CHAPTER II
REFUTATION OF DARWINISM
THE SCIENTIFIC COLLAPSE OF MATERIALISM
Materialism can no longer
claim to be a scientific philosophy.
Arthur Koestler, 20th-Century British Social Philosopher
(Arthur Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up, New York:
Vintage Books, 1978, p. 250.) |
How did the endless universe
we live in come into being? How did the equilibrium, harmony, and order
of this universe develop? How is it that this Earth is such a fit and
sheltering place for us to live in?
Questions such as these have attracted
attention since the dawn of the human race. The conclusion reached
by scientists and philosophers searching for answers with their intellects
and common sense is that the design and order of this universe are
evidence of the existence of a supreme Creator ruling over the whole
universe.
This is an indisputable truth that we
may reach by using our intelligence. Allah declares this reality in
His holy book, the Qur'an, which He inspired as a guide for humanity
fourteen centuries ago. He states that He has created the universe
when it was not, for a particular purpose, and with all its systems
and balances specifically designed for human life.
Allah invites people to consider this
truth in the following verse:
Are you stronger in structure or is heaven?
He built it. He raised its vault high and made it level. He darkened
its night and brought forth its morning light. After that He smoothed
out the earth… (Surat an Naziat: 27-30)
Elsewhere it is declared in the Qur'an
that a person should see and consider all the systems and balances
in the universe that Allah has created for him and derive a lesson
from his observations:
Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Johannes
Kepler |
He has made night and day subservient to you,
and the sun and moon and stars, all subject to His command. There is
certainly Signs in that for people who pay heed. (Surat an-Nahl: 12)
In yet another verse of the Qur'an, it is pointed out:
He makes night merge into day and
day merge into night, and He has made the sun and moon subservient,
each one running until a specified time. That is Allah, your Lord.
The Kingdom is His. Those you call on besides Him have no power over
even the smallest speck. (Surah Fatir: 13)
This plain truth declared by the Qur'an
is also confirmed by a number of the important founders of the modern
science of astronomy. Galileo, Kepler, and Newton all recognised that
God created the structure of universe, the design of the solar system,
the laws of physics and their states of equilibrium and they arrived
at that conclusion as a result of their own research and observations.
Materialism: A 19th-Century Fallacy
The reality of the creation of which
we speak has been ignored or denied since the earliest times by a
particular philosophical point of view. It is called "materialism".
This philosophy, which was originally formulated among the ancient
Greeks, has also made an appearance from time to time in other cultures
and has been advanced by individuals as well. It holds that matter
alone exists and that it has done so for an infinity of time. From
these tenets, it claims that the universe has also "always" existed
and was not created.
In addition to their claim that the universe
exists in an infinity of time, materialists also assert that there
is no purpose or aim in the universe. They claim that all the equilibrium,
harmony and order that we see around us are merely the product of
coincidence. This "coincidence assertion" is also put forward when
the question of how human beings came into being comes up. The theory
of evolution, widely referred to as Darwinism, is another application
of materialism to the natural world.
We just mentioned that some of the founders
of modern science were faithful people who were in agreement that
God created and organised the universe. In the 19th century,
an important change took place in the attitudes of the scientific
world with respect to this matter. Materialism was deliberately introduced
to the agenda of modern science by various groups. Because the 19th
century's political and social conditions formed a good basis for
materialism, the philosophy gained wide acceptance and spread throughout
the scientific world.
The findings of modern science however
undeniably demonstrate how false the claims of materialism really
are.
The Findings Of 20th-Century Science
Scientists are certain that the universe
came into being from nothingness as the result of an unimaginably
huge explosion, known as the "Big Bang". In other words, Allah
created the universe. |
Let us recall the two assertions of materialism
about the universe:
The universe exists in infinite time
and, because it has no beginning or end, it was not created.
Everything in this universe is merely
the result of chance and not the product of any intentional design,
plan, or vision.
Those two notions were boldly advanced
and ardently defended by 19th-century materialists, who of course
had no recourse other than to depend upon the limited and unsophisticated
scientific knowledge of their day. Both have been utterly refuted
by the discoveries of 20th-century science.
The first to be laid in the grave was
the notion of the universe existing in infinite time. Since the 1920s,
there has been mounting evidence this cannot be true. Scientists are
now certain that the universe came into being from nothingness as
the result of an unimaginably huge explosion, known as the "Big Bang".
In other words, the universe came into being-or rather, Allah created
it.
The 20th century has also witnessed the
demolition of the second claim of materialism: that everything in
the universe is the result of chance and not design. Research conducted
since the 1960s consistently demonstrates that all the physical equilibriums
of the universe in general and of our world in particularly are intricately
designed to make life possible. As this research deepened, it was
discovered each and every one of the laws of physics, chemistry, and
biology, of the fundamental forces such as gravity and electromagnetism,
and of the details of the structure of atoms and the elements of the
universe has been precisely tailored so that human beings may live.
Scientists today call this extraordinary design the "anthropic principle".
This is the principle that every detail in the universe has been carefully
arranged to make human life possible.
To sum up, the philosophy called materialism
has been utterly refuted by modern science. From its position as the
dominant scientific view of the 19th century, materialism collapsed
into fiction in the 20th.
How could it have been otherwise? As
Allah indicates "We did not create heaven and
earth and everything between them to no purpose. That is the opinion
of those who are disbelievers." (Surah Sad: 27) it is wrong
to suppose that the universe was created in vain. A philosophy so
utterly flawed as materialism and systems based on it were doomed
to failure from the very beginning.
