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[Thread - A Continuation] Theological presuppositions & shortcomings of anachronistic scientific interpretations: The trend alluded to in the previous thread shows that there is a belief that Islamic textual sources or divine religious figures not only have the capacity
to deliver truths that modern science has arrived at today, but in fact _they have_ indeed mentioned some of these truths centuries before these discoveries were made in the modern world. In this regard, it is important to point out that one of the crucial theological assumptions
is whether it was even necessary for these divine personalities to be aware of knowledge besides what is deemed religious knowledge. A vast number of early Shī‘ī theologians – if not all of them - believed the Prophet (p) or the Imams (a) did not _need_ to possess or be aware of
such extraneous knowledge, and many scholars also denied that these divine personalities possessed knowledge of the unseen regarding these matters. Many scholars believed that the divine figures did not need to know anything about worldly professions such as medicine, technology
or other skills, and that they themselves would refer to experts of their times to learn about these matters. If someone were to hold this position, then it would be difficult to argue for whether anything in the hadith could be speaking about discoveries made by these figures
during their own time, let alone a reference to modern scientific discoveries. Consider this question put forth to the founder of the seminary of Qom, Shaykh Abdul Karim Haeri Yazdi (d. 1937): "Given that the Quran is a book that contains all knowledge, the Europeans and others
have extracted & learned the knowledge of technologies from it and have progressed. Why haven't our scholars taught us about technology? We the people of Iran are poor and worried. Are the Europeans on the truth, or is it that our scholars have mentioned these things & we have
simply not acted on them?" The response of Haeri Yazdi is significant as he rebuts the assumption of the questioner: "The Quran and the hadith have strongly encouraged us to organize our society and to learn and gain know-how of life, but the specifics of technological know-how
is accessible for all to know. The foreigners have dedicated their efforts to it and have produced these technologies, while we have been lazy and have not shown interest in this, and this also has nothing to do with the scholars."
We can take it further & say that even if one believes these divine figures possessed such knowledge, maintaining this belief does not prove whether it was necessarily taught and conveyed by them and recorded in the sources. There is no necessary relationship between the two.
In this light, a crucial presupposition that needs to be addressed is one regarding language and intent of the speaker. Those propagating scientific interpretations assume that the language being used in the religious texts actually possesses the capacity to convey and transmit
meanings that fit modern scientific discoveries. The linguistic assumption is that the words revealed or uttered at the time of the revelation or when uttered by a divine figure have the capacity to mean something that would not have crossed the minds of their immediate audiences
This is while it is a well-established principle amongst Shī‘ī scholars that the default language of the Quran or the narrations are to be understood in the language of their immediate audience and the linguistic conventions used at the time. If one believes that the Prophet,
Imams or the Quran intended meanings through the use of their speech that are only being truly understood today, particularly in the case of modern scientific discoveries whose meanings were not understood even by their immediate audiences, then this brings into question
the wisdom of both God and divine personalities. When a wise person addresses an audience, their motive is to convey their intended meanings so that people understand what they are saying, and if the textual and verbal signification of their words
are only to be understood correctly centuries later, then this is not only very detested by society, rather it would bring into question whether God or the divine personalities even addressed the questions and inquiries of people accurately in front of them.
If people did not understand these modern discoveries during their own time despite hearing these statements and verses directly from an infallible, and instead understood something very different or even contradictory to these modern scientific discoveries, this is tantamount
to God, the Prophet or the Imams leading people into compound ignorance by having specifically intended a modern scientific discovery, yet its immediate audience was unable to understand such a point.
A second thing to note is the sources being used to purport some of these interpretations. Many sources relied upon to make these claims, particularly regarding the Prophet or the Imams are highly suspicious and often times their reliability is standing on fragile grounds.
Earlier, I made a thread about one such problematic source - which I called a modern-day fabrication, it can be read here: http://shorturl.at/nrvyY - however, another source repeatedly being used by some is Tawḥīd al-Mufaḍḍal.
Ignoring the extensive discussions on the reliability of the primary narrator Mufaḍḍal b. ‘Umar, contemporary textual criticism of the work indicates that this was most likely a work written in the 9th century and then attributed to multiple authors, such as the Mu‘tazali
scholar Abū ‘Uthmān ‘Amr b. Baḥr al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 869) and Imam Ṣādiq. The work was most likely written by a Nestorian Christian during the time of the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil (d. 861). Debates between Nestorian and Manichean Christians were prominent during the 8th and 9th
centuries in Abbasid era Baghdad and hence one repeatedly finds critiques of the Manichean sect in this work, otherwise, the work is empty of any uniquely held Shī‘ī theological position and its contents cannot be found in any other Shī‘ī ḥadīth work
Some contemporary Shī‘ī jurisconsults like Sayyid Aḥmad Madadī have argued that the reattribution of this Christian work to Ja‘far Ṣādiq (a) was most likely done by the Fatimids during the 10th century and that otherwise, the work has “nothing to do with Mufaḍḍal."
