I'm posting as I read through this article, but I find this to be a rather bold admission.
Regrettably, the scientific miracles narrative has become an intellectual embarrassment for Muslim apologists, including myself. A few years ago I took some activists to Ireland to engage with the audience and speakers at the World Atheist Convention. Throughout the convention we had a stall outside the venue and as a result positively engaged with hundreds of atheists, including the popular atheist academics Professor P. Z. Myers and Professor Richard Dawkins. During our impromptu conversation with Professor Myers we ended up talking about God’s existence and the Divine nature of the Qur’ān. The topic of embryology came up, and Professor Myers being an expert in the field challenged our narrative. He claimed that the Qur’ān did not predate modern scientific conclusions in the field. As a result of posting the video[8] of the engagement on-line we faced a huge intellectual backlash. We received innumerable amounts of emails by Muslims and non-Muslims. The Muslims were confused and had doubts, and the non-Muslims were bemused with the whole approach. Consequently, I decided to compile and write an extensive piece on the Qur’ān and embryology, with the intention to respond to popular and academic contentions.[9] During the process of writing I relied on students and scholars of Islamic thought to verify references and to provide feedback in areas where I had to rely on secondary and tertiary sources. Unfortunately they were not thorough and they seemed to have also relied on trusting other Muslim apologists. When the paper was published it was placed under a microscope by atheist activists.[10] Although they misrepresented some of the points, they raised some significant contentions. I have since removed the paper from my website. In retrospect if this never happened, I probably wouldn’t be writing this essay now. It is all a learning curve and an important part of developing intellectual integrity.
I often wonder what doubts must be eating away at the minds of these apologists, as I found myself in a very similar situation as I was losing my faith in what I thought was the absolute, divine truth. There comes a point when you realize, if you are honest, that it is simply an untenable presumption. Once you have built such a name for yourself as Tzotzis has, that can be a nearly impossible thing to admit publically. What is even more interesting and scary is the possibility that these dawah-gandists do not sincerely believe a word they are saying, but have come to the conclusion that, since it’s all bullshit anyway, they stand to lose nothing by giving it lip service whereas they stand to lose everything by publically apostatizing. (That was a very clumsy sentence, but I can’t be bothered to re-word it. You get my idea.)
Addendum:
As I read through this even more, it is almost as though he realizes and admits to just how dishonest an endeavor this entire process (i.e. proving the Qur’an to be miraculous) truly is. Look at this shit:
A New Approach
So what now? How do we change the direction of the science in the Qur’ān tidal wave that has engulfed Muslim apologetics (more commonly known as daᶜwah in the Muslim community)? How do we transform the narrative? The simple answer is we need a new approach. This new approach is what Professor of Physics and Astronomy Nidhal Guessoum calls a “multiple, multi-level” approach.[52]
The new approach is based on the following axioms and principles:
1. The Qur’ān allows multiple and multi-level meanings.
2. Our understanding of natural phenomena and science changes and improves with time.
3. The Qur’ān is not inaccurate or wrong.
4. In the case of any irreconcilable difference between a Qur’ānic assertion and a scientific one, the following must be done:
• Find meanings within the verse to correlate with the scientific conclusion.
• If no words can match the scientific conclusion then science is to be improved.
• Find a non-scientific meaning. The verse itself may be pertaining to non-physical things, such as the unseen, spiritual or existential realities.
Topic: Tzortzis: Does the quran contain scientific miracles