Reason on Faith

commenting on faith and religion through the eyes of reason

Responding to Farhan Iqbal regarding Qur’an 18:86 and the sun setting in muddy spring of water

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This is a brief response-post to a Twitter conversation with Ahmadi Muslim, Farhan Iqbal. It has to do with my proposing that Ahmadi Muslims respond to The Masked Arab’s video regarding the Qur’an’s assertion that Dhul Qarnayn found the sun setting in a muddy spring.

Background

Here is the tweet that got it started:


A few tweets later, Farhan proposed the following, which I am now responding to in this post, as short tweets don’t give you much room of course, to make a nuanced argument.

I invite Farhan to write a blog post in response, if he feels so inclined, as I understand responding in a tweet is difficult for making a nuanced argument.

My Response

The sun “setting” is an expression that we still use today to imply that visually, the sun appears to go downwards from our point of reference. No argument there. It’s a well understood expression.

We may even say that the sun appears to set over the horizon or into the ocean, if we were to look out across a large body of water. For example, when you see a sunset from the beach.

But a spring is a small body of water (again, see the video for a primer on the Arabic used in the Qur’an and for bodies of water).

If the verse said that “he found it setting over the horizon”, few would raise an issue with the verse (well technically, it should be stated as it appeared to Dhul Qarnayn, and not as an actual fact — that’s the second issue here).

It’s not the word “setting” in the expression that is the issue. That’s a red-herring, since we still use that expression today (sunset, the sun is setting, etc.).

So where’s the first issue?

Well, it’s that few today would use an expression of the sun setting into a body of water, and if they did, it would not be in reference to a small body of water. Think about whether the sunset could appear to the human eye to set into a small body of water. The optical illusion whereby the sun sets into a body of water would occur if that body of water stretched out to the horizon. Again, see the example in the video of the world’s largest spring, and how small springs actually are.

Over and over again, we see references in the Qur’an to a primitive and incorrect understanding of the Earth and of celestial mechanics.

Consider that at the time, it was a popular belief that the sun orbited the earth from rising to setting, and then traveled underneath the flat earth (through the underworld) back to its starting point to begin the day. It would make sense to primitive minds to suggest that the sun set into a spring, as many springs are naturally hot.

Primitive societies can be excused for thinking that springs are hot because every day, the sun descends into them. Of course, we now know that hot springs are hot for geothermal reasons.

While this particular verse of the Qur’an (18:86) is a smoking gun, it’s the repetition in the Qur’an of speaking towards a primitive understanding that makes it so much more plausible to see the Qur’an as having been authored by falliable human beings.

Want to see more of these primitive references? Watch the following video by The Rationalizer, linked in my tweet:

For more on hot springs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_spring 

The second issue, not even covered here, but addressed by the Masked Arab, is about the concept of actual fact versus just appearing as so. I’ll let you watch the video for an exposition on that line of thinking and how it is an indictment of this verse.