Scientific foreknowledge in sacred texts

Scientific foreknowledge in sacred texts is the belief that certain sacred texts document an awareness of the natural world that was later discovered by technology and science. This includes the belief that the sacred text grants a higher awareness of the natural world, like those views held by some Orthodox Jews about the Hebrew Bible (Tanach),^{[citation needed]} by some Muslims regarding the Qur'an,^[1] by certain Christian fundamentalists regarding the Christian Bible, and by certain adherents of Hindu revivalism regarding the Vedas.

Scriptural literalism (specifically Creationism and some forms of Biblical archaeology) is a related ideology, but strictly the reverse process of aligning scientific observation with scriptural reading rather than aligning scriptural reading with scientific observation.

Bible

Further information: Biblical inspiration

Supporters of biblical scientific foreknowledge believe that parts of the Bible contain observations regarding aspects of the natural world in line with modern scientific and medical research. This includes the view that such technology and knowledge would not have been discovered with the technology of the times and are therefore evidence of Biblical inspiration and of Biblical inerrancy.^[2]

Critics contend that these references either represent information that was common at the time, or even no real knowledge of the scientific reasons behind the phenomena described.

History and advocacy

An early example of claimed Biblical scientific foresight was the interpretation of passages of the Bible as showing Copernican motion, suggested in 1584 by Spanish theologian Diego de Zuñiga in his Commentary on Job:

"Therefore the present passage [Job 9:6],^[3] which we have been discussing, is easily reconciled with Copernicus' opinion. And in order to show the marvelous power and wisdom of God, who initiates and maintains the motion of the whole earth, which is enormous by nature, the text adds, 'and its pillars are shaken.' This teaching means that it is moved from its foundations."^[4]

William Harvey, the medical doctor who in the 17th century discovered the complete circulatory system, believed that this discovery was proof of Biblical foreknowledge. In his 1628 work De motu cordis, he supported this claim in On Generation by stating, "the life, therefore, resides in the blood (as we are informed in our sacred writing)," referring to Leviticus 17:11,14 .^[5]

David Macht, a pharmacologist and doctor of Hebrew Literature was a notable advocate of biblical health practices.^[6][7] In Dr. Macht's 1953 study entitled An Experimental Pharmacological Appreciation of Leviticus XI and Deuteronomy XIV, he suggested that the Levitical clean animals were less toxic than the Levitical unclean animals:

Every word of the Hebrew Scriptures is well chosen and carries valuable knowledge and deep significance^[6]

Harry Rimmer (1890–1952) was president of the "Science Research bureau"^{[citation needed]} and published "Harmony of Science and Scripture" (1936),^{[citation needed]} which attributed much scientific foresight to the Bible, including the wave nature and spectrographic analysis of light, stating "either Job knew this, or supernatural wisdom is revealed here!"^[8] Rimmer had no earned college degree, although he was awarded an honorary "Doctor of Science" degree from Wheaton College (Illinois), a Christian liberal arts college.^[9]

Henry M. Morris, then a hydraulics engineer, in 1951 published Science and the Bible which based on the work of George McCready Price. The first chapter of Science and the Bible dealt with Biblical scientific foreknowledge and set forth many of the arguments that are still in use by proponents today.^{[citation needed]}

The Old Earth Creationist and astronomer, Hugh Ross, Ph.D., is a notable advocate of Bible scientific foreknowledge.

"Some of the latest discoveries about the universe, specifically about the hot big bang model, speak volumes about the predictive power of a Bible-based, science-affirming perspective on the cosmos."^[10]

Qur'an

See also: Islam and science and Bucailleism

A number of Muslims believe that the Qur'an contains scientific information that would be discovered by the world in modern times, centuries after their revelation. These are claimed to include scientific information pertaining to creation, astronomy, the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and human reproduction.^[1]

One such claim is based on an interpretation of the passage in the Qur'an which states: "Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them",^{[Quran 21:30]} as representing the Big bang.^[1] Another is the Qur'anic verse, "After that (Allah) spread the Earth out (dahaha: from the verb 'daha')" ^[79:30] has been interpreted as foreshadowing the modern concept that the figure of the Earth has an ellipsoid shape. Kamel Ben Salem's explanation for this is that "the ancient exegetes had earlier explained the Arabic verb (dahaha) by (has flattened it)" but that "the origin of this verb is found in the word (Ud-hiya)," which means "egg of ostrich," thus "the Earth would look like an ostrich’s egg."^[11] Rashad Khalifa alternatively translated the verse as: "he made the earth egg-shaped."^[12]

Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani high energy physicist, has written exhaustively on the phenomenon of pseudoscience based on Quranic scripture in the Muslim world, ranging from claims that Einstein's Theory of relativity proves the existence of heaven in Islam, to claims that, according to the Quran, nuclear energy comes from Genies.^[13] He observes that the prevalence of such pseudoscientific concepts has led to significant decline in scientific output from Muslims since the distant past.^[13] Hoodbhoy's book "Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality", provides more details about the rise of such kinds of pseudoscience promoted by Wahhabists such as claims of the Quran containing "scientific miracles" and the Islamic creationism of Harun Yahya.^[14]

Bucailleism

The most famous proponent of this argument is perhaps Maurice Bucaille^{[citation needed]}, a French physician and author of the book The Bible, The Quran and Science, whose translator into Indonesian, Dr. Muhammad Rasjidi, former Professor for Islamic Studies at McGill University and former Indonesian Minister for Religious Affairs characterizes as "a half-baked mish-mash of pseudo-science and pseudo-exegesis".^[15] Maurice Bucaille asserts in his book that "he could not find a single error in the Qur'an", and that the Qur'an does "not contain a single statement which is assailable from a modern scientific point of view", which led him to believe that no human author in the 7th century could have written "facts" which "today are shown to be keeping with modern scientific knowledge".^[1] Scholars criticize, that "Bucaille bends the meaning of the Arabic words to suit his own ideas."^[16] and "Bucaille proposes new meanings for Qur'anic words to bring them into accord with modern scientific knowledge, without requiring any standard philological justification."^[17]

The search for Qur'anic references to and prophecies of modern scientific discoveries has become a "popular trend" in some Muslim societies;^[18] as a manifestation of the popularity of the scientific miracles belief, the Muslim World League at Makkah formed a committee named Committee on the Scientific Miracles of the Qurʾān and the Sunna to investigate the relation between Qur'an and science, headed by Zaghloul El-Naggar.^[1]

According to some recent studies of the relationship between science education and religion, one of the ways in which science education in strongly Islamic societies is impacted by religiosity is when "acceptable" scientific discoveries can be found to have been anticipated or "identified" by the Qur'an, with consequent implications for what is taught and not taught.^[19]

Criticisms of consistency

Taner Edis, author of An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam, describes this point.^[20] He argues that Muslims are more likely to view the Quran as the direct word of God, and so it must be reconciled with their growing respect for science and technology. Edis suggests that Muslims often have a vested interest in finding passages whose interpretation can be stretched to describe modern understanding. He warns that reading into books like this can be misleading, since the method can be used to support any number of contradictory facts.^[21] Russel Glasser (a Skeptic from the "The Atheist Experience" TV show with Matt Dillahunty and Jeff Dee) likewise suggests that reading into the Quran like this amounts to cherry picking and risks simply confirming the biases of the investigator.^[22]

Vedic texts

Hindu tradition sometimes holds that all knowledge is pre-existing, to be "recovered" rather than "discovered", and is echoed can be found in the Vedas and other ancient texts.^[23]

The Hindu revivalism movements that emerged in British India from the later 19th century developed an idea of a "Vedic science" found in the corpus of Brahmanas, Sutras and Shastras of Indian antiquity that supposedly anticipated certain results of modern science.

Of notable influence were the writings of Swami Dayananda Sarasvati and Swami Vivekananda. Dayananda rejected the older commentaries of the Vedas by Sayana, Mahidhara and Uvata as medieval corruptions "opposed to the real meaning of the Vedas".^[24] He summarily renounced the academic philological work of western scholars as being misinformed by such corrupted Indian commentators. For example, the first volume of the Sacred Books of the East series, containing editions of some Upanishads, had appeared in 1879. Dayananda's writings are recognized^{[by whom?]} as having an element of religious fundamentalism.^[25] Dayananda's Arya Samaj experienced a gradual renaissance in the 1980s.^{[citation needed]}

It has been said that pseudoscience was unwittingly helped into being by the postmodernism embraced by Indian leftist "postcolonial theories" like those of Ashis Nandy and Vandana Shiva who rejected the universality of "Western" science and called for the "indigenous science".^[26] According to the historian of science Meera Nanda:

any traditional Hindu idea or practice, however obscure and irrational it might have been through its history, gets the honorific of "science" if it bears any resemblance at all, however remote, to an idea that is valued (even for the wrong reasons) in the West.^[26]

In 1900, Vivekananda said that:

"the conclusions of modern science are the very conclusions the Vedanta reached ages ago; only, in modern science they are written in the language of matter."^[27] In one lecture he claimed that: "Today we find wonderful discoveries of modern science coming upon us like bolts from the blue, opening our eyes to marvels we never dreamt of. But many of these are only re-discoveries of what had been found ages ago. It was only the other day that modern science discovered that what it calls heat, magnetism, electricity, and so forth, are all convertible into one unit force. But this has been done even in the Samhita",^[28] thus identifying concepts from physics like gravitation, electricity, magnetism and other forces with the mystical Vedantic notion of Prana.^{[original research?][improper synthesis?]}

Some of the authors "seeking to modernize India by recovering the supposedly pristine Vedic-Hindu roots of Indian culture" revived these notions.^[26]:

"By postulating interconnections and similarities across Nature, they [the Vedic thinkers] were able to use logic to reach extremely subtle conclusions about diverse aspects of reality."^[29]

In response to criticism to the effect that this is essentially the magic worldview prevalent in pre-modern Europe overcome by the scientific revolution of the 18th century (Nanda 2003:116), Hindutva authors answer that the distinction of science and pseudoscience (or proto-science) is Eurocentric and inapplicable to Vedic science:

"Western scientic thought draws on the traditions of Greek rationalist thinking according to which only what is within the purview of the five senses is taken cognisance of. Scientific methods follow some kind of closed scientific reasoning which insulates itself against facts that its methods cannot account for. How else can they [scientists] dare dismiss Jyotisha [astrology] which sees a level of existence beyond the purview of the five senses?" (Vasudev 2001)^[30]

Or even that in India, science and religion are fundamentally identical:^{[clarification needed]}

"The idea of 'contradiction' is an imported one from the West in recent times by the Western-educated, since 'Modern Science' arbitrarily imagines that it only has the true knowledge and its methods are the only methods to gain knowledge, smacking of Semitic dogmatism in religion." (Mukhyananda 1997:94)^{[citation needed]}

Criticism

Critics of sacred text scientific foreknowledge believe that parts of various sacred text may simply contain observations regarding aspects of the technology of the times. Scientific and engineering knowledge have been documented in early cultures that claimed no divine guidance.^[31] For example, scientists of Ancient Egypt documented knowledge of engineering and anatomy that were unknown to medieval Europe thousands of years later, such as the existence of cerebrospinal fluid; see Ancient Egyptian medicine and Ancient Egyptian technology.

Another criticism points out that the process of scientific foreknowledge only works in reverse; few advocates of scientific foreknowledge use sacred texts to predict the next scientific breakthrough. Only once a new scientific discovery occurs do proponents of scientific foreknowledge scan the text to look for a verse that can be said to have predicted the latest discovery. Thus, since the process only works in reverse and the text cannot predict new discoveries, the text cannot be said to contain scientific foreknowledge.

Farrell Till asserts that biblical passages with supposed foresight can be interpreted in a number of ways, and that believers "see prophecies and their fulfillments in passages so obscurely written that no one can really determine what the writers originally intended in the statements."^[32] Till is an author with master's degree in English (and a former pastor and missionary of the Church of Christ) who has had public debates with well-known Bible inerrantists such as Norman Geisler^[33] and Kent Hovind.

Richard Dawkins claims that religious proponents "cherry-pick" passages that fit a certain framework and disregard or even dismiss the vague rest, saying that those are meant to be figuratively and loosely interpreted.

Anthropologist Mary Douglas wrote in her book "Purity and Danger" that the biblical cleanliness passages merely represent cultural concepts of symbolic boundary integrity.^[34]

A number of classical Muslim scientists and commentators did not believe in the scientific exegesis of the Qur'an; Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī (973-1048), one of the most celebrated Muslim scientists of the classical period, assigned to the Qur'an a separate and autonomous realm of its own and held that the Qur'an "does not interfere in the business of science nor does it infringe on the realm of science." These scholars argued for the possibility of multiple scientific explanations of the natural phenomena, and refused to subordinate the Qur'an to an ever-changing science.^[1]

See also

• Ancient astronaut theories
• Archaeoastronomy and Vedic chronology
• Bahá'í prophecies
• Biblical archaeology
• History of science in early cultures
• Kashrut - Health reasons
• Qur'an and science
• Science and the Bible
• Bucailleism
• Hindsight bias

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Ahmad Dallal, Science and the Qur'an, Encyclopedia of the Qur'an
2. ^ Bible scientific foreknowledge - CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science
3. ^ Job 9:6, NIV
4. ^ De Zuñiga, Diego, Commentary on Job (1584), p205
5. ^ Ferngren, Larson, Amundsen (Editors). "Encyclopedia of the History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition", Garland Publishing Inc,US (29 Jun 2000), p. 470. ISBN 0815316569
6. ^ ^{a b} An Experimental Pharmacological Appreciation of Leviticus XI and Deuteronomy XIV, Bulletin of the History of Medicine - David Macht
7. ^ Ask the Rabbi - 199
8. ^ Harmony of Science and Scripture, Harry Rimmer (1936)(p131-132)
9. ^ Froth and Fraud in Fundamentalism
10. ^ Hugh Ross, Ph.D. "Predictive Power: Confirming Cosmic Creation". http://www.reasons.org/resources/fff/2002issue09/index.shtml#predictive_power (accessed: October 06, 2006).
11. ^ Kamel Ben Salem (2007). "The Evolution of the Universe: A New Vision". European Journal of Science and Theology. http://www.akamaiuniversity.us/pdf/BenSalem_JAHC_051.pdf. Retrieved 2010-03-19 
12. ^ Rashad Khalifa (2001). Quran: the final testament. p. 497. ISBN 1881893057 
13. ^ ^{a b} Islamic failure, by Pervez Hoodbhoy
14. ^ Hoodbhoy, Pervez (1992). Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality. Zed Books. ISBN 1856490254. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/996690.Islam_and_Science_Religious_Orthodoxy_and_the_Battle_for_Rationality. 
15. ^ Roff, William R. (1987). Islam and the political economy of meaning: comparative studies of Muslim discourse. Routledge. p. 279. ISBN 9780709942481. http://books.google.com/?id=s5sOAAAAQAAJ&dq=Islam+and+the+political+economy+of+meaning. 
16. ^ Negus, Michael Robert (2005). Islam and Science. God, humanity, and the cosmos, Edition: 2, illustrated, revised, by Christopher Southgate, John Hedley Brooke, Celia Deane-Drummond. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 332. ISBN 9780567030160. http://books.google.com/?id=2euuM3YOh6YC&dq=God,+humanity,+and+the+cosmos. 
17. ^ Wood, Kurt A. (June 1993). "The Scientific Exegesis of The Qur'an: A Case Study in Relating Science and Scripture". PSCF (American Scientific Affiliation) 45: 90–95. http://www.asa3.org/asa/PSCF/1993/PSCF6-93Wood.html#6. 
18. ^ "Muslim call to adopt Mecca time". BBC. 2008-04-21. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7359258.stm. Retrieved 2008-04-24. 
19. ^ Gilbert, John (2004). The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Science Education. Routledge. pp. 4. 
20. ^ http://www.amazon.com/Illusion-Harmony-Science-Religion-Islam/dp/1591024498
21. ^ Reasonable Doubts Podcast: Islam, Science and Modernity
22. ^ The Atheist Experience, on "the Quran and the Speed of Light", quote:"A contemporary person who knows some science can make passages of the Quran superficially resemble scientific insights by manipulating verses that have nothing to do with science and trying to pigeonhole them into something resembling contemporary knowledge."
23. ^ van Buitenen, J. A. B (1966). "The Archaism of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa". In Milton Singer. Krishna: Myths, Rites, and Attitudes. pp. 23–40.  Reprinted in S.S Shashi, ed (1996). Encyclopedia Indica. Anmol Publications PVT. LTD.. pp. 28–45. ISBN 9788170418597. http://books.google.com/?id=U-sC1GkwH7sC&pg=PA44&dq=discovered. 

    "Central to Indian thinking through the ages is a concept of knowledge which, though known to Platonism and Gnosticism, is foreign to the modern West. Whereas for us, to put it briefly, knowledge is something to be discovered, for the Indian knowledge is to be recovered. [...] One particular preconception, related to this concept of knowledge concerning the past and its relationship to the present, is probably of central significance: that at its very origin the absolute truth stands revealed; that this truth—which is simultaneously a way of life—has been lost, but not irrecoverably; that somehow it is still available through ancient life-lines that stretch back to the original revelation; and that the present can be restored only when this original past has been recovered."

24. ^ Saraswati, Dayananda. Introduction to the commentary on the Vedas. pp. 443. 
25. ^ Ruthven (2007:108)
26. ^ ^{a b c} Nanda, Meera. 2003. Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India, Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0813533589. See also Nanda, Meera. 2005. "Response to my critics," Social Epistemology. 19(1):147–191.
27. ^ 1970, vol. 3, p. 185, cited after Sokal, Allan, "Pseudoscience and Postmodernism: Antagonists or Fellow-Travelers?" in: Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public Routledge (2006) ISBN 0415305934, chapter 3.2 "Hindu nationalism and 'Vedic science'")
28. ^ lecture on The Vedanta delivered at Lahore on 12 November 1897; 1970, vol. 3, pp. 398f.
29. ^ Feuerstein, Kak and Frawley in their 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization (p. 197)
30. ^ Vasudev, Gayatri Devi. 2001. Vedic astrology and pseudo-scientic criticism, The Organiser (an English-language publication of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), reprinted in The Astrological Magazine, cited after Sokal (2006:38)
31. ^ Parkins, Michael D,(Preceptor, J. Szekrenyes), Pharmocological Practices of Ancient Egypt, Proceedings of the 10th Annual History of Medicine Days, Faculty of the University of Calgary, edited by Dr. WA Whitelaw
32. ^ Farrell Till, The Skeptical Review 1990, What About Scientific Foreknowledge in the Bible? p2-5
33. ^ Farrell Till debate with Norman Geisler
34. ^ Dr. Diane M. Sharon, 1998, Parashah Commentary

References

• ^ TLC : "The Lost Ark" (Investigation of the Ark's description) [Archived copy, Wayback machine]
• ^ Burger, David, "Electrical & Electronic & Telecommunications Milestones in Australia". New South Wales. December, 2004. (Senior Member of the IEEE; [e-mail])
• ^ Sassoon, George, "The ancient of days: deity or manna-machine?".
• ^ "An electrical engineering question". Soc.history.ancient, Usenet.
• ^ Ginzberg, Louis, "The Legends of the Jews".
• ^ Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews. The Ark and the Cherubim.
• ^ Tesla, Nikola, "The Fairy Tale of Electricity". September 9, 1915.
• ^ "Leviticus 10:1". Skeptic's Annotated Bible.
• Beaver, Gary, "The Ark of the Covenant of our Lord". ordotempli.org
• Badillo, Tony, "Ark of the Covenant Secrets".

External links

• Bible scientific foreknowledge Bible scientific accuracy and Bible scientific foreknowledge
• Answers In Genesis Creationist website
• Institute for Biblical & Scientific Studies - Critiques most issues with a Christian's perspective.
• Inerrancy.org Bible inerrancy site
• ApologeticsCourses.Com/TextBooks Apologetics Wiki with many articles on inerrancy
• Regarding alleged Biblical scientific foresight
• Farrell Till (1990). "What About Scientific Foresight in the Bible?". The Skeptical Review (4): 2–5. http://www.skepticfiles.org/skeptic/4science.htm. 
• Farrell Till (1991). "Bible Biology". The Skeptical Review (2). http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1991/2/2biolo91.html. 
• Claim CH130: The Bible's accuracy on various scientific and historical points shows its overall accuracy., TalkOrigins, 2004
• Does the Bible Teach a Spherical Earth? Robert J. Schneider, PSCF 53 (September 2001): 159-169

Apologetics

• Biblical scientific foresight Scientific accuracy of the Bible and Bible scientific foresight discussed
• Answersingenesis.org Creationist point of view
• Godandscience.org Christian website discussing Christianity, science and evidence for God

Skeptical views

• Regarding alleged Biblical scientific foresight
• Dennis McKinsey, Biblical Errancy Issue 9 - Article focusing on science in the Bible.
• The Skeptic's Annotated Bible - The entire Bible annotated from a skeptical viewpoint, with specific sections on science in the Bible.
• Muhammad and Jesus in Hindu Scriptures?