THE PERFECT DESIGN IN THE UNIVERSE IS NOT BY CHANCE - Harun Yahya
THE PERFECT DESIGN IN THE UNIVERSE IS
NOT BY CHANCE
He is God - the Creator, the Maker, the Giver of Form. To Him belong the Most
Beautiful Names. Everything in the heavens and earth glorifies Him.
He is the Almighty, the All-Wise. (Qur'an, 59, 24)
THE FLAWLESS
ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE FALSIFIES
CLAIMS THAT IT CAME ABOUT BY CHANCE
The
universe with all its creations, both animate and inanimate, has a flawless
design, unique systems, and an ordered balance that provide all the conditions
necessary for living things to survive. Discoveries, especially those
made in the 20th and 21st centuries, have shown that the flawless design
of the universe is clearly the work of a supreme intelligence. It is God,
with His supreme intelligence, limitless knowledge and eternal power,
Who created the universe.
But this fact, established with clear proofs by 20th-century science,
is ignored by those who have adopted the Darwinist-Materialist philosophy.
Materialists may claim that the universe is the product of chance and
chaos, but when we examine the flawless systems that functioned in forming
the universe, not to mention the balance and harmony existing among its
living things, we clearly see that it cannot be the product of chance.
In The Mysterious Universe, the English physicist Sir James Jeans describes
the flawless order in the cosmos:
A scientific study of the universe has suggested
a conclusion, which may be summed up ... in the statement that the universe
appears to have been designed by a pure mathematician.2
Every planet in the universe, large and small, is the critically
important part of a larger order. Not one of their positions in
space or any of their movements is random. On the contrary, their
countless details known to us so far have been created and especially
adjusted for a particular purpose. Of all the innumerable factors
influencing the balances in the universe, a change in the position
of just one planet is enough to bring chaos. But these balances
are never upset. The universe continues on, in its perfect order,
with no problems. All of this is a result of God's supreme power
in creation.
''He Who created the seven heavens in layers.
You will not find any flaw in the creation of the All-Merciful.
Look again -do you see any gaps? Then look again and again. Your
sight will return to you dazzled and exhausted!'' (Qur'an 67:3-4)
Charles Darwin first proposed the theory of evolution, which suggests
that all living things came into being by the mechanism of chance.
But the universe's perfect design led even Darwin to admit that
there is no room for chance in its creation. As he wrote:
This [conviction in the existence of God] follows
from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving
this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity
of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of
blind chance or necessity.3
"God, there is no god but Him, the Living,
the Self-Sustaining. He is not subject to drowsiness or sleep. Everything
in the heavens and the earth belongs to Him. Who can intercede with
Him except by His permission? He knows what is before them and what
is behind them but they cannot grasp any of His knowledge save what
He wills. . . ." (Qur'an 2: 255)
The distance between the Earth and our moon ensures many important
balances and is extremely vital for the continuation of life on
Earth. Indeed, the slightest variation in the distance between
the two bodies could give rise to significant imbalances. For
example:
- If the moon were much closer [to the Earth], it would crash
into our planet, if much farther away, it would move off into
space.
- If it were much closer, the tides that the moon causes on the
earth would become dangerously larger. Ocean waves would sweep
across low-lying sections of the continents. Resultant friction
would heat the oceans, destroying the delicate thermal balance
needed for life on earth.
- A more distant moon would reduce tidal action,
making the oceans more sluggish. Stagnant water would endanger
marine life, yet it is that very marine life that produces the
oxygen that we breathe.4
The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said:
O God:All the Praises are for You:You are the
Lord of the Heavens and the Earth. All the Praises are for You:You
are the Maintainer of the Heaven and the Earth. You are my only
God [Whom I worship] and there is no other God for me [I worship
none but You].5 "
The Originator of the heavens and earth.
When He decides on something, He just says to it, 'Be!' and it
is." (Qur'an 2: 117)
"You will see the mountains you reckoned to be solid going past
like clouds-the handiwork of God Who gives to everything its solidity.
. . . " (Qur'an 27: 88)
"And the earth: how We stretched it out and cast
firmly embedded mountains onto it and caused luxuriant plants
of every kind to grow in it." (Qur'an 50: 7)
The distribution of heavenly bodies in the universe is designed
exactly to conform to the needs of human life. In his book The Symbiotic
Universe, American astronomer George Greenstein explains the importance
of the huge voids in space and the distances between heavenly bodies:
All that wasted space! On the other hand, in this very waste lies
our safety. It is a precondition for our existence. Most remarkable
of all is that the overall emptiness of the cosmos seems to have
no other consequence in the astronomical realm. Had the stars been
somewhat closer, astrophysics would not have been so very different.
The fundamental physical processes occurring within
stars, nebulas, and the like would have proceeded unchanged. The
appearance of our galaxy as seen from some far-distant vantage point
would have been the same. About the only difference would have been
the view of the night time sky from the grass on which I lie, which
would have been yet richer with stars. And oh, yes-one more small
change: There would have been no me to do the viewing.6
Contemporary philosopher Jean Guitton of the French Academy writes:
The first conditions that determined
the basic constants of nature and the emergence of life were set
in place with amazing exactness. To give an idea of how precisely
the universe appears to have been constructed, it is enough to
think of a golfer who can hit his ball from Earth to a hole on
Mars! 7
"This is God's creation. Show me then what
those besides Him have created! The wrongdoers are clearly misguided."
(Qur'an 31: 11)
"God is He Who raised up the heavens without any support-you can
see that-and then established Himself firmly on the Throne. He
made the sun and moon subservient, each running for a specified
term. He directs the whole affair. He makes the Signs clear so
that hopefully you will be certain about the meeting with your
Lord." (Qur'an 13: 2)
"Do you not see that everyone in the heavens
and everyone on the earth prostrates to God, and the sun and moon
and stars and the mountains, trees and beasts and many of mankind?
But many of them inevitably merit punishment. . . ." (Qur'an 22:
18)
"Do you not see how He created seven heavens in layers, and placed
the moon as a light in them and made the sun a blazing lamp?" (Qur'an
71: 15-16)
"In two days He determined them as seven
heavens and revealed, in every heaven, its own mandate. We adorned
the lowest heaven with lamps and guarded it. . . ." (Qur'an 41:
12)
"Did We not make the earth a receptacle for the living and the dead?
Did We not place firmly embedded mountains in it, soaring high into
the air, and give you sweet fresh water to drink?" (Qur'an 77: 25-27)
"He sends down
water from the sky and river-beds fill up and flow according to
their size, and the floodwater carries a rising foam. . . ." (Qur'an
13: 17)
If the laws of the universe allowed only the solid and gaseous states
of matter, life would never have come into being. This is because
the atoms in solid matter are compact, relatively motionless, and
do not allow the dynamic molecular activity needed for living organisms
to develop. The atoms in gasses have no stability and move freely,
preventing the functioning of the complex mechanisms of living organisms.
In short, there must
be a fluid environment for the functions necessary for life to develop.
The most ideal fluid-rather the only ideal fluid-is water.
2. Sir James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe,
New York: Macmillan Co., 1932/ Cambridge, England: University Press, 1932, p.
140 3. Francis Darwin, Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume
I, Chapter on "Religion." 4. Creation-Evolution Encyclopedia, http://www.pathlights.com
/ce_encyclopedia/01-ma10.htm#Elemental Forces 5. Sahih Bukhari 6. George Greenstein, The Symbiotic Universe, William Morrow
and Company, New York, 1989, p. 21 7. Jean Guitton, Dieu et La Science: Vers Le Métaréalisme, Paris:
Grasset, 1991, p. 54