Islam Imploding

Science or Scripture?

Why Do Muslims Appeal to Science Yet Ignore Qur'anic Errors?

One of the more recent trends in Islamic apologetics is the claim that the Qur’an contains miraculous scientific knowledge, supposedly proving it is a divine revelation. Muslim preachers, YouTubers, and authors regularly point to verses in the Qur’an and claim that modern science confirms them—centuries before scientists discovered these truths.

But there’s a glaring problem with this line of argument:

If the Qur’an is scientifically miraculous, why does it contain scientific errors that Muslims ignore, dismiss, or reinterpret beyond recognition?

This post takes a deep dive into this contradiction and the dangerous apologetic double standard behind it.

🧠 1. The Strategy: Appealing to Science for Validation

In an age of skepticism and rationalism, many Muslims—especially in the West—seek to validate their faith by aligning it with modern scientific discoveries.

Examples often cited include:

The development of the embryo in the womb.
The expansion of the universe (Qur’an 51:47).
The protective atmosphere.
The origin of life from water.
The shape of the earth.

This apologetic strategy claims:
“How could Muhammad have known these things without divine revelation?”

But this tactic is a double-edged sword—because once you invoke science as the standard, the Qur’an must be judged by science consistently, not selectively.

❗ 2. The Problem: Ignored or Reinterpreted Scientific Errors

Many verses in the Qur’an, when read plainly, contradict what we now know scientifically. Let’s look at just a few:

📌 1. Sperm from Between the Backbone and Ribs (Q 86:6-7)

“He is created from a fluid, emitted from between the backbone and the ribs.”

Modern anatomy disproves this completely. Semen is produced in the testes, not from between the backbone and ribs. Apologists twist the verse metaphorically, but that undermines their own literal-scientific approach.

📌 2. Setting and Rising Place of the Sun (Q 18:86, 18:90)

Dhul-Qarnayn reached the place “where the sun sets” and saw it setting in a muddy spring.

This is an ancient mythological cosmology, not science. The sun does not set in a spring, and there is no literal location where it “rises” or “sets.” Apologists say this is poetic—but again, they’re abandoning literalism only when it becomes inconvenient.

📌 3. Seven Earths and Seven Heavens (Q 65:12)

“Allah created seven heavens and of the earth, the like thereof.”

Where are the seven earths? Are we to believe in seven physical Earth-like planets stacked beneath ours? This comes from ancient Babylonian and Persian cosmology, not modern science.

📌 4. The Earth Is Spread Out (Q 15:19, 20:53, 88:20)

Multiple verses speak of the earth as flat, spread out, or laid like a carpet.

If these were meant scientifically, they are wrong. If they were metaphorical, why claim the embryology verses are literal and scientific?

🌀 3. Selective Literalism: A Methodological Crisis

When Muslims want to prove the Qur’an scientifically true, they take vague verses and interpret them with modern hindsight:

“Expanding universe” = metaphor turns into Big Bang cosmology.
“Every living thing is from water” = biology confirmed.
“Mountains as pegs” = plate tectonics?

But when confronted with clear scientific mistakes, the same interpreters suddenly pivot:

“That’s a metaphor.”
“You’re misunderstanding the Arabic.”
“It meant something different to the people of that time.”

This is not a consistent or honest hermeneutic.
It’s cherry-picking. It’s post-hoc rationalization, not divine revelation.

🧪 4. Real Science Doesn’t Work This Way

Real science is falsifiable, precise, testable, and cumulative.

It doesn’t work in vague metaphors.
It doesn’t operate on mystical ambiguity.
It doesn’t accept one correct guess in ten false ones as proof.

If the Qur’an is divine because of one accurate-sounding verse, does it become unreliable because of one scientifically incorrect one?

Or do you only want to keep the parts that work and ignore the rest?

You can’t have it both ways.

📉 5. The Collapse of the “Scientific Miracle” Claim

Here’s the ultimate contradiction:

If the Qur’an is proven divine by science, then it must be consistently scientific.
If it contains scientific errors, then it cannot be from a perfect, all-knowing God.

So which is it?

You appeal to science, and that standard condemns the Qur’an.
You abandon science, and the Qur’an loses the validation you claimed.

Either way, the argument collapses.

✅ Conclusion: A House Built on Sand

The claim that the Qur’an is scientifically miraculous is not only methodologically dishonest, but self-defeating. It opens the door to scrutiny the Qur’an cannot survive.

Muslims are trying to wear a lab coat over a 7th-century robe—and it doesn’t fit.

If science becomes your standard, the Qur’an must stand or fall by it. And when examined fairly, honestly, and consistently, the Qur’an fails.

It's time to stop the selective apologetics and ask the harder, honest question:

Was this truly a revelation from the Creator of the universe—or a product of its time, struggling to sound scientific in a world that no longer buys it?