THE QUR'AN AND MODERN SCIENCE

By the world reknowned scientist: Dr. Maurice Bucalle

On 9 NOVEMBER 1976, an unusual lecture was given at the French Academy of Medicine. It’s title was ‘Physiological and Embryological data in the Qur’an’. I presented my study on the existence in the Qur’an of certain statements concerning physiology and reproduction. My reason for doing this was that our knowledge of these disciplines is such, that it is impossible to explain how a text produced at the time of the Qur’an could have contained ideas that have only been discovered in modern times.

There is indeed no human work prior to modern times that contains statements which were equally in advance of the state of knowledge at the time they appeared and which might be compared to the Qur’an.

In addition to this, a comparative study of data of a similar kind contained in the Bible (Old Testament and Gospels) seemed desirable. This is how the project was formed of a confrontation between modern knowledge and certain passages in the Holy Scriptures of each monotheistic religion. It resulted in the publication of a book under the title, The Bible, The Qur’an and Science. The first French addition appeared in May 976. (Seglers, Paris). English and Arabic editions have now been published.

It comes as no surprise to learn that Religion and Science have always been considered to be twin sisters by Islam and that today, at a time when science has taken such great strides, they still continue to be associated, and furthermore certain scientific data are used for the better understanding of the Qur’anic text. What is more, in a century where, scientific truth has dealt a deathblow to religious belief, it is precisely the discoveries of science that, in an objective examination of the Islamic Revelation, have highlighted the supernatural character of certain aspects of the Revelation.

When all is said and done, generally speaking, scientific knowledge would seem in spite of what people may say, to be highly conducive to reflection on the existence of God.

Once we begin to ask ourselves in an unbiased or unprejudiced way about the metaphysical lessons to be derived from some of today’s knowledge, (for example our knowledge of the infinitely small or the problem of life), we indeed discover many reasons for thinking along these lines. When we think about the remarkable organisation presiding over the birth and and maintenance of life, it surely becomes clear that the likelihood of it being the result of chance gets less and less, as our knowledge and progress in this field expand. Certain concepts must appear to be increasingly unacceptable; for example, the one put forward by the French winner of the Nobel prize for Medicine who tried to get people to admit that living matter was selfcreated as the result of fortuitous circumstances under effect of certain outside influences using simple chemical elements as their base. From this it is claimed that living organisms came into being, leading to the remarkable complex called man. To me, it would seem that the scientific progress made in understanding the fantastic complexity of higher beings provides strong arguments in favour of the opposite theory: in other words, the existence of an extraordinarily methodical organisation presiding over the remarkable arrangement of the phenomena of life.

In many parts of the Book, the Qur’an leads, in simple terms, to this kind of general reflection. But it also contains infinitely more precise data which are directly related to facts discovered by modern science: these are what exercise a magnetic attraction for today’s scientists.

Source: The Quran and Modren Science