Epigraph:

And We have built the heavens as a manifestation of several of Our attributes, and surely We go on expanding the universe. (Al Quran 51:47)

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Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

Modern cosmology now suggests that there are two trillion galaxies in our universe. The above videos give you some more details of our expanding universe.

The Muslims take the Quran to be the literal word of All-Knowing God. The non-Muslims either are unsure about it, don’t have an opinion on this, or may think of it as word of Muhammad, his own words or borrowed from some helper.

I am writing a series of articles on this theme, discussing one verse at a time. The other posts of this series are: Quran: Is This God Speaking or Muhammad? and: The Quran and Creation Ex Nihilo: Is This God Speaking or Muhammad?

Today, we will examine the verse quoted as epigraph to this article, about the expanding universe.

The Prophet living in the wasteland of Arabia in the seventh century Arabia had not even the slightest idea about the expanding universe.

The conventional wisdom until the sixteenth century was that the universe is enclosed in a solid vault or firmament.

In this earth centric model of the universe, the outer most layer of the onion, as in the above picture, was firmament.

The ancient Hebrews, like all the ancient peoples of the Near East, believed the sky was a solid dome, the firmament, with the Sun, Moon, planets and stars embedded in it.^[5]

The idea is very much present in the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible. Here it is from the King James Bible:

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. (Genesis 1: 6-8)

Around the 4th to 3rd centuries BCE the Greeks, under the influence of Aristotle who argued that the heavens must be perfect and that a sphere was the perfect geometrical figure, exchanged this for a spherical Earth surrounded by solid spheres.

The model established by Aristotle became the dominant model in the Classical and Medieval world-view, and even when Copernicus placed the Sun at the center of the system he included an outer sphere that held the stars (and by having the earth rotate daily on its axis it allowed the firmament to be completely stationary). Tycho Brahe‘s studies of the nova of 1572 and the Comet of 1577 were the first major challenges to the idea that orbs existed as solid, incorruptible, material objects,^[6] and in 1584 Giordano Bruno proposed a cosmology without a firmament: an infinite universe in which the stars are actually suns with their own planetary systems.^[7] After Galileo began using a telescope to examine the sky it became harder to argue that the heavens were perfect, as Aristotelian philosophy required, and by 1630 the concept of solid orbs was no longer dominant.^[6]

The Quran talks about the expanding universe in 7th century. So, there is hardly a human explanation for this. Can it be word of Muhammad or one of his helpers?

This reminds me of the opening verses of the Surah Furqan:

Exalted is He who has sent the Differentiator down to His servant so that it may be a warning to all people. It is He who has control over the heavens and earth and has no offspring––no one shares control with Him––and who created all things and made them to an exact measure. Yet the disbelievers take as their gods things beneath Him that create nothing, and are themselves created, that can neither harm nor help themselves, and have no control over death, life, or resurrection.
The disbelievers say, ‘This can only be a lie he has forged with the help of others’––they themselves have done great wrong and told lies––and they say, ‘It is just ancient fables, which he has had written down: they are dictated to him morning and evening.’ Say, ‘It was sent down by Him who knows the secrets of the heavens and earth. He is all forgiving, all merciful. (Al Quran 25:1-6)

In the present day cosmology there is an amazing proof for a Creator, in the fine tuning of our universe. I have presented it in some detail before: Fine Tuning or the Multiverse Theory: The Best Evidence for the Creator God.

Nevertheless, a great majority of scientists, especially the physicists today continue to be atheists. How could so many, with such amazing intellect, be wrong and theists right? Today, I learnt a rather simple explanation. As humans we arrive at every thing with a prior prejudice or probability and invariably our conclusions are the same as our starting positions.

So, if such powerful evidence as fine tuning fails to convert the agnostic or atheist scientists, I have no delusion that non-Muslims are going to read this article and agree with my position. Most will still be able to maintain their prior position that the Quran is the word of Muhammad.

They can have dozens of possible ways to maintain their ideas and if need be to change the subject: why is there never peace in the Middle East? Why does the Quran talk about slavery or allow polygamy? Why are there blasphemy laws in many of the so called Muslim countries? Why are there very little women rights in Islam? Shall I go on?

I cannot convince the skeptic through one article, especially if he or she is coming from non-Muslim background. I can merely suggest some more reading materials here:

If the Atheists and the Christians Debate, Islam Wins!

Video: With Robert Kuhn and John Polkinghorn: If Christians, Jews and Atheists Debate, Islam Wins?

Happy birthday of Shree Ram and How can Hindus think like a Muslim or a Jew, despite the mention of 330 million gods?

We are all living in the Womb of God-the-Mother, 13.8 billion Years Pregnancy