Peace!
Thanks Duster for sharing an interesting discussion! I had posted I do not want to get involved in any argument on this. However, after reading your post and going through the link I thought a point is needed to be clarified. So let me make a final posting.
According to me, the issue is NOT whether an ant can "speak", but the issue is whether ants have the capacity to identify, recognize, perceive things like a human being, whether it had the ability to recognize Solomon, who was most probably at the least a mile away, to have sufficient time for all ants to find "safe place" in their 'dwellings' and most importantly, the possibility of any ant having advance knowledge of who was Solomon, his character, his mission, etc. Scientific references to show an ant can "speak" cannot help here.
Here is wiki notes about ant's eye sight.
Here is some interesting notes about an ant's ability to "THINK" and "ANALYSE" facts. I am sure many others can post many more intersting facts.
I read at one place the method used by Ants to gather food.
By following pheromone trails created by other ants from the colony, foraging ants can gather and store food efficiently. A scout ant first leaves the nest in search of food, and wanders somewhat randomly until it discovers something edible. It will then consume some of the food and return to the nest in a straight, direct line. It seems these scout ants can observe and recall visual cues that enable them to navigate quickly back to the nest. Along the return route, the scout ant leaves a trail of pheromones, special scents that will guide her nestmates to the food. The foraging ants then follow her path, each one adding more scent to the trail to reinforce it for others. The workers will continue walking back and forth along the line until the food source is depleted
If an ant, in the story of Solomon, could make an announcement to all ants in a valley to take shelter in their homes without being crushed by solomon and his army, and we should assume here Solomon and all ants in the valley instantaneously head this announcement, why ants have to follow the above complicated process for a simple thing of gathering food?
Anyhow, in verse 2:26 Allah states the possibility of using simile even that of a mosquito to convey certain facts. Therefore illustrations using ant to convey certain facts is a clear possibility. The important question is, why should we insist that there is no question of Allah using an allegory using an ant? What is the need to take an extreme position? Why we can not approach the issue with a flexible mind?
Regards, Islamist
Thanks Duster for sharing an interesting discussion! I had posted I do not want to get involved in any argument on this. However, after reading your post and going through the link I thought a point is needed to be clarified. So let me make a final posting.
According to me, the issue is NOT whether an ant can "speak", but the issue is whether ants have the capacity to identify, recognize, perceive things like a human being, whether it had the ability to recognize Solomon, who was most probably at the least a mile away, to have sufficient time for all ants to find "safe place" in their 'dwellings' and most importantly, the possibility of any ant having advance knowledge of who was Solomon, his character, his mission, etc. Scientific references to show an ant can "speak" cannot help here.
Here is wiki notes about ant's eye sight.
Quotehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant#cite_note-39
Compared to vertebrates, most ants have poor-to-mediocre eyesight and a few subterranean species are completely blind. Some ants such as Australia's bulldog ant, however, have excellent vision and are capable of discriminating the distance and size of objects moving nearly a metre away*
*Eriksson, E. Sture (1985). "Attack behaviour and distance perception in the Australian bulldog ant Myrmecia nigriceps". J. Exp. Biol. 119: 115–131.
Here is some interesting notes about an ant's ability to "THINK" and "ANALYSE" facts. I am sure many others can post many more intersting facts.
Quotehttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061018094651.htm
Professor Tom Collett from the University of Sussex's Centre for Neuroscience, explained: "To show that ants use visual memory to navigate we trained ants to find food 10cm from a cylinder. We then doubled the size of the cylinder and the ants searched for the food at 20cm away where the retinal size of the landmark was the same. "To analyse the ants' powers of recall an ambiguous a situation was set up. Ants were trained to search for food between two cylinders of different sizes and then tested with the training cylinders replaced by two cylinders of the same size. Would ants know which cylinder is which? They were only able to search in the predicted place when a patterned background was introduced as a retrieval cue
I read at one place the method used by Ants to gather food.
By following pheromone trails created by other ants from the colony, foraging ants can gather and store food efficiently. A scout ant first leaves the nest in search of food, and wanders somewhat randomly until it discovers something edible. It will then consume some of the food and return to the nest in a straight, direct line. It seems these scout ants can observe and recall visual cues that enable them to navigate quickly back to the nest. Along the return route, the scout ant leaves a trail of pheromones, special scents that will guide her nestmates to the food. The foraging ants then follow her path, each one adding more scent to the trail to reinforce it for others. The workers will continue walking back and forth along the line until the food source is depleted
If an ant, in the story of Solomon, could make an announcement to all ants in a valley to take shelter in their homes without being crushed by solomon and his army, and we should assume here Solomon and all ants in the valley instantaneously head this announcement, why ants have to follow the above complicated process for a simple thing of gathering food?
Anyhow, in verse 2:26 Allah states the possibility of using simile even that of a mosquito to convey certain facts. Therefore illustrations using ant to convey certain facts is a clear possibility. The important question is, why should we insist that there is no question of Allah using an allegory using an ant? What is the need to take an extreme position? Why we can not approach the issue with a flexible mind?
Regards, Islamist