A Muslim's Response by Shaahin
Amiri-Sharifi
this is to answer:
--Thinking with the breasts?
--about quran and science, a lot has been said! most
important point is: quran is NOT a text book to
learn science from. it is not meant to do so. it
is a book of general guidence. it gives you hints
about them (scientific facts) to make you think and
try to comprehende them, but it never explains the
details, this is our job. to give an example quran talks
about "unseen columns" holding the skies above us,
after discovery of "gravitation" this has a scientific
explanation, now. this way science helps us to understand
quran better. this is what we mean by scientific accuracy
of quran, progress of science helps (better) understanding
of quran. side point is, here, there will never be an
ultimate comprehension of quran! (this is what god means by:
only "allah" knows quran!), we mortals, just keep enhancing
our understanding of quran.
another important point about quran is, its multi-dimensionality.
a verse could be about, say, economics, yet giving
a scientific impression, too(in biology, physics, ...)
so, one should not interpret it "partly" scientific and
partly something else, they should rather do it this way
OR the other wat, and not mix the issues. these two interpretations
are both correct, but one talks about, say, biology and the other
about laws of inheritance! to make it clear, consider your example:
god knows what you have in your "breasts" (or hearsts), this means,
again as you mentioned, He is aware of all secrets,
but lets look
at it scientificaly, is really the location of "thoughts"
in the breasts, hearts?! is there a scientific interpretation of
this verse, relating thoughts to breasts, hearts? A. Carel winner
of nobel prize in biology, in his book about praying, (i do not
remember the title exactly), doesnt deny the relation. but if it is
the final explanation, scientificaly, i do not know! the isuue is
not well-searched yet. so what will the scientific explanation be?
who knows!? we should just wait for the day somebody reveals the
secret!
in this regard, there are a lot of other questions.
thus, please note that, asking these kind of questions about quran
is easy, answering them is not! it takes a big deal of scientific
knowledge, that might not even be known to humanity. all people
who comment of quran admit this as a fact.
I remember a speech of imam khomeini, who mentioned the importance
of the job of a commentator on quran, he mentioned, as an example,
this verse of quran that says, god is the "noor" of skies and earth.
(noor=light), he then said, all commentators, explain as :god is
"monavvar" of skies and earth! (monavvar=the one who sheds light)
this shows the delicacy of commenting on quran.
as a summary, if you ask scientific questions about quran and
i (or anybody else) cannt answer, this is not because there is
something wrong! i can ask thousands of questions about physics
that nobody, absolutely nobody not even the giants of the science,
can answer! this only shows that, there is a lot to be learn
from quran.
shaahin