Atlas Of Creation - Volume 4-
In the early 20th century, scientists discovered something new: that matter was not as we had imagined it to be. Matter was not solid. Matter had no colors. It gave off no smells, sounds or image. Matter was simply energy. The chair you sit in, the table you lean on, the house you live in, your dogs, the people around you, buildings, space, stars—in short, the whole material world exists as a form of energy.
In the face of this unexpected discovery, all philosophies constructed on the basis of matter therefore suffered a scientific collapse. Science revealed the proof of something inside the human body but not belonging to it, something that perceived the entire physical world, but was not itself physical: the human soul.
The soul could not be explained in any way in terms of materialist claims. Darwinism, which produced countless fictitious tales regarding the imaginary evolution of species, remained silent in the face of the existence of the soul. Because the soul was not matter, it was a metaphysical concept. And metaphysics was something that materialists were completely unable to accept, because metaphysics did away with all the unconscious events, coincidences and random processes that they had deified. Metaphysics submitted evidence of a conscious creation, in other words, of the existence of Allah. That, in any case, was why materialists had been denying the existence of the soul ever since the days of Ancient Greece.
This struggle, which had persisted since Ancient Greece right up to the present, now became meaningless because there is an entity that makes a human being human, that lets you say, “This is me.” That, in other words, is your soul: It exists, and it belongs to Allah. Science definitively proved that the human soul observed all things as they were presented to it and that there could be no reference to any reality beyond these perceived images. To put it another way, it openly declared that the only absolute Entity was Allah.
This proof by science is of importance in convincing minds that deify materialist philosophy. In fact, though, all who possess reflection and intellect are aware that they possess a sublime soul. Anyone who can reason at all will understand that it is the soul that rejoices, thinks, decides, judges, experiences joy and excitement, loves, shows compassion, gets anxious, enjoys the taste of an apple, takes pleasure from listening to music, builds planes, raises skyscrapers and constructs laboratories in which it examines itself.
If human beings are possessed of souls, they cannot have been created haphazardly. There is a purpose behind their presence in this world. All people bear a soul that belongs to Allah and are being tested in this lifetime, after which they will be held responsible for all their thoughts and deeds. There is no randomness or aimlessness in life. There are no chance events, as Darwinists maintain. Everything has been created by the will of Allah to become part of the tests to which we are subjected. In this life, which will end in death, the only thing that will be left behind is the body. The soul, on the other hand, will live for all eternity in the Hereafter, which is its true abode.
These are great glad tidings for anyone who realizes he has a soul and is able to appreciate its Creator. Darwinists, however, will continue to refuse this reality with all their means and maintain that they do not possess a soul. They will continue to refuse to accept that they will one day enter the presence of Almighty Allah, Whose existence they denied throughout the course of their lives. They will continue to regard themselves as randomly formed collections of atoms and will keep on dismissing the miraculous human consciousness that has discovered DNA, investigated the structure of the atom and has been amazed by the innermost workings of the cell.
The human soul is a terrible dilemma for Darwin and the supporters who came after him. It is the basic evidence which they cannot explain, which they cannot refute and cannot resolve. Allah has vanquished them by providing proof, of a scientific kind that they cannot deny: the insubstantiality of matter. In the face of this, any objections to the soul’s existence they may come up with are invalid and meaningless.
In His verses in the Qur’an, Allah tells us:
Who could be further astray than those who call on other things besides Allah, which will not respond to them until the Day of Resurrection and which are unaware of their prayers? When mankind is gathered together, they will be their enemies and will reject their worship. (Surat al-Ahqaf, 5-6)
Darwinists and materialists need to realize that the only absolute Entity is Allah. Confronted by this truth, all hollow, empty deceptions and superstitious faiths fall into an insuperable quandary. Allah has enfolded all things with His Sublime Might. All things belong to Him and are under His control. Denying creation and the existence of the soul cannot alter these facts one iota.
This book considers one of the materialists’ biggest errors, the scientific evidence exposing this error, Darwinism’s dilemma in the face of this, and the certain existence of the soul. The world that the soul perceives is merely an illusion, a phantom and the sole absolute Entity Who rules the entire universe is Allah, Ruler and Lord of the Earth and sky. Henceforth, those with unclouded minds who understand this fact will look at the world from a different perspective and realize that Allah is their only savior. In order to attain salvation in the Hereafter, their true life, people need to behave in the light of that understanding.
Materialism Has Collapsed and Disappeared
Materialism: The Superstition of an Age
Ancient Greek thinkers imagined that all bodies consisted of tiny particles called atoms. They maintained that these atoms shaped the universe and all living things, without intention or direction and without being subjected to any conscious intervention. According to this belief, matter was timeless and eternal, and nothing beyond matter could exist. Supernatural events that intervened in entities’ behavior and altered their structures was sheer superstition, unacceptable. All axioms and principles were based on the assumption that matter was an absolute reality.
Since matter was eternal, the universe must be eternal as well, and that idea served as the foundation of atheism. If the entire universe had existed for all time, then according to the perversion of materialist belief, it was impossible for matter and the universe to ever have been created.
According to materialists, the universe was eternal, and therefore, there was no purpose or special creation in it. Materialists imagined that all the balances, equilibrium, harmony and order in the universe were solely the results of chance. They claimed that everything came into being as the result of unconscious atoms assembling at random. And no matter how much complexity, balance and magnificent regularity exhibited by the external world, these were still the result of purposeless coincidences.
Materialist minds had held this preconception or idée fixe ever since the days of Ancient Greece. Since materialism rejected the concepts of “purpose” and “creation” to the universe, it also denied the existence of a Creator. To be strictly accurate, materialism was a philosphy which had been formulated to reject Allah. Many movements, ideologies and intellectual systems that rejected belief in Allah were, similarly, rooted in materialism. In other words, materialism was the most influential religion of atheism.
Stanley Sobottka, a professor of physics from Virginia University, describes the perversion of materialism in these terms:
Stanley Sobottka
If we believe this way [believe in materialism], we must conclude that everything, including ourselves and all of life, is governed completely by physical law. Physical law is the only law governing our desires, our hopes, our ethics, our goals, and our destinies. Matter and energy must be our primary focus, the object of all of our desires and ambitions. Specifically, this means that our lives must be focused on acquiring material goods (including bodies), or at least rearranging or exchanging them, in order to produce the maximum material satisfaction and pleasure. We must expend all of our energy in this quest, for there can be no other goal. And in all of this, we have no choice, because we are totally governed by physical law. We may feel trapped by these beliefs and desires, but we cannot shake them. They totally dominate us.A succinct, personalized, summary statement of materialist philosophy is, “I am a body.”1
In Ancient Greece, materialists held that religious adherents were illogically opposed to science. For that reason, materialists throughout history have sought to give the impression that belief in Allah and science are incompatible. In fact, however, science has increasingly showed evidence of His existence, and those discoveries worked against the materialist mindset that fought against belief in Allah.
This included Darwinism, of course. The struggle against Darwinism is basically an attack on its materialist origins.
Throughout the course of history, materialists claimed that entities consisted merely of assemblages of atoms, and that the human brain was nothing more than a network of neurons. They were unable to account for the human mind, and attempted to explain it as the electro-chemical interaction between its neurons.
Materialists had no qualms about describing themselves as animals or machines. They denied that they had the status of entities with consciousness and claimed that they had come into existence by chance. Yet this was a grave misconception and a lie fabricated in order to deny Allah.
In the words of the quantum particle physicist Stephen M. Barr, of the Bartol Research Institute at the University of Delaware, these people who believed in the absolute reality of matter were almost no different from the pagans of the past. Just like the ancient pagans, materialists describe humans as essentially sub-human. Pagans deified matter; materialists did the same thing by denying the soul and reducing everything to the level of matter. Pagans declared that events were determined by the orbits of the planets and the stars; materialists claimed that they were controlled by the ebb and flow of the hormones in their brains. Pagans prostrated themselves to worship in front of false animal deities; materialists claimed that they were no more than animals themselves.2
Amit Goswami, a professor of physics at the University of Oregon’s Institute for Theoretical Science, describes the fundamental logic with which materialists sought to indoctrinate people:
We are conditioned to believe that we are machines—that all our actions are determined by the stimuli we receive and by our prior conditioning. As exiles, we have no responsibility, no choice; our free will is a mirage.3
Amit Goswami
The fact is, however, that Allah created man. And man is not an entity devoid of purpose and responsibility. Contrary to what materialists claim, man is not an unthinking machine. Man is an entity with a responsibility to Allah and will be held to account for all his deeds in the Hereafter.
The materialist logic that seeks to divert people away from this fact has been evident at all times throughout history, ever since the days of Ancient Greece. Yet it was only in the 19th century that this belief spread and became established as a settled intellectual system. In the 19th century, the great majority of classical physicists thought that the fundamental components of matter were inanimate and indivisible atoms, just like tiny billiard balls, and that the perfect regularity and complexity in the universe were the result of the random motion and compounds of these atoms. In their view, everything on Earth, life included, came into being by accident through a series of blind, unconscious processes. Atoms established unreasoning unions and gave rise to the world we see with all its perfect features—and also to ourselves, with our minds and consciousness.
By setting out these claims, materialists sought to indoctrinate people with the idea that man was not made by a Creator and that apart from matter, nothing existed. The fact is, though, that man was obviously created with perfect systems and mechanisms, through an extraordinary mind and intelligence. There were no unconscious processes on Earth of the kind suggested by materialists, and no unthinking structures and systems arose as a consequence. Everything displays a complexity and sublimity that often exceeds the capacity of human minds to comprehend, and so perfect are these details that they exclude all possibility of chance. The Earth itself reveals proofs of creation.
Despite these facts, however, materialists insisted in their claims that unconscious atoms were the basis of all things. So what, according to materialists, were these atoms, the source of all else that exists?
In one respect, we now know that the atom is an almost complete void, and that is a proven fact. We can explain this as follows: If you imagine the atomic nucleus, comprised of neutrons and protons, as a pinhead just 1 millimeter (0.039 of an inch) in diameter, then an electron revolving around that nucleus does so at a distance of 100 meters (328 feet)!4
In this considerable volume between the nucleus and the electrons, the only thing that exists is empty space. This 100-meter void is literally “empty.” That is why in one sense, experts are justified in regarding the atom as an empty vacuum. In the words of the British physicist Sir Arthur Eddington, matter is mostly “ghostly empty space.” "5
To be more precise, it is 99.9999999% empty.
Fred Alan Wolf, a particle physicist at the University of California describes this fact regarding the atom:
Fred Alan Wolf, a particle physicist at the University of California describes this fact regarding the atom:
If you stop to think about it at all, you might realize that life on planet as we live it is really a surprise, considering just how empty the universe really is. In fact, the universe is more than 99 percent nothing! And considering that the universe is still expanding at an alarming rate, it’s getting to be more nothing than it ever was!
If you stop to think about it at all, you might realize that life on planet as we live it is really a surprise, considering just how empty the universe really is. In fact, the universe is more than 99 percent nothing! And considering that the universe is still expanding at an alarming rate, it’s getting to be more nothing than it ever was! So while looking out at it leaves us in awe, when we consider the microworld of subatomic matter, it’s even worse. There, nothing exists in spades, so to speak.6
At the beginning of the 20th century, it was known that there was a giant empty space inside the atom, which was regarded as the smallest component of all things, and that this space contained a nucleus and electrons revolving around it. However, only the general lines of matter—the atom and its fundamental parts—were understood. So what was there in the atomic nucleus, in a space just 10-18 kilometer in size, or one millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a kilometer? That was something unknown to scientists.
In the 1960s, a most significant scientific discovery was made. It was realized that in the depths of the proton, there were particles known as quarks. These extraordinarily minute particles caused protons to have a positive electric charge, and neutrons to have no charge. Research eventually revealed the presence of a gloriously complex world in what comprised just 0.0000001 of the atom.
The more that materialists descended into the depths of the atom and the more extraordinary details they saw in matter’s smallest building block, the more they sought some solution by developing their theory in another direction. In order for the entire universe to form unconsciously and haphazardly, they had to explain how not just atoms but also the world inside the atom,—in other words, the motions of sub-atomic particles—had come into being. The idea that matter was the only thing that existed survived in the materialist mind, until the discovery of quantum physics.
Quantum Physics: The Discovery That Scientifically Demolished Materialism
Isaac Newton
. . . there’s enough in the way the physical universe is constructed to indicate the presence of something called soul. Where I begin looking for this soul is in the nature of quantum mechanics, or quantum physics, which says that there may be spiritual underpinnings to the physical world.7—Fred Alan Wolf, the well-known particle physicist at University of California
According to Isaac Newton, light was a flow of a substance known as “corpuscles.” The basis of the traditional Newtonian physics—which was accepted until the discovery of quantum physics—was that light consisted entirely of a collection of particles. However, James Clerk Maxwell, a 19th-century physicist, suggested that light demonstrated wave action. Quantum theory reconciled this greatest debate in physics.
In 1905, Albert Einstein claimed that light possessed quanta, or small packets of energy. These energy packets were given the name photons. Although described as particles, photons could be observed to behave in the wave motion proposed by Maxwell in the 1860s. Therefore, light was a transitional phenomenon between wave and particle.8a state of affairs that displayed a major contradiction in terms of Newtonian physics.
Max Planck
Immediately after Einstein, Max Planck, a German physicist, investigated light and astonished the entire scientific world by determining that it was both a wave and a particle. According to this idea, which he proposed under the name of quantum theory, energy was disseminated in the form of interrupted and discrete packets, rather than being straight and constant.
In a quantum event, light exhibited both particle-like and wave-like properties. The particle known as the photon was accompanied by a wave in space. In other words, light moved like a wave through space, but behaved as an active particle when it encountered an obstacle. To express it another way, it adopted the form of energy until encountering an obstacle, at which time it assumed the form of particles, as if it were composed of tiny material bodies reminiscent of grains of sand.
After Planck, this theory was further expanded by scientists such as Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Louis de Broglie, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Adrian Maurice Dirac and Wolfgang Pauli. Each was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discoveries.
About this new discovery regarding the nature of light, Amit Goswami says this:
When light is seen as a wave, it seems capable of being in two (or more) places at the same time, as when it passes through the slits of an umbrella and produces a diffraction pattern; when we catch it on a photographic film, however, it shows up discretely, spot by spot, like a beam of particles. So light must be both a wave and a particle. Paradoxical, isn’t it? At stake is one of the bulwarks of the old physics: unambiguous description in language. Also at stake is the idea of objectivity: Does the nature of light—what light is—depend on how we observe it?9
Scientists now no longer believed that matter consists of inanimate, random particles. Quantum physics had no materialist significance, because there were non-material things at the essence of matter. While Einstein, Philipp Lenard and Arthur Holly Compton investigated the particle structure of light, Louis de Broglie began looking at its wave structure.
De Broglie’s discovery was an extraordinary one: In his research, he observed that sub-atomic particles also displayed wave-like properties. Particles such as the electron and proton also had wavelengths. In other words, inside the atom—which materialism described as absolute matter—there were non-material energy waves, contrary to materialist belief. Just like light, these minute particles inside the atom behaved like waves at times, and exhibited the properties of particles at others. Contrary to materialist expectations, the “absolute matter” in the atom could be detected at certain times, but disappeared at others.
This major discovery showed that what we imagine to be the real world were in fact shadows. Matter had completely departed from the realm of physics and was headed in the direction of metaphysics.10
The physicist Richard Feynman described this interesting fact about sub-atomic particles and light:
Now we know how the electrons and light behave. But what can I call it? If I say they behave like particles I give the wrong impression; also if I say they behave like waves. They behave in their own inimitable way, which technically could be called a quantum mechanical way. They behave in a way that is like nothing that you have ever seen before. . . . An atom does not behave like a weight hanging on a spring and oscillating. Nor does it behave like a miniature representation of the solar system with little planets going around in orbits. Nor does it appear to be somewhat like a cloud or fog of some sort surrounding the nucleus. It behaves like nothing you have ever seen before.There is one simplification at least. Electrons behave in this respect in exactly the same way as photons; they are both screwy, but in exactly the same way.How they behave, therefore, takes a great deal of imagination to appreciate, because we are going to describe something which is different from anything you know about. . . . Nobody knows how it can be like that.11
To sum up, quantum physicists say that the objective world is an illusion.12Professor Hans-Peter Dürr, head of the Max Planck Institute of Physics, summarizes this fact:
Whatever matter is, it is not made of matter.13
All the most celebrated physicists of the 1920s, everyone from Paul Dirac to Niles Bohr, and from Albert Einstein to Werner Heisenberg, sought to explain these results from quantum experiments. Eventually, one group of physicists at the Fifth Solvay Conference on Physics held in Brussels in 1927—Bohr, Max Born, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli—reached an agreement known as the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. It took this name from the place of work of the leader of the group, Bohr, who suggested that the physical reality proposed by quantum theory was the information we have regarding a system and the estimates we make on the basis of that information. In his view, these “guesses” made in our brains had nothing to do with the “outside” reality.
In short, our “internal world” had nothing to do with the “outside real” world that had been the main subject of interest of physicists from Aristotle to the present day. Physicists abandoned their old ideas regarding this view and agreed that quantum understanding represented only “our knowledge” of the physical system. 14 The material world we can perceive exists solely as information in our brains. In other words, we can never obtain direct experience of matter in the outside world.
According to quantum physics, the existence of matter is dependent on the existence of a “perceiver.” For example, when we are looking at the Moon, the possibility wave of the body we perceive as the Moon collapses and the wave no longer exists in space-time. According to quantum physics, the Moon is not in the sky so long as there is no observer!
Jeffrey M. Schwartz, a neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry from University of California, described this conclusion emerging from the Copenhagen Interpretation:
As John Archibald cracked, “No phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.”15In summary, quantum mechanics’ all conventional interpretations depend on the existence of a “perceiving being.”16
Amit Goswami expanded on this insight:
Suppose we ask, Is the moon there when we are not looking at it? To the extent that the moon is ultimately a quantum object (being composed entirely of quantum objects), we must say no—so says physicist David Mermin. . .
Zihin ve Beyin
Perhaps the most important, and the most insidious, assumption that we absorb in our childhoods is that of the material world of objects existing out there—independent of subjects, who are the observers. There is circumstantial evidence in favor of such an assumption. Whenever we look at the moon, for example, we find the moon where we expect it along its classically calculated trajectory. Naturally we project that the moon is always there in space-time, even when we are not looking. Quantum physics says no. When we are not looking, the moon’s possibility wave spreads, albeit by a minuscule amount. When we look, the wave collapses instantly; thus the wave could not be in space-time. It makes more sense to adapt an idealist metaphysic assumption: There is no object in space-time without a conscious subject looking at it.17
This, of course, applies to our perceptual world. The existence of the Moon is of course obvious in the outside world. But when we look at it, all we actually encounter is our own perception of the Moon.
Jeffrey M. Schwartz included these lines regarding the fact demonstrated by quantum physics in his book The Mind and the Brain:
The role of observation in quantum physics cannot be emphasized too strongly. In classical physics [Newtonian physics], observed systems have an existence independent of the mind that observes and probes them. In quantum physics, however, only through an act of observation does a physical quantity come to have an actual value.18
İnsanın Yükselişi
Schwartz also summarized the views of various physicists on the subject:
As Jacob Bronowski wrote in The Ascent of Man,“One aim of the physical sciences has been to give an exact picture of the material world. One achievement of physics in the twentieth century has been to prove that that aim is unattainable.” . . .
Heisenberg said the concept of objective reality “has thus evaporated.“ Writing in 1958, he admitted that “the laws of nature which we formulate mathematically in quantum theory deal no longer with the particles themselves but with our knowledge of the elementary particles.” “It is wrong,” Bohr once said, “to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.” 19
Fred Alan Wolf, one of the guest physicists in the documentary film “What the Bleep Do We Know?” described this same fact:
What makes up things are not more things. But what makes up things are ideas, concepts, information. . . .20
Following the most fascinating and sensitive experiments that the human mind could devise over the course of 80 years, there are now no views opposed to quantum physics, which has been decisively and scientifically proven. No objections can even be suggested against the conclusions reached by the experiments performed. Quantum theory has been tested in hundreds of possible different ways devised by scientists.2121 It has earned the Nobel Prize for a number of scientists, and is continuing to do so.
Matter, the most fundamental concept of Newtonian physics and once regarded unconditionally as the absolute truth, has been eliminated. Materialists, supporters of the old belief that matter was the sole and definitive building block of existence, were really confused by the fact of “the lack of matter” suggested by quantum physics. They now have to explain all the laws of physics within the sphere of metaphysics.
The shock that this inflicted on materialists in the early 20th century was far greater than can be expressed in these lines. But the quantum physicists Bryce DeWitt and Neill Graham describe it:
No development of modern science has had a more profound impact on human thinking than the advent of quantum theory. Wrenched out of centuries-old thought patterns, physicists of a generation ago found themselves compelled to embrace a new metaphysics. The distress which this reorientation caused continues to the present day. Basically physicists have suffered a severe loss; their hold on reality.22
The Wave-Like Properties of the Electron and the Scientific Proof
The most significant experiment revealing this interesting nature of the sub-atomic particles was the double-slit experiment. This was conducted to see how light and electrons both behave like waves, and how they both manifest this surprising feature to the same extent.
In order to gain a better understanding of the subject, assume that this experiment was conducted with grains of sand rather than electrons.
First, bring a source of sand grains, such as a sand-blower, behind a wall. Let there be two slits in the wall. And let there be on the other side of the wall a screen to detect the particles passing through these slits. Each sand grain impelled by the blower travels through one slit and strikes the screen.
First, bring a source of sand grains, such as a sand-blower, behind a wall. Let there be two slits in the wall. And let there be on the other side of the wall a screen to detect the particles passing through these slits. Each sand grain impelled by the blower travels through one slit and strikes the screen.
Once a large number of grains have passed through the slits and hit the screen, we see that two clusters of points have appeared on the screen; one made up of grains passing through the first slit, and the other of those passing through the second. Events have transpired as we expected.
Now, imagine that we have conducted a similar experiment in a different way. Let us fill the experimental environment between the source and the screen with a pool of water, and use a vibrating object instead of the source of sand particles. This object sets the water in motion and continuously generates waves, spreading in all directions.
Unlike grains of sand, these waves are not localized in space. They are spread throughout the whole pool. As a result, the waves passing through both slits simultaneously spread out, encounter one another and interfere with each other.
When the crest of one wave combines with the trough of another, they neutralize each other. The wave effect disappears, leaving nothing. This interference is a basic characteristic of waves.
When the experiment was performed with electrons, instead of a cluster of particles striking the screen—as with the sand grains—the electrons were observed to interfere with one another. The expected result failed to occur if the electrons were regarded as particles only. Therefore, since the electrons displayed the wave-like feature of interfering with one another, they cannot be particles. Yet they cannot be waves either—because, just like particles, they struck the screen in discrete groups.
In this instance, the observations suggest that the electrons are localized particles when they leave the source and when they arrive at the screen, but that they act as waves everywhere in between. This is really very counterintuitive.23
This experimental evidence did away with materialism, according to which, every particle must possess an objective existence somewhere in space. Again according to materialism, an electron must follow a single course through a space and cannot move through both slits like a wave which is not localized. Yet materialists’ expectations did not correspond to experimental reality.
The wave we are referring to here is different from a physical wave that occurs in water. Electron waves do not exist in the three-dimensional space in our physical world.
Fred Alan Wolf
Fred Alan Wolf describes the wave concept in question:
When quantum physicists determine the probability of an event, they calculate a number. This number arises from the multiplication of two mathematical functions called quantum wave functions—or, as I call them,qwiffs. Qwiffs are imagined to be real waves moving through space and time. However, they are not real waves; they are purely imaginal. They are not fields like magnetic fields or gravitational fields. They cannot be measured. They have neither mass nor energy. They exist in our minds and imaginations. That is, they do not exist as we observe real material things existing. . . . The dynamic laws governing time loops bring a story into being. In other words, when a time loop is created, the world we commonly and uncommonly experience as “out there” arises both in our minds and in what we believe is objectively shared reality.24
According to Wolf, the definite scientific truth regarding electrons cannot possibly be comprehended in terms of known physical or mathematical concepts. In any case, however, we are never in direct contact with the realities in the outside world. It is impossible for us to step beyond our own perceptions.
The double-slit experiment can be repeated with all sub-atomic particles. The results will always be the same, because quantum mechanics rules the entire universe. True, when billions of atoms combine to give rise to any large object or a human being, the probability of this interference effect ever being observed decrease sharply. But this does not mean that the laws of quantum physics have ceased to apply. This process is now just not observable. Therefore, this fact applies to all of matter.
According to the Washington University mathematician Thomas McFarlane, the large objects we encounter in our daily lives are not objectively existing matter, either. According to him, “the appearance of an objectively existing world independent of observation is an illusion.”.25
What quantum mechanics has scientifically proven is that the objective world exists in a concentrated wave form. According to physicists, the main problem that misleads people is that the world observed through our perceptions is high in convincing detail, sharpness and clarity. Yet the outside world never actually reaches us. We can never see the external reality, the original of the material world existing “out there.”
Our daily lives present an image highly inconsistent with the external realities. Therefore, the question arises of which one—whether the physical reality or what appears to us so sharp and clear—should be regarded as valid.
Thomas J. McFarlane states that the answer can be found by drawing a comparison.
According to him, we can imagine modern-day scientists going back 3000 years in the past and meeting with people who imagine the Earth is flat. The scientists politely tell them that they are in error on the subject, and that the Earth is actually spherical.
These people then ask the scientists, “how could you have come by such an insane idea?” The scientists will be unable to provide a single piece of evidence to prove their thesis, under the conditions and state of knowledge of that time. They, on the other hand, are quite capable of explaining that the Earth is flat, on the basis of all their experiments and the evidence they’ve gathered. They use the concept of plane geometry to measure out land and chart road maps, and find nothing in this that conflicts with their daily experience. In the same way, when they look at a wide open expanse or the sea, they say that they can see no curvature and so claim that there is no evidence showing that the Earth is round. The idea that “The Earth is round” thus remains a delusion. The scientists return to their time machine and to the present day, without having proved anything.26
According to McFarlane, the reason why these time-travelers were unable to convince anyone the Earth is round is that we humans are so very small in comparison to the Earth. Since our experiment is confined to a geographically very small area, the Earth appears to be flat, even though it is not actually so. In other words, the flatness observed on Earth is not a true flatness at all, because the Earth is not flat. This is only an illusory flatness caused by the immense size of the Earth.In order to prove that the Earth is round, we need to go beyond our day-to-day limitations. For instance, we could fly around the world in a plane, or we could go up into space in a rocket. But when limited to our day-to-day experiences, we have no evidence that the flatness we perceive is an illusion. Similarly, we have no reason not to believe that the Earth is flat.
After citing this example, McFarlane goes on to say:
If people have been so deluded about reality in the past, how can we be so sure that we are not deluded now? As we have seen, just because our present notions of reality are consistent with our ordinary experience, does not make them true. Since our experience certainly has its limits, perhaps our idea of the objective world really is an illusion, just as much an illusion as the idea of a flat Earth.27
The Idea of Absolute Matter Has Disappeared Alongside Materialism
The conclusion revealed by quantum mechanics is that matter is not absolute and eternal, as materialists claim it to be. In the same way that matter is not timeless or eternal, the entities we see around us are not simply collections of atoms. According to quantum physics, matter has changed its nature in a way that materialists never dreamed of, and it has been scientifically proven that the basis of matter is simply a form of energy. In the face of the facts revealed by quantum physics, materialism has scientifically collapsed.
Paul Davies and John Gribbin summarize the way in which the new physics has entirely eliminated materialism:
It is fitting that physics—the science that gave rise to materialism— should also signal the demise of materialism. During this century the new physics has blown apart the central tenets of materialist doctrine in a sequence of stunning developments. First came the theory of relativity, which demolished Newton’s assumptions about space and time . . . Then came the quantum theory, which totally transformed our image of matter.28
Fred Alan Wolf describes how scientists have now abandoned materialism:
Some of us, including many scientists, don’t agree with the new objective materialism. We believe in our heart of hearts, as did the alchemists that came before us, that something far richer than materialism is responsible for the universe.29
What is the result of the collapse of materialism? The stubborn opinion that matter is the only absolute reality is one of the greatest deceptions that prevents people from believing in Allah. Instead of regarding the external world as the composite of their perceptions, they behave as if they had direct experience with everything they perceive. They apply the lack of purpose that materialism ascribes to matter to themselves, imagining that there is no reason for their existence on—or departure from—the Earth. Since they are unable to see and believe in the proofs of the existence of Allah, they expect Him to appear to them as a corporeal entity (surely Allah is beyond that). They believe that entities were never created, for which reason they never want to accept the existence of a Creator.
Using materialism as a pretext, they try to seek to deny the absolute existence of Allah and His creation. The collapse of materialism has eliminated that pretext and revealed full proof of the existence of Allah.
Stephen M. Barr
Particle physicist Stephen M. Barr expresses this:
Science has taken us on just such an adventure. Armed not with weapons but with telescopes and particle accelerators, and speaking by the signs and symbols of recondite mathematics, it has brought us to many strange shores and shown us alien and fantastic landscapes. But as we scan the horizon, near the end of the voyage, we have begun to recognize first one and then another of the old familiar landmarks and outlines of our ancestral home. The search for truth always leads us, in the end, back to God.30
Believing that there can be direct experience of matter as it exists, is itself conjecture. There is no evidence of this in this world, of which we conceive through our perceptions. We can see and touch the world only through our perceptions. It is impossible for us ever to make direct contact with the actual material world outside. The universe is not timeless and eternal, but had a beginning and will have an end. There is no “aimlessness” at any point throughout the universe, as materialists claim. The entire universe and all the entities in it have been brought into being for a purpose.
All this points to a single conclusion: Creation rules at every point in the universe. The works created show the existence of a sublime power, a Creator. That Creator is Almighty Allah, Who enfolds all the worlds.
It is fruitless for materialists to struggle against this truth any longer, because modern physics has produced results that argue totally against them. In verses Allah has told us that:
We did not create heaven and Earth and everything in between them as a game. If We had desired to have some amusement, We would have derived it from Our Presence, but We did not do that. Rather We hurl the truth against falsehood and it cuts right through its brain and it vanishes clean away! Woe without end for you for what you portray! Everyone in the heavens and the Earth belongs to Him. Those in His presence do not consider themselves too great to worship Him and do not grow tired of it. (Surat al-Anbiya’, 16-19)
The External World behind Quantum Physics
Light: A Form of Energy
Max Planck’s discovery shows that light exhibits the properties of both a wave and a particle. Since Planck’s day, countless experiments and observations have revealed this as an incontrovertible fact. That being so, in order to better comprehend this definition we can refer to another kind of waves, those that occur in water. Those waves are not made up of water, but are made up of the energy transmitted through the water. If a wave moves from one end of a swimming pool to another, this does not mean that the water in one side of the pool passes to the other. The water remains where it was. Only the wave itself moves, transmitting energy. When you move your hand in a bathtub filled with water you produce a small wave in the form of ripples, because you are imparting energy to the water. That energy manifests in the water in the form of a wave.
Radio frequency and measurement device.
Light is an energy that behaves in the form of a wave. Light waves resemble waves in water. But unlike the energy in water, this energy here has no need of a medium to travel through. It can move within a total vacuum. Thus light energy can be found where there is no matter.
All waves are energy travelling and generally are trasmitted by the use of a medium—water, in this example.
Light waves, understandably, are rather more complicated than waves in water and do not require a medium in order to travel. They can travel through an empty vacuum.31Light is dependent on matter only at the initial stage. Once light has been emitted, it can move independently with no material element. Light energy can be found even where there is no matter at all.
Light and heat are different forms of the energy known as electromagnetic radiation. All the various forms of electromagnetic radiation act in the form of energy waves in space. Again, this can be compared—albeit simplistically—to ripples created when a stone is thrown into a lake. In the same way that those ripples may be of different width and amplitude, so electromagnetic radiation can have different wavelengths.
There are very great differences between the wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. While some may be kilometers long, other wavelengths are smaller than a trillionth of a centimeter.
A six-mirror, giant gamma-ray telescope on Mount Hopkins.
Scientists divide these different wavelengths into named categories, which seem to imply that they are different forms of energy entirely. For example, rays with a wavelength as short as a trillionth of a centimeter are known as “gamma rays.” These transmit very high energy. Rays with wavelengths kilometers long are known as “radio waves” and transmit very weak energy. For that reason, while gamma rays are lethal to us, radio ways have no effect at all as they pass through your body.
The spectrum of wavelengths is extraordinary wide. The shortest length is 1025 times smaller than the longest. Numerically, this is expressed by the figure 1 followed by 25 zeroes. In order to better comprehend this number—which may be written as 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000—let’s provide some comparisons. For example, the number of seconds that have passed during the 4 billion years of the Earth’s existence is only 1017. If we wanted to count to 1025, day and night and non-stop, it would take us 100 million times longer than the age of the Earth! If we tried to place 1025 playing cards on top of one another, we would find ourselves far beyond the Milky Way and we would need to travel half the length of the observable universe.
The visible light, the near infrared and ultraviolet rays that reach us from the Sun occupy the space of a single unit on the electromagnetic spectrum. In other words, the light reaching us from the Sun is the equivalent of just one out of 1025 playing cards laid one atop the other. It is only these rays that support life on Earth.
Though the different wavelengths in the universe have been distributed in such a broad spectrum, it is interesting that our Sun’s light should have been confined to a very narrow range within that spectrum. Seventy percent of the different wavelengths emitted by the Sun fall within a very narrow range between 0.3 and 1.5 microns (1 micron is one thousandth of a millimeter.)
In that range, there are three kinds of light: visible light, near infrared rays and ultraviolet rays.
But these three types of light represent just one unit in the electromagnetic spectrum! In other terms, all the Sun’s light, when put together, represents just one out of the 1025 playing cards. That the Sun’s rays are restricted to such a narrow range is important, since only these rays can support life on Earth.
The light stimulating the human eye in order to form an image represents a narrow band of this broad range of frequencies—an area less than an octave in width. The wavelengths that stimulate the retina vary between 39 and 75 millionths of a centimeter. According to professor of neuropsychology Richard L. Gregory, “Looked at in this way we are almost blind!”32
Bearing this in mind, you can realize how the light you see represents only a very small fraction of the light that you perceive to be out there. Your retina perceives images formed by light consisting of a rather small band. The realm of other frequency bands apart from this one is unknown to us.
The light in the narrow range of frequencies we can see conveys all that we can experience in the outside world.
The chief property of light is the effect it has on matter. In general, matter possesses inertia, resisting all the pressures placed on it by pushing or pulling. And whenever we push or pull an object, we feel pushing or pulling forces on ourselves. Newton called this action and reaction. Light also acts on matter, but light particles have no inertial property. We can see light reacting with objects, as when a laser beam cuts through metal or repairs a damaged retina. But we can never perceive the actions and reactions that matter has on light. Physicists refer to light’s inability to be pushed or pulled as “its absence of any rest mass.” .33Rest mass is the mass of a body when at rest, in other words, it is a fixed entity. Yet when it comes to light, it is never at rest: It is in a state of constant movement. Therefore, light is a form of energy that lacks mass and for that reason does not exhibit a basic characteristic of “matter.”
Fred Alan Wolf describes this state of affairs:
When we see light, we really don’t see light at all: we see an effect appearing as a result of light pushing and pulling on the matter making up our sensory bodies. We see matter moving. Light itself is really out of this world . . . 34
Where Is Light, Actually?
Is it light that makes the outside world visible to us, and is the means whereby our brains form images of the outside world? Does light cause all corporeal entities to come into being when we step outside and cause them to disappear for us in a completely darkened room? Were it not for light, would the whole world around us cease to exist?
The idea that the external world we perceive exists only through the help of visible light is actually our own impression. There is actually no light in the outside world, in which a pitch darkness rules. Neither lamps, nor car headlights, nor the Sun emit any light in the sense we know it. Light occurs and illuminates the world we live in solely as a perception in our brains.
The Sun and other sources of light emit electromagnetic particles (photons) at varying wavelengths. These particles spread outward through the universe as dictated by their structures. For example, many radioactive particles pass right through your body. Only a lead shield can halt them. Some of these particles are so heavy and so charged with energy that they generally destroy any molecules they meet and continue on their way without changing course. This is the underlying reason why radiation causes cancer. X-ray machines make use of a weaker form of radiation. Via photosensitive film, these machines convert the effect set up by radio waves into visible light, converting them into a form that our retinas can detect. In other words, light exists as long as it is percieved by the eye and interpreted by the brain. But light and illumination do not exist outside in the terms with which we are familiar.
Under normal circumstances, radio waves cannot be detected by any of our senses. Radios convert these into sound waves that can be detected by our ears.
Radio waves do not damage human tissue as they pass through it. These waves cannot be detected by our senses, but the radios in your home or auto convert them into sound waves that your ears can perceive. The crackling noise you hear between channels or when no radio program is being broadcast is actually the “sound” of the cosmic background radiation that has been emitted by all the stars, including our Sun, since the beginning of the universe. What we refer to as “sound” here is actually our perception of our radios processing these waves and making them audible to our ears—followed by the signals our auditory nerves transmit to our brains.
In other words, the waves themselves do not really exist, since they have no material existence in the physical sense. They must be converted into a form that the ears can hear and the brain can interpret. The same applies to a television set. Various light waves that are invisible to us are converted by the set’s screen into a form we can perceive.
The photons that are the source of the perception we call “light” are light particles and generally bounce off the atom they first collide with. In doing so, they cause little harm to their point of impact. Because of the higher frequencies at which they vibrate, ultraviolet rays carry a greater energy charge that can effect our skin and may sometimes damage our cell’s genetic codes. That is why excessive exposure to sunlight can lead to cancer.
Ultraviolet rays, which carry higher energy due to their frequencies, can sometimes cause defects in the genetic code of living cells.
Due to their frequencies, the photons known as infrared leave some of their energy on the molecules with which they collide and increase the rate at which they vibrate—thus raising their temperature. That is why infrared rays are also known as “heat rays.” A hot stove or electric heater gives off large quantities of infrared rays that are perceived as heat on your skin. Yet in fact, nothing “hot” exists outside. What we call “heat” consists of energy generated by the light waves striking matter. It is impossible to claim that anything known as “heat” exists in the absence of a conscious entity that perceives it.
Some photons have frequencies that fall between the ultraviolet and the infrared. When these rays strike the retinal layer at the back of your eyes, they are converted into an electrical signal by the cells there. Thus we perceive photons, which are all in fact physical particles, as “light.” If the cells in our eyes perceived photons as “heat” particles, then we would have no such concepts as light, color, or darkness; and when we looked at physical objects, we would merely feel whether they were “hot” or “cold.” The way the outside world appears to us depends on the way our senses perceive it. There is actually no light or heat there, in objective terms.
We are surrounded by particles of different frequencies and wavelengths. Only the perception centers in our brains make these “visible” and “detectable” for us.
The photons that fall onto the retinal layer are converted into electrical currents by the perception cells there. These currents are then transmitted by the nerves to the visual center in the brain. The visual center then forms an image by interpreting these electrical currents. This property of light is expressed thus in physics textbooks:
The word light was used in a physical or objective sense in reference to electromagnetic waves or photons. The same word is also used in a psychological sense in reference to the sensation that arises when electromagnetic waves and photons strike the retina of the eye. Let us express both the objective and subjective concepts of the word light: Light is a form of energy that manifests itself with the visual effects born from the stimulation of the retina in the human eye.35
The bright and vibrant world that we imagine exists outside us does actually have a material existence—but its perception is in fact a kind of phantom produced within us, the original of which we can never see. The seascape you see on a sunny day actually consists entirely of darkness. There is no reflection on the water, sea-blue color, clarity of air or eye-catching white clouds at all. What enables us to perceive this image, so bright and vivid for us, is merely the electrical signals transmitted to our brain. Apart from effecting a perception in our brains, light exists on the outside solely as a form of energy. For that reason, light—which we may think of as the reason for our perception of matter, is actually nothing but an illusion.
Considering this fact, we arrive at a very striking conclusion: Your eyes actually have no property such as “sight” at all. The eye is merely a subordinate unit that converts photons into electrical signals. It has no ability to perceive. It is not the eye that watches the bright world that we imagine surrounds us. The sensation of light or color does not form in the eye itself—as we’ll explain in detail in the sections regarding vision.
Are Colors Only in Our Brains?
What we perceive as light consists solely of signals interpreted in our visual cortex. Therefore, colors, which stem from light and pervade our entire lives, are nothing more than interpretations by the brain.
The names of different colors are assigned to photons of various frequencies. We are able to distinguish colors such as red and yellow according to the degree of photon vibration: Thus different colors have different scales of vibration. Paper and snow appear white because they reflect all frequencies, and the combination of these gives rise to white. Leaves are green, because they reflect only photons at a frequency that gives rise to the appearance of green, while they absorb all the others. Glass is transparent, because photons can pass through it and reach our eyes without encountering any obstruction. A black fabric reflects very little light back because it absorbs almost all the photons that strike it. As a result, few photons reach our eyes, and we perceive the fabric as dark or black.
A mirror copies an image because it has a smooth reflective surface, and the moment that light rays strike it, almost all bounce off and their parallel nature is not distorted.
Color perception begins in the cone cells in the eye’s retinal layer. In the retina, there are three main groups of cone cells, each of which react to particular light wavelengths. The first of these three groups is sensitive to red, the second to blue, and the third to green. As a result of these three different groups being stimulated in different proportions, millions of different color shades are perceived. However, it is not enough for light to reach the cone cells in order for us to see colors.
Jeremy Nathans, a researcher from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, states how the cone cells in the retina do not actually give rise to color:
All that a single cone can do is capture light and tell you something about its intensity . . . it tells you nothing about color.36
These color data perceived by the cone cells are converted into electrical signals, thanks to the varying pigments they possess. The nerve cells connected to these cells then transmit these signals to a special region in the brain, in which forms the vivid world we see throughout our lives.
Are there any colors in this region?
This special visual center of the brain is completely dark, like all the other parts of the brain. There is no light there, and no colors. There is no red, green or yellow in this part of the brain. There is no white. There is no reflection of bright flower gardens or dazzling sunlight, no blue sky or verdant trees. The inside of the skull is pitch black. We imagine that light enters it directly through our eyes. But in fact, there is not the slightest trace of light anywhere behind the eyes.
The formation of colors stems from objects’ light-reflective properties. Since there is no light in the outside world, there can be no question of the existence of any color. Therefore, where is the colorful world we regard as “outside” our eyes? This world cannot reach us directly from the outside, nor does it form inside our brains. The colorful world is something we perceive. It assumes this form because we interpret it as such.
Peter Russell from the Cambridge University Department of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics describes this state of affairs:
To the surprise of many, the world “out there” has turned out to be quite unlike our experience of it. Consider our experience of the color green. In the physical world there is light of a certain frequency, but the light itself is not green. Nor are the electrical impulses that are transmitted from the eye to the brain. No color exists there. The green we see is a quality appearing in the mind in response to this frequency of light. It exists only as a subjective experience in the mind.37
Like light, colors are an interpretation by the brain. The brightness in the image and the world of color are formed solely by types of radiation we perceive in this manner.* The interpretation is entirely subjective.
Richard L. Gregory, Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Bristol, sums up the position in his book, Eye and Brain:
Strictly speaking, light itself is not coloured: it gives rise to sensations of brightness and colour, but only in conjuction with a suitable eye and nervous system.38
Any damage or structural alteration that occurs in the eye may cause the same object to be perceived in very different ways, even though the signals generated by the arriving photons and the visual center in the brain still have exactly the same properties. That is why color-blind people and those with normal vision perceive and interpret specific colors so very differently.
The conlusion emerging from this whole account is that what we perceive as “the outside world” is dark. In fact, even the concept of darkness may be misleading. There is no color at all there. The three-dimensional, bright world we see portrayed in vivid colors is entirely deceptive. The reflected photons we interpret as light or color are nothing more than physical events taking place in complete darkness. Our entire bodies, including our eyes, and the whole material world we see as a three-dimensional, brightly colored sphere, are actually contained within the brain, which alone interprets what we see in this way. However, the interesting thing is that the eye that perceives all this and the brain that interprets it are also in complete darkness. Light and color do not exist in the brain that interprets them.
Daniel C. Dennett, a professor of philosophy from Tufts University, has conducted countless experiments into consciousness and the brain. He summarizes the position:
The common wisdom is that modern science has removed the color from the physical world, replacing it with colorless electromagnetic radiation of various wavelengths.39
In the same book, Dennett quotes from an introductory book on the brain by Ornstein and Thompson:
“Color” as such does not exist in the world; it exists only in the eye and brain of the beholder. Objects reflect many different wavelenghts of light, but these light waves themselves have no color. 40
Since color is related to the individual’s mode of perception, it is impossible for us to know whether or not the world we perceive looks the same to other people. An object we perceive as red may be a completely different shade for someone else. There is no way of comparing their perceptions of “red” with our own.
Since color is concerned with the way in which a person perceives external light, there is no way in which we can know whether the world we perceive is the same for any other person or not. You can never know whether the color that someone else sees as “red” is the same red that you see. For us, the concept of “colorful” may actually express millions of different hues altogether. Yet someone else may see a far more limited variety of colors and yet still interpret this as a full spectrum. We have no way of comparing our perception with that of anyone else looking at the same object.
We imagine that we are looking at the same thing. But perhaps the things that we perceive and what another person sees are actually completely different to one another. Since our perception of the external world is limited to our five senses, we cannot know whether “blue” means the same thing for any other person, or whether coffee tastes the same. Neither can we describe these perceptions.
Color-blindness is one of the significant pieces of evidence that colors are formed solely in the brain. A minor inherited genetic variation arising in the retina is known to cause color-blindness. Many people in this situation are unable to tell the difference between red and green. The only reason for this is our different ways of perceiving the concept of color. Something we are certain is “green” being perceived as “grey” by another party does not show that either one is mistaken. We can never know who is right and who is wrong, because both individuals have individual perceptions, and we have no means of conducting comparisons and testing the true reality. Green perception and grey perception are both individuals’ personal experiences, the validity of which is again based on those individuals’ interpretation.
We need to realize that all the properties we ascribe to objects and other people actually belong to images in our brains, not to the “originals” in the outside world. Since we can never step outside of our own perceptions and reach the outside reality, we can never perceive the true existence of matter, of colors, much less of the universe as a whole.
The famous 18th-century philosopher Bishop George Berkeley drew attention to this fact:
If the same things can be red and hot for some and the contrary for others, this means that we are under the influence of misconceptions and that "things" only exist in our brains.41
Oxford University’s Gerard O’Brien, working at the University of Adelaide in Australia, said this in a radio talk:
An image of flowers seen through the human eye, Bees see the same flowers like this
Now when we look out into the world, we see objects as coloured. We think those colours are actually attached to all the objects that we see. But now there is a very interesting question as to whether that is the case. . . . It might turn out—and there are a number of philosophers who argue—that the colours that we experience, those colour properties are in fact only features of our internal representation of the world, that there are no corresponding colours in the world itself. And so the world outside our heads, the world independent of our experience is actually colourless. . . . Is the apple red when you’re not looking at it, so to speak? And when we think about it, it’s a somewhat chauvinistic view of ours to think that the world actually contains the kinds of colours that we see it as having. Because we now know enough about other animals that we share this planet with, and they have different kinds of colour systems and they make in some cases less discriminations amongst colours than we do. And as a result, there’s the view that they actually see the world as differently coloured than us. So we see it having certain colours, other animals perhaps see it as having a different set of colours.Now, why should we think that our view is the correct one—that the colours that we see are in fact the colours the world actually has? Perhaps these are just two different internal ways of coding the world that is internal to the representations that we and other animals generate.42
O’Brien’s analysis on this subject is highly important in terms of questioning what “external reality” is like. There is no evidence that other living things see light or perceive color in the same way as we do. It is impossible for us to obtain any scientific evidence to show the truth. That being the case, all we can state regarding the external world is conjecture and guesswork, because our perception of the outside world—in the way we are familiar with it—depends on our five senses.
The Five Senses That Present the Outside World
If all that we ever know are the sensory images that appear in our minds, how can we be sure there is a physical reality behind our perceptions? Is it not just an assumption? My answer is: Yes, it is an assumption, nevertheless, it seems a most plausible one.43
Peter Russel
Peter Russel
We learn everything about the outside world by means of our sense organs. When the electrical signals reaching us by way of our sense organs are interrupted, the world that exists on the outside will disappear for us alone.
What we call “the external world” actually consists of the electron exchanges between minute atoms, the movement of radio waves in the air and the imperceptible oscillations of molecules. But do the sources of energy that transform the atoms and molecules and generate radio waves actually exist? What proves their existence? The material objects that they effect? The bodies we see, smell or feel? Or the radio waves we hear or see? Or is it simply the electrical signals reaching our brains through our five senses?
What would happen if these electrical signals vanished? Would the world outside promptly disappear?
The outside world exists in a concentrated wave form. However, the world we perceive is not the actual world outside. Therefore, if the electrical signals reaching the brain are eliminated, the world outside will effectively cease to exist for us. That is because we learn everything about the world outside by way of our senses. The information we learn about the outside world only comes in the form that our sensory organs transmit. This information reaching us is converted into electrical signals that are interpreted in the relevant sites in the brain. For that reason, the water we drink, any film we watch or any flower we smell are all the results of interpretations by the brain.
Recall, however, that actually there are neither colors, nor sounds nor images in our brains. All that occurs in our brains is electrical signals. The boundless landscape you imagine you see in front of you, a brightly colored flower in which you take such delight, loud music or a meal that tastes so delicious—all consist solely of electrical signals reaching the brain. This, however, does not mean that the outside world does not exist. It will not come to an end if the electrical signals reaching you from your sense organs are cut off. The outside world will come to an end “for you only,” because for you, the outside world consists only of the interpretation of electrical signals by your brain.
In her book Mapping the Mind, the science writer Rita Carter describes how we perceive the world:
Each one [of the sense organs] is intricately adapted to deal with its own type of stimulus: molecules, waves or vibrations. But the answer does not lie here, because despite their wonderful variety, each organ does essentially the same job: it translates its particular type of stimulus into electrical pulses. A pulse is a pulse is a pulse. It is not the colour red, or the first notes of Beethoven’s Fifth—it is a bit of electrical energy. Indeed, rather than discriminating one type of sensory input from another, the sense organs actually make them more alike.All sensory stimuli, then, enter the brain in more or less undifferentiated form as a stream of electrical pulses created by neurons firing, domino-fashion, along a certain route. This is all that happens. There is no reverse transformer that at some stage turns this electrical activity back into light waves or molecules. What makes one stream into vision and another into smell depends, rather, on which neurons are stimulated.44
This is truly astonishing and significant. All the sensations, images, tastes and sounds we receive about the world actually consist of the same material: electrical signals. The regions in the brain affected by these signals turn them into delicious food, a beautiful landscape, or lively music. But the conscious entity that feels or perceives them is something else. The brain and electrical signals themselves cannot enjoy the taste of food or the color and smell of a flower. Materialist scientists fail to realize that it is the soul—as distinct from the brain—that perceives and evaluates.
Jeffrey M. Schwartz describes how perceptions arise independently of the brain:
Every conscious state has a certain feel to it, and possibly a unique one: when you bite into a hamburger, it feels different from the experience of chewing a steak. And any taste sensation feels different from the sound of a Chopin étude, or the sight of a lightning storm . . . Identifying the locus where red is generated, in the visual cortex, is a far cry from explaining our sense of redness, or why seeing red feels different from tasting fettuccine Alfredo or hearing “Für Elise”—especially since all these experiences reflect neuronal firings in one or another sensory cortex. Not even the most detailed fMRI gives us more than the physical basis of perception or awareness; it doesn’t come close to explaining what it feels like from the inside. It doesn’t explain the first-person feeling of red. How do we know that it is the same for different people? And why would studying brain mechanisms, even down to the molecular level, ever provide an answer to those questions?45
Peter Russell has described the problem in these terms:
Every time we try to pin down the physical aspect we come away empty-handed. Every idea we have had of the physical has proven to be wrong, andthe notion of materiality seems to be evaporating before our eyes. But our belief in the material world is so deeply engrained—and so powerfully reinforced by our experience—that we cling to our assumption that there must be some physical essence. Like the medieval astronomers who never questioned their assumption that the Earth was the center of the universe, we never question our assumption that the external world is physical in nature. Indeed it was quite startling to me when I realized that the answer might be staring us straight in the face. Maybe there really is nothing there. No “thing,” that is. No physical aspect. Maybe there is only a mental aspect to everything.46
Research into the brain can never answer questions regarding who or what does the perceiving, because what scientists are seeking in the brain is actually something very different from human beings’ physical bodies—something that exists in their own identity.
American author Marilyn Ferguson notes this important search in the world of science and philosophy for who or what it is that performs such perceiving:
Philosophers since the Greeks have speculated about the “ghost in the machine” the “little man inside the little man” and so on. Where is the I—the entity that uses the brain?Who does the actual knowing? Or, as Saint Francis of Assisi once put it, “What we are looking for is what is looking.” 47
Consciousness is a property belonging solely to the soul bestowed on human beings by Allah. It is through the soul that man becomes an entity able to think, perceive and decide. The mind and consciousness possessed by human beings are properties bestowed on them by the soul. In one verse Allah tells us that:
Accordingly, We have revealed to you a Spirit by Our command. You had no idea of what the Book was, nor faith. Nonetheless We have made it a Light by which We guide those of Our servants We will. Truly you are guiding to a Straight Path. (Surat ash-Shura, 52)
This subject will be clarified in detail later.
Who Observes the Visual Images in the Brain?
Light passing through the lens produces a reversed and upside-down image on retina at the back of the eye. The rod and cone cells there convert that image into electric currents, which are forwarded to the visual center at the rear of the brain. The brain then converts the signal into meaningful, three-dimensional images.
After the light from an outside object falls onto the retina, signals are transmitted to up to 30 different visual centers in the brain for processing. The light passing through the lens at the front of the eye leaves an upside-down and two-dimentional image on the layer of retinal cells at the back of the eye. Following various chemical processes, the rod and cone cells there convert that image into electrical impulses, which signals are transmitted by the optic nerve to the vision center at the rear of the brain. The brain then assembles these into meaningful three-dimensional images.
In the words of Craig Hamilton:
How that happens is an example of what is known as “the binding problem” and is itself a mystery that no one has yet solved convincingly. For the moment, though, what is important to understand is that each of your eyes is seeing a different part of the picture, and your brain is piercing it together into a unified whole.48
These accounts provide a general description of how the eye sees. The eyes represent the first stage in the formation of an image, the original of which, in the world outside, we can never know. The world existing outside us is replicated inside us in a very small area in the brain, thanks to the light passing through our eyes and by way of electrical signals. When we look around us, any images we see, even if it is one of the boundless heavens, actually forms in this tiny area of the brain. We can never know whether or not the original of this boundless image actually corresponds to what we see.
Peter Russell sums up the position:
When I see a tree, it seems as if I am seeing the tree directly. But science tells us something completely different is happening. Light entering the eye triggers chemical reactions in the retina, [and] these produce electro-chemical impulses which travel along nerve fibers to the brain. The brain analyses the data it receives, and then creates its own picture of what is out there. I then have the experience of seeing a tree. But what I am actually experiencing is not the tree itself, only the image that appears in the mind. This is true of everything I experience. Everything we know, perceive, and imagine, every color, sound, sensation, every thought and every feeling, is a form appearing in the mind. It is all an in-forming of consciousness.49
Inside the brain, there are no scampering children, blue cloudless sky or ships floating on the sea. All there is in the brain is electrical signals.
All this leads to an important realization, that throughout our lives we imagine that the world lies outside us. The fact is, however, that we actually perceive the world that we imagine to be external to us in a small region inside the brain.
Since we cannot directly see the original of the world outside us, and since everything is a perception arising in the brain, then is it actually the eye that sees?
Throughout our lives, we imagine that we see the world that lies outside us with our eyes. But the scientific description of the visual functions performed by the brain shows that it is not the eye that sees. The eye and its millions of retinal nerve cells serve to transmit the message to the brain in order for vision to take place. The retina perceives the photons falling onto it and forwards them to the brain by converting them into electrical signals. In other words, what we are seeing is light waves from the outside falling onto retinal cells consisting of fat, protein and water and the electrical signals they transmit. In the brain, there are no children running in the garden, no sunny sky, no ships cleaving through the waves. The only thing that exists is electrical signals.
Neurons
Is there some site inside the brain where all these perceptions arise, where images take life, where sounds are heard and where smells form? If we examine the brain very closely, we find neurons interacting with one another and the various chemical and electrical transfers among them. Yet inside the brain, we cannot find colors, shapes, texts or anything belonging to the world outside. There are no waving green leaves, crowds shopping, houses, cars or furniture inside the brain.
Nowhere in the brain is there a friend, our mother or father smiling at us. The image of this book you are reading exists nowhere in the brain. In short, the world we imagine we see around us is neither outside us nor inside the brain. Scientists who claim that the image does exist in the brain have this question to answer: If an image does form in the brain, then who is it who perceives that image?
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran is Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and professor with the Psychology Department and the Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego. He dramatizes this question in his book Phantoms in the Brain:
He glanced down at the glass . . . in his hand. “Well, there is an upside-down image of this glass falling in my eyeball. The play of light and dark images activates photoreceptors on my retina, and the patterns are transmitted pixel by pixel through a cable—my optic nerve—and displayed on a screen in my brain. Isn’t that how I see this glass . . . ? Of course, my brain would need to make the image upright again.”Though his knowledge of photoreceptors and and optics was impressive, his explanation—that there’s screen somewhere inside the brain where images are displayed—embodies a serious logical fallacy. For if you were to display an image of a . . . glass on an internal neural screen, you’d need another little person inside the brain to see that image. And that won’t solve the problem either because you’d then need yet another even tinier person inside his head to view that image, and so on and so forth ad infinitum. You’d end up with an endless regress of eyes, images and little people without really solving the problem of perception . . .50
Here, Ramachandran is touching on an exceedingly important point. If we assume that there is an image inside the brain, then the existence of a person watching that image is essential. The progression of little people inside the brain regarding these images, and the even smaller people inside their brains looking at those images will carry on forever. (For details, see The Little Man in the Tower by Harun Yahya.)
Since no entity is watching the images inside the brain, then to claim that there is an image in the brain is unrealistic and illogical. The inside of the brain is completely dark, without light or sound. In the brain, there are no bright colors, lovely flowers, stoves that give a feeling of warmth or chirping birds.
So what is it that does form inside the brain? Ramachandran’s technical explanation runs as follows:
So the first step in understanding perception is to get rid of the idea of images in the brain and to begin thinking about symbolic descriptions of objects and events in the external world. A good example of a symbolic description is a written paragraph like the ones on this page. If you had to convey to a friend in China what your apartment looks like, you wouldn’t have to teletransport it to China. All you’d have to do would be to write a letter describing your apartment. Yet the actual squiggles of ink—the words and paragraphs in the letter—bear no physical resemblance to your bedroom. The letter is a symbolic description of your bedroom.What is meant by a symbolic description in the brain? Not squiggles of ink, of course, but the language of nerve impulses. The human brain contains multiple areas for processing images, each of which is composed of an intricate network of neurons that is specialized for extracting certain types of information from the image. Any object evokes a pattern of activity—unique for each object—among a subset of these areas. For example, when you look at a pencil, a book or a face, a different pattern of nerve activity is elicited in each case, “informing” higher brain centers about what you are looking at. The patterns of activity symbolize or represent visual objects in much the same way that the squiggles of ink on the paper symbolize or represent your bedroom. As scientists trying to understand visual processes, our goal is to decipher the code used by the brain to create these symbolic descriptions, much as a cryptographer tries to crack an alien script.51
But the mere existence of this map does not explain seeing, for as I noted earlier, there is no little man inside watching what is displayed on the primary visual cortex.52
Richard L. Gregory offers this description:
It is important to avoid the temptation of thinking that eyes produce pictures in the brain which are perceptions of objects. The pictures-in-the-brain notion suggests an internal eye to see them. But this would need a further eye to see its picture—another picture, another eye—and so on forever, without getting anywhere.53
* The British biophysicist who won the Nobel Prize for his co-discovery of the double helix structure of the DNA molecule.
Professor Antonio Damasio, head of the Iowa University Neurology Department, says, “Quite candidly, this first problem of consciousness is the problem of how we get a ‘movie-in-the-brain,’” 54 thus openly admitting the predicament in which scientists find themselves on this subject. It is clear that 21st-century science leaves unanswered the question “Who is it who is seeing?” Scientists have abandoned the hypothesis that there is an observer in the brain. But for scientists, this has made the concept of the image forming in the brain even worse. A single location in the brain presents us a world with countless distinct and flawless details, and non-stop. This is the technical and scientific explanation. Then, where is the “image”?
The Oxford University psychology writer Susan Blackmore comments:
Crick* says that he wants to find the correlates of ‘the vivid picture of the world we see in front of our eyes’ or what Damasio calls the ‘movie-in-the-brain.’ But if the visual world is a grand illusion, then they will never be able to find what they are looking for because neither the movie-in-the-brain nor the vivid picture exist in the brain. They are both part of the illusion.55
We are sure that we see the true state of the object we look at in the external world. In fact, however, we can never have direct experience of the original of that object. What we see is simply an illusion, as in the three-dimensional illustration made on the ground in the illustration. It is something produced by the mind. However, we never feel the slightest doubt that we are experiencing the original outside images.
According to Blackmore, our feeling of direct experience is simply an illusion. In fact, even the concept of illusion fails to fully clarify the position. An illusion is something that is detected when we compare events occurring in our minds with the physical reality. However, here human beings do not have direct experience of the world outside—in other words, of any physical realities. These are all things produced by the mind; and the mind can never perceive external reality. These are realities belonging to us alone.
That being the case, what is happening is not an illusion, and it would be more accurate to describe it as a phantom.
The world we possess is formed solely in our perceptions. There is nobody else who sees this world as we do, who experiences the same perceptions, or who witnesses the same world. Neither is what we see any part of our brain. The brain is also within this same phantom image. Our perceptions constitute a world that is shown to and created for us. There is indeed a reality outside, a material world, but human beings can never reach it.
That being the case, what is happening is not an illusion, and it would be more accurate to describe it as a phantom.
The world we possess is formed solely in our perceptions. There is nobody else who sees this world as we do, who experiences the same perceptions, or who witnesses the same world. Neither is what we see any part of our brain. The brain is also within this same phantom image. Our perceptions constitute a world that is shown to and created for us. There is indeed a reality outside, a material world, but human beings can never reach it.
As Erwin Schrödinger, one of the discoverers of quantum physics, stated, “Every man’s world picture is and always remains a construct of his mind, and cannot be proved to have any other existence.” 56
When we imagine the book in our mind’s eye, we have an experience very similar to when we actually see the book with our physical eyes. This is an important proof that we can obtain an image of an object in the brain only by thinking about it—an object that does not really exist. The Washington University psychologist Michael Posner and neurologist Marcus Raichle say this about the brain’s extraordinary mechanism:
Open your eyes, and a scene fills your view effortlessly, close your eyes and think of that scene, and you can summon an image of it, certainly not as vivid, solid, or complete as the scene you see with your eyes, but still one that captures the scene’s essential characteristics. In both cases, an image of the scene is formed in the mind. The image formed from actual visual experiences is called a “percept” to distinguish it from an imagined image. The percept is formed as the result of light hitting the retina and sending signals that are further processed in the brain. But how are we able to create an image when no light is hitting the retina to send such signals? 57
What creates an object in our minds, in the absence of the original of that object, is the same mechanism that creates it in our minds when we imagine the original does exist. Therefore, the existence of the images we see as the external world is merely an illusion, a phantom. Everything we see—the bright world in front of us, our friends, the people around us and even our own bodies—are part of this dream. What we imagine to be the source of all these, their originals in the external world, must always remain unknown to us.
This “shadow world” includes our workplaces, homes, the people around us, our cars, the food we eat, the films we watch; in short, everything in our lives. When we return home, we feel that we are entering our real abode. The fact is, however, that we are observing an identical copy of our real home, one that we do not even consider could possibly be an image. Again, everything we encounter in our homes, we observe in our minds. All our lives take place inside a tiny area in the brain.
So far, most neurologists and psychologists who have investigated this subject have easily come to this conclusion. Yet they generally avoid answering the question of “Who does the perceiving?” They look for tiny imaginary figures inside the brain and seek a material entity that perceives all these things. They debate these questions in books, articles and conferences, cite other scientists who have also been unable to resolve the issue and claim that they too have been unable to find a solution. The fact is, however, that all the technical and scientific facts indicate that human beings possess a soul that perceives, sees and feels. What scientists look for in the brain—the “seeing entity” in other words—is the soul. Everything belonging to what we consider to be the “outside world” consists of images displayed to the soul.
This insight totally does away with materialism, in which some scientists have such a strong belief. For materialists, who claim that everything consists of material entities, the existence of the soul is totally unacceptable. For that reason, the question of “Who does the perceiving?” will always remain unanswerable for materialists.
It is Allah Who gives human beings their souls. It is Allah Who causes that soul to hear, see and feel. It is Almighty Allah Who creates a perfectly clear, flawlessly detailed and extraordinarily vivid world for us solely as an illusion, Who gives the soul the impression that it is really experiencing all these things, and Who creates all things out of nothing.
Allah has told man of the truth of this in verses:
That is the Knower of the Unseen and the Visible, the Almighty, the Most Merciful. He Who has created all things in the best possible way. He commenced the creation of man from clay; then produced his seed from an extract of base fluid. Then [He] formed him and breathed His Spirit into him and gave you hearing, sight and hearts. What little thanks you show! (Surat as-Sajda, 6-9)
Sounds Exist Only in Our Brains
The hearing process is similar to seeing. The information reaching us as sound is, just like images, merely electrical signals. The external ear collects the sound waves around us and transmits them to the middle ear. This then reinforces the vibrations and forwards them to the inner ear, which then converts these vibrations into electrical signals, depending on their frequency and concentration, and sends them to the brain.
In the brain, these messages are sent to the hearing center where they are processed and analyzed. And that is how hearing takes place.
However, one very important point here is that just as with images, the sounds we heard are not somewhere outside our brains. Peter Russell, known especially for his work on human consciousness, describes the position:
The same is true of sound. When Bishop Berkeley argued that nothing exists apart from our perceptions, a vigorous debate ensued as to whether a falling tree made a sound if no one was there to hear it. At that time nothing was known of how sound was transmitted through the air, or how the ear and brain functioned. Today we know much more about the processes involved, and the answer is clearly “No.” There is no sound in physical reality, simply pressure waves in the air. Sound exists only as an experience in the mind of a perceiver—whether that perceiver is a human being, a deer, a bird, or an ant.58
For us, external sound exists only for so long as we perceive it. However, to repeat a very significant point, sounds, like visual images, are not inside our brains. In our brains, all that exists is electrical signals. All the kinds of sound we regard as “real” are products of these electrical signals in the brain. When we chat with a friend, we perceive their three-dimensional image in a perfect form in our visual cortex; we also hear the sounds they make in such a way as to confirm the impression of distance. If our friend is far away, we are assured that his voice is also coming from a distance. Yet these sounds are neither close to nor far away from us; they exist only in the form of electrical signals. To put it another way, these sounds are not inside our brains either. There is actually a profound silence inside the brain.
No matter how crowded and noisy the place where we happen to be there is still no sound inside the brain. The impulses transmitted by electrical signals inform us of the existence of a crowded and noisy outside world. In truth, however, we can make no direct contact with that noisy, crowded world outside, and neither can we re-create it in our heads. Sound is something we perceive.
As Peter Russell explains,
I hear the music of a violin, but the sound I hear is a quality appearing in the mind. There is no sound as such in the external world, just vibrating air molecules59
Therefore, in hearing sounds, we make the same error as we do with regard to seeing images. We imagine that sounds come from the world outside. Yet the sounds we perceive are actually a part of the shadow world brought into being for us. Just like the images, tastes, smells and sensations belonging to that illusory world, sounds also represent part of this world of perception. The noise from the crowded environment we imagine exists in the external world, the voice of a friend calling to us, and the music we listen to belong solely to this perceptual world.
We have no way of knowing whether or not these correspond to the reality outside, because we can never step outside our brains and experience the physical world directly.
Smells and Tastes Arise Solely in Our Brains
You can assume that the delicious smell of a meal cooking actually comes from the food itself. We imagine that other people experience exactly the same aromas as we do, and believe that we all share common sensations. But this is merely conjecture. What reaches us is scent molecules, which are converted into electrical signals. Just as with sight and sound, what we refer to as “smell” is a sophisticated mixture of electrical signals. The scent molecules themselves never reach our brains.
The famous George Berkeley, whom we referred to earlier, described this fact:
At the beginning, it was believed that colours, odours, etc., “really exist,” but subsequently such views were renounced, and it was seen that they only exist in dependence on our sensations.60
In dreams, when there are no scent molecules physically present, the perception of scent can be felt just as realistically. In the same way that you can envision exceptionally clear and distinct images and hear the most flawless sounds as you dream, you can also perceive scents in the same manner. Therefore, you can easily see that there is no need for an aroma to have a material existence in order for you to perceive it.
The same applies to the perception of taste. Just as with our other sense organs, the taste receptors on the tongue convert the various arriving stimuli into electrical signals. Therefore, when you eat a delicious piece of cake, you do not experience its actual taste. In the same way that you cannot see its true appearance or smell its true aroma, you also do not enjoy its real flavor. Its perceived “taste” is produced by the electrical signals sent to the brain.
We experience all the chocolate and fruit we enjoy during our lives in our perceptual world. The perceptions formed in our brains by way of our five senses tell us these look lovely, are sweet-smelling and flavorful. But this information belongs exclusively and entirely to ourselves. We are made to perceive these properties in our minds, and have no other experiences of the world outside us.
The Sense of Touch is No More Than Electrical Signals Transmitted to the Brain
The sensation that arises when we touch something reaches us only as an electrical signal. Any sensation of matter we perceive comes into being solely by way of electrical signals. Therefore, we can never touch the original of any object that exists outside. It is impossible, based on the perception forming inside us, to know what a physical object is really like or to know the nature of the external world.
The external world we perceive seems totally realistic. Though it is a scientific fact that we inhabit a world made up of our perceptions, most people are deceived by the perfection of these perceptions. One of the most misleading factors is their sense of touch. People may harbor doubts as to the reality of what they see, smell or taste, yet being able to touch objects may mislead them into assuming they have direct contact with the external world. But in fact, information about the object touched is forwarded to the brain as electrical signals, which entirely eliminates all such preconceptions on the subject. As with all our other perceptions, the sense of touch arises in the brain. Your feeling an object depends on the information you receive regarding it in your brain.
Although you are touching an object, you cannot feel it if your brain does not perceive it, as Peter Russell makes clear:
Our notion of matter as a solid substance is, like the color green, a quality appearing in consciousness. It is a model of what is “out there,” but as with almost every other model, quite unlike what is actually out there.61
The concept of reality he emphasizes is exceedingly accurate. When you touch an external surface, your relationship with it consists solely of the electrons in your fingers repelling the electrons in the object. In other words, you are actually unable to even touch it. We have no direct contact with outside objects. Notwithstanding, the sensations that arise give the impression we are perceiving its true nature. We may perceive that a tree trunk is hard, and that cotton is soft. We perceive the different natures of both, but the process taking place at the molecular level consists of electrons repelling one another. The sensation of hardness from the top of a desk, the softness of a cat’s fur or the rough surface of a brick wall reaches us solely as electrical signals. The physical experience taking place is completely different from the sensation arising within us. Therefore, we can never touch the original of any substance that exists externally. What reaches us is only a perception regarding the outside world, and on the basis of these perceptions, we have no means of knowing what the outside world is really like.
Andrew B. Newberg, an Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology and Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, states:
There were philosophers in the past that said, “Look, if I kick a rock and I hurt my toe, that’s real. I feel that. It feels real. It’s vivid. And that means it’s reality.” But it’s still an experience and it’s still this person’s perception of it being real.62
For instance, when you touch something hot, if the nerves responsible for transmitting the sensation of pain to your brain are impaired, it is impossible for you to feel that you are being burned. The burning sensation and the consequent feeling of pain are all just interpretations by the brain. Similarly, a feeling of perception may be established by artificial production using electrical signals, even though no outside stimulant is present. So we may feel that our hand is burning, even though there is no fire nearby. This is another proof that the sensations arise solely in our perceptual world. This significant fact was expressed by the famous 20th-century thinker Bertrand Russell:
As to the sense of touch when we press the table with our fingers, that is an electric disturbance on the electrons and protons of our finger-tips, produced, according to modern physics, by the proximity of the electrons and protons in the table. If the same disturbance in our finger-tips arose in any other way, we should have the sensations, in spite of there being no table.63
For our perceptual world, the essential feature of matter, its solidity, disappears in the scientific sense. In the same way that our seeing a thing provides no evidence about its true physical appearance, so our touching an object provides no clues concerning its real solidity. What we touch consists solely of an entity forming in the brain. Its true nature and appearance on the outside is a dream that we can never know, as the science writer J. R. Minkel sets out in an article in New Scientist magazine:
You’re holding a magazine. It feels solid; it seems to have some kind of independent existence in space. Ditto the objects around you—perhaps a cup of coffee, a computer. They all seem real and out there somewhere. But it’s all an illusion.64
Distance Is Also a Perception Formed Solely in Our Brains
We quickly realize when people approach from a distance. Their appearance, voice and size vary depending on the terrain. On the basis of these factors, we make an analysis and determine the distance between them and us. Yet in fact, there is no distance at all between these others and ourselves. The idea that we are seeing them from some distance is due to a computation we carry out in our brains. Our sensation of distance is just a perception.
The appearance of what we call the external world is so convincing and impressive that one needs to reflect carefully in order to realize that it is all simply perceptions. Such factors as distance, depth, color, shade and light make the images so convincing and credible. These materials have been employed so flawlessly that they assume a three-dimensional, colored and vivid form in the brain. When countless details are added to this image, the result is the world that we inhabit throughout our lives, imagining it to be the original, but which in fact is a mere copy that we really experience only in our minds.
The perception that we refer to as “distance” is a kind of three-dimensional sensation. The factors we call perspective, shade and movement awaken a sense of depth and distance in images. This depth perception, known as space perception in optical science, is provided through highly complex systems. The simplest way of describing the system is to state that the image reaching any one eye is merely a two-dimensional one, with height and width only. The dimensions of the images reaching the retina, and the fact that both eyes see different images, give rise to the sensation of depth and distance. The images falling onto our two eyes differ slightly in terms of angle and illumination, and the brain then combines these two images together into a single picture that gives a sensation of depth and distance.
We are so convinced that the other person is at a distance from us that we shout in order to make ourselves heard and run to catch up with him. The fact is, however, that the person we are trying to catch up with is in exactly the same place as us. We do not move, and the other person does not approach us. The whole image and all the distance are created as perceptions inside the brain.
“Distance” has been created for us solely as a sensation. As has already pointed out, there is actually no distance between us and someone we think is approaching from further away. The person we behold has been created on a single plane in our brain. Our sensation of distance is merely the brain’s interpretation. So absolute is our belief that this other person is at a distance that we shout in order to make ourselves heard and run to catch up with him. In fact, however, that person is at exactly the same place as ourselves. Every square centimeter we imagine that we run across is actually part of an image existing in our brain. In fact, we do not move; the other person comes no closer to us and draws no further away. Everything is observed solely in a minute point inside the brain.
For example, we imagine a plane flying in the sky to be many kilometers away. But it is actually right alongside us, in our brains.
When we look at a plane we imagine, as a result of the noise it produces and the frequency and wavelengths of the light waves it reflects to reach our eyes, that the plane is many kilometers away. Yet if the brain perceived frequency and dimension as one single unit, the situation would be very different. In that event, we would have no doubt that the plane we imagined to be thousands of kilometers away was actually at a different distance and we would be convinced of this reality.
Human beings see many details within the sense of depth that confronts them. They see a book they are holding fairly close by, the television beyond and the window further away still, and the Sun even further away.
We imagine that a plane is several kilometers away in the sky from us. The fact is, though, it is actually right inside our brains. There is no distance between the plane and us.
Their hands, legs and bodies are all contained within this visual field. Each object has its own particular perspective and a distance to the point from where it’s observed. That is how people perceive things; their sense of depth, perspective, shade within the whole visual field convinces them that they are seeing the actual external world. In fact, however, everything they see, including their own bodies, is the effects of electrical signals inside their brains. There is no distance between the book in front of them and the Sun that they imagine to be 93 million miles away. And there is no distance between them and any other object either. Everything they observe is part of an image arising in the brain.
The formation of a sensation of depth on the two-dimensional retina bears a close resemblance to the technique employed by artists trying to impart a realistic sense of depth on a two-dimensional surface. There are certain recognized techniques for creating a feeling of depth: objects being placed in front of one another, one or more vanishing points, variation in texture, diminishing dimensions and height and movement—the closer an object, the quicker it seems to be moving. The method employed by artists also applies to images arising in the brain. Depth, light and shade are perceived by the two-dimensional retinas in our eyes through the same method. The more accurate the details in this image, the more realistic it seems and the more it misleads us. Thus we act as if the third dimension—with depth and distance—were actually there.
In fact, however, all the images we perceive exist in a single plane, rather like a film on a flat screen. The visual center in the brain is exceedingly small. All seemingly “distant” images such as far-off mountains, stars in the sky, the Moon and Sun, planes flying in the air and birds are all crammed into this minute space. In a technical sense there is no distance between a plane you imagine to be flying many kilometers away and the glass in your hand; both are on a single location in the visual center inside your brain.
This is a glorious proof of creation, sublime artistry and a flawless work. Allah creates these perfect images and details in the mind of every human being, at all moments and without interruption. Nothing is missing to make us harbor any suspicions regarding the existence of the three-dimensional images before us. The world belonging to us is created constantly as a copy of the original world outside. The might, power and creative artistry of Him to Whom all these belong are manifested in every detail. It is Almighty Allah, the Lord and Sovereign of all things, Who creates all the worlds and brings these into being individually for every human being.
In verses, Allah tells us that:
It is Allah Who created the seven heavens and of the Earth the same number, the Command descending down through all of them, so that you might know that Allah has power over all things and that Allah encompasses all things in His knowledge. (Surat at-Talaq, 12)
Do they not see that Allah, Who created the heavens and Earth, has the power to create the like of them, and has appointed fixed terms for them of which there is no doubt? But the wrongdoers still spurn anything but disbelief. (Surat al-Isra’, 99)
What Is “Real” for Us?
We believe in the existence of objects just because we see and touch them, and they are reflected to us by our perceptions. However, our perceptions are only ideas in our mind. Thus, objects we captivate by perceptions are nothing but ideas, and these ideas are essentially in nowhere but our mind… Since all these exist only in the mind, then it means that we are beguiled by deceptions when we imagine the universe and things to have an existence outside the mind65
George Berkeley
George Berkeley
Our seeing any object, hearing the sound it makes or touching it, provides little information about the nature of the material world existing outside. For us, what gives us evidence of anything’s physical existence is our perception of it. Yet there is actually no sound, nor image, nor flavor, nor smell in our perceptual center in the brain where all these things arise. The inside of the brain is pitch dark and utterly soundless. There are no small observers in the brain to detect smells or observe images. Therefore, the idea that sounds and images can form inside the brain is illogical, scientifically impossible. However, we perceive an amazingly flawless, colored, mobile and distinct world in that pitch-black, soundless space. Despite being a world of perception forming solely in the brain, this world is realistic and highly convincing. An image far clearer and more distinct than the most advanced three-dimensional film screens or televisions, of a far higher quality than the world’s most perfect cameras, arises in the brain. Inside the brain form sounds that are much more perfect, much clearer and richer than the most advanced music systems, and which cannot be distinguished from the real thing. The perfume and scent of a rose also forms inside the brain, as do sensations of heat and cold, in the most precise manner. This perfectly clear world is placed at our disposal, without interruption, by the will of Allah. Anyone looking around in a crowded shopping center can see children running around, different people shopping, brightly lit shop windows, trays of foodstuffs, an occasional stray cat, the warm air and the smells emanating from the food court reaching his nose—all at one and the same time. People may be chatting with friends, greeting someone they recognize, as window-shopping. Yet they are actually experiencing images arising in their brains. The crowd a person sees around him, all the details he observes, all form on a phantom screen inside the brain.
He actually watches and feels images shown to him by means of his senses. All of these are part of that person’s experience, yet each is also nothing more than the entirety of perceptions arising in the brain.
He actually watches and feels images shown to him by means of his senses. All of these are part of that person’s experience, yet each is also nothing more than the entirety of perceptions arising in the brain.
Is the original of this world anything like the details that person is made to perceive? We cannot know. It is impossible for us to obtain any knowledge regarding whether there really are a lot of people around, or if the scent of flowers fills the air. What we are shown is the form of the environment as we perceive. For us, the external world is solely the world we are shown. If the electrical signals forwarded to us by our sense organs were eliminated, then our external world would disappear as well, even though there is an actual world outside.
We can only know what is forwarded to, reaches and is shown to us. That is the sum total of what goes on in our minds.
Gerard O’Brien describes the concept of the outside world and that of our perceptions:
There is an issue about whether or not the world that we experience, the world in some sense that is constructed in our heads, whether or not it actually corresponds to the way the world actually is. Because if you accept, as a number of theorists now do, that our experience of the world is constructed by our brains, then there becomes a real issue of the correspondence that exists between our experience of the world and the way the world really is, independent of our experience. And if you think there might be large mismatches between our experience of the world and the way the world really is, then it starts to look as though our visual world, the world of our experience, is in some sense an illusion.66
We can only know what is transmitted and shown to us. And that is all that goes on inside the mind. Your workplace, home and life are in fact all in your mind. Yet the material world you are convinced exists on the outside is in fact only a copy.
That being the case, what is real for us?
What we refer to as “reality” indicates a world with a material existence outside the brain and the senses. People have a full belief in the existence of that world, whether they happen to be observing it or not. They are certain that they are in their own bedroom when they get up in the morning. They imagine that they are in their offices and that the computers there have their own independent existence, and that everything will still be there when they return the following morning. They assume that their homes will be there when they return in the evening and assume the continued existence of their friends, families, acquaintances and relatives, whether or not they can see them or talk with them. Most of these experiences are repeated every day and permit no room for any doubt. On the contrary, they are of such a quality to be thoroughly convincing.
But all these things are actually in our minds, things that we are led to experience. All we see is an illusory copy of the outside material world of whose existence we are so certain. It is solely our perceptions that give rise to our world.
Susan Blackmore defines this world inside the brain:
The mind feels like a private theatre. Here I am, inside the theatre, located roughly somewhere inside my head and looking out through my eyes. But this is a multi-sensational theatre. So I experience touches, smells, sounds, and emotions as well, and I can use my imagination too—conjuring up sights and sounds to be seen as though on a mental screen by inner eye or heard by my inner ear. All these are the “contents of my consciousness,” and “I” am the audience of one who experiences them.67
The world we observe is merely a copy. An amusement park full of lights is only a duplicated image forming in the brain, whose source is simply electrical signals. The voices of the people around us, our relatives and birds are similarly, duplicate sounds arising within the brain, whose source is just electrical signals. The taste and smell of a piece of fruit we eat are duplicate tastes and smells forming in the brain. It is impossible for us to eat the original of the fruit. The source of all the features of the fruit in our brains is, again, electrical signals.
You have never felt the true heat of the Sun, the actual coolness of the sea nor the coldness of an ice cube. Because you can never have direct experience of the Sun, the sea or ice, and the effects they have on you are simply electrical signals.
A glass of water set in front of you is not distant from you at all. It is not standing in front of you, it is in your brain. You perceive an image of it in your brain.
When we imagine we are touching a glass surface, we are not actually touching the original glass. It is not our fingers that do the touching, but the brain. That being so, nobody can ever touch a real glass. They cannot drink water from it. The water they drink consists of a sensation of drinking imparted by perceptions arising inside the brain.
In the documentary film What the Bleep Do We Know?, Joe Dispenza, who has a Doctor of Chiropractic Degree from Life University in Atlanta, Georgia, says, “Your brain doesn’t know the difference between what’s taking place out there, and what’s taking place in here.” Fred Alan Wolf says, “There is no ‘out there’ out there, independent of what’s going on in here [in the brain].”68
The life we lead is a composite of the duplicates in question. The realistic appearance of these perceptions is highly deceptive. We think that the person in front of us sees the same things as we do, and we imagine that we are both in agreement and that we are observing the true state of the world. Yet in fact, the other person, who agrees with us on the things we see and hear, also consists of an image arising in our brain. In addition, we can never know what difference there is between the things he perceives and what we perceive. It is impossible for us to describe what “green” means for us, or what a lemon smells like.
So what is real? In that regard, Joe Dispenza asks the following questions:
Scientific experiments have shown that if we take a person and hook their brains up to certain PET scans or computer technology, and ask them to look at a certain object, and they watch certain areas of the brain light up. And then they’ve asked them to close their eyes and now imagine that same object. And when they imagine that same object, it produced the same areas of the brain to light up as if they were actually visually looking at it. So it caused scientists to back up and ask this question. So who sees then? Does the brain see? Or do the eyes see? And what is reality? Is reality what we’re seeing with our brain or is reality what we’re seeing with our eyes? And the truth is that the brain does not know the difference between what it sees in its environment and what it remembers. Because the same specific neural nets are then firing. So then it asks the question: What is reality? 69
In the documentary What the Bleep Do We Know?, J. Z. Knight describes reality:
That we simply are has allowed this reality we call real, from the power of intangibility to pull out of inertness, “action,” “chaos,” and hold it into its form, and we call it matter.70
Each of us lives in a world of perceptions that belongs to us alone. Nobody can share the images in this world and nobody can confirm them, yet we regard these images as reality. That being so, is reality simply an illusion? Does it consist solely of what we are made to experience? Do the body we regard as our own, and the life we consider to be ours, exist solely as phantoms in our minds?
All these are indeed phantoms. We live in a phantom world brought into being in our own brains. We imagine that we are looking at the true world outside, but a whole new world actually exists in our brains, and it is impossible for us to step outside it.
The philosopher Geoff Haselhurst describes how science has no explanation for the realism of the world that forms in the brain:
Further difficulties arise because our senses also deceive us. Philosophers have known for thousands of years that our mind represents our senses, thus the world we see and taste and touch is different (naive real) to the real world which causes our senses. . . .If we are to describe Reality then it must be founded on real things which exist and cause our senses, not on the naive real representation of our senses. Thus Science, by being empirically founded, is not well suited to describing Reality itself.71
Likewise, our sense of color is an obvious example of how our mind represents a certain frequency of light.
Peter Russell makes the following statements:
At first, we might find it surprising that the conclusions of modern physics are so far removed from our experience or reality. . . . What would be far more surprising would be to find that the image of reality created in the human mind was indeed a faithful representation of the thing-in-itself.When we speak of the material world we usually think we are referring to the underlying reality—the world that we are perceiving “out there”. In fact we are only describing our image of reality. The materiality we experience, the solidness we feel, the whole of the “real world” that we know are all aspects of the image created in the mind; they are part of our interpretation of reality. Paradoxical as it may sound, matter is something created in the mind.72
That being so, reality for us is not matter, the external original of which we can never directly experience. Since all these things consist of an image formed by electrical signals in the brain, reality cannot be the world inside the brain, either. This world is completely illusory, a phantasm. We are misled by observing that world. “Reality,” therefore, is neither outside nor in the image inside the brain.
Is it difficult to come to terms with this state of affairs? Fred Alan Wolf summarizes the familiarity with the illusory world in which people live and how they seek to avoid the concept of “true realism”:
Yet, we unconsciously strive to keep this secret buried inside ourselves. . . In other words, we unconsciously choose to live under the illusion that everything is as we see it. This is not only a fundamental truth for you and me, it is the deep secret of the universe’s existence . . . and it only works because we agree to believe the trick. If we can stop believing it for one minute, one second, even one millisecond, and allow our consciousness to become aware that we have stopped, we will see the trick revealed.. . . And most of us habitually remain unconscious and cling to the illusion until the last nanosecond of our existence. We watch the boundary between ocean and land, between air, earth, and water. We watch the effervescent crust of sand, water, and air and remember the distinctions. And likewise, we live our lives in the comfortable notion that an invisible membrane separates us from that world “out there”; that “in here,” in our minds, our inner worlds of imagination, we are safe and alone. In no way can any person or thing intrude into our individual mind worlds. Every sense in our bodies continually tells us that this is true, that we are each alone. We ignore any information, any thought, any perception, any imaginative tale, anyone else’s story that confronts our sensory presentation of the separated “out there” and “in here” worlds. We look skeptically at people who tell us a different story, probably dismissing them as misguided fools, or even lunatics.73
At some point in our lives, somehow, somewhere, just for an instant, the unveiling of the great mystery comes to pass . . . But, we don’t shout, Wow! No gasps of wonderment fill the theater. Something becomes distinguishable from nothing in a single creative act, but we trick ourselves into not seeing. And so it goes. No applause fills the air. We sit back, watch the show, breathe a sigh of relief, and say unconsciously, “We’ll never figure this one out, might as well just accept it.”
It’s by no means easy for any materialist to grasp and accept the fact that the world forming in the brain is not real. This has been verified by modern science, but nonetheless, as expressed by Fred Alan Wolf, this great truth is ignored. The fact we live in an illusory world is reflected as an ordinary scientific discovery and as an insoluble problem. The only reason for this is that what is “true” for us is “unacceptable” to the materialist mindset. This “truth,” which materialists cannot admit and which scientists are searching for, belongs to the human soul.
It is the human soul that is absolute in this world and that will live forever in the Hereafter. It is Allah Who bestows this soul on man. The matter outside man, people’s own bodies and the worlds arising in their minds will all one day come to an end and vanish. It is the soul, imparted by Almighty Allah, that is absolute and perpetual.
Your Lord said to the angels, “I am going to create a human being out of clay. When I have formed him and breathed My Spirit into him, fall down in prostration to him!” (Surah Sâd, 71-72)
The Realism in Dreams
We do not actually speak with anyone in our dreams. We see no-one, and our eyes are closed. We neither run, nor walk. No monsters frighten and chase us, no green and spacious lawns spread out before us. There are no skyscrapers we are scared to look down from or crowds of people. In the face of all these images, we are, in fact, alone in bed. The loud noises from the crowds we imagine to be surrounding us, never in fact reach into our silent room.
When we imagine ourselves to be running very fast, we are not in fact moving at all. When we imagine ourselves to be having a heated discussion with someone, we do not in fact even open our mouths. Yet during dreaming, we experience all these things very vividly. The people around us, our surroundings and the things we experience are so realistic that we never imagine that these things are actually part of our dream.
When you dream, you are alone in a pitch-black, soundless environment. Your eyes are closed, and you do not run, speak or see anybody. Yet the people around you, the environment and the events you experience in dreams are all so realistic that you have no doubt that they are all real. Dreams are important evidence proving that the external world in fact consists of perceptions alone.
We may even dream of being hit by a car and receive a very clear impression of the pains that result. We truly feel the fear we experience as the car approaches, it speeds toward us, and the moment of impact. We have no doubt as to the reality of these sensations. The temperature of air, people’s expressions, the clothes we are wearing and everything are exceedingly realistic. Yet we have actually experienced none of these. No light or sound reaches us. There is no cause of any image, sound or smell. The concept we refer to as the external world has disappeared. This is all experienced solely in our minds. Yet we do not realize that this is the case. Even if we are told—in the dream—that we are actually dreaming, we completely discount the possibility and are utterly convinced of the reality of the dream world we are inhabiting. For us, the things we see, smell, touch and feel in dreams have a definite reality. For that reason, our fears, joys and doubts during dreaming are also real. We have all the same physical experiences as when we are awake. No evidence might require us to suspect that we are, in fact, dreaming.
Dreaming is a powerful example demonstrating that the external world for us is in fact a perception. In the same way that someone dreaming has no doubt that his surroundings are real, so it is very difficult to be convinced that the reality of what we refer to as “the real world” is only in our minds. Yet how we perceive the images we call “real life” is exactly the same as how we experience dreams. Both images form in the mind. We have no doubt as to the reality of either set of images as we observe them. Yet we do have proof that dreams are not real. When we awaken, we say, “It was all just a dream.” So how can we prove that we are not dreaming at this very moment?
Allah imparts this truth in His verses:
The Trumpet will be blown and at once they will be sliding from their graves towards their Lord. They will say, “Alas for us! Who has raised us from our resting-place? This is what the All-Merciful promised us. The Messengers were telling the truth.” (Surah Ya Sin, 51-52)
The proof of this at this moment is the scientifically imparted evidence. In this case, the moment that we’ll wake up from the dream will be when we depart from this earthly life. So the right thing to do is to regard this world as mere illusion for us, as something we experience in the mind, and behave accordingly.
Peter Russell compares the realism of dreams to that of the world we inhabit:
Our perception of the world has the very convincing appearance of being “out there” around us, but it is no more “out there” than are our nightly dreams. In our dreams we are aware of sights, sounds, and sensations happening around us. We are aware of our bodies. We think and reason. We feel fear, anger, pleasure, and love. We experience other people as separate individuals, speaking and interacting with us. The dream appears to be happening “out there” in the world around us. Only when we awaken do we realize that it was all just a dream—a creation in the mind.When we say, “It was all just a dream,” we are referring to the fact that the experience was not based on physical reality. It was created from memories, hopes, fears and other factors. In the waking state, our image of the world is based on sensory information drawn from our physical surroundings. This gives our waking experience a consistency and sense of reality not found in dreams. But the truth is, our waking reality is as much a creation of our minds as are our dreams.74
Réné Descartes described this as well:
I dream of doing this or that, going here or there; but when I awake I realize that I have done nothing, that I have been nowhere, but have been lying quietly in bed. Who can guarantee that I am not dreaming now, or that even my entire life is not a dream? 75
Never, of course, can we guarantee that the people around us, or even the life we are experiencing at this moment, are not a dream. When we dream, we can touch a piece of ice and perceive its cold wetness and transparency in a perfect form. When we smell a rose, we perceive its unique scent in an equally flawless manner. The reason is that the same processes take place in our brains when we really smell a rose or only dream that we are doing so.
That being so, we can never know when we are experiencing the true image and perfume of a rose. In fact, we never have direct experience of a real rose in either case, and in either event. Neither the image nor the perfume of the rose are anywhere in our brains.
Therefore, neither case represents reality, as Gerald O’Brien describes:
Yes, we’re asleep in our beds, our eyes are shut and yet we are having for many people some very vivid visual experiences. We are in our visual experiences situated in a world populated by people, by things happening around us and while we’re in the dream state to all the world it appears to us as though we’re actually in the world in some sense. Now that’s really important because that tells us that our brains are actually capable of constructing our visual experiences in this way in our dreams. And this then suggests, to some philosophers and theorists of the mind in general, that perhaps when we’re awake and looking around at the world, our common-sense understanding is wrong. Perhaps indeed that all of our experiences, all of our visual experiences of the world are in some way constructed by the brain and that this commonsense view that we are in direct contact with the world is actually wrong.76
When we dream of smelling a flower, we enjoy a perfect sensation of the unique perfume of that flower. The reason for this is that the same processes take place in the brain when we actually smell a flower or when we only dream we are doing so.
If someone is aware that he’s dreaming, he will not be frightened by a car approaching, will realize that the goods and money he acquires are transitory, and will harbor no greed for them. He knows that the blessings and beauty he possesses will come to an end when he awakens, and these will inspire no pride in him. Other people’s negative attitudes are of no importance in his dreams, because he knows that neither the circumstances nor the people themselves are real. He knows that he will wake up, for which reason he does not chase after worldly things, or become worried by worldly concerns, or devote himself to his own interests as if this life will never end. He knows that there is a real world outside the dream one. Therefore, his surroundings are of no importance or value to anyone who knows he is dreaming.
This also applies to the period we refer to as “real life.” For someone who knows that this life is not real, that it is presented merely in the form of perceptions, nothing he experiences in connection with this “real” world is of any importance. Just as with dreaming, he is aware of the false nature of an unreal life, even as he lives it. He now realizes that the people expecting gain from him do not actually exist, and that the deceptive beauty and attractions around him in fact consist of illusions. There is therefore no point in his thirsting for things that exist in this world or expending energy on any personal gains. He lives in a passing, transitory world and knows that his true life will begin after this one.
The writer Remez Sasson has this to say:
It is like a movie show. A person watching a movie gets so involved with the characters and with what happens on the screen. He may become happy or sad with the heroes, gets depressed, shouts or laughs. If at a particular moment he decides to stop watching the screen and manages to withdraw his attention from the movie, he gets snapped out of the illusion the movie creates. The projecting machine will go on projecting images on the screen, but he knows that it is only light projected through the film onto the screen. What is seen on the screen is not real, but yet it is there. He may watch the movie, or he may decide to close his eyes and ears and stop looking at the screen. Have you ever watched a movie, when at some point the reel got stuck or there was a power failure? What happens to you when you watch an interesting, absorbing film on the television and then suddenly there are commercials? You are snapped out of the illusion to the world around you.When you are sleeping and dreaming, and someone wakes you up, you feel thrown out of one world to a different one. It is the same in the life we call reality. It is possible to wake up from it.77
Just as in dreams, the world we inhabit consists of illusory images, illusory smells, tastes and feelings. One may, of course, awake from this dream before this life comes to an end and see the true facts. Awakening from this dream, realizing that this world is not reality, will enable one to understand that the true reality is the Hereafter. Someone who comprehends the Hereafter becomes aware of the transitory nature of this world, knows that he needs to attain Allah’s approval in order to achieve salvation in the Hereafter, and begins striving to that end. This is one of the facts that will bestow countless blessings on a person in this world and in the Hereafter.
People who wake on the Day of Resurrection are described in verses:
The Trumpet will be blown. That is the Day of the Threat. Every self will come together with a driver and a witness: “You were heedless of this, so We have stripped you of your covering, and today your sight is sharp.” (Surah Qaf, 20-22)
Perceptual Defects in the Brain and a Different External World
When our five senses—which convince us that what we see is the real world—are deprived of the electrical signals that give rise to perceptions, the external world disappears. It is a scientific fact that the senses provide information only by way of electrical signals. If there is plentiful information in the outside world, but the relevant electrical signals fail to register, we will be unaware of it.
Errors of perception in the brain are some of the most important proofs of this. For example, if you look at a room in full daylight and imagine you are seeing it completely, the reality is different. There is one very small point of the room in front of you that you cannot see. And that missing spot remains wherever you look. This is the “blind spot,” present in every human being in the center of the retina where the optic nerve departs for the brain.
The cause of this blindness is the fact that the cells of the retina are absent in just that one spot in the retina. Nonetheless, you see the image before you utterly flawlessly. The reason is the compensatory nature of the brain. The area that cannot be seen because of the blind spot becomes “visible” because of the brain’s ability to “color in” and “complete” the other details in the background. This is an extraordinary state of affairs. There literally exists no information in that blind spot, and whatever details the brain creates there is entirely illusory. Yet we never know that we “cannot see” that spot. The brain “papers over” the blind spot by making its own best estimate of what ought to be there. But how is that estimate made? That question still represents a puzzle for scientists.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran describes this secret:
For example, you could try “aiming” your blind spot at the corner of a square. Noticing the other three corners, does your visual system fill in the missing corner? If you try this experiment, you will notice that in fact the corner disappears or looks “bitten off” or smudged. Clearly the neural machinery that allows completion across the blind spot cannot deal with corners; there’s a limit to what can and what cannot be filled in.78
But is it possible for us to have any preference in the completion process within the brain? Ramachandran also answers this question:
Perceptual filling in is very different. When you fill in your blind spot with a carpet design, you don’t have such choices about what fills that spot; you can’t change your mind about it. Perceptual filling in is carried out by visual neurons. Their decisions, once made, are irreversible: Once they signal to higher brain centers “Yes, this is a repetitive texture” or “yes, this is a straight line” what you perceive is irrevocable.79
 |
|---|
You can perform this test in order to better understand the blind spot. Close your right eye and bring this book towards your face from a distance of about 50 centimeters away. Focus your eye on only the cross. As it draws closer, you will see the black spot on the left disappears momentarily. Your brain has filled in the black spot it cannot perceive with a white background.
|
When we look at a table, our visual system first acquires information about the edges of the table. And a representative picture resembling the table’s outline forms in our minds. Following this, the system then selects the color and texture of the table. These are some of the essential elements for the process of “completion.” After this information has been obtained, the brain makes a general estimate regarding the image before it. The brain does not need to examine every detail of that image and enter into detailed computation. It creates images based on “guesswork.”80
Therefore, the brain produces an illusion that we believe to exist. The image in the blind spot is not a true image of what is in front of us; yet we are unaware of this. Interestingly, however, we have no evidence that the entire image is true. The image in the blind spot, which does not actually exist, seems as realistic as the other surrounding images. We are unaware of where the blind spot is in our day-to-day lives. That being so, we cannot know whether the images we obtain are all illusions. We may take them to be “realistic,” but this is not enough proof for believing that the images shown to us are “real.”
Other perceptual defects or errors in the brain also demonstrate this. One such is cortical color blindness. If the area V4 in the brain, which involves processing color, is damaged, sufferers see the world in shades of gray. Everything appears like a black-and-white film. Yet such people have no problems with reading a newspaper, recognizing people’s faces or movements and determining direction.81If the middle temporal visual area (MT) is damaged, patients can still read and see colors, but cannot tell in which direction and how fast a thing is moving.
Prof. Ramachandran has written this on the subject:
When one or more areas are selectively damaged, you are confronted with paradoxical mental states of the kind seen in a number of neurological patients. One of the most famous examples in neurology is the case of a Swiss woman (whom I shall call Ingrid) who suffered from “motion blindness.” Ingrid had bilateral damage to an area of her brain called the middle temporal (MT) area. In most respects, her eyesight was normal; she could name shapes of objects, recognize people and read books with no trouble. But if she looked at a person running or a car moving on the highway, she saw a succession of static, strobelike snapshots instead of the smooth impression of continuous motion. She was terrified to cross the street because she couldn’t estimate the velocity of oncoming cars, though she could identify the make, color and even the license plate of any vehicle. She said that talking to someone in person felt like talking on the phone, because she couldn’t see the changing facial expressions associated with normal conversation. Even pouring a cup of coffee was an ordeal because the liquid would inevitably overflow and spill onto the floor. She never knew when to slow down, changing the angle of the coffeepot, because she couldn’t estimate how fast the liquid was rising in the cup. All of these abilities ordinarily seem so effortless to you and me that we take them for granted. It’s only when something goes wrong, as when this motion area is damaged, that we begin to realize how sophisticated vision really is.82
Hallucinations are another example of perceptual defects. Hallucinations generally stem from brain damage, various febrile diseases, drug use or old age and senility. The sufferer perceives things which do not exist—they see things which are not there and hear non-existent sounds. Such people are wholly awake and conscious when they experience hallucinations, which images are highly convincing.
These syndromes we have cited are just a few of these disorders, as a result of which some people experience vivid events that do not correspond to reality. For some people, external colors seem very different. Our brightly colored world is like a black-and-white film for them. If we really have direct experience of the external world—if the world we inhabit does not consist solely of electrical signals reaching the brain—then why do these people experience different perceptions?
If there is just “one” external world, why do they not perceive the outside world in the same way we do, and why do they not see the same things?
Most of us have no doubt that we have a perfect perception of the outside world and that our perceptions form a seamless whole. Yet the same thing applies to someone who sometimes experiences hallucinations. Such people also think the illusory images they see are real. That being so, we can say nothing about what the external world arising in our brains actually resembles, or whether it seems different to others’ perceptions. This is something that cannot be tested by 21st-century science or determined experimentally. It is impossible for us to know what an individual world, brought into being for each one of us, is like. We have direct experience only of our perceptions within that world. We cannot step out of it or learn any more about it.
The electrical signals transmitted by way of our senses give rise to a copy of the external world for us. Fundamentally, however, there remains an “identity” that perceives the outside world, that draws meaning from what it perceives, harbors doubts, rejoices, experiences sorrow, becomes excited, thinks, recognizes and analyzes. But where in the brain is this entity, which we refer to as “I”? Does the interaction of neurons cause us to think and be happy? Is that what enables us to enjoy music? Is that interaction the source of our enjoying looking at a landscape or eating a delicious meal?
Obviously, no rational person can answer “Yes” to these questions. Our identity lies outside the brain, and is known as the “soul.”
They will ask you about the Spirit. Say: “The Spirit is my Lord’s concern. You have only been given a little knowledge.” (Surat al-Isra’, 85)
The Brain Is Not the Source of Personal Identity
The Flawlessly Equipped Human Brain
The perceptual world whose details we have been examining is an artificial one, formed by way of electrical signals. But do our brains interpret these signals and convert them into a friend we recognize, a beautiful flower, a boundless landscape, children playing in the street or a loveable kitten?
Each neuron in the brain makes up to 10,000 contacts with other neurons. The places where they contact are known as synapses, which are the places where information is exchanged. The number of the possible permutations and combinations of this cerebral exchange exceeds that of all the elementary particles in the known universe.
Technically, it’s true that the signals are analyzed in the brain. Materialists go on to claim that we consist simply of our brains’ neurons and that the world we inhabit is the result of intercommunication between those nerve cells. They maintain that an entity who thinks, laughs, rejoices, recognizes other people and can analyze is, in the words of the evolutionist physicist and discoverer of DNA Francis Crick, “a pack of neurons.” 83 For a materialist, it is unimportant how human beings think and how they draw significance from their perceptions. It is unimportant because materialists have no explanation for these things. In their view, everything must be investigated in a material sense. The fact is, however, that this is a great falsehood uttered in order to turn people away from faith in Allah.
To clarify this in more detail, it will help to familiarize ourselves with the general outlines of the human brain, one of the most complex structures in the world.
A newborn baby has around 100 billion neurons or nerve cells, the highest number a person can have. The number of neurons in the human brain never increases, and merely declines as time passes.According to Professor Ramachandran, “the number of possible permutations and combinations of brain activity, in other words the number of brain states, exceeds the number of elementary particles in the known universe.” 84
Neurons are the nervous system’s basic structural and functional units. Every neuron establishes from one thousand to ten thousand connections with other neurons. The places where these neurons contact are known as synapses, the points where information exchanges take place.
A nerve cell in the brain possesses all the structures necessary to maintain for the cell’s metabolism, for it to digest proteins and perform all the needed functions.
A neuron has branched extensions, known as dendrites. Dendrites’ greatest function is to receive electromagnetic messages from other neurons and to transmit them to the cell body. Dendrites are relatively thick at the point where they leave the cell body, but then progressively divide into tens, or even hundreds of branches that then become thinner and thinner. The number of dendrites varies, depending on the function of the cell.
A neuron has branched extensions, known as dendrites. Dendrites’ greatest function is to receive electromagnetic messages from other neurons and to transmit them to the cell body. Dendrites are relatively thick at the point where they leave the cell body, but then progressively divide into tens, or even hundreds of branches that then become thinner and thinner. The number of dendrites varies, depending on the function of the cell.
Another extension departing from the neuron is called the axon, whose job is to carry information to other neurons. This information assumes the form of an electrical current. The brain contains depots for the storage of neurochemicals, vesicles that release these chemicals to carry messages to the next cell in the circuit. Neurons thus carry information along to the next neuron by way of axons. To put it another way, dendrites take the information forwarded from another neuron, and axons forward it on to another neuron. Axons may extend for as long as a meter, or else be just few tenths of a millimeter.
How many different types of neurons are there in the brain? That question has not yet been fully answered, though there are estimated to be around fifty. 85 Despite the differences in their shapes, sizes, types of connection and neurochemical contents, all neurons carry information in almost the same manner. They communicate with one another in an electrochemical “language.” Information emerges from one neuron and is received by another in the form of electrical signals produced by charged atoms or ions, particularly positively charged sodium and potassium ions or negatively charged chloride ions.86Each of the 100 billion neurons establishes connections with between a few thousand and one hundred thousand other neurons. In general terms, an adult brain establishes 100 trillion synapses, or connection points. 87
Crag Hamilton describes:
What is the most complex network yet developed? If you guessed the wold wide web, guess again. The human brain, with its electrochemical matrix of over one hundred billion neurons, makes the Internet look like a fancy spider’s web. With each neuron linked to about 50,000 other neurons, that makes for a total of one hundred trillion connections.88
Between the space where the axon that transmits the information in a neuron contacts another neuron’s dendrite is a gap around one millionth of a centimeter wide.89Therefore, axons and dendrites do not touch one another directly. Connections take place in less than one thousandth of a second. Some neurons sprout as just a few dendrites; others have a very large number. Were we to try to count the number of connections arising inside the brain, at a rate of one every second, it would take 3 million years, or 42,000 human generations.90In her book An Alchemy of Mind, The New Yorker magazine writer Diane Ackerman, of Cornell University, provides numerical details about this complex system:
Computers are merely an imitation of the brain’s perfect system. One byte of information in the brain can be instantaneously disseminated to 100,000 neurons. Therefore, the brain is hundreds of thousands of times faster than the fastest computer. It is impossible to compare the brain with modern-day technology.
Impossible as it sounds, we have more brain cell connections than there are stars in the universe. The visible universe, I mean, since 96 percent of the measurable universe is invisible, to us at least. Linger with that thought a moment, picturing the infinities of space—a carbon-paper night struck through with countless stars. Then picture the microscopic hubbub in one brain. A typical brain contains about 100 billion neurons, consumes a quarter of the body’s oxygen, and spends most of the body’s calories, though it only weighs about three pounds. A ten-watt lightbulb uses the same amount of electrical energy. In a dot of brain no larger than a single grain of sand, 100,000 neurons go about their work at a billion synapses. In the cerebral cortex alone, 30 billion neurons meet at 60 trillion synapses a billionth of an inch wide.91In the words of Nobel Prize winner Gerald M. Edelman, director of the Neurosciences Institute at the Rockefeller University:If we counted one synapse per second, we would not finish counting for 32 million years. If we considered the number of possible neural circuits, we would be dealing with hyperastronomical numbers: 10 followed by at least a million zeros.92
One of the most astonishing facts is that any given human brain, with these extraordinary statistics, is never identical to any other brain. Brains are not the same even in identical twins. This amazingly complex system has been arranged separately and assumes a different form, by the will of Allah, in every human being. Yet it still maintains the same complexity.93
Computers are designed by imitating the perfect system in the brain. Kerry Bernstein, an experienced technology expert with IBM, one of the largest firms in the computer field, says that although computers have copied the brain in many respects, the design in the brain is too perfect to be replicated using any existing technology. Bernstein makes the following comment:
There is an extraordinary parallel circuit in the brain. A single data byte can reach 100,000 neurons at the same time. This makes the brain hundreds of thousands of times quicker than the fastest known computer. It is impossible for us to carry this out electronically.94
Therefore, comparing the brain to a computer is too facile, and does not do full justice to the brain’s superior capacity. Gerald M. Edelman offers this statement:
First, the world certainly is not presented to the brain like a piece of computer tape containing an unambiguous series of signals. Nonetheless, the brain . . . mediates learning and memory and simultaneously regulates a host of bodily functions. The ability of the nervous system to carry out perceptual categorization of different signals for sight, sound, and so forth, dividing them into coherent classes without arranged code, is certainly special and is still unmatched by computers. We do not presently understand fully how this categorization is done . . . 95
Within the brain, where do the external world and the features that make human beings human reside? Can neurons consisting of accumulations of blind, unconscious atoms be the source of such a sublime consciousness? Of course not! Its origin lies solely in the human soul.
The system in the brain is literally perfect; what we are referring to here is the interactions of neurons, with axons and dendrites receiving and transmitting data within a complex system. But what is the source of the “outside world” in the brain and the features that make human beings human? Could neurons and the brain they comprise—the products of the combining of blind and unconscious atoms, be the source of such advanced consciousness?
Professor Vilayanur Ramachandran has this to say:
Even though it is common knowledge, it never ceases to amaze me that all the richness of our mental life—all our feelings, our emotions, our thoughts, our ambitions, our love lives, our religious sentiments and even what each of us regards as his or her own intimate private self—is simply the activity of these little specks of jelly in our heads, in our brains.96
This is a baffling state of affairs for materialists, who look somewhere in the brain for all those elements that make human beings human—joys, doubts, beliefs and personal identity. They maintain that emotions such as the happiness when we greet a friend, the excitement when we see a puppy, belief, feeling, deciding, sentimentality, rejoicing and sorrow—all stem from neurons. However, scientists and neurologists who investigate the brain have failed to find the source of any of these. For that reason, they have come up with a new definition, saying that the source of what makes human beings human is “consciousness.”
But what is consciousness? And how can materialists account for it?
The Concept of “Consciousness” That Materialists Cannot Explain
Who is it who observes and enjoys a brightly colored flower garden in a darkened space with no need of the eye, retina, lens or optical nerves?Who is the entity that recognizes in electrical signals the voices of its friends without the need for an ear, who recognizes them and rejoices to hear them?Who is it who smells the scent of cake in the bakery, and takes pleasure from this?Who is it who delights in seeing a flower, who feels affection when he sees a kitten, who strokes its fur with no need for any arm, finger or muscle?Can a piece of tissue consisting of nerve cells and weighing just a few hundred grams be the cause of the lives we lead, our sorrows, joys, friendships, loyalty, honesty and excitement?If the entity that perceives all these things is not the brain, then who is it?Is it a “little man” inside our brains who perceives the external world?Or the “observer” to which quantum physics refers?Is this observer somewhere inside the brain?If not, then where is it?
Fred Alan Wolf provides this answer:
We know what an observer does from a point of view of quantum physics. But we don’t know who or what the observer actually is. It doesn’t mean we haven’t tried to find an answer. We’ve looked. We’ve gone inside of your head. We’ve gone into every orifice you have to find something called an observer. And there’s nobody home. There’s nobody in the brain. There’s nobody in the cortical regions of the brain. There’s nobody in the subcortical regions or the limbic regions of the brain. There’s nobody there called an observer. And yet, we all have this experience of being something called an observer, observing the world out there.97
Scientists now realize that the brain is not the source of perceptions, and that it merely serves as a vehicle. Furthermore, scientists have entirely abandoned the idea that prevailed centuries ago of the “little man inside the brain.” Scientists have clearly seen that the entity they refer to as the “observer” is entirely independent of the brain. They now know that the source of perceptions is human consciousness.
In his book Closer to Truth: Challenging Current Belief, Robert Lawrence Kuhn offers this description:
Why are some physicists suddenly so interested in human mind? Is mind as real as matter? A few have even begun wondering whether mind may be the “real reality” and matter a deceptive illusion. What is it about mental activities that causes such smart people offer such wild speculations? Part of the reason is the weird implications of two fundamental theories that have changed forever our sense of reality: quantum mechanics, which injects uncertainty into the subatomic scale, and relativity, which unifies space and time on the large-scale structure of the universe. But can theories of physics explain mechanisms of the mind? Can the behavior of atoms determine the behavior of people? Can the structure of the universe describe how we think, feel, and know? 98
A person’s life, perception, love, joy, sorrow, thoughts—in short, all that makes human beings human—is very definitely not the product of the behavior of atoms. What endows human beings with humanity, makes them capable of perceiving the external world, is something independent of the human brain. We need an explanation beyond any material concept to account for someone being able to be aware of something, to analyze it, think and choose, and for all other human characteristics. These words by Thomas Huxley are significant evidence that even a committed materialist can see the true facts, despite his being an evolutionist and even known as “Darwin’s bulldog” : 99
How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp.100
It is impossible for a structure consisting of fat, water and protein to give rise to human identity that can perceive, think, and rejoice, an entity capable of feeling pride and excitement. Materialists’ claims have completely collapsed in the face of the fact that perceptions are independent of the brain.
Sir Rudolf Peierls, one of the 20th century’s leading physicists, has said this:
The premise that you can describe in terms of physics the whole function of a human being . . . including its knowledge, and its consciousness, is untenable. There is still something missing.101
Peter Russell says that the material world belonging to us is something solely produced by consciousness:
When we realize that everything we know, including the whole material world that we experience “out there” is part of the phenomenon, the image constructed in consciousness, we find the truth is a complete reversal of our everyday view. Matter, as we know it, is a creation of consciousness. . . . Thus the ultimate nature of reality—the reality we experience that is, not the reality of the noumena, of whose nature we have no knowledge—is consciousness. Space, time, matter, energy—the whole substantial world built up from our sense perceptions—is created within consciousness. The essence of this whole phenomenal world is not matter, but consciousness.102
What we attempt to describe as reality is actually based on consciousness. Color, sound, smell, taste, time, matter—in short, everything that we perceive in the world is a form and feature within consciousness. Thanks to our consciousness, we are able to conceive all things in the universe.
But we cannot observe consciousness in the external world. Peter Russell sets out the reason why:
The reason we do not find consciousness in the world we observe is because consciousness is not part of the picture generated in our minds.103
As Russell states, the consciousness that perceives the outside world is not inside the external world we observe. Therefore, it is impossible for us to see and analyze it. Russell likens consciousness to light reflected onto a cinema screen. In the story portrayed in the film, there is no evidence that only light rays are being projected onto the screen. Human beings have direct experience with only the image on the screen. The light itself, without which there can be no image at all, goes unnoticed.
In the same way, consciousness possesses no tangible, visible existence since it is not in the material world we observe.
Diane Ackerman has described consciousness in these terms:
The brain is silent, dark, and dumb. It feels nothing. It sees nothing. . . . The brain can hurl itself across mountains or into outer space. The brain can imagine an apple and experience it as real. Indeed, the brain barely knows the difference between an imagined apple and an observed one. . . . The brain is not the mind . . . [The mind is] Like a ghost in a machine, some say.104
The Source of Consciousness: The Human Soul
So far, we have proved that the external world we perceive consists of a shadow world that arises within consciousness, and that we can never directly experience material existence. In the light of these conclusions, the concept of “absolute matter” envisaged by materialist philosophy loses all validity. Yet we still face an important difficulty that needs to be explained. Peter Russell summarizes the question:
They are asking how it is that a complex network of neurons can give rise to conscious experience. How does something as immaterial as consciousness arise from something as unconscious as the material world? Is it a result of the complex patterning of data across the neural net? Is it due to quantum coherence effects in microtubules within the neurons? Or is it something else?. . . When we distinguish between the two realities, the question disappears to be replaced by its opposite: How is it that matter, space, time, color, sound, form, and all the other qualities we experience emerge in consciousness? What is the process of manifestation within the mind? 105
This really important question should be clarified. What is consciousness made up of? What gives rise to this whole vivid world inside consciousness? This is a question that 21st-century scientists are still seeking to answer, about which they write books and hold conferences and seek to resolve—but which, for some reason, they are reluctant to settle. Hundreds of books and articles and analyses by countless scientists have failed to provide the expected answer to what the source of consciousness is.
The subject of consciousness is regarded as one of the greatest mysteries of the 21st century. Almost all researchers, writers and professors concerned with the topic have begun by stating that the subject is as yet unexplained, and end by again emphasizing that inexplicability.
One such example is these words by Jeffrey M. Schwartz:
. . . although correlating physical brain activity with mental events is an unquestionable scientific triumph, it has left many students of the brain unsatisfied. For neither neuroscientist nor philosopher has adequately explained how the behavior of neurons can give rise to subjectively felt mental states. Rather, the puzzle of how patterns of neuronal activity become transformed into subjective awareness, the neurobiologist Robert Doty argued in 1998, “remains the cardinal mystery of human existence.” 106
Contrary to the idea that materialist scientists seek to impose on us, the subject of consciousness is not inexplicable. The soul bestowed on human beings by Allah is a conscious entity aware of its own existence. No matter how much materialists may wish to deny it, any conscious human beings will indisputably be aware of the souls they bear.
But is this subject really impossible to explain? Or does it suggest a fact that scientists are unwilling to see? Are scientists who defend quantum physics under the influence of the materialism they have for so long regarded as the truth? Or is something else preventing them from seeing the truth?
Consciousness is very definitely not incapable of explanation. The entity that says “I see” the image in the brain, that says “I hear” the sounds in the brain, the entity that is aware of its own existence, is the soul bestowed on mankind by Allah. Materialist minds are unwilling for this to be known. They refrain from this truth being noticed. That is the basic reason why materialist scientists claim that the issue of consciousness “has still not been resolved.” The absolute existence of the soul, and the fact that it is Allah Who bestows the soul on human beings, utterly overturn all their materialist beliefs and claims. No matter how much they attempt to brand the subject as “inexplicable,” it is the soul that is the source of consciousness and that says “I am me.”
In the Qur’an Allah has revealed that He first created the human body and then breathed His spirit into it:
When your Lord said to the angels, “I am creating a human being out of dried clay formed from fetid black mud. When I have formed him and breathed My Spirit into him, fall down in prostration in front of him!” (Surat al-Hijr, 28-29)
This is the most essential fact that scientists investigating the subject need to accept and admit. William Tiller, a Stanford University professor of materials science and engineering, is one of those scientists who do make such an admission:
In my modeling, the observer is the spirit inside the four-layer bio-bodysuit. And so, it’s like the ghost in the machine.107
It is the human soul that can see without requiring an eye, can hear without needing an ear, and can think without a brain.
The Human Soul and Disappearing Materialism
There are only two ways to live your life: One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is. I believe in the latter.108
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
The existence of the soul scientifically eliminates the principle of atheism, on whose behalf materialists have been struggling for so long. The existence of the soul abolishes materialism and shows the absolute existence of Allah. Knowing that there is a soul, independent of the body, that perceives, sees, hears, understands, feels happiness, takes pleasure from the scent of flowers and enjoys listening to music will require all human beings to live in the knowledge of their responsibilities to Allah.
Acceptance of the fact of the existence of the soul will demolish the theory of evolution, which claims that all living things develop by chance, by evolving from one another, and that human beings and chimpanzees share a common ancestor.
Scientific acceptance of the existence of the soul will therefore totally eradicate the materialist world order, imposed over the years by the use of various forms of propaganda, publishing and brainwashing techniques.
Materialist scientists know that the property that makes human beings human is the soul. Yet for these reasons, they pretend not to know. Fred Alan Wolf expresses this truth:
Today, you will quickly see by perusing the latest books about the overlap of science, God, and the soul, that most if not all of them attempt either to explain away the soul as a material process, missing its essential points (that it is sacred and immortal) and its essential purpose (that it is necessary for consciousness to exist) or never discuss it at all in spite of the promising book titles.109
As can be seen from scientists’ words, science has become a concept rooted solely in materialism. Rather than accepting the revealed facts, everything done in the name of science assumes a form adapted to materialism. That being so, today we are dealing with a major inconsistency: science rejects the whole of the material world that human beings experience with regard to consciousness, and still ignores it in the name of being so-called scientific.
Fred Alan Wolf describes, as a scientist himself, what the scientific approach should be:
My major concern, coming out of the ranks of science, has been my own arrogance. How arrogant I was, to put down other people’s ideas that didn’t agree with my scientific view. When I went around the world and spent time with indigenous peoples and tribes, I realized that my arrogance just didn’t fit in. Like the man in the story by H. G. Wells, I thought that in the country of scientifically blind, the one-eyed man would be king. In fact, I was the one who was blind. I was intellectually incapacitated. As long as I held on to my scientific view, I couldn’t see. I thought I saw everything; I didn’t see anything. So I had to give up much of what I previously held as real, in order to see what these people saw. And when I was finally able to attain this new vision, it totally changed my view of science. And I began seeing science as a tool—not the be–all and end-all of the universe, but a tool to help us begin to dig deeper into the nature of what it means to be a human being. I don’t think we’ve arrived at that point yet. I don’t think we’re quite awake yet. I think we are all still asleep—dreaming, hoping, wishing—mechanically relying on our intellect to lead us out of the morass in which we constantly find ourselves. When we can use our heart and our spirit as well as our brain, that’s when science will begin to adapt to a new world order.110
Wolf is emphasizing that science is simply a vehicle for understanding the creation that pervades the universe. That sublime creation belongs to Allah alone. Allah, the Lord of all, is the only absolute Entity. Human beings can see what He has created by using their brains, and science can discover them and understand the artistry and sublimity in them. Science is only a means of reaching Allah’s works and seeing the details in them.
Another writer to have realized this is Craig Hamilton, editor of the journal What Is Enlightenment?:
But as years passed, and my inbred agnosticism gradually gave way to a committed spiritual quest, I soon began to have experiences of a deeper reality, far beyond anything described in my science textbooks. In the face of this unfolding world of meaning, purpose, and mystery, the notion that science held the keys to ultimate truth began to seem increasingly hard to accept . . . .Yet when I see evolutionary biologists using the unproven dogmas of neo-Darwinian theory to convince our kids that they live in a purposeless universe, my sympathies toward science start to fade once again.111
It is important that materialist scientists should be aware of this fact, because the question “Who is it who perceives?” has only one answer, and that answer is no longer a physical one. It is the soul bestowed on man by Allah that perceives. So long as people fail to realize this or behave as if they did not, none of their statements or descriptions regarding consciousness are of any consequence. The evidence so clearly revealed by quantum physics will have been ignored. It is obvious that what makes human beings human goes far beyond any anatomical concept claimed by materialists. To seek a material explanation is to ignore the facts, and is a waste of time. The soul observes the images in the brain. It is the soul that smells and tastes, that feels when one touches someone, that listens to the words of another person. The fact which we have set out with endless proofs and that has been scientifically proved in the present day is that the brain does not perceive. As the well-known French philosopher Henri Bergson has stated: "the world is made up of images, these images only exist in our consciousness; and the brain is one of these images." 112
That being so, it is only the soul that observes, rejoices, thinks, feels affection, finds food delicious and feels softness. The property that makes human beings human is something independent of the body. It is the human soul that enjoys looking at a landscape, that feels compassion towards a tiny sparrow, that realizes that a meal tastes delicious, that enjoys listening to beautiful music, that can make difficult decisions, that can think and discover the truth, that can investigate its own identity and arrive at conclusions.
The physicist Erwin Schrödinger describes how the material body cannot be the explanation of the perceptual world:
. . . recall the bright, joyful eyes with which your child beams upon you when you bring him a new toy, and then let the physicist tell you that in reality nothing emerges from these eyes; in reality their only objectively detectable function is, continually to be hit by and to receive light quanta. In reality! A strange reality! Something seems to be missing in it.113
Is it logical to assume that the ability to make judgments and decisions, and emotions such as joy, excitement and disappointment are the result of the activities of the neurons in the brain? Can unconscious atoms combine to know about rejoicing, sorrow, flavor, friendship and the joys of good conversation? Can unconscious atoms combine to give rise to scientists who investigate the brain, interpret their findings, struggle to understand consciousness and strive to come up with an answer? Is it just the electrical signals traveling through the brain that make human beings human and permit them to perceive the external world?
Which neuron in the brain decides on something, feels longing or sympathy, or is amazed at a sunset’s beauty? If consciousness does all these things, then in which neuron in the brain does consciousness lie? Where is it? Which chemical reaction gives rise to consciousness? What chemical reaction decides that a person should like apples, but dislike spinach? If everything is in the brain, which neuron thinks? Which one decides? Where is the neuron that is excited by its decisions?
Materialists have to answer all these questions. If they arrived at the conclusion that “Consciousness is the source of everything,” then they must indicate where in the brain consciousness resides. If everything consists of matter, they should be able to do that. If they cannot, it means that human beings do not consist of a collection of neurons and atoms. Consciousness does not reside in some secret region of the brain. Neither is it concealed anywhere in the body. It is something beyond all materialist concepts. Man is metaphysical, and the soul he possesses makes him human. This soul belongs to Allah alone.
The famous Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, a colleague of Sigmund Freud, made the following statement on the subject:
All science however is a function of the soul, in which all knowledge is rooted. The soul is the greatest of all cosmic miracles, it is the conditio sine qua non [an essential condition] of the world as an object. It is exceedingly astonishing that the Western world (apart from very rare exceptions) seems to have so little appreciation of this being so.114
Man is an entity with the Spirit of Allah. That spirit is eternal. Man will leave his body behind in this world after death, but the soul will continue to live forever in the Hereafter.
With the soul he possesses, man is an entity endowed with such concepts as honor, love, respect, friendship, loyalty and honesty, and is able to hold and oppose ideas. In the same way that none of the cells in your fingertip is able to think and make decisions, or grieve or rejoice, the neurons in the brain, which have a similar structure, have no means of possessing metaphysical attributes. This is one fact that everyone can clearly understand, without the need for scientific proof.
Indeed, materialists are also aware of this. But their materialist prejudices and their error of thinking that science consists solely of matter impel them to distort the truth. Yet what they maintain in the name of materialism indicates a serious logical collapse. There is no difference between someone who says “Our thoughts are the product of atoms” and someone else who believes his dreams to be real or who makes up unbelievable stories and then believes them. However, rather than admit the existence of Allah, materialists are prepared to risk this humiliating state of affairs.
The fact is that man is an entity who perceives with the soul bestowed on him by Allah, who thinks with that soul, who speaks with it, and rejoices, feels happiness, takes decisions, rules nations and governs societies with it. Man is an entity with the soul given by Allah, and that soul is eternal. The body is merely a vehicle in this world. Man will leave the body behind when he dies, yet the soul will continue. He will now reside either in Paradise or in Hell.
He [Allah] is the Raiser of ranks, the Possessor of the Throne, He sends the Spirit by His command to whichever of His servants He wills so that he may warn mankind about the Day of Meeting: the Day when they will issue forth and when not one thing about them will be hidden from Allah. “To whom does the kingdom belong today? To Allah, the One, the Conqueror! Every self will be repaid today for what it earned. Today there will be no injustice. Allah is swift at reckoning.” (Surah Ghafir, 15-17)
The Only Absolute Being Is Our Lord Almighty, Allah
Throughout history, materialists have enthusiastically embraced the deception that “Matter is absolute” in order to deny that our Almighty Lord is the Creator and sovereign of all things. That is why explanations regarding the essence of matter are so important, because this information proves the falseness of this deception which has been maintained for so many years. Understanding that we can have direct experience of only a copy of matter, and that man is not simply a collection of flesh and bone, enables us to grasp the fact that we are also possessed of consciousness and a soul. It is our Almighty Lord Who creates this soul and consciousness in man, who is in turn a servant belonging to Allah. Our Almighty Lord, Allah, is therefore the sole Entity with dominion over the Earth and the heavens.
This fact will awaken enormous amazement in the face of the might and dominion of Allah and the perfection in His creation. Allah creates the boundless universe, with its countless flawless details, both materially on the outside and also separately in the brain of every human being. All the details in the universe are flawlessly and constantly brought into being as phantoms within the human brain. So perfect and flawless is this creation of Allah’s that it appears exceedingly realistic and convincing right down to the tiniest details, even though it is obvious that it actually consists of a dream.
There are no flaws or defects in our Lord’s creation. People who fail to use their reasoning powers are taken in by this flawlessness and imagine that they have direct experience of matter, and never doubt, even for a single moment, that the images they see are illusory.
The soul observes all these things. The billions of people on Earth observe images that are shown to them at every moment. They feel joy, reflect and take decisions in the light of these images. But it is only thanks to the soul that they are able to do this.
Our human soul is a part of our Lord’s Spirit that He breathes into us. This makes it clear that He is the sole absolute Entity, the true Lord of every soul. The might and power of Allah pervade all things and all places. All the entities we perceive and imagine to be material are actually images created by our Lord. And the beings created from His Own Spirit observe those images.
In one verse Allah reveals that:
Allah, there is no deity 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. His Footstool encompasses the heavens and the Earth and their preservation does not tire Him. He is the Most High, the Magnificent.(Surat al-Baqara, 255)
In order for people to grasp the marvelous nature of our Lord’s creation and the true essence of the world they perceive, they need to pray to Allah. Because it is He Who creates all these things, and only He can give people an understanding of this, at the time of His choosing.
Peter Russell is one of those scientists who have realized this fact:
I think my reality is the only reality. Sometimes, however, I recognize there could be another way of seing things, but I don’t know what it is. I can’t make the shift on my own; I need help. But where do I go for help? Other people are as likely to be caught in this thought system as I am. The place to go for help is deep within, to that level of consciousness that lies beyond the materialistic mindset—to the God within. I have to ask God for help. I have to pray.115
Someone who realizes the truth about matter will have definitively understood that no other entity apart from Allah has any power at all. That understanding will lead the individual to adopt Allah as his only Deity and to turn to Him alone. Awareness of the soul’s existence invalidates all those materialist claims that prevent people from being His servants. A person will clearly see that there is no other entity apart from Allah that can possibly be adopted as Divine. He will therefore not believe any of the materialist accounts set out before him regarding the life of this world.
That understanding in turn will bring an end to all passionate devotion to this world, to any thirst for material gain, pride and self-interest. He will understand that greed, self-aggrandizement, and the search for material things lose meaning in a world where everything is an illusion. Anyone will then make attaining the approval of Allah and the Paradise, in which he hopes to spend his eternal life, as his sole objectives. The sublime existence of Allah enfolds everywhere and everything. All details, great or small, that a person experiences in the life of this world are proofs of our Lord’s wisdom, might and artistry. However, people who materialist philosophy has deceived into believing that matter is the sole absolute entity look for some other, equally material entity to which they can ascribe all this perfection.
This arises from their failure to realize that they are living inside an illusion.
When matter is revealed as an illusion, we see clearly the existence of the soul. Allah is the only absolute Entity, Who pervades and enfolds all things and is unfettered by space and time. He reveals this in another verse:
Eyesight cannot perceive Him, but He perceives eyesight. . . . (Surat al-An‘am, 103)
Allah pervades our internal and external lives, our sight, our thoughts and all our being. We can do nothing, not even breathe, without His knowledge. Allah, the one absolute Entity, certainly knows everything there is to know about the world that He has created as an illusion, and about man, into whom He has breathed His Own Spirit.
This is a very simple matter for Allah. As we live our lives, and experience those perceptions we imagine to be “the external world,” it is not the illusory objects and other people that are closest to us, but rather our Lord.
In one verse Allah reveals that:
We created man and We know what his own self whispers to him. We are nearer to him than his jugular vein. (Surah Qaf, 16)
If someone believes that he has direct experience of the physical world and imagines that his own body is made up of matter alone, he falls into a serious error and fails to grasp this great truth. He imagines that Allah is up in the sky or somewhere else far removed from us (Surely He is beyond any such misconception) and fails to realize that Allah is actually closer to him than even his own body. However, once he realizes that he can never have direct contact with the outside world and must experience everything in his mind alone, then everything—the external world, his car, the Sun and stars he imagines to be so far away from him—will become as a garment that enfolds him, all on the same plane. Allah has completely enfolded him and is infinitely close to him—as He has revealed in the Qur’an:
If My servants ask you about Me, I am near. . . (Surat al-Baqara, 186)
It is essential that people live in this knowledge. Someone who is unaware of it will imagine that this transitory world, to which he has been sent solely for a test, is in fact the true life. He imagines that all his passions, expectations and pleasures need to be directed towards this world. A firm belief that one can experience matter directly may cause one to turn away from belief in Allah and to forget that we will be called into His Presence in the Hereafter. By imagining this world to be absolute and striving to obtain its imaginary delights, one may suffer terrible disappointment in the Hereafter. Allah has warned people of the truth of this:
What! Are they in doubt about the meeting with their Lord? What! Does He not encompass all things? (Surah Fussilat, 54)
How Does Someone Live Who Knows He Bears the Spirit of Allah?
The external world is created for us solely as an illusion, and we observe it through the soul, which in turn belongs to Allah. All who come to realize this will see that all created entities belong to Him and will seek to understand the wisdom in our Lord’s sublime creation. They will realize that the life of this world consists of a test presented through the images shown to them, and that their true life will be that in the eternal Hereafter. When they realize that this world consists of a transitory dream they will also abandon their devotion to this life, which has no material reality, and to the things of this world. They will direct their true love and devotion to our Almighty Lord, Who has endless power, the only true Lord of all, Whose existence pervades all things. They will see the illogicality of seeking after a mere illusion. They will instead seek to attain the approval of Allah, the true Lord of existence and eternity. They will understand that the love and approval, the mercy and Paradise of Allah are far too valuable to be exchanged for anything created in this world of illusion. Once they comprehend that fact, they will strive to attain the life of Paradise, with its infinite blessings, instead of being caught up in longing for the worthless worldly desires, seeking to gain advantages and resorting to oppression, cruelty and ruthlessness to that end.
They will seek to devote the brief life span allotted to them to exhibiting proper moral values and behaving in the finest manner possible. They will hope to attain the best of all things in the Hereafter and do all they can to have no regrets in that eternal life. The more they appreciate our Lord’s might, they will realize that Allah has created infinite blessings in Paradise, but infinite suffering in Hell.
For someone who understands that the whole world consists of shadow entities and that only our Almighty Lord has absolute existence, enjoyment of this world will lose all meaning. In the face of events he imagines to be the most frightening or distressing, that person’s entire perspective will change, because everything consists of illusory entities and events and created through our Lord’s will.
Just as the troubles, difficulties and woes in our dreams lose all significance when we awaken, the events, sorrows and troubles of this shadow world are similarly trivial. The life of this world is simply a part of the test created for us, and our responsibility is to demonstrate the moral virtues and good manners most pleasing to Allah in the face of these. In the Hereafter, the imaginary images created within this test will lose their meanings and importance. What remains will be the good works performed in order to obtain Allah’s approval. Whether or not a person realizes this now, when the life of the Hereafter begins, he will certainly understand that everything in the world consists of an illusion and that the reality is our Lord and the Hereafter created by Him.
This is revealed in a verse:
The life of this world is nothing but a game and a diversion. The abode of the Hereafter—that is truly Life, if they only knew. (Surat al-‘Ankabut, 64)
When one watches a television screen, one is aware that all the characters in it are entirely fictitious. There is no need to feel anger at what they do or sorrow at what happens to them. In the same way, one should not fall into a similar error in the life of this world. That is because, just like a television program, the life of this world consists of images laid out constantly before us. In the same way that someone who is dreaming becomes angry or is saddened by what befalls him in that dream, but realizes when he wakes that all this was completely illusory, the same applies to the life of this world. Sooner or later, either in this world or in the Hereafter, one will realize that one never has direct contact with the outside world, and that all one’s worries are completely meaningless.
These images are created solely as a test. What matters is to realize that they are indeed fictitious and to behave in a manner compatible with Allah’s approval and to live for that purpose. Allah has revealed in His verses that this world, consisting solely of images for us, has been created merely as a test:
To mankind, the love of worldly appetites is painted in glowing colors: women and children, and heaped-up mounds of gold and silver, and horses with fine markings, and livestock and fertile farmland. All that is merely the enjoyment of the life of this world. The best homecoming is in the Presence of Allah. (Surah Al ‘Imran, 14)
Know that the life of this world is merely a game and a diversion and ostentation and a cause of boasting among yourselves and trying to outdo one another in wealth and children: like the plant-growth after rain which delights the cultivators, but then it withers and you see it turning yellow, and then it becomes broken stubble. In the Hereafter, there is terrible punishment but also forgiveness from Allah and His good pleasure. The life of this world is nothing but the enjoyment of delusion. (Surat al-Hadid, 20)
The position of those who imagine that the life of this world is the genuine one is revealed in the Qur’an:
But the actions of those who disbelieve are like a mirage in the desert. A thirsty man thinks it is water but when he reaches it, he finds it to be nothing at all, but he finds Allah there. He will pay him his account in full. Allah is swift at reckoning. (Surat an-Nur, 39)
When people understand that the things they imagine they possess in this world are actually illusory, they will realize that they have harbored sorrows and desires for nothing. They have wasted their time and attached needless importance to material wants and desires. They will realize that the people they imagined to be so important are actually illusory entities and that their pride is meaningless. They will understand that all things must bow their heads to Allah, Who has created them all, and thus they will live happier, more peaceful lives. They will be freed from having to prove themselves to others, worrying about the kind of impression they give, and such negative emotions as hatred, anger and envy. Knowing that all things are an illusion, they will not compete with illusory entities or harbor hatred and enmity as a result. In an environment in which everyone has submitted to Allah alone, modesty, submission, affection, love and honesty will prevail.
Whether or not someone accepts this fact in this world, he will still see matters very clearly when he dies and is subsequently resurrected in the Hereafter. On that day, “sight is sharp” (Surah Qaf, 22), as Allah tells us in one verse. People will become much more aware of all things. If he has spent his life in this world pursuing illusory aims, he will wish he never lived there.
As revealed in another verse, people will have great regrets:
[He who is given his Book in his left hand will say,] “If only death had really been the end! My wealth has been of no use to me. My power has vanished.” (Surat al-Haqqa, 27-29)
Those who realize in this world that our Lord is the only absolute Entity will thus be saved from terrible regrets in the Hereafter. They will use the term allotted to them in earthly life to gain Allah’s approval and to live in the manner commanded by our Lord. They will see the meaninglessness of ascribing any importance to this world, and that the path to ease, comfort and happiness lies in living for Allah, without becoming caught up by earthly desires. This is a great blessing and easing of their burden. False desires that wear people down, false expectations and idols adopted in the false belief that they are divine (Surely Allah is beyond that) will all disappear entirely. People will realize that it is our Lord, the One and Only, Who pervades and enfolds all things. They will attain the greatest ease and safety by submitting to Him.
We are informed in one verse of the difference between those who adopt the false deities of this world and those who take Allah as their only Deity:
Allah has made a metaphor for them of a man owned by several partners in dispute with one another and another man wholly owned by a single man. Are they the same? Praise be to Allah! The fact is that most of them do not know. (Surat az-Zumar, 29)
It is of the greatest importance for someone who believes in Allah to know the true facts about matter and to reflect on them in depth. Someone who knows that Allah enfolds all things and all places will behave sincerely towards Him at every moment. He will know that he may face death at any time, that this world will come to an end, and that he will be confronted by the true life of the Hereafter. Knowing this and behaving accordingly is a great advantage that will bring infinite beauty and blessings, by the will of Allah.
The Real Nature of Matter and Vanishing Materialism
For a materialist, realizing that we can never experience the material world directly comes as a terrible disappointment. In a materialist’s distorted world view, it is alarming and worrying to realize that we are created with a soul bestowed on us by Allah and that the material world consists of images shown to that soul. That is because in the false religion of materialism, materialists worship matter (Surely Allah is beyond that) and believe that lack of purpose, lack of consciousness, and coincidences all manifest on Earth. To be able to oppose the fact that they were created, they deny that the universe has any beginning or end. They inexplicably espouse the error that the universe is eternal and timeless. They make the deceptive suggestion that unconscious processes explain the origins of the behavior of human beings, and birds, and worms, claiming that all these are the product of a material world. According to this distorted materialist perspective, in a human being’s internal world, there is no entity that perceives, thinks, and takes decisions. Everything is supposedly the result of the physical materials that constitute human beings, in other words, unconscious cells, organelles and atoms.
In short, there is no room for anything immaterial in the false world of materialism. The main reason for this materialist logic is the attempt to oppose belief in Allah and to avoid believing in Him and the Hereafter. The most important pretext and supposed evidence that materialists put forward to refute belief in the existence of Allah is the existence of matter. However, everything described throughout the course of this book reinforces the scientifically proven fact that matter, existing externally, is for us merely a copy. All this does away with greatest evidence at materialism’s disposal and manifestly eliminates it.
That is why the fundamental truth about matter is so alarming to materialists.
In the past, matter’s essential nature was a concept recognized and openly expressed by only a few thinkers and scientists. But it is now an irrefutable truth made this certain for the first time. Now raised with certain scientific proof, this subject is not something that even materialists can deny. In the light of the facts revealed by quantum physics, matter—materialists’ sole foundation—has been shown to be an illusion within the perceptual world created for man by Allah. What was formerly imagined to be the concrete basis of our entire existence, has suddenly become an abstract concept. Materialists’ greatest evidence, which they thought they could employ in the most powerful manner against belief in Creation, suddenly vanished in the light of these scientific discoveries.
It was not just atoms and molecules that were found to be illusory entities. So were houses, cars, giant ships, the sky, mountains, planets, space and even the human body itself.
The claim regarding matter, which materialists had adopted as their own deity (Surely Allah is beyond that), had finally come to an end.
Materialism was left with no evidence to support it. The existence of matter, from which materialists drew strength and in which they placed their trust in their struggle against religion, has now become inexplicable.
This is a glorious snare that Allah has laid for the deniers. The facts showed those who imagined that they could oppose Him that the false idols they so trusted as being unshakeable were all illusions. The claims of materialism, which they had imagined to be so powerful, are now openly contradicted by the eternal might and power of Allah. No doubt that all the snares that they themselves have set are now doomed to fail.
They plotted and Allah plotted. But Allah is the best of plotters. (Surah Al ‘Imran, 54)
Sooner or later materialists, who have lost all their foundations in the face of His glorious order, must face the life of the Hereafter that they once denied. And like all others, they will have to account for themselves in the Presence of Allah. In the Hereafter, any who adopted what is visible and tangible in the life of this world will realize that they have awakened from a dream and that they expended all their efforts for the sake of a dream. Yet the regret they feel in the Hereafter will be one from which there is no escape.
Allah tells us in the Qur’an that:
Arguing in it with one another, they will say, “By Allah, we were plainly misguided when we equated you [the liars] with the Lord of all the worlds. It was only the evildoers who misguided us, and now we have no one to intercede for us; we do not have a single loyal friend. If only we could have another chance, then we would be among the believer!” There is certainly a sign in that, yet most of them are not believers. (Surat ash-Shu‘ara’, 96-103)
So long as he remains in this world, a person still has the opportunity to see the truth and to turn to Allah. Having believed in materialism all one’s life does not mean that one must persist in that error until death. Espousing a philosophy that has been outworn, and expending one’s life in its pursuit is not behavior in which any rational person of good conscience can engage. The important thing is not to persist in this after seeing the truth and to grasp that truth, which in any case becomes crystal clear with death.
Darwin's Dilemma: The Soul
The Theory of Evolution Is Silenced by the Existence of the Human Soul
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, two biologists in Victorian England, claimed that all living species were descended from one another as a result of chance processes, and that they continued developing by those same changes until human beings finally emerged.
The first study on evolution by way of natural selection was jointly prepared by Darwin and Wallace. Instead of competing with one another on the subject of the theory of evolution, each admitted the other’s contribution to this fantastical theory. Wallace even supported Darwin’s theory of natural selection in his book entitled Darwinism.
The first study on evolution by way of natural selection was jointly prepared by Darwin and Wallace. Instead of competing with one another on the subject of the theory of evolution, each admitted the other’s contribution to this fantastical theory. Wallace even supported Darwin’s theory of natural selection in his book entitled Darwinism.
When he heard of the book, Darwin’s response was, “You should not speak of Darwinism for it can as well be called Wallacism.” 116
However, the two biologists were shortly to take different paths with regard to their illusory theory.
The theory of evolution maintains that living species descended from one another, with all their differing anatomical and physical characteristics, by way of natural selection—a chance and therefore unconscious process. According to this claim, life that began with a bacterium gave rise to the whole variety of more than a million life forms existing today. (For detailed information, see The Evolution Deceit by Harun Yahya.)
Darwin believed that the principle of natural selection did not account for only the emergence of morphological features such as toes or the nose, but that it also determined brain structure and therefore, mental capacities. In Darwin’s view, natural selection was the force that altered and developed human beings’ abilities in music, art and literature and which influenced their ability to think and take rational decisions. However, Wallace did not share that view. He thought that Darwin’s principles could account for fingers and toes or simpler features, but believed that it was impossible for superior human abilities such as mathematics and music to be the work of blind coincidence.
The main reason why Wallace opposed the idea that blind coincidence could be the source of a Mozart’s abilities was the element that can be described as “potential intelligence.” Wallace suggested that we imagine that we have taken a young member of Aborigines unable to read or write. Let us then educate that youngster in a modern state school in Rio, New York or Tokyo. There will of course be no difference between that youngster and children brought up in those cities. As Professor Vilayanur Ramachandran explained: “According to Wallace, this means that the aborigine or Cro-Magnon possesses a potential intelligence that vastly exceeds anything that he might need for coping with his natural environment. This kind of potential intelligence can be contrasted with kinetic intelligence, which is realized through formal education. But why the devil did this potential intelligence evolve? It couldn’t have arisen for learning Latin in English schools. It couldn’t have evolved for learning the calculus, even though almost anyone who tries hard enough can master it. What was the selection pressure for the emergence of these latent abilities?” 117Since Wallace believed that organisms evolved by being descended from one another via unconscious processes, he wanted to discover how this imaginary theory could account for the development of human intelligence. However, since such a thing never actually happened, he was unable to come up with any logic to back up that claim.
In Wallace’s words:
. . . when all modern writers admit the great antiquity of man, most of them maintain the very recent development of intellect, and will hardly contemplate the possibility of men equal in mental capacity to ourselves, having existed in prehistoric times.118
Ramachandran provides the following clarification:
Both the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon cranial capacities were actually larger than ours, and it’s not inconceivable that their latent potential intelligence may have been equal to or even greater than that of Homo sapiens.119
In fact, even Darwin openly admitted that his theory could not explain the development of human intellect, and stated that his theory could be deemed invalid for that very reason:
. . . as man differs so greatly in his mental power from all other animals, there must be some error in this conclusion [i.e., that man descended from some lower form]120That being so, what was the explanation for this major development that evolution could not account for? Wallace’s answer was this: It was done by Allah. According to him, human grace was an earthly expression of “Divine grace.” 121
At this point, there was a parting of the ways between Wallace and Darwin, who insisted that natural selection was the propulsive force of evolution and that even the most mysterious mental characteristics developed without being created by a Sublime Being. Darwin regarded Wallace’s claims as a grave threat to his own theory, and said this about natural selection in a letter he wrote to Wallace in 1869: “I hope that you have not murdered too completely your own and my child.” 122This conclusion Wallace reached was of course incompatible with the theory of evolution, launched in order to be able to deny the existence of Allah and which drew its strength from materialism. For that reason, Wallace’s ideas were swiftly swept under the carpet. Materialist circles needed to bring to the fore the idea that everything came into being through unconscious processes, and Darwin led the way in that regard.
The Lack of Evolutionary Evidence and the Biological Collapse of the Theory
Ever since the 19th century, materialists’ main focus has been propaganda on behalf of Darwin and Darwinism. In the 19th century, which was far more scientifically backward compared to today, it was easy to claim that natural selection gave rise to the development of all living species. The fossil strata had not been examined in depth, and the principles of genetics had not yet been discovered. It was not hard for Darwin and his supporters to distract people with imaginary scenarios given the relative ignorance, at that time. Yet even then, people were aware of the fact that human consciousness could not be explained in terms of evolution—as noted by Wallace, despite his being one of the founders of the theory of evolution. No mechanism that operated unconsciously could account for the existence of consciousness. Evolutionists maintained that events taking place by chance, and therefore permitting no room for consciousness, in some way gave rise to consciousness, awareness, and creativity.
Twentieth-century science also put an end to the theory of evolution in the fields of paleontology, biology and genetics. The theory’s lack of proof and invalidity has been made clear, and it has been proven that living things were created with all their complex structures.
For this, there was no logical explanation. The theory of evolution suffered a major surprise in the 20th century. First, paleontology declared that the missing intermediate-form fossils that Darwin had been sure would be discovered in the future did not exist in the geologic record. Almost every sedimentary stratum in the world had been excavated, yet none of the intermediate forms expected by Darwin and his supporters had been found.
A second surprise for the theory of evolution was the newly discovered science of genetics, which soon showed that life forms were far too complex and had structures that were far too stable to have come about by way of the natural selection envisaged by Darwin.
A second surprise for the theory of evolution was the newly discovered science of genetics, which soon showed that life forms were far too complex and had structures that were far too stable to have come about by way of the natural selection envisaged by Darwin.
Advances in science revealed that the cell was not a fluid-filled balloon, as Darwin had imagined, but an irreducibly complex structure consisting of many highly complex organelles and possessed of intelligent mechanisms.
The discovery of DNA represented perhaps one of the most lethal blows to the theory of evolution. This giant molecule, containing all the genetic information of living things, was far too complex to have developed by chance, and also had too delicate a structure to permit any change to take place within it. According to evolution, living things changed in their descent from one another by acquiring entirely new structures, organs, and features belonging to other life forms. The facts revealed by the science of genetics, however, showed that this could not happen in the manner claimed by Darwin. No scientist could dispute the complexity revealed by genetics.
Accordingly, Darwinists felt the need to concentrate on elements that might lead to alterations in the genetic structure. The only mechanism they could find for that purpose, in their own eyes at least, was mutations. They quickly adapted a new theory, neo-Darwinism, and claimed that the “mechanism” of mutations brought about genetic change.
However, these people—all of them scientists—interestingly ignored that 99% of mutations are harmful or even fatal to the organisms, while the other 1% have no effect at all. Even under controlled laboratory conditions, it was impossible to bestow new genetic information on organisms by way of mutations, much less to turn them into more advanced life forms. On the contrary, every mutation either deformed an organism or led to its death. It thus became obvious what kind of effect mutations would have in an uncontrolled natural environment.
150-million-year-old fossil Coelacanth
The conclusions revealed by paleontology and the facts demonstrated by genetics forced evolutionists to make constant new adjustments to their theories. Once genetics eliminated the possibility of evolution by means of natural selection, they put their hopes on mutations. And as paleontology revealed the truth about the fossil record, they resorted to the concept of “punctuated equilibrium.” All the undeniable evidence against evolution revealed by science left the theory of evolution with no explanations to offer and left it totally bankrupt. The new modifications made to the theory never led to the results evolutionists had hoped for, not a single piece of evidence supports evolution.
Every claim made by the theory was discredited. All the claims made by evolutionists were scientifically refuted. Yet evolutionists knew that one subject in particular demolished all their claims right from the outset, and they openly admitted it. This was “consciousness,” which Alfred Wallace described as being impossible to have developed by way of evolution, even as he proposed that very theory.
Consciousness Cannot Be Explained in Terms of Any Darwinist Claims
. . . In the physical realm, any theory of human evolution must explain how it was that an ape-like ancestor, equipped with powerful jaws and long, dagger-like canine teeth and able to run at speed on four limbs, became transformed into a slow, bipedal animal whose natural means of defense were at best puny. Add to this the powers of intellect, speech and morality, upon which we “stand raised as upon a mountain top” as Huxley put it; and one has the complete challenge to evolutionary theory.123 —Evolutionist science writer Roger Lewin
After Darwin, evolution’s proponents tried various explanations for the subject of consciousness, something which was utterly inexplicable in Darwin’s terms. They claimed that imaginary primitive humans had encouraged the evolution of the brain by establishing communication with one another and by beginning to hunt and use tools. They then maintained that with the supposed development of the brain, language developed and that the ability to speak gave rise to rational thought—the most important difference between the human and the other animals.
But these claims lacked any scientific foundation. The fossil record provided not a single finding that constituted evidence for any of them. Scientific research, and experiments regarding language and consciousness, eliminated any possibility that such developments could have occurred.
All Darwinists had to offer were claims, which in roughly the same manner as all evolutionist literature, were described in terms of a dynamic scenario, but which referred to no scientific evidence. Why? Because evolution never happened.
Despite being an evolutionist, Henry Gee, editor of the well-known magazine Nature, makes the following comments concerning the illogical nature of this evolutionist claim:
. . . the evolution of Man is said to have been driven by improvements in posture, brain size, and the coordination between hand and eye, which led to technological achievements such as fire, the manufacture of tools, and the use of language. But such scenarios are subjective. They can never be tested by experiment, and so they are unscientific. They rely for their currency not on scientific test, but on assertion and the authority of their presentation.124
In addition to being unscientific, this claim is logically inconsistent. Evolutionists maintain that the intelligence—which supposedly emerged by way of evolution—developed the use of tools, and that intelligence then developed thanks to the use of those tools!
Evolutionists need to be able to account for the contradiction inherent in this chicken-and-the-egg scenario. This only emphasizes the dichotomy into which Wallace fell as he proposed his theory of evolution, but it still applies to the theory of evolution today.
Phillip Johnson, one of the most influential critics of Darwinism, writes on the subject:
A theory that is the product of a mind can never adequately explain the mind that produced the theory. The story of the great scientific mind that discovers absolute truth is satisfying only so long as we accept the mind itself as a given. Once we try to explain the mind as a product of its own discoveries, we are in a hall of mirrors with no exit.125
Robert Jastrow, Chairman of George Marshall Institute, comments:
It is hard to accept the evolution of the human eye as a product of chance; it is even harder to accept the evolution of human intelligence as the product of random disruptions in the brain cells of our ancestors.126
Darwinists must have realized that their claims regarding the evolution of human consciousness, based solely upon interpretation, were inadequate, inasmuch as they felt the need to dress the matter up with scientific terminology. They therefore suggested a concept they called “the phenomenon of emergence,” which, they claimed, played a role.
According to Darwinists, a pure chance phenomenon could lead to the unexpected emergence of something else. They claimed that water was a classic scientific example. On their own, hydrogen and oxygen do not bear any water-like characteristics, but the water molecules that emerge when these chemicals are combined in a specific ratio exhibit properties that could not have been predicted beforehand, from either gas. Evolutionists sought to apply this chemical observation to the subject of human consciousness, claiming that some random change in the chemistry of the brain lay at the root of human consciousness. This hypothesis—completely untestable and for which there is no scientific evidence—was a clear indication of the despairing position in which they found themselves. This exceedingly illogical claim is of course technically impossible. As everyone is perfectly well aware, human consciousness is not a phenomenon linked to physical laws in the same way that water is. The way you can imagine the appearance, smell and taste of a strawberry or the faces and voices of your relatives as if they were present is not, of course, the result of the atoms in your brain producing something that was hitherto unknown. The perception of all these things happens of your volition, and is something you are thinking about at that moment. It is impossible for physical atoms and molecules with their physical natures to combine in different ways to produce the metaphysical concept of “consciousness.”
As the philosopher and writer Christian de Quincey states, “Scientists are in the strange position of being confronted daily by the indisputable fact of their own consciousness, yet with no way of explaining it.”127
The evolutionist scientist J. Hawkes says this in an article published in the New York Times Magazine:
I find it difficult to believe that the extravagant glories of birds, fish, flowers and other living forms were produced solely by natural selection; I find it incredible that human consciousness was such a product. How can man’s brain, the instrument which created all the riches of civilization, which served Socrates, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, and Einstein, have been brought into being by a struggle for survival . . . ? 128
This is merely a Darwinist dream, one that they intensely long to be proved true. Consciousness can definitely not be explained in terms of the ridiculous and unproven claims of evolution.
Could an entity who enjoys the rhythm of the music, enjoys a meal or else finds it lacking in flavor, loves and feels affection for another person, who investigates its own identity, who examines its own brain in the laboratory, makes discoveries, solves problems, rejoices in its successes, composes and writes books, have possibly come into being as the result of unconscious coincidences? What random chemical event could teach a human being to behave properly, to be considerate of the welfare of others? As a result of what random phenomenon can a human being possess the ability to learn something, remember it, teach it to others and to rule nations, to rejoice, grieve, become emotional, surprise, worry or make plans? What unconscious phenomenon could make human beings capable of taking instant and logical decisions in moments of difficulty? Could the unconscious atoms in the brain possibly turn an animal into a human who constructs skyscrapers, makes airplanes, manufactures computers, voyages into space by discovering and solving mathematical formulae and who designs robots resembling himself?
How could a bacterium have developed into human beings who have founded glorious civilizations all over the world and produced such extraordinary technologies?
Evolutionary theoreticians need to answer all these questions, and more. They must explain how coincidences and random, unconscious effects gave rise to consciousness. They should account for how unconscious events behaved in a manner superior to consciousness itself and exhibited more intent than many a conscious entity. If evolution truly took place, they would first have to come up with supporting scientific evidence and then resolve all these illogicalities. But have evolutionists been able to bring a scientific explanation to bear? Do they have a solution to the dilemma of how unconscious events bring about consciousness? Have any of these questions been explained in the countless evolutionist books that have been written, in countless evolutionist articles and conferences? No!
All evolutionists can do is to list their various claims, adorn these with fine words, avoid producing any evidence, and use long but hollow words to indoctrinate as many others as possible with the idea that man is essentially an animal. In the same way that they cannot produce any scientific evidence, so they are unable to resolve the accompanying logical confusion. Consciousness is one of those proofs that demolish the theory of evolution, a definitive and irrefutable fact that leaves Darwinists in a state of utter despair. The lies that Darwinists have made about matter cannot be applied to the subject of consciousness. This theory, developed on the basis of the existence of solely matter, is refuted in the face of this intangible evidence. This lie, launched in order to deny the existence of Allah, has been demolished by consciousness, one of the supreme works of Allah. In one verse, He tells us that:
They concocted their plots, but their plots were with Allah, even if they were such as to make the mountains vanish. (Surah Ibrahim, 46)
Are Darwinists Aware That They Have Souls?
Modern science has confirmed that human intelligence does not stem from exchanges between brain cells, as materialists long maintained. To put it another way, there is a presence in each human body that is not the product of that body’s functions and has no corporeal nature. The theory of evolution—the product of materialist philosophy that accepts no accounts apart from the absolute existence of matter—is at a total loss in the face of the human soul, which lacks any material existence.
To remind you, not one single evolutionist claim regarding the development of life forms has ever been proven, nor has evidence ever been produced for any of them. The theory of evolution has merely resorted to speculations about natural history, employed false evidence and ignored the scientific and paleontological facts that prove that species never evolved. It has tried to mislead people by portraying fossil specimens as intermediate forms—propaganda whose invalidity has since been realized—and even resorted to hoaxes to that end. (For detailed information see The Transitional Form Dilemma by Harun Yahya.)
Evolutionists have countless scenarios and tall tales regarding the supposed evolution of living things. Yet not a single one of these has been scientifically proven, even while science and technology have clearly declared the impossibility of such evolution.
Among these insoluble dilemmas facing the theory of evolution, what makes the subject of consciousness special is the way that evolutionists have been unable to invent any scenarios on the subject, much less explain it in terms of any physical evidence. Advanced scanning devices, the products of modern technology, have dashed materialists’ expectations of any region or process in the brain that gives rise to intelligence. No materialist account of human intelligence has been produced.
The reason why materialist mindsets engage in such quests is the failure to understand the true concept of consciousness. Failing to understand that they have a soul, they do not act in the awareness of that fact—which is the sole reason for their espousal of Darwinism. Were they aware of the extraordinary nature of their own consciousness—an entirely metaphysical reality—they would realize that they possess a soul and it would be impossible for them to be Darwinists.
Darwinists maintain that the human eye’s irreducible complexity evolved by chance, and that human beings also developed their vision by chance. They regard human beings, who see colors, are able to perceive their surroundings and to interpret them, as the end product of coincidental interactions between cells. They claim that the cells of the eye catching the light outside and the existence of the brain are enough to let us perceive a brightly colored world. Yet they fail to understand that this organ must open and close, detect and perceive images, make conscious decisions of where to look and, in short, behave in accordance with the dictates of the soul.
No Darwinist admits to sensing the consciousness within him. It is impossible to feel it and still remain a Darwinist. It is impossible to claim that this consciousness within consists solely of a collection of cells that reached this level by developing from a bacterium and that everything one possesses and perceives is the product of unconscious coincidences. It is impossible to maintain this with a normal conscience and consciousness. Darwinists are unaware that inside them is an entity that sees, thinks, reasons, interprets, loves, rejoices and grieves. The moment they do become aware of it, they immediately abandon ascribing divine powers to matter.
Our ability to recognize someone approaching and being delighted to see them are no longer matters involving science. They are facts that go beyond physics and cannot be explained in terms of any physical or material structure. It is impossible for anyone aware of the consciousness inside them to claim that matter is the absolute be-all and end-all. For that reason, Darwinists have developed a completely separate conceptual structure, and mode of perception. There is no doubt that it is Allah Who best knows the truth of this.
Allah has told us in the Qur’an that even if they witness miracles, such people will still fail to believe:
Even if We sent down angels to them, and the dead spoke to them, and We gathered together everything in front of them right before their eyes, they would still not believe unless Allah willed. The truth is that most of them are ignorant. (Surat al-An‘am, 111)
For those who think in a normal way, it is a simple matter to acknowledge the “I” that feels and perceives the consciousness within them and to understand that they possess a consciousness that lies outside the brain. But since Darwinists have an entirely different way of thinking, they are unable to see the existence of a soul beyond matter, or the consciousness that belongs to them.
It is easy to observe this in any Darwinist. A special system of thinking that operates in a different way thus makes Darwinists reject any accounts apart from matter. However, anyone with a normal, healthy awareness can easily see that the world is an ensemble of perceptions, and that the “I” who perceives this is different from the light outside, the brain, ear, eye and electrical signals. External light of a certain wavelength may cause the color red that we see, but there must also be an explanation of the “I” that realizes it is red and determines it to be so. A rational person will immediately conclude that all such perceptions belong to the soul, because such a person will be aware of the consciousness he possesses, the awareness he refers to as “me.” Such a person can easily see the illogicality and invalidity of all materialist accounts, and will immediately realize the great error that Darwinism is.
Not being deceived by Darwinist propaganda requires that one take none of these claims seriously, because those people who make such claims have a different conception. One convincing proof of this is the way that the same materialist propaganda has persisted without interruption, even though it is known to be unscientific since the beginning of the 20th century—since quantum physics’ discovery of matter’s true essence. Matter, on which foundation their theories and philosophies were based, has disappeared, but this has still brought no new realization to Darwinist and materialist circles.
This may be a punishment inflicted on them by our Lord in return for their denial of Him. Allah may have withheld their attribute of being entities possessed of a soul for as long as they deny their own existence as eternal souls. No doubt that Allah knows best. In one verse He tells us that:
Do not be like those who forgot Allah, so He made them forget themselves. Such people are the deviators. (Surat al-Hashr, 19)
For that reason, it is a grave error for anyone who has understood the true nature of matter and who has realized the “self” to be deceived by Darwinist fictions or to admit that any hollow materialist claims might be true. Anyone who can see the evidence of the soul they possess and realize the existence of an Almighty and All-Powerful Creator of all things, will become an entity with superior capacities to reason, too elevated to be taken in by Darwinist deceptions. By means of it, such a person appreciates Allah’s supreme might and knows that he has an eternal soul created out of nothingness. He is amazed at the vivid, matchless world that his soul is made to perceive—the artistry of Allah Who created it as an intensely amazing illusion. He also knows that this world is not the true home of his eternal soul and that he must strive to attain that true home, as promised by Allah.
The true abode of the soul is the Hereafter, which has been created for all souls, for all the human beings who have ever lived. Humans will be confronted by infinite blessings or suffering in the Hereafter. The life of this world, which consists solely of images, is a place of testing for that eternal life. Whether a person will live amid eternal blessings, or whether he will be exposed to suffering, will be determined by the moral values and manners he displays and the deeds he does in this world. Virtue and good deeds are possible through sincere belief in Allah and adherence to the Qur’an.
Each and every one of you will return to Him. Allah’s promise is true. He brings creation out of nothing and then regenerates it so that He can repay with justice those who believed and did right actions. Those who disbelieved will have a drink of scalding water and a painful punishment because of their disbelief. (Surah Yunus, 4)
The Perception of Time and the Fact of Destiny
Our Life Spans Are Simply a Perception
For the time we spend in this world, we make comparisons, thinking about what we did yesterday and accordingly making plans for the morrow. We think about what happened ten years ago, believe that time has passed and we have grown older. What gives rise to this belief is simply the comparisons we make between those previous moments and the present one.
If you were watching television before opening this book, you compare the time when you were watching television with the time when you are reading and imagine that time has passed between the two events. You refer to when you were watching television as “the past,” imagining there has been a passage of time between the two events. In fact, the time you were watching television is information stored in your memory. You compare “the present,” when you are reading this book, with the information in your memory, and perceive this interval as “time.” The fact is, however, that there is only the present moment in which you are living. When you make no comparison with recollections in your memory, then no concept of time remains.
The well-known physicist John Barbour makes this definition of time:
Time is nothing but a measure of the changing positions of objects. A pendulum swings, the hands on a clock advance.129
Time, therefore, consists of a comparison between various perceptions that arise in the brain. A study of people suffering from the memory loss known as anterograde amnesia makes it easier to see that time is nothing more than a human perception. Such people lose all their short-term memory, they are unable to remember what happened before, and are therefore unaware whether there’s been any interval between two events. This is one further proof that time exists solely as a perception.
Since the events occurring in our daily lives are shown to us in a specific sequence, we subdivide time into the past, present and future. But in fact, the idea of a progression from the past to a future is mere conditioning. If we watched the information in our memories in the same way that we watch a film run backwards, then for us the past would be the future, and the future would be the past. This shows that time is not absolute, but forms in line with our perception.
The famous physicist Roger Penrose makes the following comment:
I think there’s always something paradoxical about the way we seem to perceive time to pass and the way physics describes time. And partly it’s a question of is there a clear temporal order of things in our perceptions, or do we somehow put lots of things together and form pictures of things . . .130
The sequencing we perform in our own minds between events that we recall gives rise to what we refer to as past, present and future. This, however, is a decision we make of our own will. François Jacob, French biologist and Nobel laureate, makes this comparison:
Films played backward, make it possible for us to imagine a world in which time flows backwards. A world in which milk separates itself from the coffee and jumps out of the cup to reach the milk-pan; a world in which light rays are emitted from the walls to be collected in a trap (gravity center) instead of gushing out from a light source; a world in which a stone slopes to the palm of a man by the astonishing cooperation of innumerable drops of water making it possible for the stone to jump out of water. Yet, in such a world in which time has such opposite features, the processes of our brain and the way our memory compiles information, would similarly be functioning backwards.131
This all goes to show that the concepts of past and future are concerned with how we perceive our memories. The truth is that we have no means of knowing how time passes or does not pass. In the same way that we can never have direct experience of the images we see, so we can never know for sure whether we are exposed to time and, if we are, how it functions, because time is merely a mode of perception.
The fact that time is a perception was confirmed with the general theory of relativity proposed by Albert Einstein. In his book The Universe and Dr. Einstein, Lincoln Barnett writes:
Along with absolute space, Einstein discarded the concept of absolute time—of a steady, unvarying inexorable universal time flow, streaming from the infinite past to the infinite future. Much of the obscurity that has surrounded the Theory of Relativity stems from man’s reluctance to recognize that a sense of time, like sense of colour, is a form of perception. Just as space is simply a possible order of material objects, so time is simply a possible order of events. The subjectivity of time is best explained in Einstein’s own words. “The experiences of an individual,” he says, “appear to us arranged in a series of events; in this series the single events which we remember appear to be ordered according to the criterion of ‘earlier’ and ‘later.’ There exists, therefore, for the individual, an I-time, or subjective time. This in itself is not measurable.” 132
In Barnett’s words, Einstein shows that “space and time are forms of intuition, which can no more be divorced from consciousness than can our concepts of colour, shape, or size.” According to the general theory of relativity, “time has no independent existence apart from the order of events by which we measure it.”133
Since time is a perception, it is also a relative concept that depends on the perceiver. The speed at which time passes varies according to the reference we use to measure it. There is no natural clock in the human body to confirm the passage of time with absolute accuracy. As Lincoln Barnett has stated, “Just as there is no such thing as colour without an eye to discern it, so an instant or an hour or a day is nothing without an event to mark it.”134
When we are left in a closed room where we cannot know the time and cannot see the rising and setting of the Sun, we can never determine how fast time goes by nor how long we remain there. What makes us think a specific amount of time has gone by is nothing more than the rising and setting of the Sun and the movement of the watches on our wrists. When these are removed, anything we say about the time we imagine has passed must be conjectural and subjective—belonging to ourselves alone. For example, time goes by quickly for someone taking an exam in a limited space of time. Yet the same amount of time seems very long to that person’s friend waiting outside.
If time were an absolute reality, then it would not be a variable concept, determined by our perceptions.
According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the speed of time changes according to the velocity of a body and its distance from the center of gravity. As velocity rises, time contracts and is compressed, in such a way as to run slower and eventually approach the point of stopping altogether.
According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the speed of time changes according to the velocity of a body and its distance from the center of gravity. As velocity rises, time contracts and is compressed, in such a way as to run slower and eventually approach the point of stopping altogether.
To use an example cited by Einstein, one of a pair of twins remains on Earth while the other heads out into outer space at a speed near that of light. When the traveling twin returns to Earth, he will find himself much younger than his brother. The reason is that time flows more slowly for the brother traveling at a high velocity.
The same example can also be considered with regard to a father traveling in a rocket moving at roughly 99% of the speed of light and his son who stays on Earth. According to Einstein, if the father was 27 years old when he set out and his son three, when the father comes back to the Earth 30 years later (in Earth time), the son will be 33 years old, but his father will be only 30. 135
The fact that time is relative affects not only the slowing or acceleration of clocks, but the entire material system, right down to the level of subatomic particles. In an environment in which time is foreshortened, processes such as the heartbeat, cell division and the activities of the brain take place more slowly. A person is thus able to continue going about his daily life without realizing the slowing down of time.
The particle physicist Dr. Jim al-Khalili made the following comments on a radio program:
Both Einstein’s Theories of Relativity say that travelling to the future is allowed; in fact, we’ve proven it experimentally. One way is to travel very fast, so you head off in a rocket, close to the speed of light and come back again. Because you’ve travelled very fast, your clocks will have run more slowly and so, if you’ve been away for one year according to your clock, maybe ten years have gone by on Earth. So, in essence you’ve travelled nine years into the future. Another way to travel to the future is to orbit a massive star. If you do it for a year, again, you may come back to find again that ten years have elapsed on Earth. So either way, time travel to the future is possible.136
Al-Khalili explains the concept of time:
This would imply that the past, present and future all exist. There is no present moment to distinguish past from future. All times co-exist, time just is. And so the future is already out there. The only way to understand this was to link the three dimensions of space with the one dimension of time to what became known as four-dimensional space/time.137
The passage of time is merely a sensation created for us. Since we perceive it in this way, we think that what we do takes place within a temporal process. The fact is that we always live in the present “moment.” The concept of passing time is illusory.
Mathematical physicist Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford has won countless awards for his work on perception. He gave this reply to a question by the host on a radio program:
Physicist: We have this subjective feeling, that time goes by. But physicists would argue this is just an illusion.Roger Penrose: Yes. I think physicists would agree that the feeling of time passing is simply an illusion, something that is not real. It has something to do with our perceptions. 138
The way that such a seemingly objective factor operates as a perception in our minds and how all times exist within one single time are without doubt beyond our comprehension. We can only understand as much as Allah reveals to us. We can only know as much as He shows us. No doubt that it is an easy matter for Allah to create time as a perception and to give rise to past, present and future within a concept which actually does not exist. That is because Allah is beyond time. He creates time, but is not subject to it. All events we perceive as past or future already exist in the memory of Allah. They are all created in a single moment. Therefore, all events belonging to the future have in fact been created at the same moment, and exist now. But since we are subject to time, we are as yet unable to see them.
All events we perceive as the past—as when you received a report card from school or your first driving lesson—are also contained within the infinite memory of Allah, and even a stone you will trip over in the future as you walk along the road is determined in His memory. That is because Allah has created all events within a single moment.
Canon David Brown makes this statement:
God is in fact outside time, so there’s no “before” for God. He’s present with each bit of our temporal story . . . 139
Allah sees and knows every circumstance of every entity. It is He Who creates them all. Every meter a person travels, the images he encounters and the time to which he is subject are all known to and controlled by Allah. In one verse, He informs us that:
You do not engage in any matter or recite any of the Qur’an or do any action without Our witnessing you while you are occupied with it. Not even the smallest speck eludes your Lord, either on Earth or in heaven. Nor is there anything smaller than that, or larger, which is not in a Clear Book. (Surah Yunus, 61)
Space, Like Time, Is Also a Perception
In proposing his theory, Einstein regarded the speed of light as a universal constant. No matter how fast you may go, the speed of light always remains constant. Even if you travel at a speed approaching 99% of that of light, light will still travel at 186,282 miles (299,791 kilometers) per second. It is impossible to match that speed. According to Einstein’s calculations, time decelerates as the speed of the observer increases, and space compresses according to the direction of travel. These concepts, which change according to the speed of light, prove that they are not absolute because they vary depending on the individual.
Peter Russell describes:
. . . however fast you are moving you will always measure the speed of light to be 186.282 miles per second—just as Michelson and Morley had found. Even if you were to travel at 186,281 miles per second, light would not pass by a mere 1 mile per second faster; it would still zoom by at 186,282 miles per second. You would not have caught up with light by even the tiniest amount.This goes totally against common sense. But in this instance it is common sense that is wrong. Our mental models of reality have been derived from a lifetime’s experience of a world where velocities are far below the speed of light. At speeds close to that of light, reality is very different.140
As the speed of the observer increases, so time decelerates, and space shrinks in the direction of travel. Einstein showed that what we regard separately, as space and time, are components of a space-time continuum. Therefore, space and time have been created as directly dependent on our perception.
Einstein showed that what we regard as space and time are actually part of a space-time whole. Therefore, time and space are directly created as perceptions and become part of a world that is experienced relatively. The perceptions of time and space are necessary to form an image of the world in the mind. Yet when we claim that these represent the true reality, we are mistaken, because we can never have direct experience of the true concept of space outside.
Fred Alan Wolf makes the following comment:
According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, matter cannot exist independent of space and time. If any one of the three—matter, space, or time—is absent, they all are. Space is necessary in order for matter to exist; matter is necessary in order for time to exist; and time is necessary in order for space to exist. They are codependent.So, if time is just some form of a dream, an illusion, as many philosophers have speculated, then so are space and matter. Yet from the standard or Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, we understand that matter cannot exist without an observer of matter.141
The fact that matter can be perceived only through our senses and in other words, is a shadow entity, again does away with the concept of space as a material concept. We perceive space as outside us, but it is totally inside the brain when we remember any place. In fact, when looking at and considering somewhere we imagine to lie outside us, the concept of space again arises solely inside the brain. The room we imagine to be standing in is an illusion forming inside our brain, a waking dream.
Peter Russell summarizes this mode of perception:
Einstein’s work also revealed that space and time are not absolutes. They vary according to the motion of the observer. If you are moving rapidly past me, and we both measure the distance and time between two events—a car traveling from one end of a street to another, say—then you will observe the car to have traveled less distance in less time than I observe. Conversely, from your point of view, I am moving rapidly past you, and in your frame of reference, I will observe less space and time than you do. Weird? Yes. And almost impossible for us to conceive of. Yet numerous experiments have shown it to be true. It is our common-sense notions of space and time that are wrong. Once again, they are constructs in the mind, and do not perfectly model what is out there.142
Einstein went even further, showing that matter was actually a form of energy. His mathematical formula for this was the famous E=mc2.143 An entity with mass appears solely as a form of energy. Peter Russell has made this statement:
Even the notion of mass is questionable. In his General Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein showed that mass and acceleration are indistinguishable. A person in an elevator feels lighter when the elevator accelerates downwards, and heavier when it decelerates to a halt. This is no illusion, scales would also show your weight to have changed. What we experience as mass is the resistance of the ground beneath our feet to our otherwise free fall towards the center of the Earth. According to Einstein, we are being continually decelerated, and interpret that as mass. An astronaut in orbit experiences no mass—until, that is, he bumps into the wall of the spacecraft and experiences a temporary deceleration.144
The Relativity of Time Revealed in the Qur’an
The relativity of time, discovered by 20th-century science, was revealed 1,400 years ago in the Qur’an.
For example, Allah emphasizes in several verses that the life of this world is very brief. Our Lord has informed us that the average human life span is as brief as “an hour of a single day”:
On the Day He calls you, you will respond by praising Him and think that you have only tarried a very short time. (Surat al-Isra’, 52)
On the day We gather them together—when it will seem if they had tarried no more than an hour of a single day—they will recognize one another. . . (Surah Yunus, 45)
In some verses, Allah reveals that time is much shorter than people imagine:
He will ask, “How many years did you tarry on the Earth?” They will say, “We tarried there for a day or part of a day. Ask those able to count!” He will say, “You tarried there for only a little while, if you did but know!” (Surat al-Muminun, 112-114)
In other verses of the Qur’an, it is revealed that time passes at different speeds in different dimensions. For example, it is stated that one day in the Sight of Allah is equal to one thousand human years. (Surat al-Hajj, 47)
Other verses on this subject read as follows:
The angels and the Spirit ascend to Him in a day whose length is fifty thousand years. (Surat al-Ma‘arij, 4)
He directs the whole affair from heaven to Earth. Then it will again ascend to Him on a Day whose length is a thousand years by the way you measure. (Surat as-Sajda, 5)
The Companions of the Cave, a group of believers to whom Allah refers in the Qur’an, were kept in a profound slumber for around 300 years. When He later woke them, these people thought that a very short period of time had elapsed, and were unable to estimate for how long they had slept:
So We sealed their ears with sleep in the cave for a number of years. Then We woke them up again so that we might see which of the two groups would better calculate the time they had stayed there. (Surat al-Kahf, 11-12)
That was the situation when we woke them up so they could question one another. One of them asked, “How long have you been here?” They replied, “We have been here for a day or part of a day.” They said, “Your Lord knows best how long you have been here.” . . . (Surat al-Kahf, 19)
In the following verse, Allah also reveals an important proof of the fact that time is essentially a psychological perception:
Or the one who passed by a town which had fallen into ruin? He asked, “How can Allah restore this to life when it has died?” Allah caused him to die a hundred years then brought him back to life. Then He asked, “How long have you been here?” He replied, “I have been here a day or part of a day.” He said, “Not so! You have been here a hundred years. Look at your food and drink—it has not gone bad—and look at your donkey so We can make you a Sign for all mankind. Look at the bones—how We raise them up and clothe them in flesh.” When it had become clear to him, he said, “Now I know that Allah has power over all things.” (Surat al-Baqara, 259)
These verses reveal that time is relative rather than absolute. It varies according to perception and the observer, and that fact was revealed 1,400 years ago in the Qur’an.
The Existence of Destiny and the Scientific Evidence
. . . Allah’s command is a pre-ordained decree. (Surat al-Ahzab, 49)
If all events are created in a single moment and if we observe these only within our perception of time, then we must conclude that there is a Creator Who knows all these events from the very beginning, Who is not subject to time, Who sees these things as we experience them and Who therefore created them.
This Creator, Who creates for us images, sounds and tastes—in short, the external world, as well as the perception of time—must be aware of the circumstances and existence of all that He has created, and must observe them at all moments. This Great Creator, Who causes us to perceive all these things and reveals them to our minds, must keep them under His control at all times. Allah, Lord of the worlds, the Sublime and Almighty, is the Creator of all things. The fact that He knows and creates the condition of all things shows us the fact of destiny.
A period of time lasting billions of years for us is but a “single moment” in the Sight of Allah. Something that for us will take place in the future is already over and done with in the Sight of Allah. We observe the future within the concept of time that we perceive. The fact is, however, that anything we need to wait for already exists in the Sight of Allah. All events that will take place in the future have already done so in the dimension of timelessness.
In the Sight of Allah, everything from the moment of the creation of the universe to the Last Day, when the universe will come to an end, is already over and finished with. One main reason why people are unable to understand this concept properly is that they are unaware of it. The fact is that events “that have not yet taken place” have simply not yet been experienced within our perceptual world.
Allah is unfettered by time and space. He creates time and space out of nothing. He has no need to wait in order to see the result of an event. Its beginning and end all take place in a single moment in His sight. The past and present are all laid out before Him and develop in the manner determined by Him.
In the sight of Allah, everything, from the moment of the creation of the universe right up to the Last Day when the universe will come to an end, has already taken place and is over and done with. Allah is unfettered by space and time. He is the Creator of space and time. All events are but “a single moment” in His sight. Past and future are always ready formed before Him and take place as determined by Him.
Dr. Jim al-Khalili described this fact during a program broadcast on BBC radio:
If you take this block of 4-D space/time literally, it means you have to abandon free will. It means not only is the future pre-ordained, but it’s already there, it’s already happened. There’s no point in making any decisions, whatever you do has already happened. If I choose to drop this stone into a pond, I think of it being my own free choice. But of course in 4-D space/time, I had no choice in dropping the stone; the splash is already there in the future, and so we lose all free will.145
Roger Penrose, a guest on the same program, drew the following conclusion from the data provided:
So this means that in a sense, the present, past and future are out there, and that also gives us a very deterministic view of the world. We have no control of what happens in the future because it’s all laid out.146
A human being witnesses the destiny determined for him throughout the course of his life. Every moment in the lives of everyone who has ever lived, and who will ever live in the future are all previously experienced in the Sight of Allah. All events written in the destinies of all things, not just human beings, but the animals, plants, planets and other entities—all exist in His “memory,” constantly and permanently. The workings of destiny is one of the manifestations of Allah’s name of Al-Hafeedh (the Preserver, the Guardian) and of His infinite might and greatness.
Fred Alan Wolf describes how someone’s past and future have been determined long beforehand:
Although a history depends on our observations of both the starting and finishing events, we remember the history as if we were aware of it while it was taking place.In other words, we seem to “live” the history as it happens. We make it a “living” story. We live in a river of time in which the source of the river (our past) and its final destination ahead of us (our future) already exist.147
İnsan sürekli olarak kendisini yaratan Allah'ın kontrolündedir ve O'nun kendisi için belirlediklerini yapmaktadır. Allah, bu gerçeği ayetinde şu şekilde bildirir:
A person is constantly under the control of Allah, our Creator, and does what He has determined for him. Allah reveals this fact in a verse:
Nothing occurs, either in the Earth or in yourselves, without its being in a Book before We make it happen. That is something easy for Allah. (Surat al-Hadid, 22)
Submission to Destiny
You should be aware that you are in a state of unconditional submission to your own destiny. No power other than Allah can alter this. Everything that you have experienced or will experience in future is set out in the Sight of Allah, and you have no control over your future. This book will leave your hands in a while, wrinkles will appear on your face in a few years’ time, and all the details of a film you will watch 15 years from now are all included in the knowledge of Allah. The people you will meet, how much money you will earn, which illnesses you will suffer, what you will rejoice over and how and where you will die—all this has already taken place in your own destiny.
The only reason why you do not know these things is that they are not yet in your memory.
Grieving over something that happens, therefore, wondering “Why did it happen like that?”, harboring sorrow and regret and starting with the words “If only . . . ,” and becoming angry, greedy or impatient—all these actions are needless and meaningless. That is because all events that give rise to sorrow or anger are under the control of Allah. It is Allah Who creates all of these within a person’s destiny, and there can be no question of any other possibility outside a person’s destiny.
If someone has a traffic accident after turning into the wrong street, it is meaningless to complain about his mistake. Even if he could have his time over again, he would still turn into the wrong street and still have that accident. Saying things like, “If only I had my life to live over” are pointless and stem from a failure to understand this fact. Similarly, it is no solution for someone whose wallet is stolen to say, “If only I hadn’t gone into that shop,” or “If only I had kept my money in my pocket.” That person had no alternative but to go into that shop, carry money in his wallet and have it stolen. That person’s destiny has been created to go into a particular place at a particular time and for the money to be stolen. Even if he were to go back in time a thousand times, the money would still be stolen a thousand times.
A happy event or a success achieved are also in the individual’s destiny. Those successes and moments of joy will inevitably be experienced, because they are appointed in destiny.
Some people are reluctant to accept this insight. Roger Penrose describes them:
I think the trouble that people have with this idea is that you think the future is under your control, to some degree. And so, this means that if the future’s laid out, then in a sense it’s not under your control.148
Since most people wish to be in control of their own lives, they reject the fact of destiny. Yet they fall into a serious error by doing so, because whether or not they wish to, whether they admit the fact or not, people live their own destinies. People’s very denial is also appointed in their destiny!
It will be useful to recall that living in submission to one’s destiny is a great blessing and brings great peace of mind. People experience great panic and distress if they think that events are actually under their own control. They then imagine that every event in the future will be their own responsibility, and they feel the weight of every event on their own shoulders. They feel that they must resolve all difficulties on their own. Unable to see the auspicious side of the functioning of events, they experience great distress in the face of events. They grow proud in the face of the triumphs they achieve, which feeling may result in serious harm in this world and in the Hereafter. The difficulties they experience, on the other hand, lead to increasing pessimism, emptiness and stress.
But knowing that every event takes place within a destiny determined by Allah and believing that all events are created for good is one of the greatest blessings a person can enjoy. Living in submission to the destiny appointed by Allah means accepting His will and voluntarily submitting to every event determined by Him. People will then be freed from the feeling that events are under their control, will feel rid of troubles, will know that they are living events that are already over and done with, and will enjoy the peace of mind that this imparts. Submission to destiny is a great blessing for anyone who knows that all things are created to be auspicious. Even events that may appear to be troubles or difficulties are in fact positive and eventually result in great good.
When considering the concept of destiny, some people take the fact that everything is predetermined to imagine that there is no need for them to do anything. Yet this is a major distortion of the concept of destiny. True, everything we experience is determined in our destinies—before we experience them, those events have already taken place in the Sight of Allah and all its details are written down in the Lawh al-Mahfuz (the Preserved Tablet) in His Sight.
However, Allah gives every human being the feeling that they are able to alter events and act in accordance with their own decisions and choices. When one is thirsty, for example, one does not sit down and wait, saying,“I will have a drink—if that is in my destiny.” One gets up, takes a glass and drinks. In fact, of course, one drinks the amount of water determined in one’s destiny. But one nevertheless feels that one is doing this in accord with one’s own wish. That feeling is experienced in everything we do throughout our lives. The difference is that someone who has submitted to the destiny created by Allah knows that despite the feeling he does things of his own accord, he actually performs them by the will of Allah. Others who have failed to grasp this fact mistakenly imagine that they do everything with their own intelligence and strength.
For example, a submitted person who learns that he has contracted a disease will be resigned, since he knows that this is his destiny. He will say, “Since Allah has created this in my destiny, there must be an auspicious element to it.” He will not sit back and do nothing saying “If I am destined to recover, I will.” On the contrary, he will take all the requisite precautions. He will go to the doctor, be careful what he eats and take medicine. However, he will not forget that the doctor he visits, the treatment administered, the drugs he takes, and how effective these will be—in short, every single detail—are all in his destiny. He knows that all these events were already in the memory of Allah, long before he ever came into the world.
Allah has revealed this in verses:
It is He Who created you from clay and then decreed a fixed term, and another fixed term is specified with Him. Yet you still have doubts! (Surat al-An‘am, 2)
. . . Allah’s command is a pre-ordained decree. (Surat al-Ahzab, 38)
Not just human beings have a destiny in the Sight of Allah, but the Sun, the Moon, mountains, trees and all things and entities. A centuries-old antique vase that is broken, for example, breaks at the moment appointed in its destiny. The people who would use this vase, where it would stand in which home, and what other objects would be standing alongside it were all determined at the moment it was manufactured. Every pattern on it and all its colors were determined beforehand in its destiny. The day, hour and minute when it would be broken, and by whom and how, already exist in the memory of Allah. In fact, the moment that the vase was first made, the moment it was placed in the shop window, the moment it was placed in its new home and the moment it was broken—in short, every moment in the life of that vase lasting several hundred years—all exist as a single moment in the Sight of Allah. Although the person who broke the vase was totally unaware of that event even a few seconds beforehand, that moment had already happened and was known in the Sight of Allah. That is why Allah tells us not to be saddened by what befalls us. That is because what happens is part of one’s destiny, and human beings have no power to change this. However, people must still learn from destined events and, by seeing the wisdom and goodness in them, turn to our Lord, Who creates their destinies and Who is infinitely Merciful, Affectionate and Just, and Who preserves and protects His servants.
The form people assume while still an embryo, their state when they first learn to read and write and the fitness they display on their 35th birthday and when they retire are already determined in the book in the Sight of Allah. Human beings can neither experience nor do anything that is not appointed in their destiny. People heedless of this major truth spend their lives in a state of anxiety and fear. For example, they constantly worry about their children’s futures, which school they will attend, what jobs they will have, their state of health and the kind of lives they will lead. In fact, however, everything from a person’s existence as a single cell to the time when they first learn to read and write, from the answers they give in exams to what job they will do in which company, how many times they will sign their names, and how and where they will die—everything is predetermined in the Sight of Allah. All these events lie concealed in the memory of Allah. For example, people’s state at this precise moment, as a fetus, in primary school, at university, first day at the office, when they celebrate their 35th birthday, when they see the angels at the time of their death, when they are buried by their relatives and the moments when they account for themselves in the Hereafter—all exist as a single moment in His Sight.
Those who sincerely submit to Allah may hope to attain His approval, mercy and Paradise, and will live in peace and happiness in both this world and the Hereafter. For someone who has submitted to Allah and who knows that the destiny created by Him is the most auspicious for them, there is nothing to fear, or regret or sorrow over. Such people will make genuine efforts, but will know that these are all in their destiny, and that they have no power to change what is written in their destiny, no matter what they may do.
A believer will submit to the destiny created by Allah, will embrace, as much as he can, the events he encounters, will take precautionary measures and seek to turn all events in an auspicious direction, but will live in the awareness and ease imparted by knowing that they all take place within his destiny and that Allah has already determined them in the most auspicious form.
In the Qur’an, Allah refers to a precaution taken by the Prophet Yaqub (as) for the security of his children. In order that they should not attract the attention of evilly disposed persons, the Prophet Yaqub (as) recommended that his sons enter the city by separate gates, but also reminded them that this could never alter the destiny appointed by Allah:
He [Jaqub] said, “My sons! You must not enter through a single gate. Go in through different gates. But I cannot save you from Allah at all, for judgment comes from no one but Allah. In Him I put my trust, and let all those who put their trust, put it in Him alone.” (Surah Yusuf, 67)
Allah reveals in another verse that no matter what they may do, people cannot change their destinies:
Then He sent down to you, after the distress, security, restful sleep overtaking a group of you, whereas another group became prey to anxious thoughts, thinking other than the truth about Allah—thoughts belonging to the Time of Ignorance—saying, “Do we have any say in the affair at all?”’ Say, “The affair belongs entirely to Allah.” They are concealing things inside themselves which they do not disclose to you, saying, “If we had only had a say in the affair, none of us would have been killed here in this place.” Say, “Even if you had been inside your homes, those people for whom killing was decreed would have gone out to their place of death.” So that Allah might test what is in your breasts and purge what is in your hearts. Allah knows the contents of your hearts. (Surah Al ‘Imran, 154)
As can be seen from this verse, even if people avoid an auspicious, religious observance in order to save their lives, they will still die if that is what is written in their destiny. The methods to which such a person will resort in order to avoid death are also determined in that destiny, and everyone will experience what has been determined for them.
In this verse, Allah also states that the events created in people’s destinies are intended to test them and cleanse their hearts. In Surah Fatir, it is revealed that everyone’s life span is determined in the Sight of Allah:
Allah created you from dust and then from a drop of sperm and then made you into pairs. No female becomes pregnant or gives birth except with His knowledge. And no living thing lives long or has its life cut short without that being in a Book. That is easy for Allah. (Surah Fatir, 11)
The following verses from Surat al-Qamar reveal that everything a person does has been written line by line and relate the events experienced by the people of Paradise as events which have already occurred. As has already been stated, the true life in Paradise is the future for us. However, the discourse, experiences and banquets in Paradise are all present in the memory of Allah. The future of all people in this world and in the Hereafter have taken place in a moment in the Sight of Allah before we are even born and are preserved in His memory:
Everything they did is in the Books. Everything is recorded, big or small. The people who guard against evil are amid Gardens and Rivers, on seats of honor in the presence of an All-Powerful King. (Surat al-Qamar, 52-55)
In some verses of the Qur’an, Allah refers to some events which lie in the future for us, but which have already taken place in His Sight. For example, certain verses revealing that people will have to account for themselves to Allah in the Hereafter relate those events as already over and done with:
The Trumpet is blown, and those in the heavens and those in the Earth all lose consciousness, except those Allah wills. Then it is blown a second time and at once they are standing upright, looking on. And the Earth shines with the Pure Light of its Lord; the Book is put in place; the Prophets and witnesses are brought; it is decided between them with the truth . . . (Surat az-Zumar, 68-69)
Those who disbelieve are driven to Hell in companies . . . (Surat az-Zumar, 71)
And those who have fear of their Lord are driven to the Garden in companies . . . (Surat az-Zumar, 73)
Other verses on the same subject read:
[On that Day,] every self came together with a driver and a witness. (Surah Qaf, 21)
And Heaven is split apart, for that Day it is very frail. (Surat al-Haqqa, 16)
And [He] rewarded them for their steadfastness with a Garden and with silk. Reclining in it on couches, they experienced there neither burning sun nor bitter cold. (Surat al-Insan, 12-13)
And the Blazing Fire is displayed for all who can see. (Surat an-Nazi‘at, 36)
So today those who believe laugh at the disbelievers. (Surat al-Mutaffifin, 34)
The evildoers saw the Fire and realized they had to fall into it and found no way of escaping from it. (Surat al-Kahf, 53)
The Essence of Matter and the Fact of Destiny Are a Great Blessing for Believers
It is a great blessing for people who believe and have faith in Allah and are capable of seeing that He has created all things to know the true essence of matter. Matters about death, the Hereafter, Paradise and Hell are all resolved for people who grasp this secret. And questions such as “Where is Allah?” “Where are Paradise and Hell?” and “Do Paradise and Hell exist at this moment?” are all easily answered. They realize the system by which Allah created the universe out of nothing and how He constantly creates; so much thanks to this secret, questions such as “When?” and “Where?” become meaningless—because, in fact, neither time nor space exist. Events to be experienced have already taken place. It is illogical and meaningless to worry about, sorrow over or feel regret for them.
Comprehension of these secrets turns the life of this world into a kind of Paradise. All material concerns, doubts, fears and longings that cause distress in this world will vanish. One will see that Almighty Allah, Lord of the worlds, is the sole absolute Being, and that no other entity really exists. One understands that the entire universe has but one Lord; that He alters the material world as He so desires, and that the only thing one must do is turn to Him and take Him as one’s guardian, having submitted to Him.
Understanding this great secret is one of the greatest blessings a person can enjoy in this world.
Allah is very close to us. It is He Who creates man and bestows His own Spirit upon him. The entity that anyone refers to as “I” is thus a manifestation of Allah. Allah knows every action he does, everything he thinks; all of them are created by Allah. It is He Who causes a person to perceive, feel, think, rejoice and be happy. A person lives his every moment because Allah so chooses. Every event one encounters is in the form determined by Allah. That is the true state of affairs. A person has no guardian and no helpmate other than Allah, the one absolute Being. His existence pervades all the worlds and all places. Nothing exists but Almighty Allah, the Great and Exalted, the Only Being, in Whom one must seek shelter, help and recompense.
In the Qur’an, Allah tells us that:
That is Allah, your Lord. There is no deity but Him, the Creator of everything. So worship Him. He is responsible for everything. Eyesight cannot perceive Him but He perceives eyesight. He is the All-Penetrating, the All-Aware. (Surat al-An‘am, 102-103)
Conclusion
Materialists imagine that a world formed by coincidences exists inside a universe they want to believe is eternal and timeless. Yet there can be no doubt that human beings—who use their intelligence, found civilizations, manufacture robots, give rise to the Internet, make use of all these things, think and understand phenomena, feel doubts, engage in altruistic behavior, take pleasure from a landscape, make efforts to establish the truth—are not the work of chance. In the same way that no life form on Earth came into being by chance, human beings—with their billions of cells, the complex organelles inside each cell, glorious brain and extraordinary appearance—cannot be the work of chance, either.
Contrary to what materialists imagine, nothing on Earth is coincidental.
If there is nothing coincidental in people, or in what they do and achieve, that means there must be purposeful consciousness in them. If a person acts with consciousness, then there must be a superior intelligence that created that consciousness, an Intelligence that must be superior to everything that individual does, sees and knows.
That intelligence belongs to Allah, Who created man from nothing and breathed His Spirit into him.
A person will delight in beauty if Allah so chooses. If Allah so chooses, he will make discoveries and invent technologies. If Allah so chooses, he will compose music, play the violin or write books. If Allah so wishes, a person will rejoice, sorrow, take pleasure, worry or feel excitement. Enjoyment of music and beauty are by Allah’s leave. Enjoyment of a lovely landscape, fine clothing, proper behavior, flowers, a rabbit, a painting or a cake is all by Allah’s leave. No one can experience any of these unless Allah so wills it.
It is not physical matter that achieves these things; it is not the proteins that emerge from the food one eats. Nor is it the cells in the human brain. It is not the human brain for it cannot feel love. The brain has no capacity to enjoy music, cannot feel affection for a squirrel as it watches it frisking around. The brain feels no longing, no loyalty or devotion. The brain feels no nostalgia as it remembers its first day at primary school. The brain is merely an organ made up of fats, water, proteins and various chemicals. It is not brains, but human souls who love, rejoice, and feel shame and affection and longing as they remember. It is the existence of the soul belonging to Allah that makes human beings human.
Whether or not people believe in the existence of the soul, they will still have to abandon their earthly bodies and render account of themselves in the presence of Allah in the Hereafter. The faithful believe that they possess a soul bestowed by Allah. They and all the rest—deniers, materialists, Darwinists, those who opposed the existence of the soul throughout their entire lives, those who say “We consist of a collection of neurons,” and “There is no Hereafter,” those who say “Matter is the only absolute”—without exception, all the souls who have ever lived will have to account for themselves in the Presence of Allah. Each will receive a perfect recompense for their deeds. Each will be judged with justice.
Whether a person admits to a 1% possibility of these facts being true, or whether they “wonder” with regard to the fact of the Hereafter, they must now abandon all their erroneous beliefs and do all they can to prepare themselves for the Hereafter by turning to our Lord, Allah.
It is always possible to redeem one’s errors so long as one is alive in this world. Allah tells us in His verses that:
When those who believe in Our Signs come to you, say, “Peace be upon you!” Allah has made mercy incumbent on Himself. If anyone among you does evil out of ignorance and then afterwards repents and puts things right, He is Ever-Forgiving, Most Merciful. (Surat al-An‘am, 54)
But as for those who do evil actions and then subsequently repent and believe, in that case your Lord is Ever-Forgiving, Most Merciful. (Surat al-A‘raf, 153)
The life of this world is a temporary abode. Everything belonging to this world is transient. Nothing belonging to human beings in this world is real. To imagine that this world is real is like assuming that a dream is real, directing all one’s energies towards it and closing one’s eyes and soul to everything else. Allah is the sole absolute Being, the sole truth. Darwinism has collapsed and materialism is dead.
Acceptance of the existence of Almighty Allah means the end of all false faiths. The aim of this book is to invite everyone to see this. There is no doubt that “. . . It is only people of intelligence who pay heed” (Surat ar-Ra’d, 19).
Hiç yorum yok:
Yeni yorumlara izin verilmiyor.