There are many biased sites in the media promoting the idea that the Qur’an contains clear scientific errors and thus cannot be the word of God. Here, I will respond to the most famous ones I have heard.
1. Semen coming from between the backbone and the ribs is not a scientific error because the word ṣulb in Arabic means the entire spinal column, from the cervical to the coccyx vertebrae, not just the thoracic vertebrae. When someone hears “from between the backbone and the ribs,” this statement won’t mean the ribcage area itself unless one interprets ṣulb as meaning the thoracic vertebrae only, which is wrong.
And in the context of progeny, reproduction, and male sexual strength, the part of the ṣulb that was commonly associated with this was the lower backbone (the loins), not the cervical and thoracic vertebrae, but the lumbar, sacral, and coccygeal regions. What lies between the lower back and the ribs is therefore the abdominopelvic cavity, and semen does exit the body from there.
The pronoun in the verb “proceeding” can refer to the human being, not to semen, because the entire context of the verse is about the human being: let man observe from what he was created; the man was created from gushing fluid; the man proceeds from between the backbone and ribs; God is able to return man back to life.
It is true that the pronoun should refer to the nearest subject, but this is only true if you don’t have contextual evidence for the contrary, and we have that. And, of course, at the end of pregnancy, the fetus is between the lower back and ribs in the abdominopelvic cavity.
2- Stars after earth.
You will never find a single verse in the Qur’an that says the stars were formed after the earth. This indicates only complete ignorance of the Arabic language.
See, for example, I will translate exactly like the Arabic text, the original language of the Qur’an. I am Egyptian and know Arabic well, and you can check it yourself because most misunderstandings come from wrong translations. Here we go:
“Ask ˹them, O Prophet˺, ‘How can you disbelieve in the One Who created the earth in two Days? And how can you set up equals with Him? That is the Lord of all worlds. And He placed on the earth firmly set mountains over its surface, and He blessed it and determined therein its [creatures’] sustenance in four days without distinction, for [the information] of those who ask. Then He directed Himself to the heaven while it was smoke and said to it and to the earth, “Come [into being], willingly or by compulsion.” They said, “We have come willingly.” And He completed them as seven heavens within two days and inspired in each heaven its command. And We adorned the nearest heaven with lamps and as protection. That is the determination of the Exalted in Might, the Knowing.’”
This cannot in any way be understood as stars being “created” before the earth. This is complete ignorance of the Arabic language. The verses, as they are, without resorting to any metaphorical gymnastics like saying thumma doesn’t mean chronological order sometimes, cannot mean this. It is true that thumma doesn’t always indicate chronological order, but there must be a valid linugistic or contextual reason to do so, not just decide to do so to avoid an error.
Literally, it reads: God created the earth in two days, put mountains and sustenance for creation on it in four days, and then directed Himself to a smoky heaven and “completed” “them” as seven heavens. After the act of completion came a linguistic clarification of what happened after that completion: each sky has its order and the lowest heaven was “adorned” with stars, because wa in Arabic does not indicate chronological order.
Focus on (complete), (them) and (adorned). There is no creation here. The earth was already created when the seven smoky heavens were already there, and only the act of completion of those seven is what took place after the creation of the earth, its mountains, and sustenance for its creatures.
Heaven here is ism jins for the seven heavens that are already there in an unfinished form, only because the verse says He “completed them,” not “it.” So the seven heavens already existed as a plurality when the earth formed, just in an unfinished form.
And even when you look at the subsequent clarification, it doesn’t say, “And We created stars in the lowest heaven.” It says, “And We adorned or decorated the lowest sky with stars,” which implicitly means the stars were already there in the seven smoky heavens, not created here. When you say, “I adorned or decorated my home with decoration,” all humans will understand that the decoration was already created and there, and was just put in its intended place.
So smoke cannot mean the absence of all structures because the verse already says the seven heavens were already there in an unfinished form when the earth formed. So smoke is the dominant condition that was prevailing throughout the entire cosmos.
And what makes this reading more convincing is that the Qur’an elsewhere says:
“Are you a harder creation or is the heaven He constructed? He raised its ceiling and proportioned it, and darkened its night and brought forth its light. And the earth, after that, He spread it. He brought forth from it its water and its pasture, and the mountains He firmly set. As provision for you and your livestock.”
So the single heaven that He then turned into seven heavens was already there, constructed, raised, darkened, and had lights therein before making the earth habitable.
And it is true that when you read these verses, you will understand that the earth was already there, created as uninhabitable rock, because the verse doesn’t say, “And after that He created the earth,” but it says “spread it.”
But by combining it with the above verses that say the earth formed when the seven heavens were already there but unfinished, then you have reason now to think that the earth was not there when the singular sky was constructed, raised, darkened, and had lights therein. Then it became there after that heaven split into seven domains as inhabitable rock then it was made habitable before finishing and perfecting those existing seven heavens.
Also, the verse that says:
“It is He Who created for you all things that are on earth; Moreover His design comprehended the heavens, for He gave order and perfection to the seven firmaments; and of all things He hath perfect knowledge.”
This verse also doesn’t say what skeptics want it to say. It affirms the above verses: the earth was created when the seven heavens were already there but just not fully perfected, and the perfection of them happened after finishing the earth, not the creation or making them seven here, as so many wrong translations say. The word used in Arabic is فَسَوَّاهُنَّ, which means “perfected/proportioned,” not “made.” “Made” in Arabic is جَعَلَ, not سَوَّى.
Al-Tabari says in the interpretation of this verse:
“If someone were to say to us: ‘You have said that God, Glorious and Exalted is He, turned toward the heaven while it was smoke, before He proportioned it into seven heavens, and then He proportioned it into seven after turning toward it. So why does the verse say فَسَوَّاهُنَّ ‘He proportioned them’ using the plural, rather than فَسَوَّاهَا ‘He proportioned it’ using the singular?
It would be said: ‘They were already seven, but they had not yet been proportioned as seven.’
3. Skeptics claim that the Qur’an supports the solid dome myth because it describes the sky as having “no fissures,” asks whether you can see any cracks, and says “when the sky is split apart,” “when the sky is cleft asunder,” and describes it as “a raised ceiling.”
But when you read these verses, you find that they make the description from a human perspective only.
God says, “Do they not look at the sky above them, how We built it and adorned it, and how it has no fissures?”
And He says, “Then look again. Do you see any cracks? Then look again and again. Your sight will return to you humbled and weary.”
And He says, “Do they not look at the camels, how they were created, and at the sky, how it was raised?”
So He speaks from two perspectives: a human perspective and a real perspective, and you know this from the sentences and expressions used, such as “Do they not look,” “look again,” and “look again and again,” and so on.
These expressions make the description clearly phenomenological, as it appears to any human observer who sees the sky above him, raised, smooth and even, and adorned with stars, without holes or defects. And this does not mean that it is necessarily something solid.
The Qur’an itself, in many verses, clearly contradicts the solid dome myth.
In the solid dome myth, the sky does not expand and is incapable of expanding beyond its current extent, while the Qur’an says, “And the heaven We built with strength, and indeed We are expanding it.”
In the interpretation of al Mawardi, it says, “And indeed We are expanding it” has five interpretations.
The first is that We are expanding in provision through rain, as al Hasan said.
The second is that We are expanding the heaven, as Ibn Zayd said.
The third is that We are capable of expanding it beyond the extent of the heaven.
This makes the sky dynamic and capable of expansion.
In the solid dome myth, there are solid supports holding up this solid dome, because this was the ancient primitive way of thinking, and they used to say that the mountains were what held up this solid dome.
Whereas the Qur’an clearly denies this and says, “He raised the heavens without pillars that you can see,” and “Who created the heavens without pillars that you can see.”
The sky is fundamentally created, and you see it raised without any visible solid supports, and this necessarily means that it is not a solid dome to begin with, because a solid dome cannot be raised without solid physical supports.
The denial of the existence of solid physical supports means the denial that the sky is something solid.
One cannot say that it is solid and that God suspends it miraculously, because the Qur’an is full of verses saying that the universe operates through the natural causes that God has ordained, rather than through continuous miracles.
If God had made the sky a solid dome, He would have boasted of the natural causes that He ordained to support and carry this solid dome, and He would not have denied them, as He does with the verses concerning the directing of the winds, the descent of rain, the creation of man from emitted fluid, and so forth.
In the solid dome myth, it is explicitly stated that the solid dome is made of crystal, bronze, iron, or glass, whereas the Qur’an does not explicitly mention any of these.
In the solid dome myth, celestial bodies such as the sun, moon, and stars do not move by themselves.
Rather, they are suspended in the solid dome, and the solid dome is what rotates and moves them.
Whereas the Qur’an says that the sun, moon, and stars swim and run through the heaven, meaning that they move with active, positive motion rather than passive motion.
“Each is swimming in an orbit.”
“So I swear by those that retreat, those that run their course and disappear.”
Swimming and running are active movements.
There is no person, for example, who remains stationary in his place while something else carries him and runs with him, and then describes himself as the one who is running and swimming.
And among this is the statement of al Hasan al Basri in his interpretation.
“The sun, moon, and stars are in an orbit between the heaven and the earth, not attached to it, and had they been attached to it, they would not have moved.”
In the solid dome myth, it is not mentioned that the sky is dynamic and capable of being easily folded like scrolls.
“On the Day We will fold up the heaven like the folding of a scroll for writings.”
“And the heavens will be folded up in His right hand.”
Nor is it mentioned that it has the capacity for oscillatory vibration like waves.
“On the Day the heaven will undualte heavily.”
In the solid dome myth, when a solid dome cracks, it would be expected to break into fragments or small pieces that fall onto the earth.
Whereas the Qur’an says that when the sky splits, it will become “a rose like substance,” or “like molten metal,” or that it will split with clouds.
“On the Day the sky will split open with the clouds, and the angels will be sent down in succession.”
Could an ancient Bedouin mind conceive that a solid iron or bronze dome could be split open by a cloud and then write such a verse?
This means that the splitting and cleaving of the sky does not mean the occurrence of cracks and fractures in a solid roof.
Rather, it is splitting in the sense of the system being disrupted and changing into new states different from the state that merely appears to us as a smooth, even, continuous surface without defects, cracks, or holes.
Incidentally, no rational person says that cracks and fissures exist only in solid objects.
The Qur’an itself says:
“So We inspired Moses, ‘Strike the sea with your staff.’ Then it split, and each part became like a great mountain.”
Here, splitting is used with a liquid, namely seawater.
Thus, the language of splitting, cracking, and cleaving is not fundamentally restricted to solid objects.
It may be that spacetime, which we see, is itself made of something non solid that is also capable of being split and fractured.
Spacetime itself is described in general relativity as a smooth, continuous manifold without discontinuities.
Perhaps the splitting or cleaving of the sky refers to the occurrence of discontinuities, or holes and cracks, in this smooth, continuous fabric, so that what appears to the eye is itself the reality of things.
Only the verse remains that says that God holds the sky from falling upon the earth.
To respond to it and understand what is meant, we must refer back to other Qur’anic verses.
By returning to the Qur’an itself, we understand from God’s speech the meaning of holding the sky from falling upon the earth, which is that God holds what is in the sky from falling upon the earth, rather than that the sky itself is a solid dome that will fall upon the earth.
The evidence for this is God’s saying:
“Or cause the sky to fall upon us in fragments, as you claim.”
“So bring down upon us fragments from the sky.”
“Or cause fragments of the sky to fall upon them.”
“And if they were to see a fragment of the sky falling, they would say, ‘Clouds piled up.’”
“So We sent upon them a punishment from the sky.”
“And We rained upon them stones of baked clay.”
This is the meaning of the falling of the sky.
God holds what is in the sky from falling upon the earth.
His punishment of the deniers and immoral people is to send down upon them a punishment from the sky.
It is not that the sky is like a solid dome collapsing into flying fragments across the earth.
Rather, He says “He holds the sky” because this is a rhetorical expression and a known metaphor in the Arabic language.
Instead of telling you, “He holds the meteors, lightning bolts, heavy rain, asteroids, deadly cosmic rays, and so on,” He summarizes all of them under the word “sky,” because sky in all Arabic dictionaries means everything that is above you, and not merely the blue surface that you see above you.
The Qur’an itself calls clouds and rain sky.
“He sends the sky upon you in abundant rain.”
And it calls the roof of a house sky.
“Let him extend a rope to the sky and then cut it.”
And it calls the atmosphere or air of the earth sky.
“Its root is firm, and its branches are in the sky.”
This is abundant in the poetry of the Arabs and in their speech.
As the poet says:
“When the sky descends upon the land of a people, we graze upon it, even if they are angry". Here, sky means rain.
And al Jawhari says in al Sihah:
“And the sky is the back of a horse, because of its elevation and height.”
And Ibn Manzur says in Lisan al Arab:
“Grass is also called sky because it comes from the sky, which is rain.”
Thus, what comes from the sky may correctly be called sky in the speech of the Arabs.
Everything the skeptic does is separate the Qur’anic verses from one another and ignore the context, and impose ancient myths upon the language of the Qur’an, rather than judging the Qur’an by the Qur’an and by the language of the Arabs