Islam’s greatest apologist, Zakir Naik,
declares:
If you want to prove the Quran wrong, only
thing you have to do is take out a single
contradiction in the Quran
Challenge accepted.
Surah 4:82 reads:
Then do they not reflect upon the Qur'an?
If it had been from [any] other than Allah,
they would have found within it much contradiction.
Well, the Quran is filled contradictions of
various kinds: scientific, historical, moral,
and so on.
You go on the Internet, you will find 1000
True, but it turns out we don’t have to
go any further than the verse itself to prove it
But first, I want to point out how ridiculous
the verse is right on the surface. Imagine
critics making fun of someone claiming to
have received divine revelation. In response,
the “prophet” says:
“I just received a new revelation: Allah
says ‘If my revelation was fake, you would
find a bunch of errors in it.’ So there,
my revelation is real”
This just smacks of what a cult leader would
do. And apparently “Allah” isn’t even
very confident because he requires “much”
contradiction to disprove his claim, not just
a little. Does that sound like something any
all-knowing God would say?
Returning to the verse, we have a conditional
statement: If P then Q. A conditional statement
is false if the conclusion Q can be false
while the premise P is true. In this case,
we have the premise “Quran is not from Allah”
and conclusion “they would have found much
error.” Let’s give it some labels and
say if not A then E. If the “not from Allah”
language is confusing, we can also look at
what is called the contrapositive, a logically
equivalent statement. In this case, that would
be: “if no error is found, then it is from
Allah.”
So, to prove the verse false, we need to show
something that is free of error, but doesn’t
come from Allah. This is incredibly easy to
do. Take, for instance, the following set
of propositions:
Water freezes at 0° Celsius under normal
atmospheric pressure
George Washington was the first President
of the United States
Muslims believe Muhammad was a true prophet
The square root of 4 is 2
Christianity is the most popular religion
in the world, with an estimated 2.3 billion
adherents
A list produced by me and completely free
of contradiction or error. So unless you want
to say I got revelation from Allah, in which
case, let me add “Islam is false” to my
list, the conditional statement of Surah 4:82
is false.
If you think it’s not from God, then to
prove it wrong, try it. Take out a single
contradiction and the Quran will be proved
wrong.
Now, the Muslim might say something like the
verse refers only to the Quran, so it is still
true. This is called the fallacy of special
pleading – admitting a position is usually
false, but claiming it is true in one specific
case without giving an adequate explanation
as to why. The Quran is clearly, at minimum,
at set of statements about the world, so if
Muslims want to avoid special pleading, they
need some reason why the Quran is different
from other sets of factual statements.
Perhaps someone will say my list is short,
while the Quran is long. That is true, but
I could extend my list indefinitely simply
by adding more basic math or other facts to
the list. Likewise, a standard textbook on
just about any subject is going to be much
longer than the Quran and the average person
won’t be able to find any contradiction
in it, let alone much, so that option is out.
A popular reply is to say “the Quran claims
to be from Allah” but I can simply add that
to my list and there still won’t be any
contradiction. After all, can you prove Allah
didn’t send this to me in a dream last night?
Another attempt is to say “the Quran contains
knowledge of the spiritual world.” This
one's a double fail. First, the verse says
the errors can be found by the unbelievers
listening to it. Spiritual propositions are
obviously untestable, and so cannot possibly
be what the Quran intends. Second, I can add
propositions like “Heaven and hell are real”
or “demons can cause human suffering”
to my list and it too will contain statements
about the spiritual world, while still being
free of contradiction.
Yet others may claim the Quran is special
because it is sacred to millions of Muslims.
Well, that obviously wasn’t true when these
words were first revealed, so unless you want
to claim it was false when it was first spoken,
you better drop that idea. Likewise, Bible
verses like John 3:16 are sacred to millions
of Christians, but obviously contain no contradiction
by themselves.
One might say the Quran was revealed in Arabic
and is the main basis for that language. So
what? The truth of an idea is not dependent
on the language it is written in. There is
nothing special about Arabic that makes it
impossible for humans to say true things while
using it. If there was, it couldn’t function
as language at all!
Finally, in desperation, the Muslim may fall
back on “yah, but the Bible makes similar
claims.” This does absolutely nothing to
remove the Quran’s error, but let’s take
a look anyway:
And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we
know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’
— when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord,
if the word does not come to pass or come
true, that is a word that the Lord has not
spoken
At first glance, it may seem the similar,
but closer examination shows it to be quite
different than the Quran's claim. Remember
the Quran’s argument is “if not from Allah,
then much error.” The Bible’s argument
is “if error, then not from God.” These
statements are not at all equivalent, any
more than the statements “if I have a son,
I am a father” and “if I’m a father,
I have a son.” The first is obviously true,
while the latter is obviously false since
I may have only daughters and still be a father.
For the Bible to be false, one would have
to show that God can speak false prophecies.
Good luck with that one.
The Biblical statement can only be used to
discredit a claimed prophet. That wasn’t
good enough for “Allah,” so he reversed
it to try to make it a proof of his, I mean
Muhammad’s, prophethood. In the process,
he made a basic logic error. I don’t know
about you, but I’ll go with the God who
understands logic, not the one who butchers
it. And remember
If you want to prove the Quran wrong, only
thing you have to do is take out a single
contradiction in the Quran
Thanks for watching.
