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Islamic Positivism and Scientific Truth: Qur’an and Archeology in a Creationist Documentary Film

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Abstract

The ambition of “scientific creationism” is to prove that science actually confirms religion. This is especially true in the case of Muslim creationism, which adopts a reasoning of a syllogistic type: divine revelation is truth; good science confirms truth; divine revelation is henceforth scientifically proven. Harun Yahya is a prominent Muslim “creationist” whose website hosts many texts and documentary films, among which “Evidence of the true faith in historical sources”. This is a small audiovisual production which, starting from some archeological files, seeks to demonstrate that Qur’an truth precedes science but is equally proven by it. In this paper, we examine the organization of the scientific and religious argumentative repertoires and, in particular, what in each of them is taken as evidence and gets access to an authoritative status. It leads us to show how much this type of Muslim creationism constitutes a kind of scientism.

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Notes

  1. http://en.harunyahya.net/evidence-for-the-true-faith-in-historical-sources-video-harun-yahya-documentaries/.

  2. Although more recently so called Young Earth views also target geology and cosmology.

  3. For a perspicuous investigation of Evangelism and its attitude vis-à-vis science, see Gonzalez and Stavo-Debauge (2015).

  4. As Drury (1973: 102) nicely puts it, in his Wittgensteinian way, there is no need for a theory when factual certainty is achieved. A theory is an interpretive means that gives a hypothetical explanation to something still partly or wholly ignored.

  5. This is the case in the field of bioethics, where some scientists try to show how to read the scriptures in the light of the development of knowledge. See Dupret (2002) and Ghaly (2015).

  6. See Wikipedia entry “Adnan Oktar”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Oktar.

  7. The title is one good reason if any why one can speak of “Islamic creationism” as a member’s term.

  8. Nursi is known for having said that “scientific practice is the best religious practice, since scientific progress broadens our knowledge in God”; and “science and religion are the two pillars of the perfect man” (see Mardin 1989).

  9. It must be noted that this combat against Darwin and Marxism is also linked to the use of these authors by Turkish leftist movements to sustain their political struggle.

  10. “About the SRF”. Srf-tr.org. Retrieved 10 April 2012. This campaign against secularism and in favor or the return to religious values in public life is a feature Harun Yahya shares with ID promoters.

  11. The parallel one can draw between the Qur’an and the Bible is evident here. However, Harun Yahya does not refer to the latter, but only to the former. It must be reminded that, in classical Islamic doctrine, Muhammad is presented as the Seal of all prophecies and the Qur’an as the direct Word of God, which corrected all what preceded.

  12. One sees here incidentally that the audience which is targeted is not only composed of non-believers but also of believers needing scientific support to their faith.

  13. While any science showing the opposite is rejected as pseudoscience.

  14. As Michael Lynch told me when discussing this paper, this syllogism is the kind of inductive confirmation that Popper attacked. In arguments in the USA about Christian creationism, Popper was frequently invoked to dismiss such confirmation of Biblical events.

  15. Reality effects are these visual and textual devices through which a narrative conveys the impression that what takes place in, e.g., a film is related to our common, familiar world, while truth effects are devices of the same kind through which the narrative seeks to persuade the audience that what is said can be trusted or believed in. Both effects are intimately related and serve similar functions and purposes. See also Barthes (1968).

  16. Abbreviation meaning in English-written Islamic texts: “Peace be upon him!”.

  17. On Wittgenstein's "religious point of view" and Winch's perspective in that respect, see Malcom (1993, 2014), the latter including an excellent essay by M. Le Du.

  18. It can be compared to Boyle’s conception, according to which the greatness of God can be empirically assessed since the invariant laws created by God can be discovered and studied by science (see Gould 1998).

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Correspondence to Baudouin Dupret.

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We are deeply indebted to Michael Lynch and Philippe Gonzalez for their generous, relevant, and thorough critical reactions and comments to an early draft of this article.

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Dupret, B., Gutron, C. Islamic Positivism and Scientific Truth: Qur’an and Archeology in a Creationist Documentary Film. Hum Stud 39, 621–643 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-016-9402-8

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