The Bucailleist's Central Dogma

Molecular biology has what is called, quite mistakenly, a "central dogma",i.e., DNA makes RNA makes protein. The Bucailleist has his own central dogma, based on which he builds all his castles in the air of Qur'anic 'scientific miracles'. Ironically, all these miracle claims are made to bolster the veracity of that same dogma, which is a logical fallacy called circular reasoning. A simple example of circular reasoning is this:

The Bucailleist makes his tall claims to prove to others (and perhaps, deep down, to himself) that the Qur'an is truly the word of God, and His message to all men. However, these claims are themselves made by first assuming that the Qur'an is the word of God, and therefore should contain scientific information that was unknown in the time of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Since I am a Deist, I make no such assumption. Besides, such assumptions can be made not just for the Qur'an but also for any other religious book and even for non-religious literature. For instance, if we are to assume that the fairy tale 'Jack and the Beanstalk' is a true story, we can read similar sientific information into it as well. The wizard who gave Jack the magical beans was really a scientist, the so-called magical beans are GM crops injected with plant hormones that could enable them to grow sky-high within a night, the giant's castle was a very large hovercraft, the harp that played by itself was a robot, and the giant himself abused growth hormones; and thus one could go on.

In conclusion, the Bucailleist's exercise of reading science into the Qur'an is nothing but a form of circular reasoning and dogmatism in the guise of scientific study.

About This Blog

This blog was conceived when a friend gave me a little book titled 'A BRIEF ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING ISLAM', in which, as proof of the veracity of the Holy Qur'an, Islam's fundamental sacred text,the author had given several examples of scientific facts discovered recently, which were already alluded to in the Qur'an, or so he claimed. The claims, which I felt even then to be far-fatched, spurred me to read the Qur'an for myself, and learn to read and write Arabic, so that I could see if they were true. I also searched for such allusions to modern science in other ancient texts. In the process, I came to the conclusion that many of the claims of scientific foreknowledge made for the Qur'an are arrived at by reinterpreting and reading new meanings into what the text originally said, or at least, what the text originally meant to its earliest believers. These interpretations were in fact, not exegeses (deriving meanings from the text) but eisegeses (reading something different into the text). A simple example would be the claim that the Qur'an in speaking of things "between the heavens and the earth" (Qur'an 25:59), is speaking of interstellar bridges of plasma, according to a popular Muslim preacher.[The Qur’aan and Modern Science: Compatible or Incompatible? By Dr. Zakir Naik, page 15]

When I first began this blog in September 2012, then under the name, "Debunking Bucailleism", I had a somewhat belligerent attitude, which was reflected in the tone of my writing, and also in the name of this blog. I think I have mellowed now, and hence the change in the blog's name, as well as a new start from scratch.

Soon after encountering claims of scientific foreknowledge ("scientific miracles", as Muslim Bucailleists call them) in the Qur'an, I had come across similar claims made by Hindus and Christians for the Vedas and the Bible respectively. However, these were very few, and not very widespread among them. Therefore, although initially I had thought of addressing these claims as well, I now have decided to restrict myself to analyzing Bucailleism.