Sorry, but - Jim Fox is a female? :D What happened? Jim evolved into a woman? :D jokes aside...
format_quote Originally Posted by
Jim Fox
1. Because the Qu'ran is the exact word of Allah and therefore infallible, Muslims must accept everything in it without question. Is this so?
2. The 5 pillars include the most important requirement, submission to Allah with no choice or free will?
3. Islam cannot accept any part of evolution due to 1.
I think bro MustafaMC has done fairly well with the above three questions. And has also done fairly well with this one below:
format_quote Originally Posted by
Jim Fox
4. This also puts Islam at odds with science in general because science does not require or accept a Creator.
I would just like to add that modern Science, is flawed. Reminds me of Ptolemy...
Let me explain.
Are you aware of Ptolemy? He was a Greek-Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in
Greek. He was a
mathematician,
astronomer,
geographer,
astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the
Greek Anthology. He ever lived anywhere else than
Alexandria, where he died around AD 168.Ptolemy was the author of several scientific treatises, at least three of which were of continuing importance to later
Islamic and
European science. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the
Almagest (in Greek, Ἡ Μεγάλη Σύνταξις, "The Great Treatise", originally Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις, "Mathematical Treatise"). The second is the
Geography, which is a thorough discussion of the geographic knowledge of the
Greco-Roman world. The third is the astrological treatise known sometimes in Greek as the
Apotelesmatika (Ἀποτελεσματικά), more commonly in Greek as the
Tetrabiblos (Τετράβιβλος "Four books"), and in
Latin as the
Quadripartitum (or four books) in which he attempted to adapt
horoscopic astrology to the
Aristoteliannatural philosophy of his day. That was considered a "science" back in those days lol.
Almost a thousand years later, came the man who would crush Ptolemys works with a single intellectual blow. That man was Ibn Al Haythm al Basri, better known as Alhazen in the west.
He was also nicknamed
Ptolemaeus Secundus ("Ptolemy the Second") or simply "The Physicist" in medieval Europe.
In his
Al-Shukūk ‛alā Batlamyūs, variously translated as
Doubts Concerning Ptolemy or
Aporias against Ptolemy, published at some time between 1025 and 1028, Alhazen criticized many of
Ptolemy's works, including the
Almagest,
Planetary Hypotheses, and
Optics, pointing out various contradictions he found in these works. He considered that some of the mathematical devices Ptolemy introduced into astronomy, especially the
equant, failed to satisfy the physical requirement of uniform circular motion, and wrote a scathing critique of the physical reality of Ptolemy's astronomical system, noting the absurdity of relating actual physical motions to imaginary mathematical points, lines and circles:
Ptolemy assumed an arrangement (hay'a) that cannot exist, and the fact that this arrangement produces in his imagination the motions that belong to the planets does not free him from the error he committed in his assumed arrangement, for the existing motions of the planets cannot be the result of an arrangement that is impossible to exist... [F]or a man to imagine a circle in the heavens, and to imagine the planet moving in it does not bring about the planet's motion.
Alhazen further criticized Ptolemy's model on other
empirical,
observational and
experimental grounds, such as Ptolemy's use of
conjectural undemonstrated theories in order to "save appearances" of certain
phenomena, which Alhazen did not approve of due to his insistence on
scientific demonstration. Unlike some later astronomers who criticized the Ptolemaic model on the grounds of being incompatible with
Aristotelian natural philosophy, Alhazen was mainly concerned with empirical observation and the internal contradictions in Ptolemy's works.
In his
Aporias against Ptolemy, Alhazen commented on the difficulty of attaining scientific knowledge:
Truth is sought for itself [but] the truths, [he warns] are immersed in uncertainties [and the scientific authorities (such as Ptolemy, whom he greatly respected) are] not immune from error...
He held that the criticism of existing theories—which dominated this book—holds a special place in the growth of scientific knowledge:
Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency.
On the Configuration of the World
In his On the Configuration of the World, despite his criticisms directed towards Ptolemy, Alhazen continued to accept the physical reality of the geocentric model of the universe, presenting a detailed description of the physical structure of the celestial spheres in his On the Configuration of the World:
The earth as a whole is a round sphere whose center is the center of the world. It is stationary in its [the world's] middle, fixed in it and not moving in any direction nor moving with any of the varieties of motion, but always at rest.
While he attempted to discover the physical reality behind Ptolemy's mathematical model, he developed the concept of a single orb (
falak) for each component of Ptolemy's planetary motions. This work was eventually translated into
Hebrew and
Latin in the 13th and 14th centuries and subsequently had an influence on astronomers such as
Georg von Peuerbach during the European
Middle Ages and
Renaissance.
Model of the motions of Each of the 7 planets
Alhazen's
The Model of the Motions of Each of the Seven Planets, written in 1038, was a book on astronomy. The surviving manuscript of this work has only recently been discovered, with much of it still missing, hence the work has not yet been published in modern times. Following on from his
Doubts on Ptolemy and
The Resolution of Doubts, Alhazen described the first non-Ptolemaic model in
The Model of the Motions. His reform was not concerned with
cosmology, as he developed a systematic study of
celestialkinematics that was completely
geometric. This in turn led to innovative developments in
infinitesimalgeometry.
His reformed
empirical model was the first to reject the
equant and
eccentrics, separate
natural philosophy from astronomy, free celestial kinematics from cosmology, and reduce physical entities to geometric entities. The model also propounded the
Earth's rotation about its axis, and the centres of motion were geometric points without any physical significance, like
Johannes Kepler's model centuries later.
In the text, Alhazen also describes an early version of
Occam's razor, where he employs only minimal hypotheses regarding the properties that characterize astronomical motions, as he attempts to eliminate from his planetary model the cosmological hypotheses that cannot be observed from the
Earth.
Other astronomical works
Alhazen distinguished
astrology from astronomy, and he refuted the study of
astrology, due to the methods used by astrologers being
conjectural rather than
empirical, and also due to the views of astrologers conflicting with that of orthodox
Islam.
Alhazen also wrote a treatise entitled
On the Milky Way, in which he solved problems regarding the
Milky Waygalaxy and
parallax. In antiquity,
Aristotle believed the Milky Way to be caused by "the ignition of the fiery exhalation of some stars which were large, numerous and close together" and that the "ignition takes place in the upper part of the atmosphere, in the
region of the world which is continuous with the heavenly motions." Alhazen refuted this and "determined that because the Milky Way had no parallax, it was very remote from the
earth and did not belong to the atmosphere." He wrote that if the Milky Way was located around the
Earth's atmosphere, "
one must find a difference in position relative to the fixed stars." He described two methods to determine the Milky Way's parallax:
"either when one observes the Milky Way on two different occasions from the same spot of the earth; or when one looks at it simultaneously from two distant places from the surface of the earth." He made the first attempt at observing and measuring the Milky Way's parallax, and determined that since the Milky Way had no parallax, then it does not belong to the atmosphere.
In 1858, Muhammad Wali ibn Muhammad Ja'far, in his
Shigarf-nama, claimed that Alhazen wrote a treatise
Maratib al-sama in which he conceived of a planetary model similar to the
Tychonic system where the planets orbit the Sun which in turn orbits the Earth. However, the "verification of this claim seems to be impossible", since the treatise is not listed among the known
bibliography of Alhazen.
The point here is that, Alhazen took science, which seemed to be at odds with itself at that time, and he presented
"The Scientific Method". A meothd which allows Real Science to be practiced in the most purest of ways. Without dogma. And this, coming from a man who believed in God... why?
To answer this, we must first understand that Al Haythm was looking for proofs for the divine laws which he believed in, as revealed by God in the Quran.
But he wanted to know if they are observable... So he conducted many experiments, and worked maths til he could understand the cosmos to a degree that none before him could have. He presented not only a refutation to Ptolemys famous works on Atronomy, (which had some elements of astrology in them) but also to other scientists and mathematicians... and he even rebuked philosophers such as Aristotle.
The new method he bought, (the Scientific Method) was heavily reliant on one core principle - and that is, "absence of proof is not the proof of absence". And he used this ideal, to investigate matters in ways that no one else had thought of. And he got real results, that remain a testament to his method, to this day.
...And today? Today atheists seem to forget 'that' golden rule from the scientific method when "Atheists" claim that "there is no proof for God" :D Take a hike fellas. You have clearly got yourselves in a pickle here - you practice what I call "bad science".
Scimi