The Fallacies of Religious Clerics by N. Fakhr - HTML preview
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Miracles
Religions that claim to come from God—or from gods with supernatural powers—often present miracles as some of the strongest evidence that their religion is true.
The most important examples are usually miracles attributed to the prophets. In some religions, supernatural acts attributed to saints or other holy figures are also offered as evidence.
Believers and religious clerics may add another kind of evidence: answered prayers. They may believe that a prayer to God was answered, or that a request made through a holy figure of their religion was fulfilled. Such events may also be taken as evidence that their religion is truly from God.
All these claims have something important in common.
They involve events believed to go beyond the ordinary laws of nature. And whether directly or indirectly, their ultimate source is believed to be the God—or gods—of that religion.
For this reason, we will examine all of them together in this section.
Miracles of the Prophets
Throughout our lives, we learn that similar causes, under similar conditions, produce similar effects.
Whenever we light a match, it produces a hot flame. If we put a finger into that flame, it burns.
By studying such regularities much more carefully, scientists have formulated what we call the laws of nature or scientific laws.
If we combine hydrogen and oxygen under the same specified conditions again and again, we expect the same result: water.
But how many natural events have we experienced during our lives?
Thousands? Millions?
In reality, the number is vastly greater.
Consider something as ordinary as starting a car. Even if we look only at what happens at the atomic level, an enormous number of physical events take place in a very short period of time. The materials and fluids inside the engine have their expected properties because countless physical processes occur in regular ways. The engine works because all these processes follow the patterns described by the laws of physics.
If we seriously believed that these regularities could suddenly disappear at any moment, we would not dare drive a car at 120 kilometers per hour.
So throughout our lives, directly or indirectly, we encounter an enormous number of natural events that behave according to familiar natural laws.
Now suppose someone asks:
“Have you ever seen something truly violate these laws?”
I would answer:
“No.”
But what if they ask:
“Could it happen?”
Could I light a match today that has the same properties as yesterday’s match, under the same conditions, and yet this time its flame does not burn my finger?
The most philosophically careful answer is:
Yes, it is possible.
Our repeated observations do not logically prove that the laws of nature can never be violated. Observing the same pattern again and again does not allow us to say with absolute certainty that no exception could ever occur.
But repeated experience does give us extremely strong reasons to expect the same patterns to continue.
That is why we rely on the laws of nature.
We design cars according to them. We build bridges according to them. We use medicines according to them. And we make countless everyday decisions on the assumption that the regularities we have observed will continue.
So although we cannot assign a precise probability to an unknown violation of natural law simply by counting past observations, we can say something much more modest—and much more important:
Our experience gives us overwhelming reason to begin with explanations that are consistent with the natural regularities we already know.
What Probability Can—and Cannot—Tell Us
Consider a simple example.
Suppose you toss a coin one hundred times and one side comes up fifty-three times.
In that particular experiment, the observed frequency of that result is 53 percent.
If we repeat the experiment many more times, we gain more evidence about the probability of the possible outcomes.
But there is an important difference between this example and a supposed violation of natural law.
With a coin, we have a clearly defined event that can be repeated under similar conditions. We can count the outcomes and estimate their probabilities.
A supposed violation of the laws of nature is different.
If we have never clearly observed such an event, we cannot simply say:
“We have observed one billion ordinary events, so the probability of a violation must be less than one in a billion.”
That would give a precise number where our evidence does not justify one.
But we do not need such a number.
What matters is that we have an enormous body of experience with ordinary physical causes, while we do not have a comparable body of established experience with genuine violations of natural laws.
This gives us a rational way to decide which explanations to investigate first.
The Car That Will Not Start
Suppose one morning my car does not start.
A mechanic comes to examine it.
I tell him:
“Perhaps the laws of physics have been violated, and that is why my car will not start.”
If the mechanic also has a philosophical mind, he does not need to say:
“That is absolutely impossible.”
He can simply say:
“There are other explanations for which we have far more evidence.”
Perhaps there is a problem with the fuel system.
Perhaps the battery is dead.
Perhaps there is a problem with the electrical system.
The mechanic has encountered these kinds of failures many times. They are well-known causes of cars failing to start, and all of them occur within the ordinary laws of physics.
By contrast, he has no established experience showing that cars sometimes fail to start because the laws of physics suddenly stop working.
So what should he do?
He should begin with the explanations that already have strong support from experience.
First he may check the battery, the fuel system, or the electrical system. If those explanations fail, he continues investigating other possible causes.
The rational approach is to investigate explanations supported by experience before turning to an explanation that requires us to abandon what an enormous body of experience has taught us.
The Detective
The same principle applies to a detective.
Suppose someone is found murdered.
You tell the detective:
“A supernatural being killed this person.”
The detective does not need to prove that supernatural involvement is absolutely impossible.
But would it be irrational for the detective to begin by looking for a human murderer?
Of course not.
The detective knows that people kill other people. There is an enormous body of evidence for this.
The detective also knows about accidents, poisons, diseases, weapons, and many other natural causes of death.
So these are investigated first.
If one explanation fails, another is examined.
No one accuses the detective of being narrow-minded because they do not begin the investigation by searching for a supernatural being.
Rejecting a supernatural explanation as the first explanation is not the same as claiming that a supernatural explanation is logically impossible.
It simply means that we begin with explanations for which we already have stronger evidence.
What If We See Something Extraordinary?
Now suppose someone performs an astonishing act in front of me.
For example, he holds an extremely hot piece of metal in his hand and tells me:
“I can do this because I am violating the laws of nature.”
How should I respond?
I have seen people deceive the senses through tricks and illusions.
I know that human perception can be mistaken.
I know that I may not understand everything about the physical situation in front of me.
Perhaps the metal is not as hot as I think.
Perhaps something is protecting the person’s hand.
Perhaps I have misunderstood what I am seeing.
Perhaps it is a trick whose method I do not know.
These are all possibilities for which we already have examples in human experience.
By contrast, I do not have the same established experience of people genuinely suspending the laws of nature.
So which explanation should I investigate first?
The trick?
An error of perception?
Some physical fact I do not know?
Or an actual violation of the laws of nature?
It is rational to examine the first possibilities before accepting the last one.
Not knowing how something was done is not the same as knowing that it was supernatural.
This does not prove that a supernatural event can never happen.
It simply means that an extraordinary appearance is not, by itself, enough to establish an extraordinary explanation.
Miracles We Did Not See
Now the problem becomes even more difficult.
Suppose I did not see the extraordinary event at all.
It supposedly happened hundreds or thousands of years ago.
Why would I, as a religious cleric or believer, tell my child that a person in the distant past performed a supernatural act called a miracle and that my child must believe it?
Human beings can lie.
But deliberate lying is not even the only alternative.
People can misunderstand what they see.
They can remember events incorrectly.
Stories can become exaggerated.
Details can change as stories are passed from one person to another and from one generation to the next.
A person can sincerely report something that did not actually happen in the way they understood it.
None of these possibilities proves that the miracle did not happen.
But they are possibilities that we already know occur in the real world.
So why should the supernatural explanation automatically be preferred to all of them?
And why would I tell my child that failure to believe this story could lead to punishment in a burning hell?
God, according to my religion, knows that my child did not witness the miracle.
He would also know that even if my child had witnessed something extraordinary, immediately concluding that it was supernatural would not necessarily be the most rational response.
If God created our capacity for logic and reasoning, and if He created a world in which natural events display extraordinary regularity, why would He expect my child to abandon that method of reasoning when confronted with a religious claim?
And why would He punish my child eternally for refusing to do so?
How a Child Learns to Believe in Miracles
When my child is very young, before learning much about logic or probability, they may believe such a miracle simply because they trust me and the other adults around them.
A child learns that certain people want what is best for them.
Parents, grandparents, teachers, religious clerics, and trusted sources such as television may all appear reliable.
The child also has experiences that strengthen this trust.
An adult says:
“Do not touch your eye with your dirty hand. You may get an infection.”
Perhaps the child ignores the warning and becomes ill.
Experiences like this teach the child that adults often know things that the child does not know.
Then these same trusted people say:
“You should believe in the prophet of our religion because he performed this miracle.”
They may also say that wise and pure-hearted people saw the miracle and immediately believed, while foolish, stubborn, or corrupt people doubted it.
The child gradually learns that this is what rational belief looks like.
One day, a respected adult asks:
“Why do you believe?”
And the child answers:
“Because I heard that the prophet performed this miracle.”
The adults praise the answer.
Something important has now happened.
The child has received not only a belief, but also a method for deciding what counts as a good reason to believe.
That method may remain with them for the rest of their life.
What Happens When the Child Grows Up?
Years later, that child may become a mechanic like the one in our earlier example.
Or perhaps a detective.
They may understand perfectly well that when several explanations are available, we should normally begin with those that have stronger support from experience.
They may become a doctor, engineer, or physicist and gain a deep understanding of the laws of nature.
They may even become a philosopher and learn to examine claims carefully and logically.
Yet they may never apply that same method to the miracle on which their own religious belief partly rests.
If I am a believer, I may readily accept every miracle attributed to my religion, my prophet, or the prophets recognized by my religion.
But what about miracles and supernatural acts claimed by religions that my own religion considers false?
I may immediately describe them as lies, tricks, exaggerations, or false claims.
But is there a logical difference between their miracles and mine?
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that supernatural events have been reported by witnesses in both religions.
Why should I search for tricks, mistakes, and exaggerations in their miracles, but not in mine?
How Might a Religious Cleric Respond?
Now suppose I am a religious cleric.
How might I deal with this problem?
As I mentioned earlier, I may first make disbelief itself appear foolish or shameful.
I may describe the person who doubts the miracle as stubborn, foolish, corrupt, hard-hearted, or spiritually diseased.
I may not be doing this as a deliberate strategy.
I may sincerely believe these things about doubters because the same ideas were taught to me when I was young.
In effect, I may be doing to another person’s mind what was once done to mine:
I make immediate belief appear intelligent and virtuous, while doubt appears foolish or morally defective.
But suppose the questioner is not troubled by these labels.
They say:
“I did not see those miracles myself. But if I had seen them, I would have believed.”
As a cleric, I might answer:
“Many people did see them. They testified to what they saw. Some of them did not believe the prophet at first. They asked him for a miracle, he showed them one, and the pure-hearted among them believed.”
This answer creates two problems.
The First Problem: Testimony
I have now based belief in a supernatural event on the testimony of people who lived in the past.
But how can either the questioner or I establish that those witnesses were telling the truth?
Even if they were completely sincere, how can we establish that they themselves were not mistaken or deceived?
And there is another problem.
If testimony from past witnesses is enough to establish a miracle in my religion, then I must be prepared to apply the same standard to miracles reported in religions I reject.
Suppose I am a Muslim cleric.
If my principle is:
“A miracle is believable because trustworthy people in the past testified that they witnessed it,”
then what should I say when followers of Shinto—or another religion—present historical testimony for their own miracles?
If I accept this standard when it supports Islam but reject it when it supports another religion, I have changed my standard simply to protect my belief.
A standard of evidence cannot be valid only when it leads to my religion.
The Second Problem: Who Chooses the Miracle?
There is another problem.
Suppose people ask a prophet for proof, but the prophet chooses the extraordinary act that he will perform.
The questioner may ask:
“If the person claiming to be a prophet is allowed to choose the miracle himself, what prevents a highly skilled magician from inventing a trick and then claiming to be a prophet?”
I may answer:
“No. The witnesses watched very carefully. There was no possibility of trickery. They were not fools.”
Or perhaps I say:
“The story of the miracle makes it clear that fraud was impossible.”
But this creates two further problems.
First, followers of other religions can say exactly the same thing.
Their witnesses were not fools either.
Their stories may also describe events in ways that appear to rule out ordinary tricks.
If this defense works for my religion, why should it not work for theirs?
Second, a story can itself contain invented or imaginative elements.
The fact that a story describes an event in a way that seems impossible to explain as a trick does not prove that every part of the story actually happened.
And one problem still remains:
The claimant himself chose the miracle.
Perhaps this even helps explain why some people in traditional miracle stories remained unconvinced after seeing extraordinary acts and instead accused the prophet of being a magician.
If someone today performed an astonishing act in front of us and then said:
“I am a prophet sent by God. Believe in me,”
many of us would probably suspect that person of being a magician, a trickster, or a liar.
And if we could not explain how the act was performed, that would not by itself prove that the laws of nature had actually been violated.
An unexplained event is not automatically a supernatural event.
What If People Choose the Miracle?
As a cleric, I might now answer:
“But there were cases in which people themselves asked my prophet for a particular miracle, and he performed exactly what they requested.”
This changes the discussion.
In fact, it makes an important principle even clearer.
What is the purpose of a miracle?
Presumably, it is to convince witnesses that a person who claims to be a prophet really has been sent by God.
And according to the religious understanding of miracles, the ultimate power behind the miracle is God.
A miracle is supposed to be an event that goes beyond the normal laws established by God. The prophet does not possess independent, unlimited power. God produces the miracle so that people will have reason to believe.
Now suppose people can ask a prophet for a particular miracle.
They might say:
“Split that mountain in two and then restore it exactly as it was.”
If the prophet does exactly that, the important power is not really the prophet’s. It is God’s.
And if God has unlimited power, there is no limit to the kinds of miracles people might request.
The purpose is to convince the person so that they can believe and, according to the religion, find salvation.
God does not need the person’s belief.
The person is the one who supposedly needs it.
Then Why Not Ask God Directly?
At this point, a person who is uncertain about religion can say:
“I am also one of God’s creatures.
What I have heard about this particular religion and the miracles of its prophet has not convinced me.
I do not think my lack of belief is stubbornness. I think it is reasonable.
But even if God considers me stubborn, He knows exactly what kind of miracle would overcome my stubbornness.
I am not my own enemy. If I saw a miracle that truly convinced me, why would I deliberately choose hell instead?
So let God show me the miracle that He knows would convince me.
If He does that and I still refuse to believe, then He may have a reason to blame me.”
As a cleric, I might respond:
“There must be an intermediary, such as a prophet.”
But this raises another question.
If God’s purpose is for this person to find the true religion and achieve salvation, why should the absence of a living prophet prevent an all-powerful God from achieving that purpose?
A Miracle That Causes No Harm
The questioner does not need to demand anything grand or destructive.
They do not need to say:
“Give me a huge amount of money.”
They do not need to ask God to dry up a river.
They could request something harmless and easily reversible.
For example:
“There is an empty bowl in front of me. Fill it instantly with lentils. Then make the lentils disappear and return everything to exactly the way it was before.”
The person could make similar harmless requests while asking God to guide them toward the true religion.
As a cleric, I might laugh because the example involves a bowl of lentils.
But why is it inherently more ridiculous than the miracles described in religious stories?
Either the principle of asking for a miracle is reasonable, or it is not. The object involved does not change the logic.
After all, I myself have already said that God sometimes performed miracles requested by people.
I might laugh again and say:
“Do you think this is a game? Is God supposed to perform a miracle whenever anyone asks? That is beneath God.”
But the critic can answer that this objection makes sense only if we imagine God too much like a human ruler.
A king may be extremely powerful, but his power is limited.
He cannot personally listen to every person in his kingdom. People must pass through officials and layers of hierarchy to reach him.
So it would indeed be unreasonable to expect a human king to respond personally to every citizen’s request.
But God is supposed to be different.
We are talking about unlimited power.
God is not supposed to be closer to one person merely because that person happened to live in a particular place or century.
We do not expect a human king to give equal personal attention to every human being. Nor do we expect a mother to feel maternal love toward every person in the world.
But we do expect God to be equally God to everyone.
This is not merely an emotional expectation about what God should be like. It also follows from the idea of God as the necessary being and the ultimate cause—an issue we will briefly return to when we discuss philosophical arguments for the existence of God.
Are There Still Miracles Today?
If, as a cleric, I take the question seriously rather than laughing at it, I may answer:
“God already knew this problem. He still shows miracles today.”
I may then point to supernatural acts attributed to saints or other holy people.
I may mention prayers that believers say were answered by God.
Or I may point to something that is claimed to be an enduring miracle.
In Islam, for example, I may point to the Quran.
Claims about supernatural acts and answered prayers raise the same basic problems we have already discussed when the person hearing about them did not witness them personally.
And even when someone witnesses an extraordinary event, the same problem remains if the person performing it chose the event themselves—or if the event was chosen by people who might have been cooperating with them.
So refusing to accept such a miracle immediately is not necessarily stubbornness or an unwillingness to believe.
The opposite may be true.
Immediate belief may be the less rational response.
If we imagine a Creator who established both the laws of nature and our capacity for logic and reasoning, an interesting question follows.
Would such a God punish the person who used those abilities carefully and refused to accept a miracle without sufficient evidence?
Or would the greater mistake be to abandon those abilities and believe too quickly?
There is, however, another category of claims.
Some people say that they themselves have directly experienced a miracle—for example, that they prayed for something concerning their own lives and their prayer was answered.
These people are not necessarily religious clerics.
But all human beings can reason fallaciously with themselves.
So near the end of our discussion of miracles, we will examine the kinds of fallacies that may arise in such personal experiences.
First, however, we will examine another claim:
Is the Quran itself a miracle?
Is the Quran a Miracle?
The Quran is considered a miracle for both its outward and its inward qualities.
Calling it a miracle means claiming that human beings could not have produced a book like it. Therefore, its source must be something beyond human beings—God, the Creator of the universe.
But in what ways is the Quran supposed to be beyond human ability?
Is the Style of the Quran Miraculous?
One reason often given is its style.
As a religious cleric, I may proudly say:
“The literary style and structure of my holy book are unique. Nothing else is like it.”
But someone who does not speak Arabic may ask:
“I do not understand Arabic. Why should I believe that its style is unique?”
Even if every Arabic-speaking Muslim agreed that the Quran has an unmatched style, that would not necessarily prove to this person that the Quran is a miracle.
After all, Muslims may be influenced by religious bias.
And there are also Arabic-speaking non-Muslims living in Muslim societies. They hear verses of the Quran in different ways, yet apparently they do not all experience its style as such an obvious miracle that they immediately convert to Islam.
A person who is uncertain may also point to the early history of Islam.
They may say that Muhammad publicly recited Quranic verses in Mecca for years, yet relatively few people accepted Islam during that period.
The person may admit:
“I cannot know whether those Arabic-speaking non-Muslims rejected the Quran because they were stubborn, or because they simply did not experience its style as miraculous.”
For that reason, they may say that the testimony of Arabic-speaking Muslims alone is not enough to establish that the Quranic style is a miracle.
As a cleric, I might answer:
“If you knew Arabic properly, you would understand why the style of the Quran is miraculous.”
The doubtful person may respond in two ways.
First: Why Should Understanding the Miracle Require Years of Language Study?
Before spending years learning Arabic simply to find out whether the Quran really has a unique style, the person may ask:
“Why would an all-knowing and all-powerful Creator make recognition of His miracle depend on learning a difficult foreign language?”
Learning another language can take years.
For some people, because of limited ability, lack of time, or the demands of life, it may be extremely difficult or even practically impossible.
Why should an Arabic speaker be able to recognize the supposed miracle immediately, while someone who does not know Arabic must spend years learning the language before being in a position to judge it?
And what if this person encounters another religion that makes a similar claim about a sacred book in another language?
Should they learn that language too?
And another one after that?
If a person must learn the original language of every sacred text before being able to judge whether its style is miraculous, a lifetime may not be enough.
They may die before reaching a conclusion.
Yet according to religions they did not accept—including Islam—they may still be judged as unbelievers.
Meanwhile, the person who happened to be born into the right language may have had a much easier path toward belief.
The critic may therefore ask:
“Why would God provide immediate miracles to people who lived at the time of a prophet, but make access to the evidence much more difficult for people living centuries later?”
Second: Unique Style Does Not Normally Mean Divine Origin
Now suppose the person does learn Arabic.
Suppose they eventually become convinced that the Quran has a unique literary style.
Would that prove that the Quran came from God?
The person may say:
“In my own language, I have encountered works whose style was also unique.”
When a writer creates a style unlike that of anyone else, we normally say:
“This writer was exceptionally talented.”
We may even call the person a genius.
We do not normally say:
“Therefore, God must have written this work.”
So why should a unique literary style lead to that conclusion in this particular case?
“But No One Has Been Able to Produce Anything Like It”
As a cleric, I may answer:
“Many people have tried to produce something like the Quran and failed. The Quran itself challenges people to do so. That is why it is a miracle.”
The doubtful person may respond:
When a writer creates a distinctive style, that writer naturally develops certain habits of expression.
They use particular words.
They combine those words in characteristic ways.
They express ideas through patterns that feel natural to them.
Now suppose another person is challenged to produce something “just like” that work.
What exactly counts as success?
If their sentences become too similar to the original, they may be accused of copying.
But if they use different wording or develop the style in their own way, they may be told:
“That is not really like the original.”
This creates a difficult standard.
If the imitation is too similar, it can be called copying. If it is different, it can be called failure.
So how can the challenge be judged fairly?
Who Decides Whether the Imitation Succeeded?
There is another problem.
Perhaps some experts in style would say that a later work comes very close to the style of the Quran.
But in a strongly religious Muslim society, how easy would it be for someone to announce publicly:
“I am going to produce a text in the style of the Quran”?
And if such a person did so, who would judge the result?
How many respected religious scholars would be willing to judge it completely without bias?
And if a judge concluded that the imitation had succeeded—or had at least come very close—might that judge be accused of hostility toward Islam?
Perhaps the person really would be hostile to Islam.
But that is not the main point.
The main problem is that an outside observer may find themselves surrounded by conflicting judgments.
Some judges may be influenced by religious loyalty.
Others may be influenced by hostility toward religion.
Others may be fair.
But how is the outsider supposed to know which is which?
So the problem is not simply:
“Has anyone ever produced something similar?”
There is another question:
“Who decides what counts as similar enough?”
If the standard depends heavily on subjective judgment, then the challenge becomes difficult to use as objective evidence for a miracle.
Unique Writers Are Not Unusual
The doubtful person may then make a more basic objection.
Even if no one has ever succeeded in perfectly reproducing a great writer’s style, that would not necessarily be extraordinary.
Many people have tried to write poetry like Hafez1 or other great literary figures.
They have not succeeded in producing something so similar that no one could distinguish their work from the original.
People have tried freely, without fear.
And literary critics have generally had no religious commitment to proving that no one could ever imitate those writers.
Yet no one concludes:
“Since no one can reproduce Hafez perfectly, his poetry must have come from God.”
A unique literary voice is impressive.
It may be evidence of extraordinary talent.
But by itself, it does not show that the source of the work is supernatural.
“But Muhammad Was Illiterate”
At this point, as a cleric, I may change the argument.
I may say:
“But this unique style came from an illiterate man. Which of the great literary works you mentioned was produced by someone who could not read or write?”
The person who doubts the miraculous nature of the Quran may answer:
What produces a literary work?
A person has a vocabulary.
They have ways of arranging words.
They have ideas they want to express.
And they have their own imagination, intelligence, and creativity.
A person does not need to learn every word through reading.
A large vocabulary can also be acquired through listening and conversation.
Likewise, a person can learn forms of expression by hearing other people speak.
Literacy can greatly expand someone’s exposure to language and literature, but it is not the only possible source of verbal ability.
People with greater natural talent may be able to create impressive works even without formal literacy.
Reading and education may increase the chances of producing a major literary work.
But the key factor is not literacy alone.
Talent and creativity also matter.
So even if a person could not read or write, an extraordinary verbal ability would not automatically require a supernatural explanation.
Oral cultures have produced major works of poetry and storytelling without depending on modern forms of literacy.
Therefore, the question remains:
Why should exceptional literary ability in an illiterate person lead directly to God rather than to exceptional human talent?
The Argument Changes Again
If I am a cleric who enjoys debate, I may now say:
“You are right that a literary work depends on vocabulary, arrangement, and meaning. But could an illiterate man have produced ideas of such depth?”
Then I may move beyond style.
I may say:
“Could an illiterate person produce a book without error or contradiction?”
“A book whose different parts support one another?”
“A book in which no falsehood can be found?”
“A book revealed over a period of twenty-three years, yet whose earliest and latest passages remain consistent?”
“A book in which, after fourteen centuries, no real error has been discovered?”
But notice what has happened.
We began with the claim:
“The style of the Quran is itself a miracle.”
Now the argument is no longer mainly about style.
We have moved to other claims:
the depth of its ideas,
the absence of contradiction,
the truth of its statements,
and the consistency of the book over time.
If these are the reasons that make the Quran miraculous, then they must be examined separately.
At this point, if I no longer offer an argument showing that the style itself is supernatural, I have effectively moved away from my original claim.
But as a religious cleric—or as any strongly biased person—I may not openly say:
“Perhaps my first argument was not enough.”
I may not even allow myself to think it clearly.
We have already discussed the psychological forces that can make such an admission difficult.
Some part of me may sense that continuing to defend the original claim could eventually force me to admit that I was mistaken.
And that admission may have consequences I do not want to face.
So instead of admitting that the argument about style has failed, I move the discussion somewhere else.
In this case, I move from the literary miracle of the Quran to its supposed miracle of meaning and content.
Before we begin that discussion, however, there is one more point worth considering.
Computers and the Quran
In recent decades, some people have claimed that computer analysis has revealed remarkable numerical patterns in the Quran.
For example, it has been claimed that certain related or opposite words—such as night and day, or woman and man—occur the same number of times. Other claims say that the number of times certain words or letters appear follows particular numerical patterns or is divisible by a particular number.
On the other hand, some people have used computer analysis to argue that many of these claims are inaccurate.
Fortunately, claims of this kind can now be tested quite easily.
A computer can count words and letters in a text with great accuracy. But before a numerical pattern can be treated as evidence of a miracle, several questions must be answered. What exactly is being counted? Are different grammatical forms of a word counted together or separately? Which spelling is used? Are all occurrences included? And were the rules for counting decided before the pattern was discovered, or chosen afterward because they produced an interesting result?
These questions matter because different methods of counting can produce different numerical patterns.
Computer technology has been available for this kind of analysis for decades, and claims about remarkable numerical patterns in the Quran have also circulated for many years. Yet such claims should not be treated as established evidence of a miracle merely because they are presented as the results of computer analysis.
For that, we would need a clear method, complete data, and results that independent researchers could reproduce.
A computer can make a calculation exact. It cannot make the assumptions behind that calculation correct.
So unless a claimed numerical pattern can be demonstrated through a transparent and reproducible method, there is no reason to treat it as evidence that the Quran could not have been produced by a human being.
Miracles in the Meaning and Content of the Quran
The Quran is also said to be miraculous because of its meaning and content.
Several claims are commonly made. It is said that the Quran contains remarkable predictions of future events, that its statements contain no scientific errors, and that there are no contradictions between its verses.
If, as a religious cleric, I use these claims as evidence that the Quran is a miracle, an important distinction appears.
Predictions Are One Possible Piece of Evidence
Suppose I claim that the Quran contains predictions that could not reasonably have been made by an ordinary human being.
If I fail to prove this, I can still turn to other arguments.
I might say:
“Perhaps its predictions do not prove that it is a miracle, but its scientific accuracy does.”
Or I might appeal to its supposed freedom from contradiction.
In other words, failure to establish one proposed sign of a miracle does not, by itself, prove that the Quran is a human creation.
It only means that this particular argument for its miraculous nature has failed.
An Error or Contradiction Is Different
But the situation is different if I make a stronger claim:
“The Quran contains no false statement and no contradiction because it comes from an all-knowing God.”
Now suppose a statement in the Quran could be clearly shown to conflict with an established fact, or suppose a genuine contradiction between two verses could be demonstrated.
In that case, I could not simply say:
“Never mind. Let us forget this problem and look for another miracle in the Quran.”
That would miss the point.
If I have claimed that a book comes from an all-knowing God and therefore cannot contain error or contradiction, then one genuine error or genuine contradiction is not merely the failure of one argument for the book. It is evidence against the claim itself.
The two situations are therefore logically different.
If a supposed prediction cannot be established, I have lost one argument for the Quran’s miraculous nature.
But if an actual error or contradiction can be established, I have gained an argument against the claim that the Quran is the flawless word of an all-knowing God.
And if that claim fails, then the claim that the person who presented the book received it as a revelation from such a God would also require reconsideration.
Failure to prove a miracle removes one reason to believe. A proven error can provide a reason not to believe.
This difference will be important in the discussions that follow.
The Absence of Clearly Miraculous Predictions in the Quran
Claims of predicting the future have existed for a very long time.
People who already believe in a prophet, fortune-teller, or other person claiming such abilities often accept these predictions. Those who do not already believe may simply see nothing extraordinary in them.
There is an important reason for this difference.
Many supposed predictions are not precise enough before the event happens.
They may describe a somewhat unclear event, without clearly stating exactly when or where it will happen. As a result, before the event occurs, believers cannot usually say:
“This exact event will happen at this exact time and place.”
But after something happens, it may be possible to look back at the prediction and say:
“This must be what the prediction was referring to.”
The words can then be interpreted in a way that fits the event.
This creates an important problem.
If we want to use a prediction as evidence of an extraordinary ability, we should be able to establish what was predicted before we know what actually happened.
Otherwise, our knowledge of the event may influence the way we interpret the prediction.
A convincing prediction would therefore need several features.
Its wording should be sufficiently precise.
It should be reliably documented before the predicted event occurs.
And the conditions that would count as its success should also be clear in advance.
A prediction becomes much less impressive if we can recognize what it predicted only after the event has already happened.
These problems concern predictions made by human beings.
But what should we expect if the prediction is supposed to come from God?
What Should We Expect from a Divine Prediction?
If God has complete knowledge of both the past and the future, there is no reason for Him to be uncertain about what will happen.
And if God is all-powerful, events cannot escape His knowledge or surprise Him.
So if God chooses to make a prediction specifically as a miraculous sign, we can reasonably expect something much stronger than an ordinary vague prophecy.
First, the prediction should be sufficiently precise that we can understand what is being predicted before the event occurs.
Second, the event should happen as predicted, without our needing to reinterpret vague words afterward to make them fit what happened.
Ideally, we should be able to write down beforehand:
“If this prediction is true, this is what we should expect to happen.”
Then, when the event occurs, we can compare what happened with what was actually predicted.
That would make the prediction genuine evidence rather than a meaning discovered after the event.
The stronger the claim of divine knowledge, the less need there should be for ambiguity to protect the prediction from failure.
If the Quran contained predictions of this kind—clear enough beforehand, reliably recorded before the events, and fulfilled with the required precision—then they could reasonably be presented as evidence that deserves serious examination as a possible miracle.
But I do not find predictions of this kind in the Quran.
This does not by itself prove that the Quran is not from God.
As we saw earlier, failure to establish one proposed miracle simply removes that particular argument for its miraculous nature.
But it does mean that I cannot use the Quran’s supposed ability to predict the future as evidence of its miraculous origin unless I can produce a prediction that meets these standards.
What About Predictions Attributed to Muhammad or the Imams?
As a religious cleric, I may answer:
“Even if you do not accept miraculous predictions in the Quran, there are very precise predictions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad or to the Imams.”
But now we return to the problem discussed at the beginning of our examination of miracles.
The doubtful person did not personally hear these predictions before the events occurred.
So we need to ask:
Was the prediction reliably recorded before the event?
Can we establish that its wording was not changed afterward?
Was its meaning clear before the event occurred?
And could a person who did not already believe in the religion have known beforehand what event would count as fulfillment of the prediction?
Without satisfactory answers to these questions, the report cannot simply be treated as independent evidence of a supernatural prediction.
And the doubtful person can still raise the question we encountered earlier:
If God considers a miracle an appropriate way to convince human beings, why must this person depend entirely on reports of miracles experienced by other people in the distant past?
Why may they not ask the God of that religion—or the Creator of the universe—to provide evidence capable of convincing them personally?
The same problem therefore returns:
A prediction known only after its supposed fulfillment cannot provide the same kind of evidence as a clear prediction independently documented before the event.
Are There No Contradictions in the Quran?
When we say that two factual statements or two commands contradict each other, we mean that one contradicts the other.
For example, consider these two statements:
“The density of water is greater than the density of iron.”
“The density of iron is greater than the density of water.”
These are contradictory factual statements. They cannot both be true. At most, one of them can be correct.
If someone makes two contradictory factual statements, we can say that they must have made a mistake in at least one of them. Such mistakes are perfectly possible for human beings, but they would be impossible for an all-knowing God.
What About Contradictory Commands?
The situation is somewhat different when we are dealing with two commands that contradict each other.
Suppose someone gives a command and, after some time, gives another command that goes against the first. There are several ways in which the person might explain this.
One possibility is that the circumstances have changed.
The person may have stated from the beginning that the first command applied only under certain conditions. Then, when the circumstances change, they can point to that condition and say:
“I knew from the beginning that when the circumstances changed, this command would no longer apply.”
We can expect this both from a human being and from God.
There is a second possibility.
The person may give the first command without adding any condition. Later, when the circumstances change and the command is replaced, the person may say:
“The circumstances have changed. And I never said that my first command was eternal and would never change.”
Again, this is something that can come from either a human being or an all-knowing God.
But there is another situation in which replacing the first command with its opposite could be the act of a human being, but not of God.
Suppose the person who gives the first command presents it, in one way or another, as an eternal rule. Everyone is assured that the opposite will never be commanded.
Then, after some time, circumstances change. The person discovers that the first command no longer serves its purpose and decides that the opposite must now be commanded.
They may give many reasons for this change and make both decisions appear completely wise and reasonable: wise when the first command was given, and wise when it was later replaced by the second.
But there is still one thing that was not wise:
presenting the first command as eternal.
If the person later has to reverse an order that they had presented as permanent, this suggests that they were unable to foresee the change in circumstances.
That can happen to a human being.
But it cannot happen to an all-knowing God.
This last case would therefore amount to a contradiction that could not come from a God who is all-knowing and all-powerful.
Let us examine an example from the Quran.
The Prophet’s Earlier Role
In verses connected with Muhammad’s preaching in Mecca and the early years in Medina2, he presents himself as no more than a bearer of good news or a warner of punishment in Hell.
Examples include Quran 6:48, 11:2, 25:56, 35:24, and 7:188.
Elsewhere, he says that his only duty is to deliver what God has sent, and that those who refuse to follow the message will have to answer to God in the afterlife.
This idea appears in Quran 38:65, 46:35, 29:18, 16:35, 16:82, 16:125, 21:106, 14:52, 36:17, and 72:23.
In addition, Quran 42:6 says:
“O Messenger, as for those who take others besides God to worship, God Himself watches over their deeds, and you are not responsible for what they do.”
Quran 42:48 says:
“If they refuse your invitation, your only duty is to deliver your message. We have not sent you to be their guardian.”
In Surah al-Kafirun, Muhammad says:
“I do not worship the gods you worship, and you do not worship my God. Your religion is for you, and my religion is for me.”
Quran 24:54 says:
“Tell them to obey God and the Messenger. If they do not, they bear the burden of their own responsibility and you bear yours. Your only duty is to deliver the message clearly.”
Quran 6:108 says:
“Do not insult those whom they worship besides God, because they may then insult God out of ignorance. We have made the deeds of every people appear attractive to them. Then they will return to God, and He will inform them of what they have done.”
And Quran 33:48 says:
“Do not obey the unbelievers and the hypocrites, but overlook their wrongdoing and entrust your affairs to your God, for He is sufficient as your guardian.”
A person hearing these verses may come to believe that Islam allows freedom of expression even for unbelievers, and that people of different beliefs can always live without fear under Islamic law.
This idea appears especially permanent in Quran 2:256:
“There is no compulsion in religion. The right way has become clear from error.”
“There Is No Compulsion in Religion”
Immediately after the words la ikraha fi al-din—“there is no compulsion in religion”—comes the phrase qad tabayyana al-rushdu min al-ghayy, meaning that the right path has become distinct from error.
The second sentence gives the reason for the first.
Or, as Allameh Tabatabaei, the Quranic commentator and author of Al-Mizan3, explains, the second sentence has been placed there to give the reason for the first.
In other words:
There is no compulsion in religion because the path of guidance has become distinct from the path of error.
Allameh Tabatabaei explains the verse in this way:
God follows the statement “There is no compulsion in religion” with “The right way has become clear from error” in order to explain why there should be no coercion in religion.
Coercion is normally used by someone stronger against someone weaker when the stronger person has an important purpose but cannot make the weaker person understand the reason for it. In such a situation, the stronger person may have to use force or demand blind obedience.
But when the good or bad nature of something is already clear, and its good and harmful consequences are also known, there is no need for coercion.
A person can choose between good and evil and then accept the consequences of that choice.
Religion, according to Tabatabaei, is one of these matters. Its truths have been made clear, the divine explanations have shown its path, and the Prophet’s teachings have made those explanations even clearer.
Thus, the meanings of rushd—the right path—and ghayy—the wrong path—have become clear. The right path lies in following religion, while the wrong path lies in abandoning it and turning away from it.
Therefore, there is no reason to force anyone to accept religion.
Tabatabaei concludes that this verse is one of the verses showing that the foundation of Islam is not the sword and bloodshed and that Islam does not permit coercion and force in religion.
What has been presented here from Al-Mizan, in the Persian translation by Seyyed Mohammad Baqer Mousavi Hamedani, seems entirely logical. It is also difficult to draw a different conclusion from these two consecutive sentences.
Before continuing, however, it is useful to look at the reported occasions on which this verse was revealed. The following reports are also taken from Al-Mizan.
Why Was “There Is No Compulsion in Religion” Revealed?
According to one report, before Islam there was a custom among the people of Medina. If a woman’s children repeatedly died, she might make a vow that if one of her children survived, she would make that child a Jew—that is, raise the child in the Jewish religion.
As a result, after the rise of Islam, when the Jewish tribe of Banu Nadir was forced to leave Medina, some of these children who had been raised as Jews were among them.
The people of Medina said:
“We will not allow our children to remain Jews and leave with Banu Nadir.”
It was then that the verse:
“There is no compulsion in religion. The right way has become clear from error.”
was revealed.
In other words, these people were free to decide for themselves whether to remain in their religion or become Muslims.
According to a second report, some women from the Jewish tribe of Banu Nadir had breastfed a number of boys from the Aws tribe when those boys were children.
When Muhammad later ordered Banu Nadir to leave Medina, these foster children from the Aws said:
“We will leave with Banu Nadir and adopt their religion.”
The people of Medina tried to stop them and forced them to say la ilaha illa Allah—“There is no god but God”—and accept Islam.
The verse “There is no compulsion in religion” was then revealed.
According to a third report, the verse was revealed concerning a man from Medina who had become a Muslim but had two Christian sons.
He asked Muhammad:
“May I force them to accept Islam? They refuse to accept any religion other than Christianity.”
In response, the verse “There is no compulsion in religion” was revealed.
These are the reported occasions or reasons for the revelation of this verse.
The Later Verses About Fighting
In later years, however, verses gradually began to be revealed that permitted fighting.
For example, Quran 2:190 says:
“Fight in the way of God those who fight against you, but do not be the first to transgress, for God does not love transgressors.”
It is useful to remember here that after Muhammad recited verses on different occasions, he himself would say where in which surah each verse should be placed. The surahs themselves were later collected in their present order during the time of Uthman, the third caliph of the Muslims.
For this reason, the present order of the verses and surahs in the Quran does not correspond to the order in which they were revealed. Determining the chronological order and the circumstances in which Quranic verses were revealed therefore became one of the fields of Quranic studies.
As time passed, the language became stronger.
Quran 2:191 says:
“Kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from where they drove you out.”
Quran 2:193 says:
“Fight them until there is no more fitna4 and the religion of God is established.”
Quran 2:216, 4:74–75, 4:89, and 4:91 also deal with fighting in a similar context.
Quran 5:33 says:
“The punishment of those who wage war against God and His Messenger is that they should be killed or crucified, or that their hands and feet should be cut off on opposite sides ... and this is only their punishment in this world, for a greater punishment awaits them in the afterlife.”
Quran 8:12 says:
“Strike their necks and strike their fingers.”
Quran 8:39, 8:69, and 33:27 also speak in a similar context.
Eventually we reach the ninth chapter of the Quran, Surah al-Tawbah, which, according to the chronological order of revelation, was revealed only one surah before the final surah of the Quran.
Verses 2 and 3 say:
“You polytheists are therefore given four months in which you may travel freely and safely through the land. But know that you cannot escape the power of God, and that God will disgrace the unbelievers. And on the greatest day of the pilgrimage—that is, the Day of Arafah or the Day of Sacrifice—God and His Messenger announce to the people that from this time onward God and His Messenger are free from obligation toward the polytheists. So if you polytheists repent, it will be better for you in this world and the next.”
Verses 4 and 5 of the same surah then say:
“As for those polytheists with whom you have made a treaty, and who have not broken any part of that treaty and have not supported any of your enemies against you, honor your treaty with them until the end of its agreed period, for God loves those who are righteous.
“Then, when the sacred months—Dhu al-Qadah, Dhu al-Hijjah, Rajab, and Muharram—have passed, kill the polytheists wherever you find them. Capture them, surround them, and lie in wait for them on every road. But if they repent, establish prayer, and pay zakat5, then let them go their way, for God is forgiving and merciful.”
In these verses, we can see that breaking the treaty with those whose peace agreements with Muhammad did not specify a fixed period is permitted, provided that they are first given four months.
In any case, after those four months, it is Muhammad who ends the agreement.
And after those four months—or after the period specified in a peace treaty has ended—freedom of belief no longer remains, and the polytheists are required, through force and coercion, to accept Islam.
How Religious Clerics Respond to These Contradictions
You may ask: How is it possible that religious clerics do not see such an obvious contradiction?
The answer is that they have dealt with this contradiction in several different ways.
The First Response: The Later Rules Abrogated the Earlier Ones
One response is to say that the later rules abrogated the earlier ones.
Here I should explain what abrogation means. Abrogation is, in effect, the replacement or cancellation of an earlier rule. But this is usually understood to happen when circumstances change and there is a reasonable and wise basis for replacing the earlier rule. For this reason, abrogation is not normally regarded as a contradiction showing a lack of knowledge.
An opponent of this view may respond that this explanation might have worked if the rule against compulsion in religion had not been presented in the Quran as permanent, for the reasons discussed earlier. In that case, the later rule requiring the imposition of Islam could perhaps have been regarded simply as the abrogation of the earlier rule against compulsion.
But what happened in this case, the opponent may argue, suggests something different. Such a reversal could not have been the work of an all-knowing and all-powerful God. It resembles what human beings do because their knowledge is limited and they do not know what circumstances will arise in the future.
The Second Response: Accepting the Change as God's Method
Another response is for the cleric simply not to consider whether this contradiction might indicate that the words of the Quran are human in origin.
He does not abandon his belief in the divine origin of the Quran even for a moment. His bias and his guardian of the mind do not allow him to critically examine what he sees in the Quran.
So, while recognizing that the rule has changed, he draws a different conclusion:
When you do not have power, speak of freedom of expression and tolerance toward your opponents. Once you gain power, force others to change their beliefs.
In this way of thinking, the cleric sees this method as a strategy of deception taught by God to His Prophet, and he may follow the same method himself.
An opponent of this view may respond that deception and lying are things we might expect from weak human beings, not from an almighty and overpowering God who has power over everything.
Why would a God who, by a single act of will, can create billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars and planets, have any need for deception or lies?
And if God can lie in His book, another question follows:
Could there be other lies in this book as well?
Could Heaven and Hell also be among those lies?
And if we no longer know which parts of the book are true and which are false, can such a book still be called a book of guidance?
The Third Response: Fighting First, Religious Freedom Later
A third response to these apparently contradictory rules is somewhat more sophisticated.
According to this view, God intended jihad6 first to spread monotheism and establish the truth. After monotheism had been established, everyone would then be free to choose whichever monotheistic religion they wished.
Allameh Tabatabaei gives a similar explanation in Al-Mizan in his commentary on the verse “There is no compulsion in religion,” when discussing its apparent conflict with the verses about fighting mentioned earlier.
Tabatabaei says:
“The fighting and jihad to which Islam has called Muslims are not based on the principle of imposing power. Islam has not sought to spread religion by force and compulsion or to force it into the hearts of a greater number of people. Rather, it is based on the principle of truth. Islam has regarded jihad as a fundamental duty in order to revive the truth and defend one of the most precious treasures of human nature: monotheism. But once monotheism has spread among the people and all have accepted it—even if their religion is not Islam but Judaism or Christianity—Islam no longer permits a Muslim to fight or quarrel with another monotheist.”
There are two responses to this view.
First Response: The Reason Given for “No Compulsion” Works Even More Strongly for Polytheists
Those who hold this view, as we also saw in Tabatabaei's words, believe that the reason religion should not be forced upon people is that the path of guidance has become clear and distinct from the path of error.
From this, we can draw a simple conclusion:
The greater the difference between two paths, the easier it should be to distinguish between them and recognize which one is correct.
Therefore, the command against compulsion should apply even more strongly to a religion that differs greatly from Islam than to a religion that differs from Islam only slightly.
It is obvious that polytheism differs from Islam much more than Christianity or Judaism does. It differs both in the nature and number of gods and in its religious rules. Christianity and Judaism are both monotheistic religions and also share more rules with Islam.
Therefore, according to the reasoning behind the verse “There is no compulsion in religion,” polytheists should be even more clearly covered by this principle, and force should not be used against them.
Polytheists can recognize the difference between their religion and Islam more easily than Jews or Christians can, precisely because the differences are greater. They should therefore be able to recognize more easily what Islam describes as ghayy—error or misguidance—in their own path and rushd—right guidance—in the path of Islam.
Second Response: What About Jews and Christians?
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that what Tabatabaei says is correct and that the verse “There is no compulsion in religion” applies only to Jews and Christians.
If so, we would expect that no force or compulsion would ever be used to make them change their religion.
Yet Quran 9:29 says:
“Fight those among the People of the Book who do not believe in God and the Last Day, who do not consider forbidden what God and His Messenger have forbidden, and who do not follow the religion of truth, until they pay the jizya with their own hands while humbled.”
The People of the Book—identified elsewhere in the Quran as Jews and Christians—were described as believers in verses from the earlier years of Muhammad's preaching, but in this verse they are described as unbelievers.
Tabatabaei addresses this objection. He says:
“The answer to this objection is that God Almighty, in His noble words, makes no distinction between belief in Him and belief in the Day of Judgment. He regards disbelief in one as disbelief in both. Those who make a distinction between God and His prophets, believing in God Himself and in some of the prophets while disbelieving in others, are true unbelievers, even if they believe in God and the Day of Judgment.”
Whether explanations of this kind actually resolve the problem is not the subject of our discussion here.
The point is that although we were previously told that at least the People of the Book7—Jews and Christians—would not be subjected to force and compulsion, they must now also be fought until they agree to pay jizya.
Jizya is a payment collected by a Muslim ruler from the People of the Book. Its amount is left to the ruler's discretion, with no fixed limit specified. Moreover, as the verse states, it is to be collected while the People of the Book are made to feel humbled and humiliated. It is not to be collected from them with respect.
Clearly, this is different from an ordinary tax. A tax has a defined system and is collected from citizens according to criteria such as their income—not according to their religious beliefs and not according to the personal wishes of the ruler.
If the People of the Book refuse to pay this amount, they are forced to leave their cities and homes, and if they refuse to leave, they will be killed.
It is therefore clear that these people can remain in their cities and homes and enjoy the same rights as others only if they change their beliefs and convert to Islam.
The rules mentioned here may not be as severe as those applied to other unbelievers, but they still amount to a lower degree of force and compulsion aimed at changing a person's religion.
A person experiences no compulsion to change their beliefs only when they enjoy the same rights as everyone else.
Taking away a citizen's rights and returning them only if that citizen changes their beliefs is itself a form of coercion.
Why Intelligent People May Still Fail to See the Problem
Allameh Tabatabaei was an intelligent and learned man. He knew these matters, just as religious clerics know them.
But this is a characteristic of us as human beings: when our religious beliefs are being questioned, we may become unable to use our intelligence and knowledge in the same way that we use them in other areas.
This inability is not necessarily evidence that we are bad people. It can arise from features of human psychology.
Perhaps recognizing this fact should make some of us ask another question:
Should we also take this problem into account when educating children?
In other words, should we consider the possibility that what we tell children about religion may, over time, make them biased in the same way?
I personally do not believe that children should be kept away from religion simply because we fear that, like many of us, they may later have difficulty critically examining religious questions or may even become vulnerable to manipulation by religious extremists.
Instead, I think children should become familiar with religion in a way that does not create such bias.
Religious education should also avoid placing fear of God and fear of failing to attain salvation in their minds like a guardian that prevents them from ever examining their own beliefs.
It would be better to introduce them both to their own religion and to other religions in a way that prevents them from harming themselves or others in pursuit of promises of Heaven made by people who merely appear righteous.
In short, religious knowledge should be taught in a way that allows children to examine the religion and traditions of their own families and societies just as they examine anything else: with logic and sound reasoning, without using fallacies against themselves8.
Ultimately, specialists in the relevant fields—such as experts in education and psychology—should determine the best way to do this.
And they, too, should do so without allowing their own religious bias to influence their judgment.
Does Islamic Law Support a Different Interpretation?
Regarding the contradiction in the rules discussed above, some readers who are not religious clerics—and who are compassionate people—may think that perhaps these verses have another interpretation and that Islam never uses force or compulsion toward followers of other religions.
It should therefore be noted that in Shia jurisprudence, which draws on the Quran, the traditions of the Prophet, and reports from the Imams, the same ideas discussed above also appear in the rulings of Twelver Shia jurists.
These rulings all support the existence of pressures imposed by Islam on followers of other religions—pressures that are removed only when those people submit to Islam and convert to it.
For example, the diya of a Muslim man is much greater than the diya of a man from the People of the Book, even when the latter is a dhimmi—that is, someone who pays jizya. If he is not a dhimmi, or if he is an unbeliever, no diya is due for him and his killer is not subject to qisas.
A Muslim may backbite a dhimmi, insult him, falsely accuse him, or spread gossip about him without committing a sin by doing so.
If a Muslim accuses another Muslim of adultery or fornication and cannot prove the accusation, the punishment known as qadhf applies to him—that is, he is flogged. But if he makes the same accusation against a dhimmi and cannot prove it, the punishment for qadhf does not apply.
A dhimmi may not construct a building higher than the buildings of Muslims.
Exhuming the grave of a Muslim is forbidden, but the grave of a non-Muslim may be exhumed.
A dhimmi may not testify against a Muslim in court, nor may a dhimmi act as a judge in matters concerning Muslims.
Those who wish to investigate these rulings can find them in Shia works of jurisprudence such as Al-Urwah al-Wuthqa and Jawahir al-Kalam.
In this respect, Sunni jurisprudence does not differ greatly from Shia jurisprudence, and rules resembling these can be found in almost every religion in relation to followers of other religions.
Another Contradiction: Breaking Treaties
In addition to the contradiction discussed above, the verses of Surah al-Tawbah that we examined show God commanding the Prophet to break his agreements with those polytheists whose peace treaties with him did not specify a fixed period.
This means that God and the Prophet themselves initiate the breaking of those agreements.
Yet treaty-breaking and the violation of promises and covenants are condemned and treated as sinful in different ways in Quran 17:34, 3:76–77, 2:177, 6:153, 23:8, 70:32, 5:1 and 5:13, and 8:56.
This therefore provides another example of what may be regarded as a contradiction within the Quran.
Is the Quran Scientifically Miraculous?
Religious clerics and believers have argued in two different ways that the Quran is miraculous in the field of science.
The first is that some verses of the Quran refer to scientific facts that were unknown when the verses were revealed but were discovered later.
A person questioning this claim can propose two possible explanations.
The first is the one offered by these clerics: these statements came from God, who already knew these scientific facts.
But there is another possibility. These verses may originally have expressed ideas that people at the time could understand and that had nothing to do with the advanced scientific facts now attributed to them. It may simply be a coincidence that today we can also interpret the same words as referring to a modern scientific idea.
These kinds of verses have been interpreted and explained throughout the past 1,400 years, and they have always had meanings that people and commentators of their own times could understand. Therefore, this second possibility cannot simply be dismissed. There is no reason to assume that only the first explanation is possible and that these verses could only have been referring to scientific facts unknown at the time.
The Easts and the Wests
For example, one verse that is sometimes said to refer miraculously to the spherical shape of the Earth is Quran 70:40, which says:
“I swear by the Lord of the Easts and the Wests.”
Some have argued that the use of the plural words “Easts” and “Wests” indicates that the Earth is spherical, something they say became known only later.
A critic may reply that multiple Easts and Wests can also be imagined on a flat Earth.
For example, if we travel northward, we could divide the lands to our right into different regions and collectively call them “Easts,” while calling the lands opposite them “Wests.”
Quran 7:137 similarly says:
“And We made the people who had been oppressed”—meaning the Children of Israel under Pharaoh—“the inheritors of the Easts and the Wests of the land.”
The land referred to here has been understood as the regions around Jerusalem. It has not been interpreted as meaning the entire globe. So the expression “Easts and Wests” already had an understandable meaning for people without requiring them to assume that the Earth was spherical.
A Second Claim: The Quran Contains No Scientific Errors
The second reason given for considering the Quran scientifically miraculous is that no verse in the Quran contradicts science.
Here, however, we should note that merely containing no scientifically incorrect statement would not itself be a miracle.
A miracle must be something impossible for a human being to accomplish. It is certainly possible for a human being to write a book without making statements that conflict with modern science, especially when most of the book deals with religious rules, moral instructions, stories about earlier peoples, and descriptions of Heaven and Hell.
There is, however, another point that can be made.
If this book contains a statement that genuinely contradicts established scientific knowledge, this would indicate that the book—or at least that particular statement—did not come from God.
And if we accept that the Quran has not been altered and that all its verses were spoken by the Prophet, we would then have to conclude that the book was produced by the Prophet himself rather than by the God who created nature and its laws and knows the facts about them.
The Quran contains statements that do not agree with modern science and, in some cases, appear to contradict it. Examples include what it says about the seven heavens, the creation of the world in six days, and the creation of Adam and Eve.
This becomes clearer to a researcher who is familiar with ancient ideas about creation.
When we examine the ideas and beliefs that ancient peoples developed about how the world was created, we find that creation stories in many old religions with different origins are remarkably similar to one another—and very different from the conclusions of modern science.
What appears in the Quran is one of these similar creation stories. From the perspective of many researchers, rather than looking like God revealing previously unknown secrets of creation, the story appears more like a version derived from one of these earlier traditions.
Still, religious clerics can find ways to reconcile these Quranic creation stories with modern science.
They may say, for example, that the present scientific account of creation is “only a theory” and has not been proved, or that the Quran's “six days” actually means six stages, and so on.
But there are other passages in the Quran that clearly resemble ideas about nature that were common among people at the time and that appear to conflict with what is now established scientifically.
One example is Quran 18:86.
Dhul-Qarnayn and the Setting Sun
This verse is part of the story of Dhul-Qarnayn, whom the Quran presents as a real person and whose experiences are presented as real events. More generally, according to the Quran itself, what it tells us is true rather than fictional.
As Dhul-Qarnayn travels westward, he eventually reaches the place where the sun sets.
Quran 18:86 says:
Hatta idha balagha maghriba al-shamsi wajadaha taghrubu fi ‘aynin hami’ah.
That is:
“Until, when he reached the place where the sun sets, he found it setting in a muddy or dark spring.”
Anyone familiar with the beliefs of ancient peoples knows that when the Earth was imagined as flat, the idea that the sun descended into a well or spring in the west and emerged again from the other side was quite common.
This verse happens to agree with one of that ancient beliefs.
But suppose I am a religious cleric today.
I now know that the sun does not revolve around the Earth. I know that it is about 150 million kilometers away and that day and night result from the Earth's rotation on its axis.
What the verse appears to say conflicts with these facts.
So how can I continue to defend the claim that every verse of the Quran is true and consistent with science?
“That Was Only What Dhul-Qarnayn Saw”
My first response may be that this was merely what Dhul-Qarnayn himself thought he saw.
After all, the verse says:
wajadaha taghrubu...
meaning:
“He found it setting...”
Perhaps this was simply Dhul-Qarnayn's mistaken perception of what was happening.
The critic may reply:
Could a person really make such a mistake?
All someone needs to do is look toward the horizon at sunset. The place where the sun appears to set will seem to be kilometers away.
So far away, in fact, that if there were a spring at that distant horizon—of the size we normally expect a spring to be—it would appear at most as a tiny dot, if it were visible at all.
The sun, by contrast, appears much larger than a dot on the horizon.
No ordinary visual illusion would make a person think that an object as large as the setting sun was entering a tiny point that could barely be seen.
There is also the question of how Dhul-Qarnayn could identify the water in the spring as muddy or dark from such a distance.
And if we say that he approached the spring closely enough to see that its water was muddy, the critic can reply that from such a close distance, the illusion of the sun entering the spring would no longer occur.
“Perhaps It Refers to the Sea”
At this point, as a cleric, I may say that the verse does not necessarily describe the sun literally entering a small spring. Perhaps what Dhul-Qarnayn saw was the sun appearing to set in a large body of water, such as the sea.
The critic may answer that the Quran itself uses the word ‘ayn, whose ordinary meaning in this context is “spring,” and ‘aynin hami’ah has traditionally been understood by many Quranic commentators as a muddy or dark spring.
Some commentators may explain the scene as the sun appearing to set in the sea, just as it appears to someone standing on a coast. But that is an interpretation of the scene; it does not mean that the Arabic word ‘ayn itself means “sea.”
The critic may therefore ask: if the intended meaning was simply that Dhul-Qarnayn reached a seacoast and saw the sun apparently setting in the sea, why was a word meaning “sea” not used in the first place?
There is a broader problem as well.
When a speaker says something to a listener, the purpose is to communicate a particular meaning. A careful speaker tries to avoid wording that will cause the listener to understand something different from what the speaker actually means.
We should expect even more precision from a God with perfect knowledge.
Why would God say something in a way that, instead of helping people understand the truth, could lead them to accept an incorrect idea and believe that their ancestors had been right when they said that the sun descends into a spring?
Is that consistent with the guiding role that the Quran is supposed to have?
The critic might put the problem this way:
Centuries later, instead of being guided to the scientific truth by the verse, people first discovered the truth themselves and then corrected their understanding of the verse—as though they had guided the Quran rather than the Quran guiding them.
“God Spoke at the Level of the People of That Time”
At this point, many religious clerics and believers turn to another common argument:
God spoke according to the level of understanding of the people of that time.
A critic can respond that, at least in relation to this verse, the statement appears to conflict with reality.
Even if God did not want to speak beyond the people's level of understanding, He could simply have left this part of the story out. There would then have been no need to say anything contrary to reality.
When we explain the same subject to a child—whose level of understanding is far below that of the adults who lived at the time—we see no reason to tell the child that the sun enters a spring when it sets.
In fact, the basic reason for sunrise and sunset is not so complicated that even a child could not understand it, let alone an adult.
It is worth mentioning here that when religious clerics are confronted with a question about an apparently mistaken idea in a religious text, they very often respond by saying that we must consider who the original audience was and what level of understanding those people had.
The critic may reply:
Do all people today have the same level of understanding?
We, too, deal with many people whose levels of understanding differ greatly. Yet we do not feel that we must lie to them in order to speak at their level.
Instead, we explain difficult ideas with simpler examples and more understandable comparisons. Or we tell them:
“This subject is complicated. You first need to learn some basic ideas in a particular field before I can explain it to you.”
What Should We Expect from a Book Meant to Guide People for All Time?
There is another point.
When we write a scientific book that we hope will remain useful for a long time, we write what we believe to be true.
From the beginning, we understand that not everyone will be able to understand everything in the book.
That is not the important issue.
What matters is that when a reader eventually reaches the level of knowledge required to understand the book, that reader should not discover errors in it.
The book should become a ladder that helps the reader climb higher.
It should not first teach the reader incorrect ideas, only for that reader later to learn the correct facts from other books and then return to correct our book.
If that happens, what exactly have we done for the person who read our book in order to learn?
What service have we provided?
Could we reasonably tell that reader:
“I wanted even the least educated person in society to understand my book, so I wrote it in a way that agreed with that person's knowledge, in case that person would otherwise dislike it”?
What would happen if books on medicine, engineering, philosophy, ethics, logic, psychology, and economics were written in this way?
Could we still call them educational books or books of guidance?
And what if a book claims to be a guide for all people and for all ages?
Miracles Through Answered Prayers
It may be difficult to find a religion whose clerics do not describe an answered prayer as a miracle and present it as evidence that their religion is true.
But under what circumstances can an answered prayer logically be regarded as a miracle?
An answer to prayer could be called a miracle without serious doubt if what happened violated the laws of nature and we witnessed it ourselves rather than merely hearing about it. If we only hear a report of such an event, the story may be false or exaggerated.
Some philosophers, such as David Hume, have raised objections even to calling an apparently observed violation of the laws of nature a miracle. But we will not enter that discussion here. For the sake of our argument, let us assume that an observed supernatural event can be regarded as a miracle.
With that assumption, when can an answer to prayer be considered an event contrary to the laws of nature and therefore a miracle?
First, we must determine whether what happened really could not have occurred through natural processes.
We often call events “miracles” even when they occur entirely within the laws of nature simply because they are very unlikely.
For example, suppose doctors diagnose an injured person with a spinal cord injury and conclude that the person will never be able to move again. If one day the damaged nerves recover and the person regains movement, we may call it a miracle.
Yet observations around the world—including cases involving people who did not believe in prayer—show that, in rare cases, people with spinal cord injuries can experience unexpected neurological recovery.
Such an event is therefore not necessarily impossible within the laws of nature. Even if only one such person in the entire world recovered after praying, we still could not conclude with certainty that something contrary to the laws of nature had occurred. We do not know everything that happened inside that person's spinal cord, nor do we know all the person's genetic and biological characteristics, some of which may in fact be unusual or even unique.
A much clearer example of a miraculous answer to prayer would be this:
Suppose someone's leg had been completely amputated and, immediately after a prayer, a new and healthy leg appeared.
That would be the kind of event we could much more reasonably describe as contrary to the laws of nature.
Interestingly, we human beings do not usually expect things like this from our God.
We may believe that He is capable of doing anything, yet most of us have somehow learned not to expect miracles that are quite so unmistakable. If our leg has been completely amputated, we usually stop praying for an actual new and healthy leg.
Instead, both we and our religious clerics may say that we must accept God's will.
It is almost as though we ourselves know that we should pray only for things that, deep down, we know are not impossible but merely unlikely.
When an Unlikely Event Happens After Prayer
Now suppose something we need has a low probability of happening. We pray for it, and then it happens.
How will we react?
Some diseases—for example, certain autoimmune diseases, in which the immune system attacks the body's own tissues—can last for many years and sometimes never disappear. In other cases, they may unexpectedly improve after years. Psoriasis, a skin disease, is one example of a condition involving the immune system.
We might call diseases of this kind “faith-producing diseases,” because when they improve unexpectedly, they can produce a powerful religious belief in the person who suffered from them.
Suppose I have one of these diseases.
Throughout my illness, I suffer greatly and repeatedly pray to my God or gods. Sometimes I ask my God to heal me. Sometimes I ask a deceased religious figure—perhaps a saint—for help. At other times, I may turn to a living person who claims that his prayers are especially likely to be answered.
Whenever I visit a doctor, the doctor first tries to control or improve my symptoms. After unsuccessful treatments, I may eventually be told that only a miracle could cure me.
My illness occupies my mind constantly. Sometimes I even dream that I have been healed and that a particular god or a particular religious figure has cured me.
Then, if the course of my illness eventually ends and I recover for whatever reason, my first reaction may be to call my recovery a miracle.
I may develop a powerful belief in the last person, saint, or god to whom I prayed—or the one I saw in my dream.
If someone tells me that something naturally possible has happened and that I have no reason to call it a miracle, I may strongly disagree.
Although I have no conclusive logical evidence that my recovery was a miracle, there are several reasons why I may not even want to consider the possibility that it was not.
Fear
First, I have suffered greatly because of my illness.
I may think that even if there is only a small possibility that my recovery was an answer from God, a saint, or some other supernatural being, denying the miracle might anger that being and cause my illness to return.
That fear can become another guardian of the mind, like the ones we have discussed many times before. It watches over my belief and helps preserve my faith in that supernatural power and, consequently, in my religion.
The Feeling of Being Special
Second, having my prayer answered and receiving a miracle gives me the feeling that supernatural powers have noticed me—that I somehow have a special position in their eyes.
I do not want to believe that this feeling might be mistaken, because I do not want to lose the happiness that comes with it.
Sometimes sick people become so desperate that they try almost anything recommended to them in the hope of being cured. This may include making vows or offerings to the gods or holy figures of other religions.
If they recover afterward, they may even change their religion in order to preserve the health they believe they have received.
Can the Effect of Prayer Be Tested?
A person who pays close attention to the laws of nature—how they were discovered and how consistently they operate throughout the world—may begin to think about prayer differently.
Suppose a person believes that God Himself established all these laws. Whenever an experiment is repeated under the same conditions, God's laws produce the same result.
This may lead the person to reconsider the idea that prayer changes the operation of natural laws.
Imagine, for example, that someone places a weight on a spring scale ten times, records the force measured each time, and calculates the average.
Then the person repeats the experiment another ten times.
This time, however, before every measurement, he sincerely and desperately prays to God to make the scale show a larger number, so that God will demonstrate the effect of prayer on the laws of nature.
Suppose the measurements remain the same.
What should he conclude?
Should he conclude that the two experiments produced the same results because God does not want His servant to discover His laws concerning prayer and therefore deliberately ignored the prayers during the experiment?
Or might he reach another conclusion?
Perhaps God has no reason to prevent human beings from discovering whether there is a law governing the effects of prayer, just as He has no reason to prevent them from discovering His other laws.
Whenever human beings have performed experiments to discover the laws of gravity or magnetism, God has not played games with them or deliberately hidden those laws. He has allowed them to discover how nature works.
So why should things suddenly be different when people try to discover whether prayer has an effect?
If prayer has no effect on the results of such experiments, perhaps this means that there is no natural law by which prayer changes those results.
“Prayer Works Only for Those Who Truly Believe”
If I am a religious cleric, however, I may react strongly to this way of thinking and to experiments of this kind.
I may describe such an experiment as an insult to God, the gods, or sacred things. I may suggest that the researcher is not sincerely searching for the truth but is merely trying to ridicule prayer.
I might also say:
“Prayer is answered only for someone who truly believes in it.”
The critic may respond that a person investigating prayer is assuming that the God of the universe is not afraid of human doubt about His laws and traditions and will allow the truth to be discovered.
After all, when the same researcher investigated God's other laws, he did not already have heartfelt faith in those laws. He came to believe in them after observing the results of the experiments.
Why should prayer be different?
There is another question.
If prayers are answered only when they come from genuine believers, then we can look at the world around us.
People belonging to many different religions pray every day for all kinds of good things—wealth, health, safety, and many other forms of happiness. They all believe that their prayers can have an effect.
So which nations, statistically, are wealthier or healthier?
And if I, as a religious cleric, discover that a nation whose people do not pray—or a nation belonging to another religion whose people do pray—is happier or more prosperous than my own people, will I be willing to admit that their beliefs are therefore true?
Prayer as Evidence for a Particular Religion
Many different methods have been used to improve road safety. These methods have been tested, and experience has shown that some of them reduce accidents and deaths.
Yet road-safety experts—even those who themselves have strong religious faith—do not report that years of professional experience have shown that putting up signs saying “Please Pray” reduces road deaths.
The point is this:
Belief in prayer and in miracles resulting from answered prayers is extremely common among followers of many religions. Prayer has even been examined in randomized controlled studies. So far, however, such studies have not provided reliable and reproducible evidence that intercessory prayer improves medical outcomes9. And there is another problem.
Answered prayers are claimed by followers of many different religions.
So even if we accept all these claims, we still cannot logically conclude that one particular religion must therefore be true.
At most, accepting such claims would suggest that answered prayer is a relationship between the Creator of the universe on one side and a person in need on the other.
It would give us no reason to conclude that the answer depends on which religion that person belongs to.
Is Genius a Miracle?
There is another category of phenomena that are sometimes regarded as miracles: the extraordinary abilities of highly gifted people.
In every nation and every religion—and also among people with no religion—we sometimes find individuals with remarkable abilities.
Some people can look at a scene once and then draw it in extraordinary detail. Some can hear a piece of music only once and then play it. Others can perform astonishing multiplication and division calculations almost instantly. Some can be given a date many years in the past or future and immediately say which day of the week it falls on. Others can memorize a text after hearing or reading it only once.
Sometimes a person with one of these abilities grows up in a religious family and uses that talent, for example, to memorize religious texts.
At this point, believers and religious clerics may claim that the person's extraordinary ability is the result of special attention from spirits, gods, or holy figures of that religion, and that the ability itself is a miracle.
The gifted person may also enjoy the feeling of being specially favored by a supernatural power. He may come to believe this interpretation himself and even confirm it in one way or another.
The Same Pattern Appears Again
As we have seen in the different kinds of miracles discussed so far, the fallacious reasoning involved is often similar.
We encounter something extraordinary, and we are told that there is only one possible explanation:
God has directly intervened.
And from this, we are told, there is only one possible conclusion:
This proves that our religion is true.
Religious clerics and strongly biased believers may insist so firmly on this last point—that no other conclusion is possible—and present it as so obvious that the listener may begin to believe that no other conclusion is logically possible.
But as we have seen, other explanations may exist for the extraordinary events described in this chapter.
And even when we cannot find an explanation for a strange event, that still does not mean that no explanation exists.
“I do not know how this happened” does not logically mean “therefore, it was a miracle.”
And even if we did conclude that an event was genuinely miraculous, there would still be another question:
Why should that miracle, by itself, prove that one particular religion is true?
So when we encounter something extraordinary that we cannot explain, we cannot simply conclude that “it was a miracle—and specifically a miracle confirming this particular religion” is the only possible explanation.