Author: pilgrim

I’ve come across quite a few Muslims recently who champion the “mathematical miracle” of the Qur’an. It’s not impressive at all and this can be demonstrated by doing something very similar with the Book of Mormon:

The 19th word of the 19th chapter of the 19th book in the Book of Mormon is the word “I”. How many times does that word appear in the chapter? It appears thirty-eight times, which is 2 x 19! That chapter has 5,586 characters, which is 294 x 19!

Key phrases regarding Mormonism also appear in multiples of 19 throughout the text. For example, if you know the story of Mormonism, you’ll know about the importance of “engraved plates”. Well, would you like to guess how many times those words appear in that chapter? Nineteen! Other phrase counts include:

• “Record of the prophet” appears 209 times (11 x 19)
• “His prophet” appears nineteen times
• “By God” appears nineteen times
• “Written by our Lord” appears 76 times (4 x 19)
• “Nephi, prophet of the engraven plates” appear 228 (12 x 19)
• …

Okay, but what about structural miracles in the text?

• From the first mention of the plates to the second mention of the plates are 304 characters (16 x 19).
• From the first mention of the plates to the last mention of the plates, there are 1,102 words (58 x 19)
• …

Believe me, if we threw a computer at this and had more people diligently searching for numerological miracles, we could find plenty more. Weird Christian groups have done the same thing with the Bible and it’s not impressive when they do it either.

I came across this video and thought I’d offer a few comments on these reasons to believe Islam is true…

00:30 This is not a good reason. The Book of Mormon claims to be the Word of God. Does that mean Mormonism is true?

01:05 This is demonstrably false, even from some of Islam’s own sources. Yasir Quadi admits that there are “holes in the narrative”.

01:38 I don’t see what’s amazing about this verse. For a start, it’s very vague, and it’s also behind embryonic knowledge of the time.

02:36 Lots of people memorized a text… Why does that make the faith of that text true?

03:05 Matter and anti-matter are not “pairs”, but opposites. Electrons and Protons…okay, what about Neutrons? Everything is clearly not in pairs. Once again, the verse is very vague and at first glance would seem to refer to the binary of sex, which obviously is complicated by organism which reproduce asexually.

04:13 This one is really strange. There is lots literature I’d point to which is better than the Qur’an (the poetry of Shakespeare, Kahlil Gibran, …), but who is to say that the Qur’anic challenge has been met? By what standard does one judge? 04:55 What’s meant to be amazing about this verse?

05:37 Islam has a lot to say about how someone should live their life. Why does that make it true? That’s even before we ask whether that advice is *good* advice…

06:12 This is generic proof for God, a poorly stated Cosmological argument, but that doesn’t prove Islam is true. It is compatible with most religions.

06:58 A prophecy about usury isn’t very impressive – didn’t everyone except the Jews embrace it? Also, strictly speaking, if 2 billion Muslims aren’t involved in usury can we really say that this prophecy came true? Regarding “the hour”, I’m pretty sure that there are variant readings on this, one of which suggests it’s within the lifetime of the Muhammad’s hearers. Even if we take the reading presented, is it really fair to say that a *descendant* of someone who was a shepherd *is* a destitute shepherd? Also, what would make this specific to Mecca? Even if we accept all that, this prophecy can’t be proven to be true until the event itself happens and thus far, “the hour” has not come…

The Lesser-known Lewis Podcast recently discussed this essay, and it’s still one of my favourites from Jack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi8q1Eopk2U

Since we’re going through Out of the Silent Planet on Pints With Jack at the moment, I thought I’d share this documentary from Andrew Wall: