I've not really got time to go over the full thing at the moment, but I've had a quick scan and I'd start with these two questions:

1)  It states that "GOD is the ONE who made the sun a shining glory and the moon a light and for her ordained mansions, so that you might know the number of years and the reckoning"  This doesn't necessarily equate to us measuring the time by the lunar year.  Time could be reckoned by the sun.  There's no solid reason to assume that the Qu'ran is referring to a sidereal year.

2)  In one day light will travel 4.4 times the mean distance of PLuto from the Sun.  It specifically states that the cosmic whatsit travels to allah in that time.  Does that mean that Allah is only a light day away?  We can see stars that are billions of light years, why haven't we seen Allah?  If the answer is that "It travels to Allah in the spirit" then the physical  laws no longer apply - so while it's an interesting coincidence the calculation doesn't mean anything,  I'll accept it if they accept that Allah is floating in space and we should be able to see him.

Here is at least one basic error:

Note that the Earth is not said to be in orbit, only the Sun and Moon, which is exactly consistent with the then prevailing geocentric view, not the scientific view that the earth is in orbit around the sun. The Sun most certainly does not orbit around any body in the solar system - it orbits around the center of the galaxy in an estimated 225 million years. It is vastly more likely that the 'orbit' of the sun they are referring to is the apparent motion around the earth.

And this really sounds like the scientific understanding of the motion of the Sun (not):

Several similar statements all refer to the sun and moon orbiting the Earth, none have the earth itself moving. In fact:

which while not absolutely unambiguous, certainly implies that theearthdoes not move.

The velocity calculation says that the distance that moon will travel around its orbit in 1000 lunar years (12000 revolutions) corresponds to the distancelight will travel in one terrestrial day. He has to apply this adjustment factor cos(a) where a is the angular movement of the earth/moon system around the Sun in one lunar month. I don't quite see how this is justified - 

is total crap - relativistic considerations just don't apply here. There may be some geometric correction justifiable, but the adjustment proposed doesn't quite make sense to me.

The original quote is clearly just using simple quantities - 1 day and 1000 years - just the sort of rhetoric one would expect in such a context. He claims that the 'measure' of normal(?) velocity is that of the moon in its orbit, which is presumable justified elsewhere, hopefully in one of the references.

What the author has 'uncovered' is that if you calculate the lunar velocity, with an obscurely justified correction, multiply it by 12000, which is the number of terrestrial days in 1000 lunar years, you get a figure closely agreeing with the currently accepted figure for the velocity of light. This an interesting coincidence. I haven't repeated all the calculations to check if there is a numerical error, but the most suspicious thing is the angular 'correction' - seems to me like he did the basic calculation, got a figure in the ballpark of the speed of light, and hunted around for the required 'correction'. Still a bit of a coincidence to get that close with a relatively simple extra correction, even if the justification for the particular adjustment does not quite make sense.

At best, he has found an interesting numerical coincidence, assuming all the figures and calculations are accurate.

When you look at all the other completely erroneous ideas about orbital motions, distances, numbers of planets, etc in the Qu'ran, it really doesn't offset them to the extent of 'proving' the remarkable scientific predictions of the book, particularly when the original quotation contains entirely unremarkable figures - one day and 1000 years. If it had used odd special values, like 1249.6 years, and that could be shown to match closely some major physical constant only established recently by science, there would be more of a case.

I've been trying to reply to Bob, but somehow his post completely crashes my browser. It's like magic.

Anyway, Bob hit the nail on the head. Except that it's not a coincidence that Dr. Whatshisface ended up with the speed of light.

Quickly, though, your first hint that this guy isn't a scientist is that he's not preserving his significant figures properly. That's high school. I don't know what he's a doctor of, but it didn't involve scientific math. Either that, or he just doesn't care. That actually kills his argument right there, because if he were to observe the necessary rules of significant digits, his calculation is actually quite different. In short, he's using specific numbers because he knows what the answer will be, even if it completely breaks the rules of reasonable calculation. That's either ignorance or lies, and neither helps his case.

First, let's check his data. We'll use NASA as a source, since he holds them in such high esteem. (From their Moon Fact Sheet.)

Siderial period in days => 27.321661 = 655.71986 hours

That pretty much checks out. Let's give it to him. It's odd that he can claim better data than NASA, but whatever.

Okay, now how about the average center-to-center distance between the earth and the moon?

Dr. Dude says 384,264km, but NASA says 384,467km. 200km isn't that significant, but let's take the NASA figure just to be sure.

Now, Dr. Genius would like to use a value of pi that has only five significant figures, but end up with a result that magically has six. Not allowed. But let's be nice and hand him the benefit of a sixth digit in pi. He gets 3682.07 km/h, and we get:

(2 * 3.14159 * 384,467 km) / 655.71986 h = 3684.01 km/h

Well, four km/h probably won't make much of a difference, eh?

Let's give him all the rest of his numbers and skip to the end to see:

C = 12000 x 3684.01 x 0.89157 x 655.71986 / 86164.0906

C = 299,950 km/s

Oh. Wow. Turns out when we use the actual values, uh ... it's not so spot-on. No "marvelous agreement" there. Just an arbitrary number close to 300,000. Back to the drawing board, Dr. Cheatsalot. Thanks for coming out.

The trouble with stuff like this is that you ask for someone who is scientifically savy to rebut this, when in fact that just means you've fallen into the trap of aproaching this from a scientific angle: the one thing that this whole business wants you to do.

What you need is a philosopher, or even better, a linguist, a sophist, a professional contrarian.

All this is is an example of how language as the primary form of communication is both humanity's greatest blessing, and it's greatest curse. It makes us capable of contemplating reality in all it's complexity, and to represent reality, both within our own minds, and to other people.

But words don't really mean anything. They are just arbitrary sounds. That's why we have different languages. The word "Fart" means something entirely different to me, a Dane, then it means to you English speakers. I don't find the mere mention of that word funny, unless the context is right: that is, I'm engaged in juvenile humour with an English speaker. Otherwise, the word just means "speed" to me.

Platonic idealism, while a fascinating idea, is so naive in it's attempt to reconsile language and reality, that it ends up looking like exactly what it is: one man's desperate attempt to to justify that his words actually mean something.

What I'm saying is, the Muslims who are proponents of this idea wants to speak the language of science, and they want the Koran to do so to.

So when you tell them: "But the Earth orbits the sun", they'll say: "Yes, that's what I am saying".

You: "But the speed of light is..."

Them: "Yes, precisely, and it says so right here in the book"

You: "But E=MC2"

Them: "Yes, and reality=Allah. It fits perfectly!"

See, a conversation like that is like two people, one speaking Chinese and the other one Spanish. If you want to engage this guy, forget about trying to speak "Science" with him. You have to speak his language: The language of postmodernism: The language of making words mean whatever you want them to mean.

That may sound a little bleak: how are you ever going to convince him of anything, if can only speak the language of meaninglessness. Well you aren't, but then, you never were to begin with.

But you may be able to show him what it is he's doing. Make him aware of what language he is speaking.

What you need is reducto ad absurdum arguments, and pointing out self-contradictions. And put your self in his shoes constantly, as a conversational tool: accept a proposition, as a hypothetical, and see where that leads you.

Example:

Him: "Science is in the Quran"

You: "Okay, so let's assume for a moment that I accept that proposition. So, what should I infer from that? That the Lord want's us to know about the scientific reality of the universe?"

Him: "Well... yes..."

You: "So then do you accept the theory of natural selection?"

Him: "What? No!"

You: "But then why do you accept the theory of relitivity, and other scientific theories relating to the speed of light and the other things in the Koran? If any scientific theory can be disregarded, just on your say-so, then Science has no merit over anything. The scientific theories that you use to justify the Koran are only true if science works.

If science works then, according to you the Koran has merit. But if the Earth is banana-shaped and the Nightsky is a huge black blanket with holes in it, laid over the Earth, then the Koran is not true.

So science must be true for the Koran to be true. Is that a connection you are sure you should be making? Because science also includes the theory of Natural selection. Science also includes sociology that tells us restrictions in pre-marital sex leads to sexual disfunction, not to mention violent crime in the form of an inordinate amount of sexually frustrated young men.

I mean, either you accept the scientific method as a valid means of uncovering reality, or you don't. If you do, then cool, so do I.

If you don't then what does it matter that the Koran tells us about the sun's and the moon's orbit? The moon could just as easily be a huge hunk of Green cheese, meaning the Koran is full of nonsense.

That's just one example. Generally, just think: What has he decided is his argument? Think like he thinks, and then see what you can do with it, to show him what that line of reasoning will lead him to that he probably hasn't thought of.

Like the above example:

If you argue: "The Koran is true because Science is true" then you are arguing: "science is true". Now what does that mean for your worldview?

Or how about: "If Allah is one day away from everything, then he IS omnipresent, but with a lag of one day, everywhere. So there's no point in praying for something that requires instant intervention. If you are on a plane that's crashing, will you pray to your God? Because he won't hear the prayer until tomorrow, so why pray?

And so on and so forth. Don't try and make your worldview destroy his worldview, because that never works. Try and make HIS worldview destroy itself by exposing the cognative dissonance. That rarely works, but at least you'll be speaking to him in his own language, making it at least possible that he'll see the self-contradictory nature of his views.

Excellent! Posting works again!

That's because your initial assessment of "total crap" is totally accurate. The guy decides when and where to ignore gravity--even though I doubt that would have any major impact on the calculation--and then fudges the center-to-center value between earth and moon. For the less significant figures, he just introduces a rounding error by ignoring the convention of significant figures entirely, and ... voila! Behold the power of Allah! When I switch the numbers around, I can get the speed of light! Allah be praised.

If you do a back-of-the-napkin calculation with the values, you'll quickly see why the 12,000 works out. It's basically the multiplier that gets a number close to 300,000).

The reason I bothered to do the calculation at all is because the average center-to-center distance between the earth and moon is 385,000 km, accurate to one part in ten billion. So if I use that value, and end up with

C = 300,366 km/s

you can see the calculation's sensitivity to that value. We've overshot the mark pretty severely by this point.

If I were to only use NASA's numbers (from the above cited moon info page) and actually followed the rules of math, then the official speed of light according to Allah is:

C = 12000 * 3689.1 * 0.89157 * 655.728 / 86164.2

C = 300,370 km/s

Close, but no cigar, Allah.

I enjoyed reading the posts and trying to follow a topic which is way over my head (no pun intended).

Yay!

I've always thought that basing your 'year' on the moon's motion is pretty silly - the seasons clearly follow the Sun. Since seasonal changes are so fundamental to important aspects of life, such as growing or hunting for food, it's makes far more sense to mark the passage of time by the Sun.

The moon mainly affects the tides, which have some significance for people living on or near the sea coast, but that is about it.