| AVOIDING THE MISTAKES OF GENESIS |
| As we saw in chapter 2, both the
Quran and modern science confirm that the heavens and the earth were created
simultaneously, having been separated from a primary nebula. It is important
to understand that the Bible, the most famous record of the creation prior
to the Quran gives a sequence for the creation of the heavens and the earth
that is today found unacceptable from a scientific standpoint. If the Quran
was the work of human beings it is difficult to imagine how they could
have avoided the human errors so firmly fixed in the minds of people from
the previous records.
In the Bible, in Genesis, chapter 1, we read that God
created light which He called day, and separated it from the darkness which
He called night (see v. 3). Today we know that the alternation of day and
night is caused by the earth's movement in relation to the sun. But, according
to Genesis, the sun was not created until the fourth day (see v. 16). So
how could day and night alternate before that?
Could the Quran have been authored by a human? No!
Dr. Bucaille asks: "How could a man living fourteen hundred years ago have
made corrections to the existing description to such an extent that he
eliminated scientifically inaccurate material and, on his own initiative,
made statements that science has only in the present day been able to verify?"
(p.151). (Dr. Bucaille was not born a muslim, but after reading the Quran
and seeing how the Quran goes in such details into Science he converted
to Islam.)
SIX DAYS OF CREATION OR SIX PERIODS? Today we know that the creation process can be measured
in billions of years.
The six days of creation in the book of Genesis, then,
are clearly like six days of any seven-day week. The Priestly editors have
made it clear that a day is meant a period from one sunset to another.
Six days meant from Sunday to Friday. They believed that the reason the
Sabbath day became holy is that God Himself had rested on that day. Thus
the editors tell us: "By the seventh day God had finished the work he had
been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God
blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from
all the work of creating that he had done" (Genesis 2:2).
The idea that God rests like humans and gets refreshed
like humans had to be corrected by Jesus, on whom be peace, when, according
to John, he declared that God never stops working, even on the Sabbath
day (see John 5:16). God clarified the matter in His own words when he
declared: "And verily we created the heavens and the earth and all that
is between them in six days, and naught of weariness touched us" (Quran
50:38 see also v. 15).
Again, we see that the Quran has avoided repeating
an error which was established in a previous book an error that will not
be discovered until modern times. In view of this, can anyone insist that
the Quran is the work of a man?
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