Prove that the Qur'an IS the word of God

format_quote Originally Posted by Herostratos

My point was that the qualities you think is so unique about the koran arehighlysubjective.

Then why not respond to my individual points?

For the "clear" part of it, no, I am not interested in debating the koran with you, as I have not even read it

The clarity of the Qur'an is not negated by the fact that Muslims have differences of opinion. It should be noted that the legitimate differences only extend to lesser fiqhi rulings, as opposed to doctrinal differences or differences over laws. Differences in opinion in the latter are the result of not reading parts in context, because the Qur'an clarifies itself.

As for what you mentioned:

A Norwegian muslem wrote to a newspaper that it was against Islam to punish blasphemers, while there's millions of people whom disagree loudly. Obviously, both of these views cannot be true. The Koran wasn't so clear about this, it seems.

You haven't been clear about what you're referring to. Punishing blasphemers in an Islamic state? In a non-muslim country? In the after-life? Please be specific.

The ignorance of some Muslims has nothing to do with the clarity of the Qur'an.

Regards

"And if you are in doubt about what We have revealed (the Quran) to Our worshiper (Muhammad ), then produce a chapter like it, and call your witnesses (supporters and helpers) besides Allah if you are truthful. And if you do not do it, and you can never do it, then fear the Fire (Hell) whose fuel is men and stones. It has been prepared for disbelievers. And give good news (O Muhammad) to those who believe and do good deeds, that for them are gardens (Paradise) in which rivers flow.... " ( Quran, 2:23-25)

So, If u have any doubt about Quran Why don't u clear it out! God has challenged you! Produce even one chapter of the Quran! You never can and you never will!!!!

Ever since the Quran was revealed, fourteen centuries ago, until this day, no one has been able to produce a single chapter like the chapters of the Quran in their beauty, eloquence, splendor, wise legislation, true information, true prophecy, and other perfect attributes of the Quran. Also note that the smallest chapter in the Quran (Chapter 108) is only ten words, yet no one has ever been able to meet this challenge, then or today. Some of the disbelieving Arabs who were enemies of the Prophet Muhammad tried to meet this challenge to prove that Muhammad was not a true prophet, but they failed to do so. This failure was despite the fact that the Quran was revealed in their own language and dialect, and that the Arabs at the time of Muhammad were a very eloquent people who use to compose beautiful and excellent poetry, still read and appreciated today.

format_quote Originally Posted by Herostratos

1) not true, the new testament is more followed

What do you mean when you say the New testament is 'followed' ? What religious practices/laws/directives are given in the New Testament?

2) TOTALLY IRRELEVANT!

I agree that numbers do not determine what is right or wrong, but the issue here is the distinction of the Qur'an over other books, so it is not irrelevant. The challenge is simple - what other book has been taken by people as the constitution of their lives? And I'm not speaking about the legislation of a country, but an actual body of guidance for every aspect in one's life.

If it was minor differences, no. But the differences seem to be very, very large.

As I said before, the legitimate differences are minor; the differences you're speaking of are resulting from ignorance on what the Qur'an says, and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad pbuh, not any ambiguity in them.

You said that the koran was a comprehensive book.

Comprehensive is not the same as long. By comprehensive I mean that the Qur'an provides us with guidance in every aspect of our lives.

Source?

I can get you the statistics.

You did not understand me. My point was to point out that this is subjective.

And I answered that point, especially with the link.

Again, it may be special, but the only thing it tells us is that arab culture emphasises memorization, and has nothing to do with divinity.

I'm not talking about arabs. I'm talking about Muslims, whether they be as far apart as Indonesia and Morrocco - the fact is that the Qur'an is the only book which is memorized so widely and so easily.

For the book, it may be a refutation, but I cannot read it, as it must be bought first.... This is the argument from hidden knowledge, is it not?

No, the knowledge is not hidden, anyone may purchase the book, but you have to make an effort. For online links on the Qur'an's preservation, there is some material available here:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/

I think Turin has said this many times before, but.....

I also responded to Turin.

Let's say that there's equally many cats as there is dogs. Then let's say that the prophet mentioned "cats" twice as many times as he mentioned "dogs". Is this a disproof of his divinity?

Muslims do not believe the Prophet is divine!!

But why don't you tell a little more about these word-repetitions-miracles? Gice a few concrete examples, for example.

Sure. I'll link you to three that have personally beeon confirmed by forum members and proper citations included:
http://www.islamicboard.com/172587-post14.html
http://www.islamicboard.com/171261-post12.html
http://www.islamicboard.com/170015-post7.html

I think the man said that no blasphemers should be punished at all, even in a muslem state.

The Qur'an has not prescribed a punishment for blasphemers in an Islamic state, so this has nothing to do with the Qur'an's clarity. The issue here depends on the circumstances.

Hello Turin,
Can I get a response to my long post to you? I've been waiting some time to hear your 'common sense' and 'simple human reason'.

Ansar Al-'Adl,

I have been all this time answering everything you write! You cannot say that I don't pay attention to you...

Now I will answer your statement that reads:

“This is a red-herring. Instead of providing me with a rational response as to how Prophet Muhammad pbuh had a computer in his head such that he could keep track of the exact word repetitions, you have instead merely provide an unsubstantiated allegation of "old Jewish kabbalistic lore" contaminating Qur'anic studies. Word repetitions are simple statistics that are not particular to any one group. What you have left unanswered is the fact that the Qur'an miraculously uses words an exact number of times.”

You are missing the point that izmi was making, and that I also make.

Obviously Muhammad wasn’t counting words while he preached. There was nothing miraculous in him. The only thing miraculous is how naïve Muslims are when it comes to this point.

Muslims are simply finding “confirmations” AFTER THE FACT. Once I have a text in front of me I can find any number of word repetitions according to rules that I am free to determine myself. If what I find suits me I will leave it there, if it doesn’t suit me I will keep silent.

For instance, and to show you how seriously I take your posts, and the time I am willing to devote to debunking your myths, I went to Wikisource and took the first text that I saw there: “Sleeping Beauty”. Using the “Find” tool that you have in your browser I found the following coincidences:

1) The words “day” and “night” are mentioned an equal number of times, three times each, and we see that there is one day for each night in the real world!

2) The word “eyes” is there exactly two times, one for each eye that we have in our face!

3) The word “four” is found in the text exactly four times!

Please don’t take my word for it. I actually took the time to find these “coincidences” so go and check them. You should be happy that the text is short, it will not take you too long to find them.

If the text is long enough (and if I have enough time and patience) I can find ANY NUMBER of coincidences, as long I as I am free to determine what constitutes a coincidence and what doesn’t. Muslims obviously have had too much time in their hands throughout the years, so by counting words they have discovered all these “coincidences” in the centuries that have elapsed since Muhammad. Probably they were using the time and dedication Christian countries used to develop the modern world, something from which you are also benefiting right now.

So you see, the Quran isn’t the only text dictated by God. “Sleeping Beauty” also shares the divine origin. Now that I think of it, I might even begin a new religion. I have always wanted to have fifteen wives.

format_quote Originally Posted by Turin Turambar

Once I have a text in front of me I can find any number of word repetitions according to rules that I am free to determine myself.

Do so. Your response with an example is more on target. Try to find a text with miraculous word repetitions and then your response will be closer to meeting my challenge.

I went to Wikisource and took the first text that I saw there: “Sleeping Beauty”

Common sense shows us why this is not a good example. How long is 'Sleeping Beauty'? How long is the Qur'an? Exactly.

You're a Christian - why are you looking for anything other than the Bible? If your New Testament is miraculous, bring me examples from it.

As for the examples you brought, all of them are small numbers in a small text, as opposed to the Qur'an which is a big text, and 25 times is a big number.

1) The words “day” and “night” are mentioned an equal number of times, three times each, and we see that there is one day for each night in the real world!

Day does not appear three times, it appears TEN times, and night appears three times.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Sleeping_Beauty

2) The word “eyes” is there exactly two times, one for each eye that we have in our face!

It wouldn't be hard to repeat a word only two times in a nine page story. This one can be dismissed as coincidence.

3) The word “four” is found in the text exactly four times!

No, three times. The first time is 'fourth'.

Also note that the examples I brought you from the Qur'an had a specific indication. The word used to compare Adam and Eesa for example, was mathal meaning two things that are alike. As such, it is difficult to pass it off as a coincidence when we find that the name 'Adam' and the name 'Eesa' both appear in the Qur'an, exactly 25 times.

What about the other points I raised in my other post to you? No comment?

format_quote Originally Posted by Turin Turambar

With enough patience I can find MORE coincidences in a long text than in a short one, simply because of the law of probabilities.

WRONG. According to the laws behind combinatorics, the probability of a word occuring a specific number of times in the text decreasing as the text grows longer, as the number of possibilites increases rapidly. That means if you took a book that was 20 000 pages, and the word night was mentioned exactly as many times as day, it would be far more astonishing than if you found the same thing in a single page report. Also, if the word repetitions are small, then there is a greater chance that it was intentionally done that way. But if the repetition number is bigger, it is practically impossible.

And certainly you would never find a Christian trying to prove his belief by counting words in the Bible.

Because the Bible simply isn't miraculous like the Qur'an.

By the way, in “Sleeping Beauty” the word “day” appears three times. The other cases you mention refer to a character named “Day” and the plural word “days” so it doesn’t count.

You just destroyed your case even more! If you only want to count 'day' singular, then you have to count night singular as well! And your three occurances of night were, "night's", "nights", and "nightinggale". The last two don't count.

It is my sacred book, so I decide what constitutes a sacred coincidence.

I haven't used any unreasonable comparisons like you have - singular to plural! The Qur'an says that Adam is like Eesa, and both names appear in the text exactly the same number of times.

You still cannot come up with a good response to the numerical miracles! The fact is that no one can explain away how the Qur'an has used these words an exact number of times, while still being able to produce a coherent and consistent message.

I thought i'd add my 2 cents to the debate.Turin, I don't think you quite understand the extent of the miracle in the Qur'an with regards to word repititions.

Whenever God has said X is like Y, or the likeness of X is the likeness of that of Y, in these instances X and Y appear same number of times, and this happens. The miracle is all about the wording of the Qur'an. Even when God says A is not like B, then A and B are not mentioned same number of times. This occurrs so many times it in the Qur'an it is inconceivable to think a man could have written such a book

Take this verse into account

Have they not considered the Qur'an, if it came, other than Allah, surely they will find in it many inconsistencies.(4:82)

A sceptic could take this verse literally and say "Look the actual word inconsistencies is mentioned here, so i have found inconsistencies in the Qur'an which contradicts the above verse, so the Qur'an contains a contradiction. However upon closer examination you will see it says inconsistencies, with a letter S at the end, indicating plural, and miraculously the word inconsistencies is only mentioned once, and not twice. God chooses his words so precisely, so no one can find any such contradiction

If you take into account Aristotle's law of the "excluded middle" you will understand. Please take time to read the following short extract from a book by Gary Miller THE BASIS OF MUSLIM BELIEF.

Use and Mention of Words
For myself, as I said everyone knows something for sure or has an interest and experience in life; my interest is in mathematics and logic. There is a verse in the Qur'an which says:

"This a scripture whose verses are perfected and then expounded."(11:1)

Which tells me that there are no wasted words in the Qur'an; that each verse is perfected and then it is explained. It could not be in a better form. One could not use fewer words to say the same thing or if one uses more words one would only be adding superfluous information.

This directed my attention to a particular mathematical subject, a logical subject, and I examined the Qur'an to see if I could find something of what I knew to be the case.

A revolution in logic has occurred in the last one hundred years, primarily over the difference between use and mention of words. A structure of logic seemed to be in danger of collapsing about a hundred years ago because it came to the attention of the people who studied these matters that the structure was not quite sound. The issue involved 'self-reference' and the use and the mention of words which I will explain briefly.

Aristotle's law of the 'excluded middle' was the statement that every statement is either true false. About a hundred years ago, somebody pointed out that the law of the excluded middle is a statement and is therefore not a law after all. It could just as well be false as well as true.

This was a tangled knot for the logicians to untie until they came to understand the difference between the use and the mention of a word.

When we use a word, we consider its meaning. When we mention a word we are discussing the word itself. If I said Toronto is a large city, I mean Toronto, that place, is a large cit. If I say Toronto has seven letters, I am talking about the word 'Toronto'. In the first case I used the word and in the second I mentioned the word. You see distinction.

Jesus and Adam
Connecting these ideas and the idea that the Qur'an composed of verses that are perfected and then expounded for us, consider the verse which says:

"The likeness of Jesus before Allah is as the likeness of Adam." (3:59)

It is very clear that what we have in the statement is an equation. This verse goes on to explain how that is true because they both came under unusual circumstances rather than having a mother and a father in the usual human reproductive way. But more than that, I got to consider the use of the mention of words.

The words are used clearly enough. Jesus is like Adam and by Jesus and Adam, we mean those two men. But what about the mention of the words? Was the author aware of the fact that if we were considering the words as words themselves, this sentence also read that 'Jesus' is something like 'Adam'. Well, they are not spelt with the same letters, how can they be alike in this revelation? The only answer came to me fairly quickly and I took a look at the index of the Qur'an.

The index of the Qur'an has been made available only since 1945. This book was the result of years of work by a man and his students who assembled a book which lists every word in the Qur'an and where it can be found.

So, when we look up the word Isa (Jesus), we find it in the Qur'an twenty-five times. When we look up Adam, we find it in the Qur'an twenty-five times. The point is that they are very much alike in this book. They are equated. So, following up on this idea, I continued to examine the index looking for every case where something was set up as an equation, where the likeness of something was said to be the likeness of some other thing. And in every case, it works. You have to example a verse which reads:

"The likeness of this who reject our signs is as the likeness of the dog." (7:176)

Well, the phrase is Arabic for 'the people who reject our signs' could be found in the Qur'an exactly five times. And so is the Arabic word for 'the dog' (al-kalb). And there are several instances of exactly the same occurrence.

It was some months after I found this for myself that a friend of mine, who is continuing this investigation with me, made a suggestion that there are also some places in the Qur'an where one thing is said to be not like another thing.

As soon as he mentioned this up to me, we both went for the index and had a quick look at several places where on thing is said to be not like another thing and counted their occurrence in the Qur'an. We were surprise and maybe should not have been to find that, after all, they do not match up. But an interesting thing does happen. For example, the Qur'an makes it very clear in the verse that trade is not like interest. The two words will be found six times for on and seven for the other. And so it is in every other case.

When one thing is said to be not like another, they over for a difference of one time. It would be five of one and four of the other, or seven of one and eight of another.

Good and Evil
There is one interesting verse which, I felt, spoke directly to me from right off the page. It mentions two words in Arabic, al-khabeeth (the evil), and al-taib (the good). The verse reads:

"Say, the evil and the good are not comparable, even though the abundance of evil will surprise you. So be mindful of your duty to Allah, O Man of understanding that you may succeed."(5:100)

Well, I had a look at those two words in Arabic, the evil and the food, and found it in the Qur'an that they both occur seven times. Yet the verse here is saying that they are not comparable. I should not expect to find that they occur the same number of times. But what does the rest of this verse say?

"The evil and the good are not comparable. The abundance of the evil will surprise you" and it did for there were too many of them. But it continues:

"So be mindful of your duty to Allah, O Man of understanding, that you may succeed."

So press on. Use your understanding and you will succeed. That is what the verse said to me. Well, I found the answer in one verse further on where it reads:

"Allah separates the evil from the good. The evil HE piles one on top of the other, heaping them all together."

Here is the solution to the difficulty. While we have several occurrences of al-taif (the good), according to the principle of this verse, evil is separated from good and is piled one on top of the other and heaped all together. We can not count them as seven separate instances

Occurrences of Words
A favorite difficulty, or supposed difficulty, which critics like to cite or have cited in the past years concerning the Qur'an is that, apparently to their thinking, the author of this book was ignorant because he advised the Muslims to follow the lunar instead of the solar year. The critics say the author was unaware of the difference in the length of years, that if one follows twelve lunar months one loses eleven days every year.

The author of the Qur'an was well aware of the distinction between the length of the solar year and the lunar year. In chapter eighteen, verse nine, it mentions three-hundred years and gives their equivalent as three-hundred and nine years. As it happens, three hundred solar years is equal to three -hundred and nine lunar years. Let us go back to my original scheme of the occurrence of words in the Qur'an. The Arabic word for 'month', shahar, will be found twelve times in the Qur'an. There are twelve months in a year. If we find twelve months, how many days should we expect to find? The word in Arabic is yaqum, and as it happens you will find that the word occurs three-hundred and sixty five time in the Qur'an.

As a matter of fact, the original issue which had me interest in looking up the occurrence of months and days was this distinction between the solar year and the lunar year. Well, for twenty-five centuries it has been known that the relative positions of the sun, moon and earth coincide every nineteen years. This was discovered by a Greek by the name of Meton, and it is called the 'Metonic' cycle. Knowing this, I looked again to the index for the word 'year', sanah and found, sure enough, that it occurs in the Qur'an nineteen times.

Perfect balance of Words
Now, what is the point of this perfect balance of words? For myself, it shows the author was well aware of the distinction between using words and mentioning words, a fine logical point. But more than that, it indicates the preservation of this book.

After giving a lecture on the subject of the Qur'an , I touched on some of these subjects and a questionnaire from the audience afterwards said: "How do we know we still have the original Qur'an. Maybe pieces of it have been lost or extra parts been added?" I pointed out to him that we had pretty well covered that point because since these items, the perfect balance of words in the Qur'an, have come to light only in this generation, anybody who would have lost the portion of this book, hidden some of it, or added some of their own would have been unaware of this carefully hidden code in the book. They would have destroyed this perfect balance.

It is interesting to note too that, well, such a thing might be possible to organize today by the use of a computer to coordinate all words so that whatever thought you might have as to a meaning of a sentence or however you might construe an equation out of a sentence, you could check for yourself and the book will always have the balance of words.

If that were possible today, if it were possible fourteen centuries ago, why would it be done and then left hidden and never drawn to the attention of those who first saw this book? Why it would be left with the hope of the author who contrived this, that maybe in many centuries someone will discover it and have a nice surprise? It is a scheme that does not make sense.

Best Explanation
We are told in the Qur'an that no questionnaire will come to the Muslims with the question for which a good answer has not been provided, and the best explanation for whatever his question. This verse says:

"For everything they say we are given something to go back to them and reply." (25:33)

We looked again to the index of the Qur'an and we found the word, qalu (they say), is found three hundred and thirty-two times. Now, what would be the natural counterpart? The Arabic word, qul, which is the command 'say' and you will find at the index it also occurs three hundred and thirty-two times


I strongly advise you to read the rest of the extract. The full version can be found here, worth a read - http://members.tripod.com/saif_w/exp...n%20of%20Words