EARTH AND EARTHLY RELIGIONS?
There seems to be ambiguity and ambivalence in Quran about Earth being spherical or flat. Believers have cited Quranic verses to prove its sphericity. Critics have produced equally convincing verses to indicate Quran shows it flat. And Bible is not even ambivalent but almost positive about the earth being flat.
But about earth’s geocentricity [or the earth being at the center, as against haleocentricity, or the sun being at the center] Quran is far less specific. And Bible, dated over 600 years ago, is positive about it. Galileo was even punished and compelled to retract.
Both these discoveries at their respective points of time must have been as baffling to the human mind. It is just that the former was better sorted out by the time of advent of Islam while the latter wasn’t fully sorted out yet.
About the presence of such a large continent like America [discovered about 800 years after Mohammed and about 1500 years after Christ] both these scriptures are absolutely silent. And about the shortened or elongated days and nights on the North and the South poles the books appear prima facie completely inaccurate.
Now, from these facts, can’t this be surmised that the scriptures merely reflect the stock of knowledge available to humans [may be, the better informed humans] of the time?
