Every living thing made from water.

Beebok wrote: Muslims established not only memorization of the word, but proper readings such as where to pause to inhale. If someone memorized the Quran without this proper education, it would not be accepted by the scholarly community as a correct reading, even though the words were perfect.The fact that we have even deviant readings of the same words shows even more thoroughly how carefully and perfectly we preserved the Quran.Actually, a real example of what a real scholar says include:"And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places."and"...these copies differ from one another in so many places that we don't even know how many difference there are."and"there are more differences� among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament."

But since there are deviant readings as you say, who decided which one was or is correct? It said that the Uthman script (there are no known copies) was unpointed and so rather that fix the reading would inevitably multiply the variants.

Of course there are differences between NT manuscripts but very few of these differences are significant. One should also note that if a word say was spelled differently 50 times it would be counted as 50 variants though no rational person would regard it as of serious significance. The point is there are about 25,000 manuscripts that contain portions or whole books and therefore with such a body of evidence the accuracy of the Greek NT can be assured. I would point out here that we don't need to invoke any supernatural intervention to have confidence in the text.

Finally, just because a text is known to be accurate does not mean you have to accept what it says be it the NT or the Quran or indeed any scripture - that is the point where faith convinces you but to come to that point you have to have read with some honesty the relevant texts for yourself not approach them in a unbiased manner.

Edited by bunter - 12 November 2012 at 6:39am

Abu Loren wrote: In the Bible it says this. Genesis 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. So it's clear even in the Bible that water was created even before the earth. The significance of this is that this is only the second verse of Genesis, striking home the importance and meaning of this verse.

This is a mistake because you are assuming that the verses in Genesis 1 are strictly chronological and literal. In fact what I and many others believe is that Genesis 1 cannot be read literally and it seems to be structured so that is makes excellent logical sense but not necessarily chronological sense. Therefore, the correct way of reading it might be non-chronological, topical and theological. Consider, when the earth was first created it is said to be shapeless and empty: the first three days deal with its shape and the second three with filling it up with creatures suitable to its different parts.

Day 1 The separation of darkness and light
Day 4 The creation of the lights to rule the day and night

Day 2 The separation of the waters to form sea and sky
Day 5 The creation of birds and fish to fill the sea and sky

Day 3 The separation of the sea from dry land & creation of plants
Day 6 The creation of animals

The whole passage reflects and speaks of the harmony, order and beauty in God's creation. In short it is perfectly possible to find an interpretation that tells us what God is saying to us in this passage as long as we are willing to take some time and effort to do it with an open mind for we cannot demand God speaks to us in the way WE would like it to be.

With regard to 'everything being made from water' then you need to say what that might mean - does it mean everything is made out of water or everything needs water or what? Obviously we are not made entirely out of water and it is equally obviously we need water to survive so I don't see any scientific miracle here. Plus the Quran also says men are made out of 'sounding clay' in Q15:26, 'dust' in Q30:20 so are these verses mistake?

Beebok wrote: Although some of the importance of water to life was known before the 1976 mission, it hadn�t sunk in enough for NASA scientists to look for water. It only struck them to do so after the Viking missions, according to this show.

[sigh] No, that's not it at all, but I can see how this documentary might give you that mistaken impression.

The Viking mission was designed to look for positive signs of life "as we know it", i.e. water-based life.  If the experiment had been successful, we would have had sufficient evidence to say that there was life on Mars.  Unfortunately, Viking failed to find such evidence; and in the process we learned just how difficult that is to do.

It was around the same time that science came to realize the amazing diversity of life "as we know it", in the deep ocean, deserts, etc.  We learned that on Earth at least, where there is water, there is probably life.  In fact, it's hard to find a place on our planet where there is water and there isn't life.

The failure of Viking, coupled with our new knowledge of just how adaptive life "as we know it" can be, convinced NASA scientists to change their approach.  Instead of looking for sufficient evidence, they decided to settle for finding the necessary conditions for life.  Finding those conditions would not prove that there is life on Mars, but at least it would give us reason to hope, and help us to know where to look for positive signs.

It wasn't that it never occurred to scientists to look for water.  In fact, the BBC documentary mentions Percival Lowell, whose interest over a hundred years ago in the supposed "canals" on Mars was because "he understood the importance of water, H2O, to living things."

It was rather that after Viking failed to answer the more ambitious question, "Does life exist on Mars?", NASA decided to ask the easier question, "Could life exist on Mars?"; and the easiest way to ask this second question was to look for water.

It is even more ludicrous to suppose that a desert-dwelling tribe (of all people!) would need divine inspiration to understand that water is essential to life.  For them this isn't even science -- it's basic survival.

bunter wrote: Absolutely. I am not familiar with the book you mentioned but in its notes it obviously has a creationist and literalist agenda. It clearly goes way beyond what one might learn from the text itself - there is no warrant at all for saying 'breath" equates to "Waves of gravitational energy and waves of electro-magnetic energy.... " I don't take a creationist and literal view, I am happy to accept that creation occured in much the way modern science portrays it - that is creation goes on because God made it so it could reproduce itself. I cite two books, the first by Professor Andrew Parker, a non-believer, who wrote a book called "The Genesis Enigma" and concluded that the Genesis account matches perfectly with modern science. Similarly, Professor Earnest Lucas, a believer who has 2 Phd's, in his book "Can we believe Genesis today" apply science and find certainty there - does it not seem telling that two formidable experts in science agree? 'Can we believe Genesis Today' - ISBN 9781 84474 1205 'The Genesis Enigma' - ISBN 9780 55277 5281