Can Science ever replace the Creator?

PART 1

The battle between those who believe in the Omnipotent God and those who believe there is no such thing as a Creator is heating up and both camps are claiming and loosing people daily. Richard Dawkins, the father of new Atheism, claims that even the Pope believes in Evolution.

Atheist-Scientists are relentless in their effort to prove that there is no such thing as a creator, and that the universe came about by evolution. In this theory there is the maintenance that plants, animals including birds etc, and geological phenomena all evolved or unfolded over many millions of years. The length of time it takes to appreciate evolution is the catch-22 of the theory because events that take such a longtime cannot be observed in the lab, a basic requirement of Scientific theory!. But this cannot be done in a lifetime!

Another major problem of the evolution issue is that, should it be claimed that it has been proven; can it convince even all Scientists? Bringing to mind how delicate scientific theories are, any finding that any part of it is does not fit means going back to the drawing board. This is what Evolution and many scientific findings fall victim to; even findings on issues closer to us such as the benefits and harms of the food we eat have gone through this continuous flux. This “shifting sand syndrome” is what defeats Evolution. A recent example, July 22, it was reported, and I quote “Scientists contradict earlier beliefs about the planet's key element coming from the outer solar system….. The article goes on to say “And they have important implications for the current models of the formation and orbital evolution of the planets and smaller objects in our solar system."” End quote. The

Sometimes there are even paradigm shifts and the underlying basic assumptions are changed. Major issues as the origin of the universe, how life began, and even relatively recent issues such as global warming have found themselves in this quagmire, as a result, they are continuously studied and prone to revision as Scientists improve their investigations. Does it not follow that Scientists facing this conundrum, will only be laughing at themselves when they say there is no Creator?. It will always be premature to proof that there is no God. For what you know today, might just turn out tomorrow to be a mirage that disappears the closer you get to it. Opponents of creation cannot come out with anything concrete to counter the overwhelming evidence experienced by both the lettered and unlettered. All they can do are ad-hoc speculations based on formulae customized for the purpose. This will then fall flat as time goes on, and for the very huge majority of people what they argue simply makes no sense; but The Creator has made himself known in various types of ways suitable for both the lettered and the unlettered.

So Allah mentions such people and says: “And for those who dispute concerning Allah after he has been accepted, futile is their dispute in the sight of their Lord, on them will be a penalty terrible.” Ash-Shura, Chapter #42, Verse #16

It does happen that some scientific theories gain currency for a very long time and later proved wrong. Famous Scientists like Albert Einstein first believed that the Universe was static and even proved their argument with calculation. This was later found to be untrue.

Isaac Newton also thought that light was made up of particles, and this was accepted for hundreds of years, until it was disproved by Young, who proved that light was made of waves and not the corpuscular theory advanced by the “mighty Newton”.

The principle of cause and effect which was theorized by Newton and some Scientists supposedly eliminated the idea of God, but the coming of theory of Quantum Mechanics, negated their earlier findings. The examples go on and on.

A further argument against Evolution is the acceptance that Scientists know only about 4% of the Universe. So how do you draw conclusion when you are ignorant about 96% of the universe. This still brings us back to shifting Sand syndrome, making the discerning minds laugh secretly when they talk about the universe. Because we can always say tomorrow “we told you so, that tomorrow they’ll prove themselves wrong”. At least the Scientists are honest either willingly or unwillingly, because the inner urge to prove someone right or wrong is always fired up with any new scientific pronouncement. Maybe our creator created this urge in us to make us a laughing stock of ourselves when we challenge His being. Unknowns in the God equation are far too many to ignore. They far outway the knowns.

Scientists, having failed the lab test, resort to fossil remnants and imprints to prove their point, here again they have always failed the test with time. Some have been found to be faked by scientific zealots who, at a loss of proving their point, resort to fraudulent evidences; it normally takes no time for them to be found out.

It is not all Scientists though, who fall to this theory of evolution. In the book “The intelligent Universe” by Fred Hoyle, he supports the fallacy of the evolution by writing, and I quote ““Imagine a blind fellow trying to solve the Rubik cube. The chance against achieving a perfect colour matching is about 50,000,000,000,000,000,000 times to 1. These odds are roughly the same as those against just one of our body’s 200,000 proteins having evolved randomly, by chance”.

So imagine that whole of life – man, animals, birds, flora and fauna in sea, insects and all its species, came by chance, how much time would it take to happen: The theory of evolution falls flat on this reasoning. It can surely happen only if there is a Creator, who when he wills anything says “BE” and it is. He therefore created man in the likeness and form he is now and same for all animals and what we see. There has never been anything as evolution. This is just the imagination of the deniers of God.

In the Book Man does not stand alone, A. Cassey Morrison points out that: “So many essential conditions are necessary for life to exist on our earth that it is mathematically impossible that all of them could exist in proper relationship by chance on any one earth or at one time. Therefore there must be in nature some form of intelligent direction. If this is true, then there must be a purpose”

Can Science ever replace the Creator? PART 2

God believing people rely on their scriptures as a word of God, in which it is stated unequivocally that God created the Universe and all that is in it. Period.

The problem I’ll have in Atheist Scientists who believe in evolution as opposed to creation is that, they do not look beyond the “western Bible” when arguing against God and creation. But it is not all religious people who reckon with the Bible as it is today. For example, we Muslims believe that the pristine nature of the Bible has been compromised and is still being compromised each passing day. The Bible stating that God created the Universe in six days and rested on the seventh day is not accepted by all religions especially Islam. Six days, yes; rested, an EMPHATIC NO!. Rest is not an attribute of God. Further, the literal explanation of the six days by the Christians leads to a calculation of the age of the universe to be unrealistic for all what we see around. However, when we have a careful study of the Qur’aan, the same six days is mentioned, but the lengths of each of the days have not been explained. A further reading of The Qur’aan refers to lengths of days being equal to 1000 years and sometimes 5000 years. So the six days in the Qur’aan are durations we do not know; the knowledge of which explains the discrepancy in the estimated age of the universe. A day in our term is the length of time it takes for the world or a planet to rotate on its axis. By definition a year is the time it takes to revolve round the sun or it’s sun. This means that for some planets, a day can even be longer than a year depending on the distance between the planet and its sun. Based on this fact, if a planet is very close to its sun, it may take a shorter time to go around its sun than it takes to for one complete rotation on its axis, thus rendering a day longer than a year. It has been reported that one Saturn year is about 30 Earth years. So the Qur’aan’s pronouncement should not come as ridiculous, because it depends on the plane you are in. This gives explanation that the six days mentioned might not literally mean six.

The Qur’aan does not only make a claim that God created the universe and stop there; unlike the Bible it also makes pronouncements that are subjects of scientific discussions. Pronouncements that could not have been known by the time the Qur’aan was revealed. Rendering further evidence of its Devine origin and supporting the claim that the revealer of the Qur’aan is the creator of the universe. Take for example Qur’aan Chapter 13- Thunder verse 4, talking about the taste of different fruits says “…watered with same water yet some of them we (God) make more preferable to some in taste”. This provokes intellectual curiosity as it talks about plants in adjacent track of land, same soil, same mineral components, watered by same water, yet come out with different tastes. This is a miracle of God. All Scientists can do is explain the “how” and not the “why”. Many arguments of this nature are found in The Qur’aan supporting the Creator evidence, it will be good thing for Scientists to have an unbiased study of The Qur’aan and it will be interesting to listen to their comments. I have no doubt it will be an eye opener to many in the world. The Qur’aan being from God exudes total confidence and throws challenges. Due to this confidence it disapproves of blind faith. It is the nature of the Qur’aan when it makes some pronouncement, to end up asking “Don’t you see’ don’t you understand” An example is Sura 35- Fatir:27-28 . “Hast thou not seen that Allah sends down rain from the sky? “Those who truly fear Allah among his servants are those who have knowledge”. The Qur’aan makes statements that stun scientists in almost all fields; knowledge that could have been known the time the Qur’aan was revealed.

Believe in the Creator makes Religion way ahead of Science when it comes to discussing the Universe. There are facts Scientists will never understand, and can never investigate. One such is the existence of Jin and angels. Yes, Jin exists as we humans but in a plane of their own. They have religions, they marry, have children, speak, sleep and do most of the things we do, some having extreme strength more than we can ever imagine. God created them by fire. A scientist will laugh at this but is fact and they can even expose themselves and render their services to some people.

Believe in the Creator leads to the believe that his will is supreme. So whatever happens is subject to his will. Take for example two people are sick of one illness, they are given same treatment one recovers, one dies. This is by his will. The medicine is just a means it’s potency depends on the will of the Creator. If a plane crashes and some die and some survive, those in want of faith just call it luck. Luck?. What is luck? And who chooses who has the luck?. We say this is the will of the Creator. Two twins attend same school same class, same teacher, one turns out very bright and the other read as much as he can, but always fail. They say the bright child is just very good they say he is just gifted!. Gifted by who?. We say by the Creator. If someone turns out to be say, a very good footballer they say he is so good. He is just a gifted player!. Gifted by who?. We say the Creator. A football game is so fluid the player can hardly wait to think how to organize his thoughts and how to dribble, but it comes like reflex actions to the gifted player because he has been gifted by God.

It does follow that Scientist make discoveries, but this is just that The Creator has made laws to govern the human body and the universe. One who learns them can use them to benefit. If you can go to space, it is just that you learnt the laws of aerodynamics that God put in place, then took advantage of that knowledge but it does not mean that there is no Creator. Science is constantly pushing the frontiers and coming out with what we could never have imagined, but still boils down to the same point, learning the laws by which God created the universe and what is in it, and taking advantage of that knowledge. That said, these scientific developments still have their limits. Take for example weather changes. The best that can be achieved, is to forecast that it will be a very hot summer or a very cold winter, but there is no way it can be stopped, because it has been willed by God. All the knowledge used to mesmerize us today all fall within the 4% or less of the knowledge that God has put in his creation. HE is the All- Knower and All-Wise. God has willed the direction of rotation causing the sun to appear from the East, can it ever be reversed? No, not until God wills it again.

To cut a long discussion short, the battle between Creation and evolution cannot be convincing unless religious people and Atheists Scientists each come out of the box, Religious people learning Science and Atheists Scientists reading other religious scriptures other than just the Bible, and asking for explanation from the experts where they do not understand. If this is done sincerely I have no doubt, the gap between religion and Science will narrow, and God will as always Stand Supreme.

i. alhassan Idris_alhassan@yahoo.com