By Babatunde Jose

Not only does the existence of matter, of motion, and of life, testify that there is God, but the magnitude and magnificence of creation announce the same grand truth: the work reveals the Workman.

“Our Lord is He Who gave to each (created) thing its form and nature, and further, gave (it) guidance. (Quran 20:50) See also (Quran 13:3)

Imbued with the mores of the cultures that created them, archaeological sites shed light on past civilizations, preserving their societal structures, religious beliefs, and modes of living. By studying these sites, scholars are often able to trace their histories, as well as their place in the historical continuum. Many foreshadow art and architecture as we know them today.

Stonehenge, Pyramids, The Sphinx, Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, Chichén Itzá, Great Wall of China; all offer clues to their builders’ aesthetics and values. Blind chance never built these architectural wonders. There must have been a controlling intelligence.

 The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews indulged in no mere poetic rhapsody when he wrote, “Every house is builded by some man; but He that built all things is God.” Hebrews 3:4

Allah is He Who raised the heavens . . ..  He doth regulate all affairs, explaining the Signs in detail that ye may believe with certainty in the meeting with your Lord. (Quran 13:2)

“…So also the universal harmony by which the whole mechanism is regulated, indicates a character of infinite perfection in harmony with itself. Thus, seen from no higher point of view than the scientific and philosophical, the dome of the sky bears, wrought on its expanse, in starry mosaics, ‘There is a God’” (The Gordian Knot) James Harvey.

Behold! In the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the alternation of the Night and the Day; in the sailing of the ships through the Ocean for the profit of mankind; in the rain which Allah sends down from the skies, and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is dead; in the beasts of all kinds that He scatters through the earth; In the change of the winds, and the clouds which they trail like their slaves between the sky and the earth; (here) indeed are Signs for a people that are wise. (Quran 2:164)

On this Earth too, we are confronted with phenomena, for which no explanation is adequate save that of an Almighty, benevolent, and infinitely wise Creator. “He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle and herb for the service of men: the earth is full of Thy riches. These all wait upon Thee, that Thou mayest give them meat in season. Thou openest Thy hand, they are filled with good” (Psalm 104:14).

Consider that atmospheric pressure upon a person of ordinary stature is equal to the weight of 14 tons, and it scarcely needs to be pointed out that the falling upon him of a very much lighter object would break every bone in his body and drive all breath out of his lungs. The Creator’s having so devised that the air permeates the whole of our body, and by its peculiar nature pressing equally in all directions, all harm and discomfort is prevented. (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

The air performs many functions for the good of mankind. While it covers us without any conscious weight, the air reflects, and thereby increases the life-giving heat of the sun. The air does this for us much as our garments supply additional heat to our bodies. The air co-operates with our lungs, thereby ventilating the blood and refining the fluids of the body, stimulating the animal secretions, and regulating our natural warmth. We could live for months without the light of the sun or the glimmering of a star, but if deprived of air for a very few minutes we quickly faint and die. 

It is this gaseous element enveloping the earth which both sustains and feeds all vegetable life.

By the undulating motions of the air, all the diversities of sound are conducted to the ear.

Let us then inquire, what is it that has endowed the atmosphere with such varied and beneficent adaptations, so that it diffuses vitality and health, retains and modifies solar heat, transmits odours and conveys sound? Must we not rather ask “Whom?” and answer, “This also cometh from the Lord!

There in the firmament we behold an endless succession of clouds fed by evaporation from the ocean, drawn thither by the action of the sun. The clouds are themselves a miniature ocean, suspended in the air with a skill which as far transcends that of the wisest man. It is because so very few “stand still and consider” the amazing fact of millions of tons of water being suspended over their heads and sustained there in the thinnest parts of the atmosphere, that such a prodigy is lost upon them.

But what most fills us with wonderment is that these celestial reservoirs, so incalculably greater than any of human construction, should be suspended in the air. 

The ocean and its inhabitants present to our consideration as many, as varied, and as unmistakable, evidence of the handiwork of God as do the stellar and atmospheric heavens. If we give serious thought to the subject, it must fill us with astonishment that it is possible for any creatures to live in such a suffocating element as the sea, and that in waters so salty they should be preserved in their freshness; and still more so that they should find themselves provided with abundant food and be able to propagate their species from one generation to another. Yet by the wisdom and power of God not only are myriads of fishes sustained there, but the greatest of all living creatures-the whale-is found there.

As it is with us in the surrounding air, so it is with the fish in their liquid element. According to James Harvey, “They are clothed and accoutred in exact conformity to their clime. Not in swelling wool or buoyant feathers, nor in flowing robe or full-trimmed suit, but with as much compactness than and with as little superfluity as possible. They are clad, or rather sheathed, in scales, which adhere closely to their bodies, and are always laid in a kind of natural oil—which apparel nothing can be lighter, and at the same time so solid, and nothing so smooth. It hinders the fluid from penetrating their flesh, it prevents the cold from coagulating their blood, and enables them to make their way through the waters with the greatest possible facility. If in their rapid progress they strike against any hard substance, this their scaly doublet breaks the force of it and secures them from harm.” 

Being slender and tapering, the shape of fishes fits them to cleave the waters and to move with the utmost ease through so resisting a medium. Their tails, are extremely flexible, consisting largely of powerful muscles, and act with uncommon agility. By its alternate impulsion, the tail produces a progressive motion, and by repeated strokes propels the whole body forward.

Still more remarkable is that wonderful apparatus or contrivance, the airbladder, with which they are furnished, for it enables them to increase or diminish their specific gravity, to sink like lead or float like a cork, to rise to whatever height or sink to whatever depths they please. 

As these creatures probably have no occasion for the sense of hearing, for the impressions of sound have very little if any existence in their sphere of life, to have provided them with ears would have been an encumbrance rather than a benefit. Is that noticeable and benignant distinction to be ascribed to blind chance?

A spiritually minded naturalist has pointed out that almost all flat fish, such as soles and flounders, are white on their underside but tinctured with darkish brown on the upper, so that to their enemies they resemble the colour of mud and are therefore more easily concealed. What is still more remarkable, Providence, which has given to other fishes an eye on either side of the head, has placed both eyes on the same side in their species, which is exactly suited unto the peculiarity of their condition. Swimming as they do but little, and always with their white side downward, an eye on the lower part of their bodies would be of little benefit, whereas on the higher they have need of the quickest sight for their preservation. Now we confidently submit that such remarkable adaptations as all of these argue design, and that, in turn, a designer, and a Designer, too, who is endowed with more than human wisdom, power and benignity. 

“One circumstance relating to the natives of the deep is very peculiar, and no less astonishing. As they neither sow nor reap, they are obliged to plunder and devour one another for necessary subsistence. Were they to bring forth, like the most prolific of our terrestrial animals, a dozen only or a score, at each birth, the increase would be unspeakably too small for consumption. The weaker species would be destroyed by the stronger, and in time the stronger must perish, even by their successful endeavours to maintain themselves. Therefore, to supply millions of fishes with their prey and millions of tables with their food, yet not to depopulate the watery realms, the issue produced by every breeder is almost incredible.

They spawn not by scores or hundreds, but by thousands and tens of thousands. A single mother is pregnant with a nation. Mute though the fishes be, yet they are full of instruction for the thoughtful inquirer. Wise contrivances and logical arrangements involve forethought and planning. Suitable accommodations and the appropriate and accurate fitting of one joint to another unquestionably evinces intelligence.

In the Holy Qur’an, Allah, the Exalted, calls our attention to his creatures and appeals to us to study them closely in order that we may know that He is the Most Powerful, Most High, so that we can reference and worship Him. See Quran 7:174 and Quran 40:81)

Those who study medicine will appreciate the complexity and wonders of human systems. Allah praises Himself on these wonders: Then We made the sperm into a clot of congealed blood; then of that clot We made a (fetus) lump; then We made out of that lump bones and clothed the bones with flesh; then We developed out of it another creature. So blesses be Allah, the Best to create! (Quran 23:14)

Allah did not stop at these wonderful creatures, but He gave mankind the intellect to explore them so as to get benefits from them.

Barka Juma’at and a happy weekend.

By Babatunde Jose

There is no evidence whatsoever that flowering plants evolved. Charles Darwin himself once commented: ‘Nothing is more extraordinary in the history of the vegetable kingdom, as it seems to me, than the apparently very sudden and abrupt development of the higher plants.’

The orchid family is one of the largest plant families, with about 30,000 species. Orchids come in many shapes and sizes; the best known probably being the insect–mimicking species. Many of these mimics have very ingenious ways of attracting pollinating insects, appealing to the senses of both sight and smell. Can evolution explain the origin of these mechanisms?

The evolution of plant life on Earth is fundamental to the history of our planet. It has provided resources and habitats for animals and influenced climate on a global scale. We know that plant life on land is ancient, but exactly how old is widely debated. Now, Museum scientists are part of a multi-institutional team transforming our understanding of this most formative episode in Earth’s history.

Dr Harald Schneider, Dr Paul Kenrick, Dr Silvia Pressel and Dr Mark Puttick were part of a team of ten scientists researching the evolution of plant life. Their latest findings, published in the journals Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Current Biology, show that land plants evolved about 100 million years earlier than previously thought.

New data and analysis show that plant life began colonizing land 500 million years ago, during the Cambrian Period, around the same time as the emergence of the first land animals. This is understandable because land plants predated the arrival of land animals. Allah created the plants on which animals will feed before creating the animals.

There is no doubt therefore that the Cambrian Explosion as described by paleontologists lend credence to the existence of a Creator.

In the Qur’an (55: 10-13), God speaks to those who claim that these beautiful things are the work of blind, unconscious processes: It is He Who has spread out the earth for (His) creatures: Therein is fruit and date palms, producing spathes (enclosing dates); Also, corn, with (its) leaves and stalk for fodder, and sweet-smelling plants. Then which of the favors of your Lord will ye deny? (Quran 55:10-13) See also  (Quran 56: 63-65)

The tiny seed we hold in our hands contains sixty times more information than the complete Encyclopedia Britannica. When sown, the information in the tiny seed will turn the seed into either a tree, or another plant depending on the seed of which plant it is. To imagine or contemplate that these creations of nature are the result of chance will be most contemptuous of the awesome powers of the living God.

Biophysicist Lee M. Spetner writes: Plants do not proliferate in a field to the point where they become crowded. They do not engage in a “struggle for existence” where natural selection would preserve the strong and destroy the weak. Plants tend to control their populations by sensing the density of the planting. When the growth is dense, plants produce less seeds; when growth is thin, they produce more seeds. Allahu Akbar!

And We have provided therein means of subsistence, . . . . (Quran 15: 20) 

With Him are the keys of the Unseen, the treasures that none knoweth but He. He knoweth whatever there is on the earth and in the sea. Not a leaf doth fall but with His knowledge: There is not a grain in the darkness (or depths) of the earth, nor anything fresh or dry (green or withered) but is (inscribed) in a Record clear (to those who can read). (Quran 6: 59)

The ‘apparently sudden appearance of quite well-developed ‘Flowering Plants’ is still, perhaps, the greatest difficulty in the record of evolution’. Accordingly, Charles Darwin admitted when he said:’ Nothing is more extraordinary in the history of the Vegetable Kingdom, as it seems to me, than the apparently very sudden or abrupt development of the higher plants.

But the Qur’an says: Or, who has created the heavens and the earth, and who sends you down rain from the sky? Yea, with it We cause to grow well-planted orchards full of beauty and delight: It is not in your power to cause the growth of the trees in them. (Can there be another) god besides Allah? Nay, they are a people who swerve from justice. (Quran 27: 60)

The wide variety of plants in the natural world is only one of the proofs that they are not the work of chance. The flawless systems and extraordinary design of these esthetic, sweet-smelling plants couldn’t be formed by the chance agglomeration of atoms. This claim would be as nonsensical as the assertion that clothes in a store could make themselves by the accidental coming together of fabric and thread.

It is He who produceth gardens, with trellises and without, and dates, and tilth with produce of all kinds, and olives and pomegranates, similar (in kind) and different (in variety): (Quran 6: 141)

Dr. Eldred Corner of Cambridge University is forced to admit the all-too-clear fact of creation: . …I still think that, to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation. If, however, another explanation could be found for this hierarchy of classification, it would be the knell of the theory of evolution. Can you imagine how an orchid, a duckweed, and a palm have come from the same ancestry, and have we any evidence for this assumption? The evolutionist must be prepared with an answer, but I think that most would break down before an inquisition.

To Him is due the primal origin of the heavens and the earth: How can He have a son when He hath no consort? He created all things, and He hath full knowledge of all things. That is Allah, your Lord! There is no Allah but He, the Creator of all things: Then worship ye Him: And He hath power to dispose of all affairs. (Quran 6: 101-102)

For millions of years, the countless, varied plants on the Earth have known what they must do and when they must do it, thanks to a program stored in their seeds; and they remember this program and carry it out without error.

An almond tree never grows from a cherry pit, nor does an orange ever come from the seed from a coconut tree. The idea that this system can have been functioning perfectly for millions of years due to the success of chance occurrences is a fantasy that all sensible people will find ridiculous. It is God Who creates plants.

Dr. Lee Spetner writes: How does an acorn know it has to grow into an oak tree and not into a sunflower? . . . The science of biology took a pivotal turn about 40 years ago when biologists began to learn how information plays its role in living organisms. We have discovered the location of the information in the organism that tells it how to function and how to grow, how to live and how to reproduce. The information is in the seed as well as in the plant; it’s in the egg as well as in the chicken. The egg passes the information to the chicken it becomes, and the chicken passes it to the egg it lays, and so on. 

Even a rose, whose smell has not changed for millions of years and whose variously colored smooth petals give it a beautiful esthetic appearance, disproves the evolutionists’ claims. For years, trained experts have tried in experiments to duplicate the smell of a rose in the laboratory. But a rose, with more “intelligence” than the experts, has been producing this incomparable scent for millions of years.

A rose’s special smell, color, softness and wondrous design show God’s incomparable creative artistry.

And in the earth, there are tracts (diverse through) neighboring, and gardens of vines and fields sown with corn, and palm trees–growing out of single roots or otherwise: Watered with the same water, yet some of them We make more excellent that others to eat. Behold, verily in these things there are Signs for those who understand!  (Quran 13: 4)

All the plants have the structure that is most appropriate for each one. For example, the seeds of a coconut palm float in the water—even seawater—for long periods of time; for this reason, their shells are very hard and have a special composition to protect them from the water. Because of this, they can make long journeys over water—downstream, across the Ocean. Over the course of this journey, they need more nourishment to sustain them, and within their shells is stored just the kind of nourishment they require. Moreover, the coconut does not germinate while in the water; instead, it waits until it reaches the land and germinates at that exactly appropriate time. Unconscious atoms cannot calculate all this by chance! The evident truth is, an All-knowing and intelligent Creator is behind this design. This is just one of the many examples of God’s incomparable creative art. 

“He Who has made for you the earth like a carpet spread out; has enabled you to go about therein by roads (and channels); and has sent down water from the sky.” With it we have produced divers pairs of plants each separate from the others.  (Quran 20: 53)

When various atoms come together within a plant, they form complex molecules that produce their beautiful smells. And for plants all over the world, this process is the same and the formula never fails; the smell production laboratory in the plant never makes a mistake. Thanks to this ongoing perfection, flowers of the same species everywhere have the same smell.

The production of a scent is a very delicate matter, in the course of which molecules are assembled with very complex structures. For example, it requires between three and ten different compounds to produce the scent of a rose. A water lily uses six, and white freesia uses ten; and every plant uses a different chemical formula for its distinctive aroma. Anyone who has received no training in this field would find it difficult, if not impossible, to understand these chemical formulas, which plants produce in areas that can be seen only with a microscope.

Who gives these plants their awareness, their intelligence, the knowledge that only a chemical engineer could have? These organisms, more successful in producing scents than any laboratory, reveal God’s artistry in creation for all of us to see.

As Niles Eldredge, a well-known paleontologist and curator of the American Museum of Natural History, writes : Indeed, the only competing explanation for the order we all see in the biological world is the notion of Special Creation.

Bananas contain various carbohydrates and an important quantity of potassium which, when eaten by humans, ensure the development of cells and muscles, adjust the level of water in the body, and keep the heart beating normally. Together with these advantages, God tells in the Qur’an (56:28-33) that bananas are among the fruits of paradise:

(They will be) among Lote trees without thorns, Among Talh trees with flowers (or fruits) piled one above another In shade long extended, By water flowing constantly, And fruit in abundance. Whose season is not limited, nor (supply) forbidden . (Quran 56:28-33)

It is God, the Lord of the Worlds, Who has created everything from nothing. “. . . . .  The things that ye worship besides Allah have no power to give you sustenance: Then seek ye sustenance from Allah, serve Him, and be grateful to Him: To Him will be your return. (Quran 29: 17)

 The work of God, like they say is incomprehensible: Awamaridi Ni ise Oluwa.

Barka Juma’at and a happy weekend.