Why Are We Here
Abid Ullah Jan
Why we are here has been one of the most burning questions of human history. According to the chance theory every individual arrives into this world as a culmination of a chain of seeming co-incidences from a particular sperm reaching a particular egg to the chance that parents of the baby happen to meet and their parents too, and generations of ancestors before them. But the chance theory doesn’t stop there.
For such a simplistic approach to understanding why we are here, the chain of assumptions go back much further than that – to our creation, our planet and the origin of the universe.
To believe the chance theory, one has to believe that we happen to live on a perfect planet in a perfect universe just by coincidence. It merely feels that it has been made for us – but it is not. Accordingly, the earth is located at just the right distance around just the right star just by accident. The temperatures on its surface are just right to commit liquid water to exist purely by chance just as those temperatures have remained just right for billions of years. Similarly, there was just the right amount of time for human beings to evolve – all by chance.
It means, we have to blindly believe in so many hypothesis and unknowns to be true believers of the theories of chance and evolution. Is our existence really accidental?
Well we have come a long way. Scientific facts today are not just very close but actually at a level to guide us in the right direction. It’s up to us to ponder, use reason and logic, and engage other sources of information to reach the right conclusions. In this film, we want to show you that recent scientific discoveries, as well as some critical un-answered questions combined with some critical information from the past, have provided us a chance to parse the ignorance and reach the right conclusions.
According to the chance theory, 2 or 3 billion years ago the earth was populated only by single celled organisms, whose origin is yet unknown. One day, quite by accident, a bacterium got into an arcea and for some unexplained reasons. A symbiotic relationship began. The archon got the energy generated by the Bactrian – against the second law of thermodynamics – that allowed the cell to begin to work in larger colonies to begin to construct complex living things. The mitochondria in our cells, so the story goes, today are the descendants of that chance collision billions of years ago.
That so-called chance encounter between two unicellular organisms led to what is called natural selection and ultimately the self-creation of human beings and two million other species of life on planet earth alone.
If in our universe there was no particular aim, what’s the origin of the laws of nature? What is the origin of the universe itself? What went before the big bang?
The proponents of the chance theory admit that they simply don’t exactly know how, when or why matter originated; how and why the first cell originated; how non-life became life; how, why and when the first DNA/RNA originated; when and how sexes originated; why the fossil records do not unequivocally show an evolutionary chain; why human beings alone have language, writing, generational knowledge transfer, the ability to invent, worship and rule other species of the earth.
In fact, four great discoveries in the past 100 years help us dispel the myth of the chance theory:
The First great discovery questions the existence of the unicellular bacterium and arcea which the evolutionists believe to have started life on earth. Many scientists are convinced that cells containing a complex code and intricate chemistry could never have come into being by pure, undirected chemistry. No matter how chemicals are mixed, they do not create DNA spirals or any intelligent code whatsoever. Only DNA reproduces DNA.
One microscopic cell is a micro factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up of more than one hundred-thousand million atoms.
Two well known scientists, Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, calculated the odds of life forming by natural processes. They estimated that there is less than 1 chance in 10 to the 40,000power that life could have originated by random trials. 10 to the 40,000power is a 1 with 40,000 zeros after it!
“…[It is] an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth, this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely out of court….The enormous information content of even the simplest living systems…cannot in our view be generated by what are often called “natural” processes…For life to have originated on the Earth it would be necessary that quite explicit instruction should have been provided for its assembly…There is no way in which we can expect to avoid the need for information, no way in which we can simply get by with a bigger and better organic soup, as we ourselves hoped might be possible a year or two ago.”[1]
The 3 billion characters of precise information in the digital code instruct the cell how to build complex molecules to do the work so the cell can stay alive. So far, no one could answer where did this specified information come from?
For a very modest, shortest protein of 150 amino acids, there are 20 x 20 x 20 x 20150 possible combinations – That is one chance in 1095 of getting a specific sequence.
To understand how rare that chance is, one needs to know that there are only 1080 elementary particles in the whole universe. There’s only been 1017seconds since the origin of the 13billion year’s old universe. This is unimaginably unlikely that even a modest shortest protein of 150 amino acid could take shape just by one mindless chance in such a short time. Anything as rare as that probability had absolutely no possibility of happening by chance.
Another way to consider the impossibility of a chance creation of the shortest protein of 150 amino acids is to imagine that we’re looking for a needle in a haystack of the size of the universe and we have only 10 seconds to look for it. And it’s such a small fraction of time in relation to all those possibilities, that the odds are vastly more likely than not, that you’re going to solve the problem by chance.
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The second great discovery of modern science is that the universe is expanding and it had a beginning. What Hubble discovered recently is that no matter which part of the sky we look at, we find galaxies moving away from us.
It means if we go back in time, at each step back the universe is going to get smaller and smaller until reaching a point where all the matter in the universe is congealed into a single point. That marks the beginning of expansion.
Interestingly, the rate of expansion is finely adjusted to allow for the possibility of life. If the universe were to expand even a little tiny bit faster, the heat and energy of the universe would dissipate too quickly and stable galaxies would not form. If it had expanded a little tiny bit slower, the universe would have experienced a big crunch. The gravitational forces would have overcome the rate of expansion and all the matter in the universe would have crunched back on itself. The fine adjustment of the expansion rate is exquisite and cannot happen by chance without a controlled mechanism or a controller.
In fact, it is adjusted to one part in ten to the sixtieth power. It shows the tolerance for error is miniscule. And yet, the universe is just right to allow for the possibility of life. Is this possible as a result of uncontrolled explosion or expansion?
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The third great scientific discovery is that space and time also had a beginning.
There’s a huge problem for the materialistic world-view we inherited from the 19th century science. Materialism affirms that everything originates from matter. Yet if you take Steven Hawking’s discovery seriously, you realize that if you go back far enough in time, you have an infinitely tight curvature to space, which corresponds to no spatial volume, and therefore there’s nowhere to put any matter. There is no matter in the early phase of the universe. It comes into existence suddenly from nothing physical. And therefore the materialistic world-view can’t refer to anything as a cause that can account for the origin of the matter and universe. The materialistic world-view says that matter is the end-all and be-all. Everything comes from matter. But the science of origin shows that matter comes into existence. It’s the first effect, but it is not the cause of the origin of the universe itself. So that’s a big problem.
According to quantum cosmology in the very tiniest first micro milliseconds of existence, the universe was oscillating in a timeless, non-isolating wave function.
The equation of quantum mechanics describes is the different possible geometries or gravitational fields that might have existed in that early non-time before the universe began in time.
However what we have is a universe with one geometry and one type of gravitational field. So to get from that state described by the quantum equation to the universe we have, something has to get rid of all the possibilities and actualize one. It is called “collapse the wave packet.”
According to Quantum Mechanics,” what collapses the wave packet, the thing that actualizes all possibilities into one, is always an observation, which is made by a mind – a person – a creator. So even if you invoke this cosmological model, you actually end up suggesting the need, inadvertently, for a cosmic observer – a creator that proponents of the theories of chance and evolution are not ready to accept despite that fact that there is no explanation for:
- Going from the timeless to the temporal;
- Going from the immaterial to a real universe that has matter and energy and other things; and
- The infusion of information that’s involved in going from all that range of possibilities to an actualized universe.
So the quantum cosmological model either invokes a cosmic observer in total control of the situation, or it requires an unexplained transition from no time to time, from no matter to matter, and an unexplained infusion of information. That sounds like, again, creation by a creator – which the materialist mind is not ready to accept.
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The fourth great discovery of modern science is that the laws and constants of the universe have been finely adjusted for human life to exist. From the market place to outer space, there are regularities in nature that can help us understand the reason for our existence. Order is hidden in everything – from rivers, rocks and landscape, to living things.
All the intricacies that we see across the natural world emerge from simple laws and constants of nature specifically adjusted solely to enable life on Earth. We live on a planet with scores of improbable and interdependent life supporting conditions that make it a tiny oasis in a vast and hostile universe.
These conditions are called Anthropic Constants. The word entropic comes from the Greek word that means human or man. The anthropic principles then is just a fancy title for the mounting evidence that has many modern scientists believing that the universe is extremely fine-tuned and designed for the specific purpose of supporting human life here on earth.
It’s not that there are just a few broadly defined constants. In actuality, there are more than 122 very narrowly defined constants that strongly point to the fact that our creation and the creation of the universe can’t be just chance. These constants include everything from our exacting distance from the Sun.
-The exacting balance gravitational forces
– the Earth’s axis rotation rate.
-The thickness of the earth’s crust.
– The preciseness of atmospheric discharge.
– The delicately balanced thickness of our protective and life-sustaining atmosphere
– to the interaction of salt and freshwater bodies.
– The necessity of exacting types of vegetation.
– The precise chemical balances is the air we breathe.
– And the absolute necessity of the interconnectivity of our ecology from honey bees to rainforest. Without the precise and seemingly measured balances, along with scores and scores of others of equal importance, we would not know we could not be here.
By the latest count there are 122 laws/constants. Astrophysicist Hugh Ross has calculated the probability that these more than 122 constants would exist today for any planet in the universe by chance, his answer is quite shocking: one chance in 10 to the 138 power. That’s one chance in 10 with 138 zeros after it. As a way of understanding how large that number is, consider that there are only about 10 to the power 78 to the 1082 atoms in the known, observable universe, which reaches 46 billion light years in any direction. In affect then, there is zero chance that any planet in the universe would have the life supporting conditions we have, unless there is an intelligent creator behind it all.
This shows that a blueprint for the creation does exist – a scientific blueprint. And we know blue prints do not emerge by chance or accident. However, according to the chance theory, after the big bang, the planet earth happened to acquire a strategic positon in the universe by chance with all the right conditions for life to evolve.
As we look at the evidence from nature, it disproves a number of theories and worldviews. Starting from materialism which is the idea that matter and energy are the entity from which everything else comes. The key tenet of the materialistic worldview is there is nothing beyond the physical world that exists. There’s no god. There’s no purpose or entity that could provide a purpose for the universe. The fundamental entity from which everything else comes is matter and energy. This theory can’t answer even a single question that we have discussed so far.
The deistic worldview holds there is a god that’s separate from the universe and never acts within the cosmos. That god designed the universe in the beginning, but then let it on its own, and never had anything more to do.
The pantheist worldview says there is a god, but he is impersonal. God is not a mind or a personal agent, is not conscious, is not someone to whom you can communicate through prayer or any other means. Instead, god is the mystical unity that binds all things together. All matter is in god; all god is in matter.
Theism is a worldview on the other end of the spectrum, which holds that
there is an orderly concourse of nature – thus there are laws of nature. The universe is not autonomous and self-existent; that beyond the universe there’s an almighty, omnipotent God who created the universe. That god underwrites the order of nature, sustains the universe in its orderly concourse. And, the laws of nature are a mode of god’s divine action, a mode of divine action. So god acts as an agent within the created order from time to time as well.
The scientific discoveries tell us that except theism, all other worldviews have a hard time accounting for the evidence related to the beginning of time, the expansion of the universe, the fine tuning of the laws and constants of physics and the complex creation of life. The reason being they don’t posit the existence of anything beyond the universe and still less a creator behind the universe. And yet the evidence of intelligent design and fine tuning cries out for a creator who knows it all, and the cosmological singularity cries out for a cause beyond the universe, a transcendent cause. So when you take those two pieces of evidence together only theism provides an adequate explanation, because it posits an entity beyond the universe itself which can act to bring the universe and life into existence.
Its now time to put to test another whole class of information piled in the 1400 years old book, called the word of god or Al-Quran, which is not a book of science and predates modern science yet the scientific information contained in this book as signs of God said to have been proven absolutely to the point by the recent discoveries.
The information in the Quran helps us connect the dots between the known scientific fact and the answers to the questions that human mind could not answer to date.
Let’s assume that all the information in the Quran, that obviously was unknown to the people at the time, were mere guesses by a prophet who wanted to impress people into believing him. Let us discuss the probability of all these guesses in the Quran being simultaneously correct to find out if it’s really the word of God and leads us to right conclusions when looked from the perspective of recent discoveries.
A practical demonstration of the eath’s sphercity was achieved by Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastian’s expedition’s circumnavigation in 1519. 800 years prior to that at the time when the Qur’an was revealed, people thought the world was flat. There were several other options for assuming the shape of the earth. It could be domelike, square, quadrangular, pentagonal, irregular, hexagonal, heptagonal, octagonal, spherical, or any of the different possible forms of all these shapes. Let’s assume there were about 30 different options for the shape of the earth. However, the Qur’an, which is the word of the Creator of the universe and all life, rightly said 1400 years ago that it was spherical. If it was a guess, the chances of the guess being correct was one out of thirty – 1/30.
Let’s move on. The light of the moon can be its own light or a reflected light. (Sura 25, verse 61) The Qur’an rightly said, 1400 years ago, that it was a reflected light. If it was a guess, the chances that it would have been correct were 50-50 i.e., 1/2 and the probability that both the guesses i.e the earth was spherical and the light of the moon was reflected light is 1/30 x 1/2 = 1/60 i.e., one chance out of 60.
Further, the Qur’an also mentioned in the 7th entury that every living thing was made up of water (surah 21, verse 30) (Sura 24,Verse 45). Every living thing can be made up of either wood, stone, copper, aluminum, steel, silver, or any combination of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, oil, water, or any other element that we can think of. The options, let’s say about 10,000. The Qur’an rightly says that every living thing is made up of water. If it was a guess, the chances that it would have been correct were 1/10,000 and the probability of all the three guesses i.e. the earth is spherical, light of moon is reflected light and everything is created from water being correct is 1/30 x 1/2 x 1/10,000 = 1/60,000 which is equal to about .0017{1e471bf3c95de20db8cdebd24d60477127fe89937a6c485a84b7b121859c5784}.
The Qur’an told us that it is the female bee that makes honey (16:68-69), a fact that human being could only confirm in the 16th century by Jan Swamerdam. If female bees making honey was a guess, the chances that it would have been correct were 1/2 and the probability that all the four guesses so far being correct is 1/30 x 1/2 x 1/10,000 x ½ = .00085{1e471bf3c95de20db8cdebd24d60477127fe89937a6c485a84b7b121859c5784}
Until the 17th century it was thought that the Sun was stationary and did not rotate about its axis. The Qur’an mentioned the sun rotation about its axis 1400 years ago. If rotation of the sun about its axis was a calculated guess, the chances that it would have been correct were 1/2 and the probability that all the five guesses so far being correct is 1/30 x 1/2 x 1/10,000 x ½x1/2 = .000425{1e471bf3c95de20db8cdebd24d60477127fe89937a6c485a84b7b121859c5784}
The Qur’an speaks of hundreds of things that were not known or scientifically confirmed at the time of its revelation. Only in five options, we see the probability of all of them being correct is as low as .000425{1e471bf3c95de20db8cdebd24d60477127fe89937a6c485a84b7b121859c5784}.
We leave it to you to work out the probability of all the hundreds of statements in the Quran that have now been proven correct and consider the fact that they are all correct. Not a single statement in the Quran has been scientifically challenged to this day. To list a few, the Quran did mention:
- The exact fine-tuning of the universe (25;02)
- The gaseous state of celestial matter at the time of creation (surah 41, verse 11)
- The expansion of the universe (51;47)
- Reference to the existence of other planets (Sura 37, Verse 6)
- The existence of the moon’s and the Sun’s orbits (Sura 10, verse 5)
- The evolution of the solar system and the sun running its course toward a final place of its own (sura 36, verse 38) (Sura 13 verse 2, sura 35, verse 9, sura 30, verse 48, sura 7, verse 57) – modern science has established its exact location situated in the Constellation of Hercules (alpha layer) whose exact location is firmly established. It is moving at a speed already ascertained at something in the region of 12 miles per second)
- Correct speed of light
- The water cycle on earth with remarkable accuracy (sura 50, verse 9-11; sura 23, verse 18-19; sura 15, verse 22) – a clear formulation of which was possible in 1580 by Bernard Palissy.
- the existence of sub-atomic particles, (34;3) (10:61)
- the setting of mountains as pegs on earth crust, (78, v 6-7) (31, 10)
- the barrier between the salt and sweet sea, (25, 53; 55, 19-22))
- the darkness at the depth of oceans,
- The weights of clouds (7:57) (13:12)
- the creation of plants, fruits and everything created in pairs, (Sura 20, v 53) (Sura 35, 11) (sura 75, v39)
- the recently confirmed minute details of embryonic stages,
- the creation of human beings as the best of all creations
- the reference to pain receptors,
- The reference to our identify hidden in finger tips (75:04) and much more.
Imagine if all these references and information were mere guesses made by one human being 1400 years ago. Now imagine the chance of all of them being correct guesses simultaneously and there being not a single wrong guess.
If we assume Mohammed PBUH to be the author of the Quran, how could a man, from being illiterate, become the most important author, in terms of literary merit, in the whole Arabic literature? How could he then pronounce truths of a scientific nature that no other human being could possibly have developed at the time, and all this without making the slightest error in his pronouncements of the subject?
It is beyond human capacity to make all correct guesses without a single mistake, which itself is sufficient to prove to a logical author of the Qur’an is the creator who created the universe and provided us the key information about it long before we could discover it through our scientific endeavors.
It is the ‘CREATOR’ of the universe and its contents. In the English language He is called ‘God’, or more appropriate in the Arabic language, ‘ALLAH’.
Francis Bacon, the famous philosopher, has rightly said that a little knowledge of science makes man an atheist, but an in-depth study of science makes him a believer in God.
Scientists today are eliminating false gods – being worshiped in various forms but they are not eliminating the one true God.
The false gods have confused many for sure in the east and the west. It is not surprising to see many who grew up in environments with several irrational beleifs, rightly stopped believing in false gods and associated religions, and called themselves atheists – which is the first part of Islamic belief that there is no god – If you translate this into Arabic, it is La illaha, There is no god, Illal Lah but Alalh.
Surah Fussilat:
“Soon We will show them our signs in the (farthest) regions (of the earth), and in their own souls, until it becomes manifest to them that this is the Truth. Is it not enough that thy Lord doth witness all things?” [Al-Quran 41:53]
By Abid Ullah Jan
Abid Ullah Jan
Reference:
[1] Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe,
Evolution from Space [Aldine House, 33 Welbeck Street, London W1M 8LX: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981), p. 148, 24,150,30,31).
