The Quran's descriptions of embryo development cast serious doubt on its supposed 'divine origin'
There are many modern Muslims that point to certain predictions' and claims in the Quran as smoking gun evidence that the Quran came from God. One of the most popular proofs' of divine origin that are cited is the Quran's miraculous' description of embryo development, its claims having been confirmed by modern science!'
What the Quran actually states is that "bones come first, then are clothed in flesh."
My argument is that for various reasons this claim is wrong, and rather than being proof of divine origin, this claim in fact represents further evidence that the Quran is simply a man-made work of 7th century fiction.
These are the problems with the bones come first' claim:
Problem Number 1: the word in question translates to English as meat' or flesh'. Now the vast majority of definitions for the words 'flesh' and meat' describe it as a generic, umbrella term for all of the body's non-bone, 'soft tissue'. An embryo has a lot of soft tissue before it has any bones. Nuff said.
Problem Number 2: if 'bones come first' was an accurate way of describing embryo development, it really wouldn't count for anything anyway. The documented study of embryology precedes the birth of Muhammad by about a thousand years. The Koran's descriptions of embryo development are derived from Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. Indeed it has been claimed that the Quran's descriptions have been lifted specifically from the 2nd century AD works of the Roman philosopher Galen.
Problem Number 3: embryo development is essentially a process of the differentiation of tissues. By week 3 there are three distinct types of cells:
"Ectoderm cells will form the embryo's skin; mesoderm cells its bones, muscles, and organs; and endoderm cells its digestive tract."
The muscles AND the bones AND the organs ALL form from the exact same type of tissue: the mesoderm. This tissue differentiates further into the muscles/bones/organs, i.e. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSCLES AND BONES HAPPEN SIMULATNEOUSLY.
Problem Number 4: there is absolutely no point in the stages of development in which the embryo has either ALL of its muscles and no bones, or ALL of its bones and no muscles. Even if bone development did begin earlier than muscle development, the Quran would still be wrong since this is not what it says. "Bones first then clothed in flesh" implied that the skeleton is fully formed before it is wrapped in soft tissue. This doesn't happen.
Problem Number 5: Muslim websites and You Tube vids abound pointing to this single biologist, Keith L Moore, who they claim describes bones coming first. Since the rest of the scientific literature and opinion on the subject tends to be ignored, this appeal is clearly an Argument from Authority. Typically Muslim sites and vids refer us to one lecture Keith L Moore gave in 1971 where he (kind of) says the bones come first. However in the the 7th edition of his textbook even Moore recounts specifically how the Koran's statements on embryology are pretty much copied and pasted from the works of Galen and thus are nothing impressive: he references the essay "B. Musallam, The human embryo in Arabic scientific and religious thought", in support of that contention.
Problem Number 6: if we put aside ALL of those problems then there is another: since neither development of muscle or bone strictly comes first as they begin to develop simultaneously, we might ask the question which develops faster?' The answer is the muscle'. Bone development is not even fully complete until several months after birth.
So, in summary, the Quran's descriptions of embryo development are child-like in their simplicity, based on works that came centuries earlier, and fundamentally inaccurate on even a basic level.
