The Qur'an Leads the Way to Science
WikiIslam Archive,
Archives of the first iteration of WikiIslam, prior to acquisition and revamp by Ex-Muslims of North America
|
Author | Harun Yahya |
Language | English |
Subject(s) | Islam, Science, Propaganda |
Publisher | Global Publishing, Istanbul |
Released | January 15, 2004 (2nd ed.) |
Pages | 191 |
ISBN | 978-9756426425 |
This article discusses the book, "The Qur'an Leads the Way to Science", by Harun Yahya.
Contents
Introduction
Many of the articles regularly cut and pasted into Muslim websites and forums on the Internet come originally from Harun Yahya. Among the most ironic of his generally scientifically incompetent works is the book, The Qur'an Leads the Way to Science. One would imagine from the title that the book would be about how the Qur’an actually lead somebody to science, or to a scientific discovery. Wouldn’t you?
Scientists of Faith
Nowhere within its 191 pages are we provided with an examples of anything like that. Instead, we are presented with what consists mostly of lists of “scientists of faith.” But there is an interesting problem with his lists.
They contain almost no Muslims. They are composed almost entirely of Christians and Jews, people who doubtlessly did not find the Qur’an useful, since they all reject it as false.
List 1
Below for example is the entire list of “scientists of faith who lived in the past” from the second part of this book. There are 100 scientists on the list.
And not a single one of them is a Muslim.
- Roger Bacon (1220-1292)
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
- Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
- Johannes Baptista von Helmont (1579-1644)
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
- John Ray (1627-1705)
- Robert Boyle (1627-1691)
- Antonie von Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723)
- Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
- John Flamsteed (1646-1719)
- John Woodward (1665-1728)
- Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778)
- Jean Deluc (1727-1817)
- Sir William Herschel (1738-1822)
- William Paley (1743-1805)
- George Cuvier (1769-1832)
- Humphrey Davy (1778-1829)
- Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873)
- Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
- Samuel Morse (1791-1872)
- Joseph Henry (1797-1878)
- Louis Agassiz (1807-1873)
- James Prescott Joule (1818-1889)
- George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903)
- Rudolph Virchow (1821-1902)
- Gregory Mendel (1822-1884)
- Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)
- William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) (1824-1907)
- J. J. Thomson (1856-1940)
- Sir William Huggins (1824-1910)
- Joseph Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)
- John Strutt (1842-1919)
- George Washington Carver (1865-1943)
- Sir James Jeans (1877-1946)
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
- Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966)
- Sir Alister Hardy (1896-1985)
- Wernher von Braun (1912-1977)
- Max Planck (1858-1947)
- Charles Coulson (1910-1974)
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
- Georgias Agricola (1494-1555)
- John Wilkins (1614-1672)
- Walter Charleton (1619-1707)
- Isaac Barrow (1630-1677)
- Nicolas Steno (1631-1686)
- Thomas Burnet (1635-1715)
- Increase Mather (1639-1723)
- Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712)
- William Whiston (1667-1752)
- John Hutchinson (1674-1737)
- Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
- Richard Kirwan (1733-1812)
- Timothy Dwight (1752-1817)
- James Parkinson (1755-1824)
- William Kirby (1759-1850)
- Benjamin Barton (1766-1815)
- John Dalton (1766-1844)
- Charles Bell (1774-1842)
- John Kidd (1775-1851)
- Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855)
- Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864)
- Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869)
- William Buckland (1784-1856)
- William Prout (1785-1850)
- Edward Hitchc*ck (1793-1864)
- William Whewell (1794-1866)
- Richard Owen (1804-1892)
- Matthew Maury (1806-1873)
- Henry Rogers (1808-1866)
- James Glaisher (1809-1903)
- Philip H. Gosse (1810-1888)
- Sir Henry Rawlinson (1810-1895)
- John Ambrose Fleming (1849-1945)
- Sir Joseph Henry Gilbert (1817-1901)
- Thomas Anderson (1819-1874)
- Charles P. Smyth (1819-1900)
- John W. Dawson (1820-1899)
- Henri Fabre (1823-1915)
- Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866)
- Joseph Lister (1827-1912)
- John Bell Pettigrew (1834-1908)
- Balfour Stewart (1828-1887)
- P.G. Tait (1831-1901)
- Edward William Morley (1838-1923)
- Sir William Abney (1843-1920)
- Alexander MacAlister (1844-1919)
- A.H. Sayce (1845-1933)
- James Dana (1813-1895)
- George Romanes (1848-1894)
- William Mitchell Ramsay (1851-1939)
- William Ramsay (1852-1916)
- Howard A. Kelly (1858-1943)
- Douglas Dewar (1875-1957)
- Paul Lemoine (1878-1940)
- Charles Stine (1882-1954)
- A. Rendle-Short (1885-1955)
- L. Merson Davies (1890-1960)
- Sir Cecil P.G. Wakeley (1892-1979)
List 2
In the third part of his book, Yahya makes a tiny bit of progress. This is the list of “modern scientists of faith” and it is more than 50 percent longer than his previous list; fully 155 named scientists.
And whereas the last list had no Muslims at all in it, this one does a little better.
There is one.
- Dr. Henry Fritz Schaefer
- Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Malcolm Duncan Winter, Jr.
- William Phillips
- Prof. Dale Swartzendruber
- William Dembski
- Prof. Stephen Meyer
- Prof. Walter L. Bradley
- Earl Chester Rex
- Dr. Allan Sandage
- Prof. Cecil Boyce Hamann
- Paul Ernest Adolph
- Lester John Zimmerman
- Enrico Medi
- Wayne U. Ault
- Prof. Michael P. Girouard
- Prof. Edward Boudreaux
- Prof. Kenneth Cumming
- Prof. Carl Fliermans
- Prof. David Menton
- Prof. John Morris
- Arthur Peacocke
- Albert McCombs Winchester
- Mehdi Golshani (the lone Muslim)
- Prof. Edwin Fast
- Charles H. Townes
- John Polkinghorne
- Hugh Ross
- Prof. Dr. Duane Gish
- Dr. Pierre Gunnar Jerlstrom
- Dr. Stephen Grocott
- Dmitry Kouznetsov
- Dr. Emil Silvestru
- Dr. Andre Eggen
- Dr. Ian Macreadie
- Prof. Andrew Conway Ivy
- Dr. Raymond Jones
- Jules H. Poirier
- Michael J. Behe
- Philip Johnson
- Charles Birch
- S. Jocelyn Bell Burnell
- Prof. Owen Gingerich
- Prof. Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker
- Prof. David Berlinski
- Prof. William Lane Craig
- Dr. Kurt Wise
- Siegfrid Hartwig Scherer
- J.P. Moreland
- Paul A. Nelson
- Prof. Jonathan Wells
- Dr. Don Batten
- Dr. John Baumgardner
- Prof. Dr. Donald Chittick
- Dr. Werner Gitt
- Dr. Gary E. Parker
- Dr. Margaret Helder
- Prof. Dr. Jonathan D. Sarfati
- Prof. Robert Matthews
- Dr. Claude Tresmontant
- Dr. Don Page
- Dr. Andrew Snelling
- Dr. Carl Wieland
- John K.G. Kramer
- Dr. Jerry Bergman
- Dr. Kimberly Berrine
- Jay L. Wile
- Prof. Vladimir Betina
- Dr. Andrew Bosanquet
- Dr. David R. Boylan
- Dr. Clifford Burdick
- Robert Kaita
- Alexander V. Lalomov
- Prof. Dr. Steve Austin
- Prof. Robert Newman
- Prof. Siegfried Scherer
- Dr. Russell Humphreys
- Dr. Geoff Downes
- Dr. Larry Butler
- Prof. Linn E. Carothers,
- Prof. Sung-Do Cha
- David Dewitt
- Prof. Dr. Eugene F. Chaffin
- Dr. Choong-Kuk Chang
- Prof. Chung-Il Cho
- Dr. Harold Coffin
- Dr. Jack W. Cuozzo
- Dr. Malcolm Cutchins
- Dr. Lionel Dahmer
- Dr. Raymond V. Damadian
- Dr. Chris Darnbrough
- Dr. S. E. Aw
- Dr. Thomas Barnes
- Dr. Paul Ackerman
- Dr. Douglas Dean
- Dr. Don DeYoung
- Prof. Danny Faulkner
- Prof. Dennis L. Englin
- Prof. Robert H. Franks
- Dr. Donald Hamann
- Dr. Barry Harker
- Dr. Charles W. Harrison
- Dr. Harold R. Henry
- Dr. Joseph Henson
- Robert A. Herrmann
- Dr. Russell Humphreys
- Dr. Jonathan W. Jones
- Dr. Valery Karpounin
- Dr. Dean Kenyon
- Dr. John W. Klotz
- Dr. Vladimir F. Kondalenko
- Dr. Leonid Korochkin
- Prof. Jin-Hyouk Kwon
- Prof. Myung-Sang Kwon
- Prof. John Lennox
- Dr. John Leslie
- Prof. Lane P. Lester
- Prof. George D. Lindsey
- Dr. Alan Love
- Prof. Marvin L. Lubenow
- Dr. Andrew McIntosh
- Dr. John Mann
- Dr. Frank Marsh
- Dr. Ralph Matthews
- Dr. John Meyer
- Dr. Henry M. Morris
- Dr. Len Morris
- Dr. Graeme Mortimer
- Prof. Hee-Choon No
- Dr. David Oderberg
- Prof. John Oller
- Prof. Chris D. Osborne
- Dr. John Osgood
- Dr. Charles Pallaghy
- Prof. J. Rendle-Short
- Dr. Jung-Goo Roe
- Dr. David Rosevear
- Dr. Young-Gi Shim
- Dr. Mikhail Shulgin
- Dr. Roger Simpson
- Dr. Harold Slusher
- Prof. Man-Suk Song
- Prof. James Stark
- Prof. Brian Stone
- Dr. Lyudmila Tonkonog
- Dr. Larry Vardiman
- Dr. Joachim Vetter
- Dr. Noel Weeks
- Dr. A. J. Monty White
- Prof. A. E. Wilder-Smith
- Dr. Clifford Wilson
- Prof. Verna Wright
- Prof. Seoung-Hoon Yang
- Dr. Ick-Dong Yoo
- Dr. Sung-Hee Yoon
Purpose Behind the Book
Haran Yahya states in his conclusion to "The Qur'an Leads the Way to Science":
It is clear from his conclusion that the purpose of presenting these lists was not to prove “faith leads to science,” but, as the title of the book clearly suggests, he is presenting them with the goal to “prove that the Qur’an is true.”
The irony lay in the fact that out of 255 “scientists of faith” that he was able to come up with in order to prove his point, only a single one of them was Muslim.
Since only one scientist on this list believes that the Qur’an is true, and many scientists on this list believe that the Qur’an is false, it does not serve his purposes.
Conclusion
The book, and in particular Harun Yahya's "conclusion", make no sense whatsoever.
Not even one scientist in the first list is a Muslim, and the progress made with scientists in the second list is balanced by the fact that at least 18 of them are members of Christian movements in the United States which openly consider Prophet Muhammad and the Qur’an to be tools of the Devil. Clearly it was not the Qur'an which had led them to science.
We are then told these scientists believe in scriptures that "can no longer be considered as Divine Books", ultimately leaving us guessing as to how Yahya could then logically justify his conclusion that the Qur’an is the "primary source for providing man with the most accurate knowledge regarding the creation of the universe and of life".
See Also
- Harun Yahya - A hub page that leads to other articles related to Harun Yahya
- Book Reviews - A hub page that leads to other articles related to Book Reviews/Summaries
External Links
- The Qur’an Leads The Way To Science - Harun Yahya's book in PDF format
References
- ↑ Harun Yahya - The Qur’an Leads The Way To Science (page 185) - Global Publishing; 2nd edition, 2004, ISBN 9789756426425