A critique of Religion, particularly Islam
Why particularly Islam? Because Islam tells its followers to wage Jihad (war) against the non-believers (of Islam). It also tells them that if they are victorious fighting the non-believers then they can subjugate them and take their possessions and if they die in the fight, they will go to "heaven", where they will get all sorts of goodies, (virgins, boys, wine endless sex etc), and sufficient number of its followers believe its nonsense to carry out these instructions.
A few hours back I chanced on a publication called "AGE OF EARTH AND EVOLUTION – CAN RELIGION AND SCIENCE RECONCILE?" by one Muhammad Nabeel Musharraf, Chief Executive, Australian Islamic Library, where the guy indulges in scientific obfuscation and dishonest apologism for his religion. There doesn't seem to be a direct link to the article it arrived in my Inbox.
I couldn't let it pass, so I wrote a critique:
Muhammad Nabeel Musharraf writes: “The first thing that is required to be clarified before we begin is that there are a lot of aspects of the early history of the universe and the early stages of life that are based on multiple theories which often compete with, and sometimes contradict, each other.”
This is the typical opening gambit of Islamic and religious apologists to defend their religion while attempting to cast doubt about the legitimacy of science. It reveals their fundamental, perhaps willful, ignorance about the nature of science (and religion).
First of all, Scientific theories are explanations of facts. Scientific theories are based on evidence and facts. They start with a collection of observations, evidence and facts and then they seek to explain these facts. The most successful scientific theories are those that explain a lot of facts using very few assumptions. Thus, while there are many different theories about the origins of the Earth, there is absolutely no disagreement about the fact that the Earth is billions of years old.
This fact comes from the evidence of radiometric age-dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the radiometric ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples 1. According to this evidence the age of the Earth has been estimated to be approximately 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years. In 1999, the oldest known rock on Earth was dated to 4.031 ±0.003 billion years, and is part of the Acasta Gneiss of the Slave craton in north western Canada 2. In 2014, researchers have confirmed that a tiny zircon crystal from Australia, is the oldest rock fragment ever found on Earth — 4.375 billion years old, plus or minus 6 million years 3.
The Theory of Evolution explains the fact of the descent of all species from older species back to a common cellular ancestor. This vast evidence comes from fossil evidence, and genetic evidence.
Because scientific theories are explanation of facts, they do not claim to be infallible. They are constantly being tested and validated until a newer and better explanation comes along. They do not claim to be the absolute truth for all time.
As opposed to this religion claims the absolute truth for all time, based not on evidence, but on faith. Take for example the Islamic religion. It was founded by Muhammad, who claimed he wrote the actual words of a God called Allah, through his angel Gabriel, compiled subsequently into a book called the Quran. No one heard these words except Muhammad, so we must take his word for it.
The question we have to ask is - how then do we know it is true? The answer that Muslims give is that the Quran claims that no one can produce a verse like it and that the Quran contains some “miraculous” revelations that the 7th century Muhammad could not have known if it were not from a divine creator.
Only a perfunctory study of the Quran discredits both these claims. The first claim fails on logic as there is no objective test that can test this claim. The second claim also fails. There is nothing in the Quran that can astound the reader about its depth of scientific knowledge.
In fact, the Quran contains a number of scientific errors, the creation of man being only one of them, which points to it being the creation of the 7th century rather than anything containing divine knowledge.
Some of these are pointed out by WikiIslam which writes that:
“A message from an all-knowing being should not contain any errors, mistakes, or information that contradicts known facts about the universe. If even one error exists in the text of Islam's holy book then the claims of divine authorship and infallibility are not true. An objective evaluation of the Qur’an shows that it contains numerous scientific and historical errors and reflects a pre-scientific, 7th century view of the natural world.”4
References:
1. Hedman, Matthew (2007). "9: Meteorites and the Age of the Solar System".
2. Bowring, Samuel A.; Williams, Ian S. (1999). "Priscoan (4.00–4.03 Ga) orthogneisses from northwestern Canada". Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology. 134: 3
3.
https://www.livescience.com/43584-earth ... ircon.html 4.
http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Scientific_Er ... _the_Quran