Islamic Positivism and Scientific Truth

Clémentine Gutron (1) , Baudouin Dupret (2)

1 CAK-CRHST - Centre Alexandre Koyré - Centre de Recherche en Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques
2 LAM - Les Afriques dans le monde

The ambition of “scientific creationism” is to prove that science actually confirms religion. This is especially true in the case of Muslim creationism, which adopts a reasoning of a syllogistic type: divine revelation is truth; good science confirms truth; divine revelation is henceforth scientifically proven. Harun Yahya is a prominent Muslim “creationist” whose website hosts many texts and documentary films, among which “Evidence of the true faith in historical sources”. This is a small audiovisual production which, starting from some archeological files, seeks to demonstrate that Qur’an truth precedes science but is equally proven by it. In this paper, we examine the organization of the scientific and religious argumentative repertoires and, in particular, what in each of them is taken as evidence and gets access to an authoritative status. It leads us to show how much this type of Muslim creationism constitutes a kind of scientism.

Mots clés: Creationism; Scientism; Truth effects; Archeology; Islam; Harun Yahya

Domaines: Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences; Religions

Clémentine Gutron, Baudouin Dupret. Islamic Positivism and Scientific Truth: Qur'an and archeology in a creationist documentary. Human Studies, 2016, 39 (4), pp.621-643. ⟨10.1007/s10746-016-9402-8⟩. ⟨halshs-02164638⟩