... against Maurice Buccaille, Basically

... against Maurice Buccaille, Basically · David Wood Shows a Weakness of Islam and of Protestantism · David Wood Partly Attacking Wrong Things in Islam

Countering Muslim Claims, Episode 8: Is the Quran a Scientific Miracle?
Acts17Apologetics | 13.X.2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDhy5fO4CLk

Note:

all comments here are directed at what was said in French translation and timesignatures depend on when the French subtititling appears.

Since it was manmade, not machine made, it is presumably correct about what was said in English.

But this means some of my quotes in English are less than perfect.

I

At 4:06 in French translation ... the behaviour of the Muslims who believe their preacher or so has seen what needs to be seen, reminds me of things.

I just saw a video by one Chévrier in which he compared persecution of Christians today, often by Muslims (he told a horrible story about Nigeria) to the Inquisition. He seems to have believed without much checking a figure of "60 million" tortured, emprisoned and killed by the Papal Inquisition. It's a bit like claiming a famously slow calligrapher has won a contest in speed typing, if you see what I mean, not very credible.

Or some believe the Medieval Western Bible was put into Latin because only the clergy understood it ... seriously, even by 500 AD, 600 AD? And that hundreds of translations to hundreds of languages (not just versions of very few literary languages, much fewer than those heard on Pentecost, since most were unwritten, "analphabetic" like languages in Australian bush) had existed - I think the claim was for 500 AD. Such people seem not to care of how Latin ceased to be what we call a living language, which is later than the changes of pronunciation which would have made Latin as pronounced 500 - 800 somewhat difficult to understand for a Latinist.

Or, what about Evolution believers? Did you check that Cretaceous fossils of land vertebrates everywhere on earth lie below Palaeocene and above Jurassic, below Miocene and above Triassic, below Eocene and above Permian fossils of land vertebrates? If so, tell me where you found even one of these sequences, note, not in classification of stones, of minerals, but in fauna of land vertebrates. I haven't found so even one place (and I have looked at Karoo and Yacoraite and Jurassic Coast, in the literature I could find on the web).

So, while the behaviour is somewhat ridiculous and somewhat unfortunate precisely in Muslims, it is not their prerogative.

II

5:33 I'm curious as to what examples you will take, especially for one.

You see, back when I had an appartment, it was in a neighbourhood with quite a lot of Muslims, and quite a lot of Palestinians, not all of them Muslims.

A Christian Palestinian brought me to a conference on the topic, or a range of topics including this (I think the main topic was refuting Evolution, which per se is not bad, but Harun Yahya is an Old Earth Creationist, very far from Genesis literalists either Jewish or Christian in some respects, but I did not come to see much on main topic, because ...)

Well, topic anti-evolutionism was briefly presented, and the Christian Palestinian went out. Next topic touched "en passant" was sth which made me leave the conference. If you have missed it, I'll add it under here for you.

[They didn't, so I take it in context]

III

5:59 One of the wings has a disease, the other a remedy for the disease?

Wonder where they got that from ... the custom could be in order to get an extra portion of proteines, and a habit of crying over spilled milk (I first imagined the fly falling into wine, then recalled their unscientific and impious attitude about this beverage ...). Some get sick and some don't get sick and if you get sick, it's the sick wing, if you don't, it's the wing with the cure .... not exactly my ideal of medical investigation, but this is a pure reconstruction of where Mohammed had his family lore from (argumentwise), and pure reconstructions are also not my ideal of historic investigation.

I'd not like to drink with that fellow in an area infested with flies.

Nabeel was not too bright on medicine either.

Yersinia pestis is fatal to man or rat, often enough, but fairly harmless to lice.

If lice have a metabolism so different from ours as to be unharmed carriers of Yersinia (which fortunately doesn't have flies as carriers), arguably some diseases carried by flies would be simply carried around, and the fly have no resistance of immunity, because it doesn't need that. Wonder if Mohammed would have said the same in an area with Tse-Tse flies?

One could imagine a fan fic in which "life of Mohammed" meets "sleeping beauty" (sorry Sleeping Beauty, I didn't mean to compare looks!)

8:11 I wonder if the idea was from the time when Mohammed's ancestors drank wine.

One fly less, and the alcohol (often enough) takes care of he bacteria ... too bad he banned wine ...

IV

9:51 I'm sorry, you might have wanted to check with Creationists before speaking up on this one.

Of a probably pre-Flood or very early post-Flood probable Behemoth, a k a sauropod, there are three very dislocated and skull-less remains, with LOTS of specimens, since each little bone is a specimen.

Palaeocritti Blog : Uberabatitan ribeiroi
http://palaeocritti.blogspot.com/2013/12/uberabatitan-ribeiroi.html

From this original work, which I thought I was preserving from programmed extinction from the internet:

Palaeocritti - a guide to prehistoric animals Palaeocritti - a guide to prehistoric animals : Uberabatitan ribeiroi
https://sites.google.com/site/palaeocritti/by-group/dinosauria/sauropoda/macronaria/uberabatitan

Here is my comment:

// So little is given in holotype, sorry, in specimen C, I am not sure it can be excluded it was a real "titan" or "human shaped but gigantic mighty one" of the nephelim.

But I am not an anatomist or palaeontologist. I am not one of the medicine students of my family.

The other two specimens have bones identified as caudals, i e tail bones. //

Obviously, the tail bones are from non-human skeleta, but the one without tail bones theoretically could be human or from a nephelim.

A non-human skull would also have settled for non-human, but here skulls are totally lacking, whether non-human or human.

10:16 I have seen Catholic commenters say that pre-Flood men were larger than we too.

Possibly bc St Augustine found a bone which looked like a human femur apart from size (which I think is the case with sauropod femurs, don't take my word for it, that's from memory).

Now, the thing is, "pre-Flood" means we shrank since then, but not that we have continued shrinking since we shrank.

And 3000 years ago is less than half the time Earth has stood in the centre of the universe (7217 years, this year).

So, on this one, no clear palaeontological case against Mohammed's theory, but there is one against his originality, if he was perchance right.

"We can test it, thanks to archaeology"

For how long back do you consider it gives the correct or at least near correct dates?

Now, since I consider Neanderthals as pre-Flood, Denisovans as pre-Flood, their contemporary Cro-Magnons (carbon dated 40 - 50 millennia [there were more recent ones too!]) as pre-Flood and Antecessor and Heidelbergians as also pre-Flood, more precisely aliases of Denisovan, I don't share this idea.

Another Creationist considering them as post-Flood (Anne Habermehl, Jonathan Sarfati) would logically not be able to cite their size against St Augustine's theory rehashed by Mohammed.

So, that is why, when speaking of the possibility (so far not excluded by gene testing, I presume?) of one sample of Uberabatitan being a human like giant, I rather speak of nephelim (and even first generation, whil Skiba would probably shake his head and say "oh, considering that size, it's arguably just third generation nephelim".

Seriously, if nephelim bones of someone with that size were found, one could risk Muslims taking them for the "bones of Adam" which would arguably be bad. And I mean found complete with human like but much bigger skull and so.

"even if they are 100,000 years or older"

Now, that is not a dating.

Carbon dates just barely can be used to "60,000" years back, and those dates are of course inflated due to carbon 14 content being so much lower back then.

But 100,000 years is not a carbon date. It's most probably from lava over or under the skeleta, and the "date" probably says most of how fast the lava cooled and how much surplus argon was trapped by that fast cooling. Not about how old the thing is, even the lava itself.

V

12:20 I suppose that Mohammed would have been misinterpreting sth about water in Christian ritual, either Baptism or blessed water.

But that is some misinterpreting.

13:06 Boiling water?

Tea is nice and so is coffee .... (but for Mo's science, I don't give a toffee).

VI

15:41 On this one, you are somewhat less on firm ground with pure Coranists.

I'm not one, I'm a Christian, but if [...]

• 1) Dhul-Qurnayn was a Medo-Persian ruler (two horns = two kingdoms), the one who allowed Jews to return and was monotheist (part time)
• 2) Alexander Romance (of which there are many versions) borrowed from that one
• 3) "earth" ending means "land" ending where Caucasus touches Black Sea
• 4) it refers to Sun visually setting in Black Sea
• 5) and for some reason someone had either misunderstood or found the Black Sea very dirty,

[...] then the main problem for a Coranist, a total rejector of Hadiths at least as supernatural truth, would be why Black Sea is called a puddle.

Still - that too is somewhat of a problem for them, AND the thing is of course worse if you take Hadiths into account.

Obviously, who lives there is still somewhat important - if they are Magog and if this means Muslims had some tradition of Magog living just North of Caucasus / Black Sea.

18:34 This is one of the reasons why some Muslims have said, it is NOT Alexander.

And a Medo-Persian ruler would have/be "two horns" in the Biblical sense of being "two kings at once".

Caucasus would have been at one point on his North frontier and you can ride along either West to East or East to West ...

And if you are riding East to West (roughly speaking), you very probably will see the sun set in the Black Sea.

It's a pity Imran Hosein is Muslim and not Christian yet, but his view on this matter is not pure folly.

18:47 Actually, even Alexander did not JUST go from West to East.

He went East as far as Ganges. But then he was back in Babylon when he died, which clearly is a long way West of Ganges. So, he must have been travelling West after deciding not to try to cross Ganges, which he actually seems to have believed had Gibraltar at opposite side, and if so, it would have been poor and barbaric, and this was in fact one argument for Aristotle to accept Earth as a globe.

It was correct in principle, just wrong in fact, and it was superceded by correct in fact proof by Magellan about 2000 years later, or somewhat less.

So, what way was Alexander going from Ganges to Babylon?

When Greeks came to Bactria, now Afghanistan, was it before or after Ganges? Was it before or after Alexander's death?

19:07 I'd actually like to know what Greek recension of Alexander romance, or what Syriac recension, you can trace this to ...

A later Latin or French one is no use, since it could have been copied from Coran 18.

20:12 I suspect quite a lot of Mohammed's lore was common in his tribe.

And, when it came to flies or dirty water, Mohammed may have had a very robust immunity system ...

Well, Sunan Abu-Dawud 4002 seems to clinch the astronomic at least heterodoxy of Mohammed.

Btw, "Allah and his Apostle/Prophet know better" would have been a polite way for that follower who might have been from a different tribe ... yes indeed ... Mohammed was Banu Hashim and Abu Dhar al-Ghifari was Banu Ghifar.

So, he could have risked to say what Banu Ghifar were saying about the matter, and if that was not what the Banu Hashim said, well, he had made a fool of himself in the sight if the prophet.

Charming man he must have been (for those challenged about sarcasm, that was irony).

I wonder if Imran Hosein considered the "prophet" outside speaking the Ayahs as infallible exegete of the Coran ...

I also have not heard Imran Hosein use the "scientific miracles of the Coran" argument.

Good for him.

And obviously, I find it an interesting question if Darius or Cyrus was riding up that area and finding people descended from Magog and told Jews about it before they left for Jerusalem - or such Jews who lacked behind.

VII

24:02 This calls for comparing sizes of meteorites and fix stars.

"It was formed by a large asteroid or comet about 10 to 15 kilometres (6.2 to 9.3 miles) in diameter"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater

If stars are only one light day away, well, some of them are smaller than that.

New blog on the kid : How Big is Kepler 452? A Geocentric Minority Report
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2015/07/how-big-is-kepler-452-geocentric.html

So, on this account, I don't find the Coran all that counterproven.

I don't believe it is a fact, I believe rather the stars will be falling in the endtimes (see Matthew 24), but it would not be physically impossible.

Also, the text as such could well refer to Christian eschatology, unless you can find eavesdropping sheyatin getting thrown from paradise in the Coran itself (or, if you like, in a Hadith).

And obviously, I'm less than dogmatic on astrophysics.

Paradise just above our atmosphere?

Or just above where the meteorite came from?

I'd say Heaven is above the stars. So, if the stars are one light day away, Heaven as such, where the Pearly Gates are, is not all that much further away.

25:44 Well, I haven't heard a single scientist say that either, but I also refuse to bow down to them as much as to Mohammed, when they speak on astrophysics, which is unreachable. To us. Before we die a good death. In this life. In the existence a scientist has as a scientist.

VIII

27:20 Well, while male and female semen as secular science is acceptable up to microscope, like referring to the two types of gamete, what determins sex is actually inside the male gamete.

The female gamete by definition has no Y chromosomes, only X-Chromosomes, and they are transferred to all.

X+X = XX = female (with versions like X or XXX, less fertile)
X+Y = XY = male (with versions like XXY and XYY, also less fertile)

Where exactly did you find that any fight between the types of semen determined sex?

Not in the text cited, so, I guess a Coran only (not reciting Shahada and praying three times a day and so on ...) might have a chance on this one.

But I'm waiting for the other one.

The one which made me walk away from that Buccaillist talk back when I had an appartment ... 2003.

Oh, was tired, forgot (or was rather momentarily bad at French) how far down the ribs go.

Not quite as far down as the scrotum, I'd say.

Now, that one would be difficult for a Coran onlyist too.

IX

29:25 "the heavens are seven solid domes"

Hello, Telly!

(Like Savalas' name was in reality Aristotélis, I'm referring to his non-Kojak namesake).

A Church Father had a problem - why didn't the Bible mention those?

His solution was the Bible only told what was visible to the eye, not what the scientists had only concluded by painstaking reasoning.

Now, fortunately for the criterium of Trent, not all of the Church Fathers shared St Basil's astrophysical belief taken from Telly .... so, while we have one Church Father saying there were domes, others said or implied there weren't.

Now, the problem for the Coran is, it is so up to date, it did not miss out on including Telly's observations or rather explanations on why Moon, Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, Fix Stars all share the same daily movement, with some delay further in.

It should have, because that explanation was disproven by Tycho Brahe.

Church Fathers : Coran = 1:0.

X

Yes, right. 30:12 - this is precisely what I heard in 2003.

It is also where this son of a med student with some knowledge of gynaecology walked out of that talk.

Buccaille ... let's put it like this, if he was on some kind of tour in the Orient, and if he was invited to a lot of Muslims, I think he might have risked diabetes if he hadn't converted and become able to add "I swear on the Coran" to whenever he had to say he had eaten enough, so, I can feel for his plight.

The psalmist says somewhat less precisely "thou cladstest my bones with flesh" - which is equally true if the bones came after the flesh was already there. It seems whoever was writing the Coran was sure of a certain interpretation thereof, and probably a Jewish one, or perhaps Oriental Christian one, and didn't want to miss out on being more detailed than the Bible.

He should have missed out on that one too.

In the case of a stage with bones only, it seems some very early kicks of the fetus are somewhat sharp, and pregnant women then and there considered they were being kicked with bones only, not yet any flesh on it.

Well, on this one, Mohammed showed a bit excessive empathy with women, taking gynaecological information from how women feel about it.

Reminds me a bit of those who think "someone's unborn baby" and a "lump of cells" depends on how the mother feels about the fetus ...

XI

Noted, CIRA:
http://www.cirainternational.com/about/

Al Fadi, knew David Woods before ... not you.