allah doth guide whom He will to His Light: Allah doth set forth Parables for men: and Allah doth know all things." in this verse the word translated from Arabic into English as "light" is actually "noor"! if we accept noor as meaning reflected light rather than produced light then where is the divine light coming from that is reflected from Allah? does Allah get his divine light from someplace else?
as if this didn't settle the issue there's the final nail in the coffin in 33:45-46: "O Prophet! Truly We have sent thee as a Witness, a Bearer of Glad Tidings, and Warner, And as one who invites to Allah's (grace) by His leave, and as a lamp spreading light." the Arabic phrase rendered as "lamp spreading the light" is actually "wa siraajan muneeran." here is the noun "siraaj," which means "lamp" occurring right alongside the adjective "muneer" to described the sun's light. to assert that the sun's light can be described by the adjective muneer if muneer means reflected light is just stupidity.
moving on quickly to dispense with the ludicrous assertion that the Qur'an offers up scientific truth in saying that all living things were created from water. first of all, we must acknowledge that the Qur'an, verse 24:45, does say that god created all living things from water. if only that were the end of things then the assertion would stand. but the Qur'an then says that man was created from a clot of congealed blood, not water (96:1-2). it says that man was created from a clay mud (15:26). it also says that man was created from dust (30:20)! and so, not only has science established that all living things were not created from water, the Qur'an contradicts itself on whether even that was the case as far as its concerned; water, blood, mud, dust- which is it?!

but i began by pointing out that if we could find verses in the Qur'an that stood in stark opposition to the objective facts of science we would demonstrate that the Qur'an is a work of ignorance.
12:4 says there are 11 planets.
13:2 suggests that the sun orbits the earth.
18:86, 90 say that the sun rises and sets in a particular place on earth. indeed it sets in a muddy spring.
27:61 says that the earth does not move.
36:40- the sun orbits the earth
and on and on...
the evidence shows that, since the Qur'an says the earth was created flat, does not say that the moon's light is reflected from the sun, and since the Qur'an was written between 610 and 632 CE when philosophers, mathematicians, and astronomers going back to the Classical period 900 years earlier had recognized that the earth was a sphere and that the moon's light was reflected, and since it is contradictory and flat wrong about biology, the Qur'an was written by ignorant people without divine inspiration just like every other religion's holy text.
Theory of Probability indeed!

Creator Is The Author Of The Qur'an
we've established that the creation OF the author is the Qur'an but that that author wasn't at all divine. the only other option to consider is that the divine author was an idiot himself, ignorant of the facts of science.

Qur'an is a book of Signs not Science
odd that right after asserting that the Qur'an is filled with scientific information that he then goes on to say that the Qur'an isn't a book of science. i certainly agree that it hasn't anything important to say about science but neither is it a book of signs unless you count the signs that indicate that it was informed by ignorant superstitions common to the time of its writing.

Science Is Eliminating Models Of God But Not God
clearly Francis Bacon was wrong because according to surveys of the National Academy of Science and the Royal Society those scientists at the top of their profession, the most eminent scientists, are those that find the evidence for a personal deity like Allah wholly lacking. in the survey of the NAS only 7% of those surveyed believed in a personal god while those responding to the survey of the Royal Society were even lower, a bare 3%.
in fact the more educated you are the less likely you are to believe in gods.

Comment by Doug Reardon on September 5, 2009 at 10:58pm

Sheesh, Alyaa's kidding isn't he? He didn't really waste all that time and space for such ridiculous arguments did he? But then, Nashwan was appreciative of his arguments, that should say something for their caliber of persuasiveness. Maybe these two can go off and establish a Utopian society together, where Islam is all, and everybody is as happy as pigs in slop! oh, I'm sorry, happy as a dog in a butcher shop! Oops, another inappropriate simile.

Comment by Wassabi on September 6, 2009 at 1:21am

http://www.islam101.com/religions/provingGodExists.htm

could you please stop playing "copy-paste" with articles you found on islamic websites? What's the point? you're obviously not interested in any sort of discussion, putting up other people's posts and disappearing... it's pathetic.

Comment by Kerry Murton on September 10, 2009 at 11:52pm

see this really pisses me off. atheists get their own website and the religious people come along and start preaching to us on here. its bad enough they stand on street corners and knock on our doors, now theyre infiltrating our websites! atheists just cant express themselves without these people interferring and its driving me mad!!!!!!!

Comment by S S Tragus on December 19, 2009 at 9:18pm

Kerry, I agree that it is irritating to have religious folk come into an atheist forum to discuss views (i.e. try to proselytise). Could we perhaps make the sign-up process so that only those who say current religious status is atheist/agnostic/non-religious are admitted? This should really be a religion-free zone as everywhere else we get bombarded with this crap, however well-intentioned and mild-mannered some may be. Perhaps we can bring the idea up to the founder to have something to filter those still adhering to religion out of here?

Comment by Jacqueline Sarah Homan on December 20, 2009 at 1:43am

Targus, that is what A|N does. Occasionally, a few theists will still slip in anyway because they'll be dishonest about their non-theism just to get into this site. What could be done would be to have this site's owner/admin/moderators apply a very firm rule: theists/theist apologists who slip in and proselytize or shove theism, including theistic positions (e.g. Intelligent Design, misogyny/patriarchy apologia, or "pro-life" arguments, etc.) at other people here on this site and bang — kick 'em out and ban 'em. No if's, butts, or bull.

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