Quick question. Claim of Quranic prediction.

[Abooga]

I read in a muslim forum that:

"Modern science has only recently proven that the water covers 71.111% of the earth, while the land covers 28.889%. "

and the number of times that those words appear in the Quram:

Sea 32 , Land 13
Sea + land = 32 + 13= 45
Sea = 32/45*100q.=71.11111111%
Land = 13/45*100 = 28.88888889%
Sea + land 100.00%



So, is this B.S.? (Well, obviously... I just want someone to tell me why and same me the hassle... Please)

Some more of these "coincidences" or whatever they are:

Dunia (one name for life) 115 .
Aakhirat (one name for the life after this world) 115
Malaika (Angels) 88 . Shayteen (Satan) 88
Life 145. Death 145
Benefit 50. Corrupt 50
People 50. Messengers 50
Eblees (king of devils) 11. Seek refuge from Eblees 11
Museebah (calamity) 75. Thanks ! 75
Spending (Sadaqah) 73. Satisfaction 73
People who are mislead 17.D Dead people 17
Muslimeen 41 .J Jihad 41
Gold 8 .E Easy life 8
Magic 60 .F Fitnah (dissuasion, misleading) ! 60
Zakat (Taxes Muslims pay to the poor) 32 ....
Barakah (Increasing or blessings of wealth) 32
Mind 49 .N Noor 49
Tongue 25 .S Sermon 25
Desite 8 .F Fear 8
Speaking publicly 18 .P Publicising 18
Hardship 114 .... Patience 114
Muhammed 4 .S Sharee'ah ( Muhammed's teachings) 4
Man 24 . Woman 24

[scotth]

I count 44 or so references to Sea.
There are more than 100 references to Land

I'd say total BS from the word go.

ETA: I am using an english translation.... But 'Land' appears over 100 times...

[SimonD]

Just pattens in the chaos, as it has been and will be forever more.

I hope that DJJ doesn't find this tread :)

[Ladewig]

"Modern science has only recently proven that the water covers 71.111% of the earth, while the land covers 28.889%. "


This figure is so "recently-proven" that it doesn't appear in any scientific website that I can find.

I wonder how long it will take for modern science to catch up to Islamic scholars?

. . . . . . . .

As for the other statistics, if you are allowed to use synonyms, antonyms, one item being the subset of the other, and one item having no clear relationship to the other, then you can find a lot of "coincidences."

[Par]

Even if the numbers were correct, its still appears to be a fairly typical example numerological nonsense. It looks a poor man’s Bible Code.

[scotth]

This figure is so "recently-proven" that it doesn't appear in any scientific website that I can find.

71% of the earth IS covered in water. That is in fact accurate.

I don't know about the .11111 part... but 71% I'll grant. But Quranic ratio of Sea and Land is something like 35% Sea and 65% Land. Not even in the ball park.

[Earthborn]

So, is this B.S.? (Well, obviously... I just want someone to tell me why and same me the hassle... Please)First of all, I don't think it is known how much surface of Earth is covered with such a precision. Because of the tides, melting of ice in summer and other causes, it does not stay the same. And when one is talking about such a precision, it quickly becomes problematic exactly what the definitions of "sea" and "land" exactly are.

A very common precise number that is given for sea coverage 71%, which in good scientific usage of numbers means: between 70.5% and 71.5%. It is probably just an average. Still, if the Quran mentions the numbers 32 en 13 as the proportion between sea and land, that would have been amazingly accurate.

But instead it is claimed that it is the number times the words "sea" and "land" appear in the Quran reflects this proportion. While I am sure there are translation issues, I tried to verify this with this online Quran (http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/searchquran.html). I found 40 mentions of the word "sea", and 145 mentions of the word "land". I think the claimant should specify more clearly which words in the original Arabic appear in the 32/13 proportion.

[scotth]

I checked Man and Woman... Man - over 100 references, Woman a paltry 18.

[Ladewig]

71% of the earth IS covered in water. That is in fact accurate.

I don't know about the .11111 part... but 71% I'll grant.

I was pointing out the .1111 part is not related to any scientific source. As for the 71 part - it is rather misleading to say that number was only recently proven.

[Earthborn]

A bit of searching and I found the original source (http://www.islamawareness.net/Miq/stat.html) for the claims, including what original Arabic words were used.

[Fnord]

This figure is so "recently-proven" that it doesn't appear in any scientific website that I can find.
I wonder how long it will take for modern science to catch up to Islamic scholars?

When the scientist all start having children by their first cousins.

[ChristineR]

If Arabic is at all like English there are many words for water and even more words for dirt. So if I wanted a certain ratio of these words I could pick and choose from terms like sea, water, wave, ocean, lake, and earth, soil, land, etc. until I got the right ratio. Note that you can cheat by comparing (sea+ocean+water) to earth. Some of the examples appear to be cheating in this way.

If I couldn't get the right ratio, I could always pick some other interesting number, like the depth of the deepest ocean and the height of the highest mountain.

Repeat this over and over and over again, and pick the coolest coincidences and publish them on a website. You can do it with any large text, not just the Quran.

[The Mad Hatter]

I was pointing out the .1111 part is not related to any scientific source. As for the 71 part - it is rather misleading to say that number was only recently proven.

According to this site (http://www.oceansatlas.org/unatlas/about/physicalandchemicalproperties/background/seemore1.html), it's 70.8% water, and 29.2% land. I don't know where they got the .111. I wonder what the ratio was 2000 years ago. Maybe the .311% was lost when Atlantis was flooded...

[osmosis]

Be careful showing skepticism of an Islamist's claims and the mighty Q'ran. Make sure there's absolutely NO WAY for them to find out who you are, or you just might end up dead.

[JoeTheJuggler]

Even if the numbers did line up right, this is still NOT a prediction.

First, it's in a sort of word frequency code and not in the text itself. (If someone had deciphered the code and articulated a prediction before the event predicted, you might have something.)

Second, the ratio of land to seas isn't really an event. ("Predict" means literally "said before".) I would bet that in the time of Mohammed, sea-faring (and mercantile) cultures would be able to make a guess that might be about right just based on the world they knew. So even if a statement such as "The surface of the Earth is about 71% sea," at best you'd call it a good estimate (at worst, a lucky guess). Still, we know the surface of the Earth has land and sea, so it wouldn't take a prophet to give a guess as to their areas relative to the whole.

[UnrepentantSinner]

Be careful showing skepticism of an Islamist's claims and the mighty Q'ran. Make sure there's absolutely NO WAY for them to find out who you are, or you just might end up dead.

I once had a Muslim woman in a chat room try and evagnelize me with some Koranic offal about what was under the Oceans and how there were 4 women for every man because Allah ordained polygamy and I told her she was full of it. Eventually she offered to come cook and clean for me if I would let her evangelize me.

You mean she was secretly going to cut my head off while I slept? :rolleyes:

[skeptigirl]

According to this site (http://www.oceansatlas.org/unatlas/about/physicalandchemicalproperties/background/seemore1.html), it's 70.8% water, and 29.2% land. I don't know where they got the .111. I wonder what the ratio was 2000 years ago. Maybe the .311% was lost when Atlantis was flooded...
The .111 came from the self delusional claims on the site Earthborn found (http://www.islamawareness.net/Miq/stat.html).

Word/ Meaning Mentioned in the Quran
Al-bahar Sea 32
Al-bar Land 13

If we add up the total words of both "sea" and "land" we get 45. Now if we do a simple calculation:
32/45 X 100% = 71.11111111%
13/45 X 100% = 28.88888888%

Above is what we know today, the percentages of Water (Sea) and Land in the world. Yet another miracle in the Quran. It really is hard to take someone seriously who thinks it's a miracle that a bunch of related words are supposedly found in equal numbers in the Quran.

Examples:Word/ Meaning Mentioned in the Quran
Al-Rajul (Man) 24
Al-Mar'ha (Women) 24

Word/ Meaning Mentioned in the Quran
Benefi't 50 . Corrupt 50
Word/ Meaning Mentioned in the Quran
People 50 .. Messengers 50 Maybe they were referring to the specific words for man and woman here, scotth.

But this claim you know is nuts:Dr.Tarig Al Swaidan discovered some verses in the Holy Qur'an that mention one thing is equal to another, i.e. men are equal to women.

Although this makes sense grammatically, the astonishing fact is that the number of times the word man appears in the Qur'an is 24 and number of times the word woman appears is also 24, therefore not only is this phrase correct in the grammatical sense but also true mathematically, i.e. 24 = 24.

[osmosis]

I once had a Muslim woman in a chat room try and evagnelize me with some Koranic offal about what was under the Oceans and how there were 4 women for every man because Allah ordained polygamy and I told her she was full of it. Eventually she offered to come cook and clean for me if I would let her evangelize me.

You mean she was secretly going to cut my head off while I slept? :rolleyes:

lol no, probably not, if only because it was a woman. A lot of those Muslims are very touchy about their religion, especially when it comes to what they perceive as mockery of it. "Perceive" being the operative word here.

People have been threatened and murdered over perceived insults to Islam, especially when those supposed insults were made publicly.

[Jackalgirl]

I once had a Muslim woman in a chat room try and evagnelize me with some Koranic offal about what was under the Oceans and how there were 4 women for every man because Allah ordained polygamy and I told her she was full of it. Eventually she offered to come cook and clean for me if I would let her evangelize me.

You mean she was secretly going to cut my head off while I slept? :rolleyes:

A chat room? Are you sure it was a woman? ; )

[UnrepentantSinner]

A chat room? Are you sure it was a woman? ; )

She told me if I converted I could marry her and her sister. I don't figure any guy would come up with something that kink.... wait a minute. :)

[wahrheit]

She told me if I converted I could marry her and her sister. I don't figure any guy would come up with something that kink.... wait a minute. :)

You know half a dozen guys from this forum alone who would come up with stuff like that. Not to mention yourself. :newlol

[Bunk]

I checked Man and Woman... Man - over 100 references, Woman a paltry 18.

You forgot the 72 virgins.

[osmosis]

You forgot the 72 virgins.

That'd keep me pretty happy.. for about a week. And that's without viagra.

[Jackalgirl]

You forgot the 72 virgins.

If I understand it correctly (and I could just possibly be talking completely out of my rear here), the 72 "virgins" aren't actually women. They're a type of djinn, or something, that are "pure" -- that is, not human. Calling Captain Kirk! ; )

[wahrheit]

If I understand it correctly (and I could just possibly be talking completely out of my rear here), the 72 "virgins" aren't actually women. They're a type of djinn, or something, that are "pure" -- that is, not human. Calling Captain Kirk! ; )

It seems the 72 virgins are, for all intents and purposes, nothing but blow up dolls. What a letdown!

[skeptigirl]

If you boys think sex with virgins would be great, perhaps you haven't had that experience yet?

[osmosis]

If you boys think sex with virgins would be great, perhaps you haven't had that experience yet?

You're right. I've been with.. hmm let's see.. Four by my count, and only once was it what I would call "good sex". By some remarkable coincidence, that was the only one of the four that I actually loved.

the 72 "virgins" aren't actually women. They're a type of djinn, or something, that are "pure" -- that is, not human.

Now THAT is some serious kink right there. The Quran is sounding better and better.. lol

[Fnord]

It was explained to me that the 72 virgins are perpetual virgins. That is, no matter how many times they have sex, they always remain chaste, intact, and pure. Alahu Akbar!

Y'know, sorta like Jesus' mom.

"Honey, of course I'm still a virgin! Now run along and play with your brother James..."

[slyjoe]

Darn - I thought they were harmonica virgins.