Did you hear the one about the Moon Splitting in Two?

Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed to see such fun,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Religions make plenty of claims of outlandish supernatural miracles, all of which are unable to be substantiated by evidence, outside the little in the way of detail provided in the texts of ancient holy books.

Lack of historic evidence, violations of the laws of nature etc, are no barrier to billions of believers.

Earths creation in six day’s, is a familiar religious story to most Westerners & probably ‘the granddaddy’ of the divine miracle claims.

But there’s another fable that comes close.

Have you heard about the miracle of the moon splitting in two?

And there’s is a whopping 1.5 billion people, with a deep seated belief, that just 14 centuries ago the moon briefly split in two.

The hour has approached, and the moon split. But whenever they see a sign, they turn away and say, ‘This is evident magic’. (Qur’an: al-Qamar, 54.1-2)

To further summarise the relevant passage(s) from the Qur’an for the benefit of you heathens, the story goes like this;

Mohammed was able to split the moon into two halves, and place one half in front of, one half behind the Hiram' mountain range.

And what could have caused the monumental act of breaking in two an 81 trillion ton object, circling Earth at a distance of 385,000kms?

The prophet Mohammed simply twiddling a finger!

Given the scientific absurdity of the story, some Islamic Scholars seek to revise & interpret the passages from the Qur’an, to indicate Mohammed, with the aid of God, merely performed a grand parlor-trick, in the form of an optical illusion.

So what was observed wasn’t the moon actually being literally broken in two - it was but scene created in the sky by Mohammed (or his daddy) as a display of his divine power.

Imagine David Copperfield meets The Weta Workshop, but much, much bigger.

This is an identical scenario to that of Christian revisionists, who seek to explain the Creation time-frame of 7 days (six, not counting the day God had off for good behaviour) and state it’s not a literal truth, by explaining away the Creation ‘days’ in the bible as ‘ages’ (what ever they are?) rather than the widely accepted 24 hours. Of course all other references to days in The Bible are to be taken literally, it’s just the story in Genesis that time itself is re-written, to suit the fact mankind now knows planet Earth is 4.5 Billion Years Old (give or take a few million) not 6,000.

But back to that Mohammed and his lunar excavations.

Cheap telescopes are surely available from the Middle Eastern equivalent of Dick Smith Electronics, so any child looking into the night’s sky can see the moon comes minus evidence of a massive fault-line.

A ten year old only needs look into the night sky to see the moon is, as it has been for billions of years, and armed even with a half decent pair of binoculars, a quick eye-ball show’s there’s no tell-tale dab of ‘magical’ super-glue holding the satellite together.

Therefore you don’t have to be a astro-geologist here, to weigh-up the proposition being put forward – and dismiss it out right.

Nor is there any evidence outside the Qur’an the moon has split in two at point in the last 4.5 billion years, let alone some where around 625 CE.

So why persist in the year 2008 to fob this moon-splitting ‘bullocks’ off, as anything other than a primitive legend?

The most worrying of words in the English language: Faith.

Despite the irrefutable scientific evidence to the contrary, the followers of Mohammed largely take anything written in The Qur’an as a ‘truth’.

In a grand irony, it’s these very same followers of Islam, that disparage the Christian story of creation, even on occasion presenting scientific evidence to show conclusively the planet we reside on is older than the that stated in Christians Bible, and smugly pointing-out that the Qur’an says an indefinable ‘six periods’ rather than those of the ‘Jesus following fools’ who believe in a measly six days.

Christians, also call into play science and astronomy when it suits them, to defend their faith, and discredit religious stories which differ to their own, moon-splitting being one of them.

Thus an Atheist and a Christian make strange bed-fellows in their disbelief in tales of ‘moon splitting’ and Atheists and Muslims get a good old laugh together, at the ‘creation in a mere six days’ nonsense.

But, it’s only the Atheist has the sense to see both stories for what they are.

Fiction.

And poor fiction at that.