Scientific Miracles in the Qur'an?

Examining a Key Muslim Claim

Many Muslim apologists respond to any challenge to the truth of the Qur’an with detailed claims that the Qur’an is filled with miracles and that it is, therefore, worthy of our full attention. These supposed miracles can generally be divided into the following types:

• Claims that some modern scientific discoveries are prefigured in the pages of the Qur’an.

• Claims that there are hidden numerical codes in the Qur’an.

• Claims that the Qur’an confirms truths about the natural world that Muhammad simply cannot have known about.

My book ‘Questioning Islam' contains several detailed refutations of such supposed ‘miracles’. With this article, I would like to lay down a few general principles by which these claims may be evaluated. In the process, it will be shown that such claims can easily be disproved. Before I discuss possible responses to the so-called miracles, it is worth making two general remarks:

Even if it can be conclusively proven that the Qur’an contains miracles, these miracles will not magically ‘cancel out’ the many errors, contradictions, and absurdities in the Qur’an. An appeal to the so-called ‘scientific miracles’ is often the kneejerk response by many devout Muslims when confronted with the many errors, contradictions and absurdities in their holy book. This response is based on a massive logical fallacy. By proving (or claiming to prove) Fact A (the Qur’an contains miracles), you do not in the same breath automatically disprove Fact B (the Qur’an fails the test that it sets for itself by containing many contradictions and errors). In this sense, the supposed miracles simply take attention away from the very real and troubling problems with the text of the Qur’an.

Appeals to ‘miracles’ betray a lack of confidence in the text of the Qur’an. This point follows logically from the previous one. It seems that many Muslim apologists are very uncomfortable with careful critical scrutiny of the text of the Qur’an and therefore seek to deflect attention from issues with the plain meaning of the Qur’an’s text by pointing to spurious miracles. Even though there are no encouragements whatsoever within the text of the Qur’an to validate its truthfulness in this way, Muslim apologists continue to look for hidden miracles and meanings.

The miracle claims associated with the Qur’an will be dealt with in two ways. In this section, some general remarks will be made about the way in which the miracle claims are presented. In the process, some of the more common miracle claims will be debunked. In the next section, the gold-standard miracle claim of so-called Qur’anic science will be carefully analyzed. I am referring, of course, to the claim that the Qur’an accurately describes human embryology.

I am convinced that the miracle claims in the Qur’an can all be easily disproved by applying the following principles:

Those who seek to prove miracles in the Qur’an incorrectly apply the scientific method.

One of the key principles of the modern scientific method is that we proceed from hypothesis to fact. This means that the scientist will continually test his or her theories through repeated experimentation and observation. The process will eventually produce solid scientific principles. Those who claim to find ‘science’ in the Qur’an have this process exactly backwards. They start with what they believe to be solid ‘scientific’ facts from the Qur’an and then they search for bits and pieces of corroboration in scientific literature that will confirm their beliefs. Scientific facts that do not support those beliefs are simply discarded as useless for their purposes. ‘Qur’anic science’ is, therefore, no such thing. It is simply an attempt to cherry-pick random scientific facts to confirm what believers already hold to be true. We shall see, for example, that references to embryology in the Qur’an are celebrated because some parts of the process are more-or-less accurately described. Not a word is said, however, about the glaring errors in the Qur’an’s description of human embryology, for example the fact that it ignores the female contribution to the development of the embryo or the claim that bones are formed before skin. These data points do not fit in with the pre-formed conclusion that the Qur’an accurately describes human embryology and are, therefore, simply ignored. This is, to put it mildly, a terrible way to do science.

Miracle claimants make entirely arbitrary choices about how the text of the Qur’an should be interpreted.