re islam and scientific predictions was umar khan khan itd itd nrl navy mil wrote i strongly suggest that you look up a book called the bible the quran and science by maurice baucaille a french surgeon it is not comprehensive he was unable to find a wealth of scientific statements in the holy qur an but what he did find made sense with modern understanding so he investigated the traditions the hadith to see what they had to say about science they were filled with science problems after all they were contemporary narratives from a time which had by pour standards a primitive world view his conclusion was that while he was impressed that what little the holy qur an had to say about science was accurate he was far more impressed that the holy qur an did not contain the same rampant errors evidenced in the traditions how would a man of th century arabia have known what not to include in the holy qur an assuming he had authored it this book is worth a read to get a sensible view of this issue the book is in two sections section contains a fairly reasonable analysis of the bible showing many inconsistencies between the bible and modern science well we all know that no surprises section analyses the koran s version of the old testament stories and seems on the face of it to present a good case showing the koran is consistent with modern science however it was plain to me that this consistency was only possible by the vague phraseology of the koran take the flood for example the bible is full of detail forty days and forty nights pair of every animal etc we all know this is nonsense the koran s description of the same event is so obscure as to make possible an interpretation such as a big river flooded for a few days and caused much damage yes no contradiction but also not much fact the koran might be consistent with modern science but being consistent due to its vagueness compared with other books of that time does not seem much of an achievement the book concludes by saying something like the koran must have had divine inspiration because at the time it was written there were a lot of to us now ridiculous ideas about the universe and none of them can be found in the koran arguing for the greatness of a book by talking about what it does not contain seems absurd in the extreme the above is of course from memory so i may have missed some points leonard e mail l newnham bradford ac uk
