Allah says (what means): “Were they created by nothing? Or were they themselves the creators?
Or did they create the heavens and the earth? Nay, but they have no firm Belief.” [52:35]
See the Universe
The universe operates by uniform laws of nature. Why does it?In 1960 the Princeton physicist – and subsequent Nobel Prize winner – Eugene Wigner raised a fundamental question: Why did the natural world always – so far as we know – obey laws of mathematics?
Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winner for quantum electrodynamics, said, "Why nature is mathematical is a mystery...The fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle."
How could two distant objects in the solar system be drawn toward one another, acting according to a precise mathematical law? Indeed, Newton made strenuous efforts over his lifetime to find a natural explanation, but in the end he could say only that it is the will of Allah.
Wigner wrote, “the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.”
Pascal's Wager
As originally proposed by Pascal, the Wager assumes that logical reasoning by itself cannot decide for or against the existence of Allah; there seem to be good reasons on both sides. Now since reason cannot decide for sure, and since the question is of such importance that we must decide somehow, then we must "wager" if we cannot prove. And so we are asked: Where are you going to place your bet?
If you place it with Allah, you lose nothing, even if it turns out that Allah does not exist. But if you place it against Allah, and you are wrong and Allah does exist, you lose everything: Allah, eternity, heaven, infinite gain. "Let us assess the two cases: if you win, you win everything, if you lose, you lose nothing."
Consider the following diagram:
The vertical lines represent correct beliefs, the diagonals represent incorrect beliefs. Let us compare the diagonals. Suppose Allah does not exist and I believe in him. In that case, what awaits me after death is not eternal life but, most likely, eternal nonexistence. But now take the other diagonal: Allah, my Creator and the source of all good, does exist; but I do not believe in him. He offers me his love and his life, and I reject it. There are answers to my greatest questions, there is fulfillment of my deepest desires; but I decide to spurn it all. In that case, I lose (or at least seriously risk losing) everything.
The Wager can seem offensively venal and purely selfish. But it can be reformulated to appeal to a higher moral motive: If there is a Allah of infinite goodness, and he justly deserves my allegiance and faith, I risk doing the greatest injustice by not acknowledging him.
The Wager cannot—or should not—coerce belief. But it can be an incentive for us to search for Allah, to study and restudy the arguments that seek to show that there is Something—or Someone—who is the ultimate explanation of the universe and of my life. It could at lease motivate "The Prayer of the Skeptic": "Allah, I don't know whether you exist or not, but if you do, please show me who you are."
Pascal says that there are three kinds of people: those who have sought Allah and found him, those who are seeking and have not yet found, and those who neither seek nor find. The first are reasonable and happy, the second are reasonable and unhappy, the third are both unreasonable and unhappy. If the Wager stimulates us at least to seek, then it will at least stimulate us to be reasonable. And if the promise Rasulullah makes is true, all who seek will find, and thus will be happy.
In the creation of the heavens and earth and in the succession of day and night there are certainly signs for those who reflect. Those who remember God while standing, sitting, and laying down and ponder on the creation of the heavens and the earth, saying: Our Lord you have not created this in vain. Glory be to You. Give us salvation from the penalty of the Fire.
The universe had a start - what caused it?
Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow, a self-described agnostic, stated, "The seed of everything that has happened in the Universe was planted in that first instant; every star, every planet and every living creature in the Universe came into being as a result of events that were set in motion in the moment of the cosmic explosion...The Universe flashed into being, and we cannot find out what caused that to happen."[ii]
Allah provides the best explanation of the origin of the universe.
أَوَلَمْ يَرَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا أَنَّ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضَ كَانَتَا رَتْقًا فَفَتَقْنَاهُمَا ۖ وَجَعَلْنَا مِنَ الْمَاءِ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ حَيٍّ ۖ أَفَلَا يُؤْمِنُونَ (الأنبياء ، 21: 30).
Have those who disbelieved not considered that the heavens and the Earth were a joined entity, and We splintered (separated) them and made from water every living thing? Then will they not believe? (Al-Anbiya, 21: 30 of the Holy Quran).
The complexity of our planet points to a deliberate Designer who not only created our universe, but sustains it today.
Example
If Earth were larger, its atmosphere would contain free hydrogen, like Jupiter.[iii] And our moon is the perfect size and distance from the Earth for its gravitational pull. The moon creates important ocean tides and movement so ocean waters do not stagnate, and yet our massive oceans are restrained from spilling over across the continents.[iv]
Water cycle is a system of purification and supply that sustains life on this planet, a system of recycled and reused water.[v]
The human brain processes more than a million messages a second.[vi]
Eye has automatic focusing and handles an astounding 1.5 million messages -- simultaneously.[vii]
Allah provides the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe. In one verse, in the Quran, it says, “God created everything in exact proportion.” (16:25)
See Yourself
Allah says, “Do they not reflect in their own minds?” (30:8)
consciousness.
In 2004 the great British physicist Roger Penrose put forward a vision of a universe composed of three independently existing worlds – mathematics, the material world and human consciousness.
How can physical atoms and molecules, for example, create something that exists in a separate domain that has no physical existence: human consciousness?
It is a mystery that lies beyond science.
Like the laws of mathematics, consciousness has no physical presence in the world; the images and thoughts in our consciousness have no measurable dimensions.
Yet, our nonphysical thoughts somehow mysteriously guide the actions of our physical human bodies. This is no more scientifically explicable than the mysterious ability of nonphysical mathematical constructions to determine the workings of a separate physical world.
Until recently, the scientifically unfathomable quality of human consciousness inhibited the very scholarly discussion of the subject.
Recognizing that he could not reconcile his own scientific materialism with the existence of a nonphysical world of human consciousness, a leading atheist, Daniel Dennett, in 1991 took the radical step of denying that consciousness even exists.
Finding this altogether implausible, as most people do, another leading philosopher, Thomas Nagel, wrote in 2012 that, given the scientifically inexplicable – the “intractable” – character of human consciousness, “we will have to leave [scientific] materialism behind” as a complete basis for understanding the world of human existence.
As an atheist, Nagel does not offer religious belief as an alternative, but I would argue that the supernatural character of the workings of human consciousness adds grounds for raising the probability of the existence of a supernatural Allah.
The DNA and protein.
A cell needs a minimum of over 400 different proteins to make the machines that are absolutely essential for life.
Then let’s take just one protein component of that machine, less than 10% of the total. This protein is 329 amino acids in length. What would be the chance of getting this one protein by chance, assuming that the correct, and only the correct, amino acid ingredients were present? Calculate it this way: 1/20 x 1/20 x 1/20 … 329 times! This is a probability of 1 in 10428 … a number with 428 zeros after the 1! Even if every atom in the universe (1080—a number with 80 zeros) represented an experiment for every molecular vibration possible (1012 per second) for the supposed evolutionary age of the universe (14 billion years=1018 seconds), this would allow ‘only’ 10110 experiments—a long, long way short of the number needed to have a ghost of a chance of getting just this one protein to form[viii], let alone the over 400 others needed.
DNA is a three-billion-lettered program telling the cell to act in a certain way. It is a full instruction manual.[ix]
Allah provides the best explanation of objective moral values and duties.
Even atheists recognize that some things, for example, the Holocaust, are objectively evil. But if atheism is true, what basis is there for the objectivity of the moral values we affirm? Evolution? Social conditioning? These factors may at best produce in us the subjective feeling that there are objective moral values and duties, but they do nothing to provide a basis for them. If human evolution had taken a different path, a very different set of moral feelings might have evolved.
Moreover, A number of developments in evolutionary theory have challenged traditional Darwinist – and later neo-Darwinist – views that emphasize random genetic mutations and gradual evolutionary selection by the process of survival of the fittest.
American novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace said that: “Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”
“Do they not see that We have created for them of what Our Hands have created, the cattle, so that they are their owners.
And We have subdued them unto them so that some of them they have for riding and some they eat.” [36:71-72]
The Ontological Argument
The ontological argument was devised by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), who wanted to produce a single, simple demonstration which would show that Allah is and what Allah is.
Anselm's Version
It is greater for a thing to exist in the mind and in reality than in the mind alone.
"Allah" means "that than which a greater cannot be thought."
Suppose that Allah exists in the mind but not in reality.
Then a greater than Allah could be thought (namely, a being that has all the qualities our thought of Allah has plus real existence).
But this is impossible, for Allah is "that than which a greater cannot be thought."
Therefore Allah exists in the mind and in reality.
Charles Hartshorne and Norman Malcolm developed this version of the ontological argument. Both find it implicitly contained in the third chapter of Anselm's Proslogion.
The expression "that being than which a greater cannot be thought" (GCB, for short) expresses a consistent concept.
GCB cannot be thought of as: a. necessarily nonexistent; or as b. contingently existing but only as c. necessarily existing.
So GCB can only be thought of as the kind of being that cannot not exist, that must exist.
But what must be so is so.
Therefore, GCB (i.e., Allah) exists.
Allah said:
{هُوَ الأَوَّلُ وَالآخِرُ }
which means: [Allah is the Eternal, without a beginning, and the Everlasting, without an ending.]
Who worships none?
Even though Karl Marx, for example, condemned the illusion of religion, his followers, ironically, worshiped Marxism. The American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre thus wrote that for much of the 20th century, Marxism was the “historical successor of Christianity,” claiming to show the faithful the one correct path to a new heaven on Earth.
It is obligatory to believe Allah is attributed with Speech (Kalam). This is an eternal and everlasting attribute with which Allah orders, forbids, and informs. It is not a letter nor a sound nor a language. The Qur'an and the other revealed Books are expressions of the eternal Kalam of the Self of Allah. When we write the word "Allah" it is an expression of the Self of Allah. Likewise, the words and sentences of the revealed Books are expressions of the Kalam of Allah. The Qur'an is called the Kalam of Allah because it is not authored by Prophet Muhammad or Angel Jibril. The Qur'an is also used to mean the eternal Kalam of the Self of Allah. Allah said:
{وَكَلَّمَ اللهُ مُوسَى تَكْلِيمًا}
which means: [Allah spoke to Musa with His eternal Kalam] i.e., Allah created in Prophet Musa the ability to hear the Kalam of the Self of Allah, which is not a letter nor a sound.
and Allah knows best. Truly a God you can proud of.
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Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist (New York: BasicBooks, 1998), 43.
[ii] Robert Jastrow; "Message from Professor Robert Jastrow"; LeaderU.com; 2002
[iii] R.E.D. Clark, Creation (London: Tyndale Press, 1946), p. 20
[iv] The Wonders of God's Creation, Moody Institute of Science (Chicago, IL)
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] Hugh Davson, Physiology of the Eye, 5th ed (New York: McGraw Hill, 1991)
[viii] Even if the universe were 10 times bigger and 10 times older, this only makes it 10112 experiments. No matter how you jiggle the numbers, the number of possible experiments comes up way short.
[ix] Francis S. Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, and author of The Language of God, (Free Press, New York, NY), 2006
