In the ‘atheism’ part of the ‘comparative religion’ section of the IRF website Dr Zakir Naik makes an attempt to prove the existence of god to an atheist. Dr Naik attempts to roll ‘scientific miracles in Quran’ and ‘argument for existence of God’ into one and tries to prove existence of god by proving the scientific miracles of the Quran.
In this article will attempt to analyze his arguments. Dr Naik begins the article with a word of congratulations to the atheists for not blindly following any religion and how atheists already accepts the first part of the shahada ‘La ilaaha’ which means ‘there is no God’, which reduces his burden to just proving the other half i.e. ‘il lallah’ which means ‘but Allah’. He then asks the atheists to define God and highlighting how important it is to be able to define something to be able to reject it. This portion is entirely irrelevant to the argument and does not require any refutation.
He starts his argument with a short discourse on probability before applying it on the Quran to find out the probability of the Quran getting all the scientific facts right by pure chance. I don’t intend to analyze the flaws of the approach here as it is rather unnecessary, so I am moving on straight to the evidence presented by Dr Naik.
His basic argument is:
1) Qur’an states many scientifically accurate facts
2) The quranic facts were not and could not have been know know to the people of that time.
Conclusion
3) Hence only God could have been the author of Qur’an.
Examples of ‘Miracles of Quran’ given by Zakir Naik:
First Miracle: The first scientific miracle he offers is the knowledge of the shape of the Earth in Quran. He begins by saying that at the time of the Quran people thought that the earth was flat. The fact however is the shape of the earth was well known long before the Quran. Pythagoras who lived 1000 years before the prophet is said to be one of the first to be aware of the spherical shape of the earth. Eratosthenes (246-194 BC) calculated the circumference of the earth about 800 years before the birth of Mohammad. Aryabhatta who died before the birth of Mohammad has written well known books where he was aware of the shape of the earth. Thus, the first scientific miracle Zakir Naik offers is just a hogwash (probably just to trick people unaware of non-Muslim history). It is based on False Premise. Earth’s shape was already known to many people.
Second Miracle: The Second miracle he offers is the knowledge that moonlight is reflected light. This too was known long before Mohammad was born. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (480-430 B.C.); a Greek philosopher discovered that the moon reflected light and formulated the correct theory for the eclipses. He was the first to explain that the moon shines due to reflected light from the sun. The Indian astronomer Aryabhatta (476–550 CE) was well aware of the explanation 20 years before the birth of Mohammad in 570 CE. Aryabhatta explained that the moon and the planets shine by reflected sunlight and that lunar eclipses occurred when shadow of the earth fell on the moon. Again, Zakir Naik puts up a Faulty Premise.
Third Miracle The third miracle he offers is the knowledge that living things are made of water. This actually gets quite interesting because he also mentions that “Every living thing can be made up of wood, stone, copper, aluminium, steel, silver, gold, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, oil, water, cement, concrete, etc.” And the Quran could have mentioned any of those as a matter of fact nearly all of the other materials he mentions like are either constituents of living things or have common elements with constituents of the human body. Putting that aside; the knowledge that water is a major component of living body must be at least as old as the oldest Egyptian mummies. The Egyptians used to dry the body and wrap it in dehydrating salts to preserve it. Drying of food and firewood must also have been common practice long before the birth of Mohammad. Ayurveda too mentions earth, fire, water, air and sky to be the elements which the body is composed of. Thales of Miletus a pre Socratic Greek philosopher observed that water was the most abundant material on the Earth and all plants and animals needed it for life. He postulated that life originated from water and that everything died when deprived of it. This ‘scientific miracle’ too fails to prove that “Only Divine Origin could have known Water”.
It is hard to say whether his ignorance is merely the result of insincerity on his part or is it an intentional attempt to mislead his gullible followers. It seems that the article was not meant to convince any serious atheist but to lead his gullible followers to believe that Islam is a reasonable faith.
Why he does this is quite understandable. In most religious debates the existence of god is presumed to be true the debate is only on the qualities of God. However with atheism, he has to take the burden of proving the existence of God and suddenly he finds himself in unfamiliar territory. None of the standard arguments like the teleological argument; creation ex nihilo etc finds mention in Dr Naik’s article. References:
Third Miracle The third miracle he offers is the knowledge that living things are made of water. This actually gets quite interesting because he also mentions that “Every living thing can be made up of wood, stone, copper, aluminium, steel, silver, gold, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, oil, water, cement, concrete, etc.” And the Quran could have mentioned any of those as a matter of fact nearly all of the other materials he mentions like are either constituents of living things or have common elements with constituents of the human body. Putting that aside; the knowledge that water is a major component of living body must be at least as old as the oldest Egyptian mummies. The Egyptians used to dry the body and wrap it in dehydrating salts to preserve it. Drying of food and firewood must also have been common practice long before the birth of Mohammad. Ayurveda too mentions earth, fire, water, air and sky to be the elements which the body is composed of. Thales of Miletus a pre Socratic Greek philosopher observed that water was the most abundant material on the Earth and all plants and animals needed it for life. He postulated that life originated from water and that everything died when deprived of it. This ‘scientific miracle’ too fails to prove that “Only Divine Origin could have known Water”.
Dr. Zakir Naik follows up these false ‘scientific miracles’ with rhetoric claiming that the creator is the author of Quran, the Quran is a book of signs not science, science is eliminating models of god but not god; which while deeply flawed in themselves, make less interesting analyses.
It is easy to see that his article is poorly researched. It seems that not even an hour of research was put into the article. (What is funnier is ZN preaching everyone that Qur;an claims to “First check the information before passing it to others”, but unfortunately failed to practice what he preaches. The inaccuracy of Dr Naik’s facts in the age when information is available at the click of a button is appalling.
It is hard to say whether his ignorance is merely the result of insincerity on his part or is it an intentional attempt to mislead his gullible followers. It seems that the article was not meant to convince any serious atheist but to lead his gullible followers to believe that Islam is a reasonable faith.
Why he does this is quite understandable. In most religious debates the existence of god is presumed to be true the debate is only on the qualities of God. However with atheism, he has to take the burden of proving the existence of God and suddenly he finds himself in unfamiliar territory. None of the standard arguments like the teleological argument; creation ex nihilo etc finds mention in Dr Naik’s article. References:
