Before I start, I would like to remind the reader that one's belief in Allah should be based hundred percent on al-Quran, as-sunnah, and Ijmak Salafus Soleh. The intellect does not contradict with the revelation. Here is a metaphor: The intelect can accept the fact that there is something beyond a solid wall. Revelation tells what is beyond the wall. However, the intellect cannot know what is beyond the wall, unless it accepts what the revelation tells about it. Some people have this delusion that their intellect can can tell whatever is beyond the wall. This is a serious error and this article is meant to tell those people that their intellect is actually limited. After the intellect is enlightened by the fact that it is limited, then it should seek to understand the revelation.
Please correct my mistakes. I am very glad to recieve comments.
To comprehend the existence of God and to be submissive to God is two very different things. Not believing in God usually is a simple case of being naïve; therefore it is a problem with the mind. The mind can be fixed by learning true knowledge. The problem of not wanting to be submissive to God is a problem with the heart. There are many scientists out there who believe in God, but they do not practice their religious duties. There are people out there who try to comfort their hearts by reasoning out that God does not exist, so that they do not feel this guilt of committing sins and leaving obligations set by God.
As Descartes once put, “I think, therefore I am.” Of course there is a paradox attach to this phrase which I do not want to dwell any further here. I am just saying that by convincing one self that God does not exist, therefore one does not feel guilty when one does not submit to God – needless to say that such peace is an illusionary one. Some try to sooth their heart by convincing themselves that God created this universe, but after that they say He just “sits back” and He does not interfere at all with his creations, as they are already govern by laws which He has set when he created them – deism. There are many people out there who profess believe in science and they naively say: It contradicts with the existence of God. How ironic is this.
Just to check your knowledge about science, let us go through some phenomenon (examples) of this world. Let’s say that you are traveling at 10m/s north and I am traveling 20m/s. north too. I am some distance away directly behind of you. Therefore, the relative speed between us is 10m/s or in other words, I am catching you up at a speed of 10m/s right? Let’s say that light’s speed is 20m/s(this is not light’s true speed, it’s just a hypothetical case) and there is a photon of light some distance away directly behind of you. So light will catch you up at the speed of 10m/s just like I did right? Logical reasoning says yes, but the universe does not work that way. Light will catch you up at 20m/s. In fact, even if you are traveling at 20m/s, light will still catch you up at the speed of 20m/s. It’s just that light’s true speed is 3x10^8m/s (blinding fast), which is why all the mind-bending predictions about space and time that Einstein made in Special and General Relativity are counterintuitive to us.
This peculiar nature of light does not makes sense to you, as according to you, everything in this universe has to be logical. I am sorry my friend, unfortunately, it is not our job to tell light and the universe what they should do or how they should behave. Let’s just say, Mother Nature has set those laws. Shall I say, God has set those laws and you have no part in deciding it? Einstein abandoned all the proven scientific laws and mathematical theorem such as Galilean Transformation and Euclidian Geometry – geometry that you have been leaning in high school and guess what, they are actually WRONG! They are only good approximations – instead he put his trust in Principle of Relativity, which is purely an assumption. Of course it turned out that he is right. There are countless of good books out there which explain Relativity in great details. I am just trying to point out that this universe is not what it seems and what is actually science?
To give you a more intuitive sense of what this particular nature of light may mean to you, let me give you an example. (This example is a modified version of an example in Brian Greene's book, The Elegant Universe) Let’s say that the leaders of Palestine and Israel are going to sign a peace treaty on a train. This train is a special one: It travel’s at relativistic speed (near the speed of light), and its carriages are all transparent so that people from outside can see what is happening inside. To add a bit of a twist to this anecdote, let’s say that this state-of-the-art train is engineered by an Israeli. Thousands of Palestinian and Israelis are waiting at a train station which is situated at the border of the two countries, as the treaty is scheduled to be made when the train passes that station. Let’s forget about the impossibility of the human eye to focus on something that moves near the speed of light. There is a long table in the train and there is a light bulb in the middle of the table. The Israeli president sits at one end of the table with his back facing the front of the train and the Palestinian president sits on the other end where his face is facing the front of the train. The rule is like this: The carriage will be made pitch dark. When the light bulb in the middle of the train is switched on, both leaders will sign the treaty. This is to make sure that they sign it at the exact same time (again forget about human’s reaction time). There is also a third person in the train to verify that the treaty is signed together and nobody cheats.
Now, the train is passing the designated station and the light bulb switches on. Both leaders play by the rule and they sign the treaty together, as confirmed by the third person. So we are on a verge of a new peaceful era in the Middle East, right? Shockingly, fighting starts between the Israelis and the Palestinians who are at the train station after the treaty was signed. Shall I say kudos to the Israeli engineer who designed this train? People from the platform claim that the Palestinian leader cheated: They say he signed the treaty first. Mind you that this is not some twist of the truth – this is the reality. People from outside of the train will indeed see that the Palestinian leader signed the treaty first, but the three people inside the train will claim that they agreed that nobody cheats. I can hear you say, “How could that be? This is a single event; therefore there can’t be two truths about it.” I don’t want to bore you with the technicalities here, but to cut long story short: It is because time is relative and a SINGLE event is not the same for different observers in different frames. So, do you understand what is time? When I say time, I am not talking about the watch that you are wearing on your wrist or even just the feeling of the passing of time. I am talking about all the events that had happened, are happening, and will happen in your life and the nature of this world that YOU THINK you understand. Mind you that when you look at the sky and the stars during the night, you are actually looking at something you call the past and it is billions of years back.
If that did not amuse you, lets peak into the strange world of Quantum Mechanics (Ironically it is the very world that you live in). Before I go any further, let me quote what Neils Bohr once said: “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” So if you have no idea what Quantum Theory is, pray try to understand it. If you are wondering why I want you to know all these; it is because Einstein, Hawking, Penrose, Bohr, etc. know all these and that part of the reason why they don’t think science contradicts with God.
(Example below is taken from Jim Al-Khalili’s book, Quantum : A Guide for the Perplexed, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2003)
The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Regrets, choices, and the unknown future; part of life right?
“While we are often burdened with regrets about the choices we make in life, quantum mechanics tells of a very different reality at the subatomic level. Meeting it for the first time, the quantum world may seem unbelievable to us [Actually, it is the very world that we live in] when judgeg according to the PREJUDICED VIEWS of our everyday experiences – what we call common sense. But the alien way that quantum objects behave is beyond any doubt. A single atom can travel both roads in Frost’s yellow wood… no regrets for atoms; they can sample all possible experiences simultaneously” (Al-Khalili, 22)
Long gone the time when Newton’s laws say that this universe is deterministic, in fact now it is probabilistic and the weirdest thing is, atoms know the future before making ‘its decision'. Maybe this is a bit too complicated. Let’s just put it this way. According to Quantum mechanics (proven theory), there is a probability that you can go through a wall! It’s just that the probability for an atom to pass through a wall is 1 in a billion, let alone you, who consists of billions of atoms. But there is a chance right? Who decides this? Who decides for the electron? So who decides the probabilistic position of all these subatomic particles? Mind you that we are not in a realm of ‘we don’t know yet’, we are sure that it is not explainable – even if we found Theory of Everything – unless you invoke the word God. You can read books on Quantum mechanics if you do not believe me. Pray make yourself understand about Quantum mechanics (the nature of our world). After that, if you still think science contradicts with God, I can’t help you anymore.
One more thing that I want to ask: Why do you trust science so much that you are prepared to abandon certain things because science says so? Of course, there is absurd stuff out there which are clearly wrong. For example, many people back then believed that the universe is infinite; therefore there is no need for a creator. Then it is found out that the universe is finite and it has a beginning – the Big Bang – then certain people believe that there must be creator who created this universe. Many people buy this idea that God ‘sits back’ after He created this universe and He does not interfere with it after He created it. They argued that every physical laws - Newton ’s law, Gravitational Law, etc. In fact every classical physical laws out there – is perfect and there is no need for Him to ‘interfere’ with this world. They also say the same thing for living organism, by arguing on the basis of Darwin's Theory of Evolution. In other words, they are afraid of the fact that God is omniscient and their deeds and sins will be judged accordingly. Isn’t this a nice escape route to convince your intellect?
Suddenly Quantum mechanics is found out, and we learn that the deterministic classical physical laws (which are all the stuff you learn in high school physics) are actually ‘wrong’ – well, they are good approximations – and the CURRENT real nature of this world, is probabilistic. You can’t predict or say for sure where an electron’s position is and Bohr’s deterministic model of atom - he applied Newton's laws – is actually wrong. We know that there are certain things in this universe which we cannot predict and there is no exact rule that bound them. Someone or something decides certain thing. Those who believe in deism and they are honest with themselves admit that God has a role in this universe even after creation.
So believer in science, why do you make your judgment about God based solely on science? What is the ultimate truth? Can science tell you that? Once upon a time science says that an apple should be blue, but now it says that it should be red, but what about the future? Beforehand you argue that an apple should be blue JUST because SCIENCE SAYS SO, only to found out that science 'changes its mind' and now it says that apple should be red. What a bummer if you decide the most important thing in your life based on science, which proven laws are often found out to be actually wrong. Anyway, the current physics that we know certainly agrees with the existance of God. Is there a revealed knowledge from God which is the ultimate truth? May you find the right path, seeker of the truth.
Allah knows best.
Please correct my mistakes. I am very glad to recieve comments.
To comprehend the existence of God and to be submissive to God is two very different things. Not believing in God usually is a simple case of being naïve; therefore it is a problem with the mind. The mind can be fixed by learning true knowledge. The problem of not wanting to be submissive to God is a problem with the heart. There are many scientists out there who believe in God, but they do not practice their religious duties. There are people out there who try to comfort their hearts by reasoning out that God does not exist, so that they do not feel this guilt of committing sins and leaving obligations set by God.
As Descartes once put, “I think, therefore I am.” Of course there is a paradox attach to this phrase which I do not want to dwell any further here. I am just saying that by convincing one self that God does not exist, therefore one does not feel guilty when one does not submit to God – needless to say that such peace is an illusionary one. Some try to sooth their heart by convincing themselves that God created this universe, but after that they say He just “sits back” and He does not interfere at all with his creations, as they are already govern by laws which He has set when he created them – deism. There are many people out there who profess believe in science and they naively say: It contradicts with the existence of God. How ironic is this.
Just to check your knowledge about science, let us go through some phenomenon (examples) of this world. Let’s say that you are traveling at 10m/s north and I am traveling 20m/s. north too. I am some distance away directly behind of you. Therefore, the relative speed between us is 10m/s or in other words, I am catching you up at a speed of 10m/s right? Let’s say that light’s speed is 20m/s(this is not light’s true speed, it’s just a hypothetical case) and there is a photon of light some distance away directly behind of you. So light will catch you up at the speed of 10m/s just like I did right? Logical reasoning says yes, but the universe does not work that way. Light will catch you up at 20m/s. In fact, even if you are traveling at 20m/s, light will still catch you up at the speed of 20m/s. It’s just that light’s true speed is 3x10^8m/s (blinding fast), which is why all the mind-bending predictions about space and time that Einstein made in Special and General Relativity are counterintuitive to us.
This peculiar nature of light does not makes sense to you, as according to you, everything in this universe has to be logical. I am sorry my friend, unfortunately, it is not our job to tell light and the universe what they should do or how they should behave. Let’s just say, Mother Nature has set those laws. Shall I say, God has set those laws and you have no part in deciding it? Einstein abandoned all the proven scientific laws and mathematical theorem such as Galilean Transformation and Euclidian Geometry – geometry that you have been leaning in high school and guess what, they are actually WRONG! They are only good approximations – instead he put his trust in Principle of Relativity, which is purely an assumption. Of course it turned out that he is right. There are countless of good books out there which explain Relativity in great details. I am just trying to point out that this universe is not what it seems and what is actually science?
To give you a more intuitive sense of what this particular nature of light may mean to you, let me give you an example. (This example is a modified version of an example in Brian Greene's book, The Elegant Universe) Let’s say that the leaders of Palestine and Israel are going to sign a peace treaty on a train. This train is a special one: It travel’s at relativistic speed (near the speed of light), and its carriages are all transparent so that people from outside can see what is happening inside. To add a bit of a twist to this anecdote, let’s say that this state-of-the-art train is engineered by an Israeli. Thousands of Palestinian and Israelis are waiting at a train station which is situated at the border of the two countries, as the treaty is scheduled to be made when the train passes that station. Let’s forget about the impossibility of the human eye to focus on something that moves near the speed of light. There is a long table in the train and there is a light bulb in the middle of the table. The Israeli president sits at one end of the table with his back facing the front of the train and the Palestinian president sits on the other end where his face is facing the front of the train. The rule is like this: The carriage will be made pitch dark. When the light bulb in the middle of the train is switched on, both leaders will sign the treaty. This is to make sure that they sign it at the exact same time (again forget about human’s reaction time). There is also a third person in the train to verify that the treaty is signed together and nobody cheats.
Now, the train is passing the designated station and the light bulb switches on. Both leaders play by the rule and they sign the treaty together, as confirmed by the third person. So we are on a verge of a new peaceful era in the Middle East, right? Shockingly, fighting starts between the Israelis and the Palestinians who are at the train station after the treaty was signed. Shall I say kudos to the Israeli engineer who designed this train? People from the platform claim that the Palestinian leader cheated: They say he signed the treaty first. Mind you that this is not some twist of the truth – this is the reality. People from outside of the train will indeed see that the Palestinian leader signed the treaty first, but the three people inside the train will claim that they agreed that nobody cheats. I can hear you say, “How could that be? This is a single event; therefore there can’t be two truths about it.” I don’t want to bore you with the technicalities here, but to cut long story short: It is because time is relative and a SINGLE event is not the same for different observers in different frames. So, do you understand what is time? When I say time, I am not talking about the watch that you are wearing on your wrist or even just the feeling of the passing of time. I am talking about all the events that had happened, are happening, and will happen in your life and the nature of this world that YOU THINK you understand. Mind you that when you look at the sky and the stars during the night, you are actually looking at something you call the past and it is billions of years back.
If that did not amuse you, lets peak into the strange world of Quantum Mechanics (Ironically it is the very world that you live in). Before I go any further, let me quote what Neils Bohr once said: “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” So if you have no idea what Quantum Theory is, pray try to understand it. If you are wondering why I want you to know all these; it is because Einstein, Hawking, Penrose, Bohr, etc. know all these and that part of the reason why they don’t think science contradicts with God.
(Example below is taken from Jim Al-Khalili’s book, Quantum : A Guide for the Perplexed, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2003)
The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Regrets, choices, and the unknown future; part of life right?
“While we are often burdened with regrets about the choices we make in life, quantum mechanics tells of a very different reality at the subatomic level. Meeting it for the first time, the quantum world may seem unbelievable to us [Actually, it is the very world that we live in] when judgeg according to the PREJUDICED VIEWS of our everyday experiences – what we call common sense. But the alien way that quantum objects behave is beyond any doubt. A single atom can travel both roads in Frost’s yellow wood… no regrets for atoms; they can sample all possible experiences simultaneously” (Al-Khalili, 22)
Long gone the time when Newton’s laws say that this universe is deterministic, in fact now it is probabilistic and the weirdest thing is, atoms know the future before making ‘its decision'. Maybe this is a bit too complicated. Let’s just put it this way. According to Quantum mechanics (proven theory), there is a probability that you can go through a wall! It’s just that the probability for an atom to pass through a wall is 1 in a billion, let alone you, who consists of billions of atoms. But there is a chance right? Who decides this? Who decides for the electron? So who decides the probabilistic position of all these subatomic particles? Mind you that we are not in a realm of ‘we don’t know yet’, we are sure that it is not explainable – even if we found Theory of Everything – unless you invoke the word God. You can read books on Quantum mechanics if you do not believe me. Pray make yourself understand about Quantum mechanics (the nature of our world). After that, if you still think science contradicts with God, I can’t help you anymore.
One more thing that I want to ask: Why do you trust science so much that you are prepared to abandon certain things because science says so? Of course, there is absurd stuff out there which are clearly wrong. For example, many people back then believed that the universe is infinite; therefore there is no need for a creator. Then it is found out that the universe is finite and it has a beginning – the Big Bang – then certain people believe that there must be creator who created this universe. Many people buy this idea that God ‘sits back’ after He created this universe and He does not interfere with it after He created it. They argued that every physical laws - Newton ’s law, Gravitational Law, etc. In fact every classical physical laws out there – is perfect and there is no need for Him to ‘interfere’ with this world. They also say the same thing for living organism, by arguing on the basis of Darwin's Theory of Evolution. In other words, they are afraid of the fact that God is omniscient and their deeds and sins will be judged accordingly. Isn’t this a nice escape route to convince your intellect?
Suddenly Quantum mechanics is found out, and we learn that the deterministic classical physical laws (which are all the stuff you learn in high school physics) are actually ‘wrong’ – well, they are good approximations – and the CURRENT real nature of this world, is probabilistic. You can’t predict or say for sure where an electron’s position is and Bohr’s deterministic model of atom - he applied Newton's laws – is actually wrong. We know that there are certain things in this universe which we cannot predict and there is no exact rule that bound them. Someone or something decides certain thing. Those who believe in deism and they are honest with themselves admit that God has a role in this universe even after creation.
So believer in science, why do you make your judgment about God based solely on science? What is the ultimate truth? Can science tell you that? Once upon a time science says that an apple should be blue, but now it says that it should be red, but what about the future? Beforehand you argue that an apple should be blue JUST because SCIENCE SAYS SO, only to found out that science 'changes its mind' and now it says that apple should be red. What a bummer if you decide the most important thing in your life based on science, which proven laws are often found out to be actually wrong. Anyway, the current physics that we know certainly agrees with the existance of God. Is there a revealed knowledge from God which is the ultimate truth? May you find the right path, seeker of the truth.
Allah knows best.
hmmm
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