While doing some research on different religions, I came across a photograph on an Islamic website. Below the photograph is an explanation for how certain lines in the human hands add up to numbers that are significant in Islamic culture. Here is a link to said photo:
While one may simply disregard such a picture as absurd, I would like to go a little bit further in analyzing why. At first glance, it is a bit interesting. What are some serious reasons why you think such a “proof” is invalid, when so many people actually believe in it sincerely and it supposedly makes sense? Is this just humans trying to find design in nature? I am curious as to what some of your answers will be.
The lines on people’s hands differ – and my two hands are significantly different from each other. So, looking for Arabic numerals, my left hand looks like 111 and my right hand like 88. What is the cosmic significance of the sum (199) and the difference (23)?
Reminds me of a tract I once read about how numerical codes embedded in the Bible prove it is the Word of God. (This was long before The Bible Code, BTW; I guess it’s an old meme.)
That’s funny, because 19 is supposed to be the special number in Islam. I guess Allah changed his mind between designing human hands and dictating the Quran. And as a minor nitpick, I wouldn’t say Islam was completed upon Muhammad’s death; it immediately split into warring factions and the Quran has been extensively exegesized since then.
Somewhere in a book I once read by the historian of Islamic science Seyyed Hossein Nasr is a remark to the effect that the prohibition of intercalation (leap years, etc.) in the Muslim calendar seems to hint at divine prescience about the eventual global spread of Islam. Because if the Muslim calendar accepted intercalation, religious festivals would stay fixed at particular seasons of the year, and consequently Muslims in areas where Ramadan fell during summer would have a more arduous task in daylight fasting (because of the longer summer days) then areas where it occurred in winter, and that would be unfair.
So the cycling of the Muslim lunar calendar through the solar seasons, showing no favoritism to any land or clime in its festivals, is allegedly sort of intelligently designed for a world where people who observe that calendar live all over the globe: a situation that, it is argued, couldn’t have been plausibly predicted by mere human foresight in the time when Muhammad first decreed the prohibition against intercalation.
I don’t buy it myself, but it’s an interesting example of the kind of argument that the OP is asking about.
Straight Dope Pedantic Moment:
The intercalation to which he alludes is the insertion of a second month of Adar, (Adar Aleph or Adar I which is actually added before Adar), into the Jewish solar/lunar hybrid calendar so that the seasonal festivals regarding planting, harvest, etc. remain associated with the correct season of the year. In the Jewish Metonic cycle of 19 years, Adar Aleph is now inserted on a regular cycle. (In earlier times, it was inserted when it was determined that the solar year was too far out of synch from the lunar calendar–in other words, when the month of Spring (Aviv) was about to begin but it was not actually turning to Spring.)
It really has nothing to do with the “leap years” of the Gregorian or Julian solar calendars. In a solar calendar, the seasons remain fixed in any event, shifting only very gradually as the extra 1/4 day in the earth’s annual cycle messes up the apparent 365 day passage of the sun.
By adhering to a strictly Lunar calendar–that really does not correspond at all to the cycle of the sun–Islam’s months roll around the entire cycle of the sun’s passage with each month appearing at a diferent season each year.
As a proof of the wisdom of Islam, (or Mohammed), it seems rather weak, to me, but if it made Nasr happy, that is also fine with me.
It reads more like a sunday scoop lesson than a ‘proof’ to me - that is, something intended to uplift those who already believe, rather than convince those who do not.
Not exactly accurate. There were various forms of “leap month” intercalation in ancient and medieval times, and not all of them were specifically connected with the Jewish (Hebrew) calendar per se. The ancient Hebrews were not the first or only people to use an intercalary month in their lunar calendar, and Muhammad was probably not referring to the Jewish calendar in particular when he spoke of calendar intercalation.
I think you’re slightly misunderstanding the basic notion of calendar intercalation, in that you’re thinking of intercalation within a 12-lunar-month year as being somehow essentially different from intercalation within a 365-solar-day year. The latter form of intercalation is more minor because the 365-day year is a more accurate approximation of the true astronomical year, but neither type of calendar would truly “remain fixed” to the seasons without the use of intercalation.
Consequently, the intercalation Muhammad spoke of does indeed have something to do with “leap years” as a general concept, as I said. The system of intercalary months, as used in Assyrian/Babylonian and Jewish calendars (and explicitly rejected by the Muslim calendar), intercalates a lunar month within twelve lunar months in specified “leap” years, as opposed to the Julian/Gregorian intercalation of a solar day within 365 days in specified “leap” years. But both practices ultimately serve exactly the same fundamental purpose of keeping the civil calendar on average synchronized with the seasons of the astronomical year.
You are looking at your palms, and not the backs of your hands? That’s where the magic happens.
I must also respectfully disagree that the OP’s link is “interesting” at first glance. It’s a rather weak example of a fallacious argument. Nostradamus-crazies are more convincing.
Even if I were a believer, how would this be proof of anything? Maybe it goes the other way, and the Arabic characters for those numbers were inspired by shapes on the hand. It’d be like claiming our Julian calendar is a God-inspired calendar because it just so happens to align with the amount of time it takes for the Earth to go around the Sun.
If we’re going down that line of reasoning, though, shouldn’t there have been some consideration for those living north of the Arctic Circle, where there is sometimes no day at all, or nothing but day?
One proof I heard mentioned is the discovery of submarine non-salty water springs. Apparently those would be mentioned in the Koran somewhere.
As for the OP, that has been used forever to “prove” everything on the basis of anything. You add, substract, multiply any set of numbers found in a supposedly significant source, and you end up with whatever supposedly significant number/date/word (if you assign numerical value to letters). You can, say, find the date of the beginning of World War II hidden in the dimension of the Egyptian pyramids or anything else you want.
If you count the number of fingers on your left hand, and then add the number of fingers on your right hand, you get 10, the base of our entire numbering system.
