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SCIENCE-RELIGION DIALOGUE
Summer 2002

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Causality and Divine Action: How Science is Related to the Islamic Beliefs

Dr. BILAL MASUD*

For most of the present Muslims, the main topic would mean the question if we are the cause of our actions, or Allah is totally responsible for all what we do. At least during most of the time in the last fourteen hundred years, if Muslim philosophers in large number have addressed any issue related to the question of causality and Divine action, it was this Masa‘la-e-Jabr-o-Qadr. An idea of the new challenges we have to meet after facing the secularism and empiricism can be obtained by noticing that the now the dominant view (at least in the intellectual circles) is that no one controls our actions: it is maintained in the name of science that every change in the world is either caused by some unchangeable laws of nature or is a result of pure purposeless randomness, and our actions are not exception to this blind rule. This view asserts that nothing else than natural causes operating through the scientific laws (known or unknown to us) can determine what happens in this world. It is said that the universe is determinate, meaning that by knowing the complete initial state of any system in it, however complicated, we can use scientific laws to predict its future precisely, without ambiguity or uncertainty. Or else it is an accidental heap of random process. In either way, there is considered no room for any aim, purpose or intention (irada) in the working of the world.

If all events, all phenomena can be predicted and explained precisely by the scientific laws, then it must be possible to backtrack from the event to find, somewhere in the dim recess of history, its natural cause. This is how the principle of causality is understood in the scientific tradition prevailing during the last few centuries: it says that for every event there is a cause, and also that a cause is necessarily part of a chain of events rigidly connected by scientific laws. “If the universe is ruled by causality (in this way), then human free will is a meaningless concept, for the universe is a vast, mindless machine that controls our every action, our every decision. Everything that happens because of something that happened in the past, not because we choose to make it happen. According to this view, if you ‘decide’ to get married or to take a job or to collect water buffalo, you do not do so by choice but (just ) because the past events (had already determined this.) In such a universe, our loves, hopes, and dreams are but delusions, hiding the grim reality that we are but cogs in Descartes’ clockwise machine. Goals are irrelevant; human aspirations pointless.”

During the 20^th century, probability-based models and theories have replaced this principle of causality for a variety of applications in the atomic and nuclear descriptions. Probability was used in science even before. But then it was taken as an alternative to the exact knowledge that for some reason was not available but could in principle be obtained. For example, if we have enough information about a coin we can tell on which side it would fall in a certain toss. But since that much detailed information about the coin, the air surrounding it and the hand tossing it are not practically available, all we can say is that there a half-half chance of the coin showing one of the two possible faces. Similarly, in chemistry or biology the probabilities for, say, biological evolution by the Darwinian mechanism (if calculable) were thought to be alternative to the exact knowledge obtainable in principle but not in practice. Modern physics (quantum mechanics) gives a different kind of probabilities in the atomic and nuclear domain: these are intrinsic probabilities and not alternative to some deterministic knowledge. We can only say that there is for example a 10% chance of a positive outcome to particular experiment and 90% chance of a negative. This means that if we repeat this experiment a large number of times, the ratio of the positive outcomes to the total experiments would be approximately 10%, that is, one out of 10. But no matter how refined technology we use and imagine, we cannot even think of knowing if in a particular try the result would be positive or negative. Even in principle there is no way to give this kind of information. Most of the scientists say that a particular unknowable outcome is “governed” by random chances. A minority of scientists thinks that an exact prediction about a particular outcome is in principle possible; it is just that the scientific theory at this moment is not able to know it. None of these views can accommodate Devine control or even the human free will. The quotation in the above paragraph, taken from a modern physics book, tells us that it is the physics of the 19^th century that implied that “if you ‘decide’ to get married or to take a job or to collect water buffalo, you do not do so by choice but because of past events.” But a naïve view of the 20^th century physics may only modify this to “if you ‘decide’ to get married or to take a job or to collect water buffalo, you do no do so by choice but just because you happened to do so, nothing more.” There is no room for a decision-by-choice in modern physics as well. So, our loves, hopes, and dreams remain delusions, goals remain irrelevant and human aspirations remain pointless in this ‘revised’ view based on modern science. This is, because if there is a difference in the modern physics and 19^th century physics, it is just in replacing certain fixed relations by random unexplainable chances that do not have a purpose and are not governed by decisions and choices of anyone. At least, that is what the modern physics is taken to mean presently.

If the human free will-- the ability to make decisions, the ability every person has direct experience of-- were taken to be meaningless, obviously any talk of a Divine action would also be regarded meaningless for the same reason. Thus a total acceptance of the principle of causality in the presently accepted form means a denial of all kinds of controls in the world, including both the Divine action and the human free will. The difficulty in understanding this point can be understood by an analogy of a country where there is rule of law and still there is a ruler like president or prime minister. So, people think that a complete rule of scientific laws is not incompatible with the Divine action and/or the human free will. But the analogy is imperfect: in any country with a rule of law, the laws in the books do not completely dictate what should be done in each and every situation; in exceptional situations the laws can be broken or at least the laws leave many decisions to the rulers, and only these powers of the rulers justify calling them rulers; a hypothetical ‘ruler’ totally dictated by all – embracing laws is no longer a ruler even if these laws are made by him at one time and he is somehow for ever disallowed changing them or making any room for any action in these laws in any way. Someone bounded by the law in the sense of working within the boundaries set by the laws can be a ruler, though. But the way scientific laws (including the randomness basing for example Darwinism) are presented, there cannot be any exception to the rule of blind laws of nature and the laws do not leave a room at all for any decision to be made in any way by the Creator of the universe or by the human beings, or for any aim or purpose in the universe at all.

Thus “no decision” means “no control”----no Divine action and no human free will. At most you can say that the Divine action is limited by this view to the moment of the creation of the universe and the Creator afterwards cannot make any decision. This is not the view of God in any religion, certainly not in Islam. We believe that not only Allah decided to bring into existence the world, but also that He will completely or partially end the universe (or its present form) to bring the doomsday and the life after death when He so decides and not when the scientific laws force Him to gradually do so in billions of years and in manner very different to the one described in Quran; He decided to give certain things the special (not random) qualities attributed to life and consciousness even if scientific laws did not require the presence of these attributes as a necessary consequence: He decided to have some supernatural phenomena (miracles) happen as a sign of Divine nomination for His prophets at a time decided by Him and not at a time dictated by scientific laws or at a time left to random chances: He decides to help, reward, check or punish persons He decides to choose for reasons not always knowable by scientific calculations: and. in reply to prayers or otherwise He makes decisions about the world and things in it that are not already dictated by aimless scientific laws. (If purposeless scientific laws already dictated these “decisions the whole concept of prayers would be a request for something that is already fixed, and thus would have no effect and meaning.) Not only that, many Muslim scholars say the Quran and Sunnah imply that Allah separately created different biological species on the earth. This may mean that Allah supernaturally interfered in the natural processes (describable by scientific laws) continuing on earth during the billions of years of its history to cause the generation of few selected important genes responsible for specific properties of life forms like different senses, genes that otherwise could not be produced by the natural processes. (In the Quran we have mention of at least one Divine interference in a natural process: the birth of Jesus (Isa, Allaih-i-Salam) from the Virgin Mary; the natural process was in mother and the supernatural Divine interference in it was the birth without father at a chosen time.) Thus the biological creationism is the part of the wider question of causality and Divine action, and should not be taken in isolation.

The straightforward result that causality in the present form is not compatible with Islamic beliefs is rarely understood; many simple Muslims say that everything in the universe is happening according to the law of cause and effect and Allah is responsible for all the causes, and remain satisfied! They do not realize at all the challenge posed by the modern version of causality for a belief in supernatural effects like Divine action---the criticism that is in minds of almost all scientists and non-scientists aware of the spirit of scientific inquiry and the relevant issues. Two reasons cause this lack of awareness:

The first is that this challenge through causality is for most of Muslims a new kind of challenge. The intellectual challenges Muslims had to face in past came from polytheism in one form or other suggesting a dominance of the world by supernatural gods. in reply to this, Muslims have remained busy in arguing against the supernatural gods, effectively arguing for a natural explanation of different phenomena. They have developed a momentum in this argument and it will take some time before Muslims realize that going too far in this direction also means deviating from the Islamic beliefs. A complete natural view of the world is not compatible with the Islamic beliefs, as it is not compatible with beliefs of perhaps any religion. So, here we have some concerns against materialism (like those against Darwinism) that we have to share with the other religions of the world. The importance of balance in Islam is very relevant here; we have to avoid both extreme views of too much supernatural and of no supernatural.

Starting from the 19^th century, the complete natural view emerging from science has been opposed by Muslims ‘ulamas’. But they were and are the people generally ignorant of even the scientific results. Those aware of science, especially sincere Muslim scientists, have been taking pride in their ability to show that science supports the Islamic beliefs. But they are normally not able to differentiate the valid scientific results form the implicit assumption of a complete natural explanation and have written again and again what means the philosophically wrong assertion that a complete natural explanation supports the Islamic beliefs. To avoid this philosophical mistake, Muslim scientists need to be well aware of the Islamic teachings and the subject of philosophy. But philosophy, even the philosophy of science, has never been popular with Muslim scientists. The result is that the Muslim scientists are rarely aware of the spirit of the science: they normally remain satisfied with just consuming the science developed by others, and this much can be done without understanding the logic, philosophy and limits of science etc. Apparently, the reason for this is that we are somehow subconsciously afraid of the spirit of a scientific inquiry. We have devised rather ad-hoc ways to consume the sciences developed by others, but we are not sure what do these results (at least in biology and the social sciences) mean to us. And we are even less sure if ourselves doing the scientific research as others do and thinking as others think would maintain our Islamic values and standards; we find it difficult to think rationally and act Islamically. The ways presently adopted to solve this puzzle are based on leaving either the scientific and rational thinking or the Islamic practice. By leaving rational thinking we cannot maintain a standard in natural sciences, social sciences or even in doing ljtihad and understanding fiqah. This may well be the reason we lack standards in every walk of life.

Most of the Muslims’ efforts to face the challenge of modern knowledge remain concerned with the question if the modern scientific results oppose or favour the Islamic beliefs. This is naturally the obsession of a community who for some reason or other is mainly a consumer of the knowledge generated by others. But the rational thinking would point out that this is not the way to do the things: the scientific results i.e. facts and theories of empirical sciences can be compared only with alternative facts and theories of empirical sciences. Islamic beliefs are not scientific theories. So, how can we compare the Islamic beliefs with the scientific theories?

One may point out the statements in the Quran and Sunnah addressing the issues that have been under discussion in the scientific circles. The most obvious are the ones concerning the issue of Darwinism and creationism in biology. Even if we take it that creationism (the statement that Allah created different species separately) is the Islamic position, can this creationism be a scientific theory? Logically, it cannot be: by definition science is a study of natural processes the regularities and repetitions in the world and creationism means explaining the observations in the animal and plant world through something supernatural, something special and not regular and repeatable. It is wrong to expect that science, a natural inquiry, would ever show up supernatural aspects of the world in form of scientific experiments, theories (laws) or theorems. The partial or total biological creationism, the human free will, Divine Creation, Design and Active Control in response to prayers of the universe, the doomsday and the life after death, the miracles of the prophets, including all what we mean by Divine actions, are supernatural aspects of the world and thus cannot by definition be the direct subject matter of the natural scientific research published in the scientific journals. Thus science cannot directly confirm their presence.

That does not mean we leave Divine action or even say that science is against the concept of Divine action. The first point is that science not being able to address these questions means not only that science cannot confirm these, but also that science cannot oppose these. Leaving the discussion at this point may lead to agnosticism, so we have to look further into the issue. Many human observations and scientific results can be used to justify the design in the universe indicating the Divine existence and action. These include the signs of Allah mentioned in the Quran such as the alteration of day and night, the sun and the moon running with precision, the animal serving human beings, the delicious and healthy fruits, the water system on the earth, the winds and clouds bringing life to dead earth, mountains stabilizing the earth, the ships sailing on the sea, the fire and others. There are also examples of extraordinary precision in the design of the universe brought out by science such as the universe expanding precisely according to a required speed and the modern Big Bang theory of the start of the universe in astrophysics (telling that the universe started from a point long time ago), the precise balance of different forces in the universe to guarantee the emergence of stars and life, the precise arrangements for the formation of different elements in the universe, the precise cancellation of electrical charges in an atom, precise parameters like temperature, size, and magnetic field of the earth and of its atmosphere like the oxygen percentage and the Van Allen Belt, the precise equality of the wavelength of light emitted from sun and the wavelength suitable for life, photosynthesis and vision, the extraordinary thermal properties of the water including its resistance to flow ideal for respiration and the bigger mass density of 4 degree water than ice allowing fish in extremely cold weathers to survive in the water beneath the thermally insulating ice layer, and the extraordinary properties of different elements such as carbon, oxygen and nitrogen necessary for life etc. To this list we can add the extraordinary qualities of life and consciousness indicated in reply to the claims of Darwinism that life and consciousness are just some properties of inanimate matter emerged through random chances. These qualities include many special features of different animals and plants without any historical continuity in time (that is, in the fossil record) and in life forms at one time snapshot (that is, at the last and present century when very serious efforts to note all the life forms are made), the emergence of many special qualities of animals and plants such as hearing, vision, radar in bats, social life in bees and consciousness in humans not producible through the genetical variation (mutations) which are normally harmful and not creative (the statistical probabilities of full creative mutations being negligibly small and partial creative mutations not able to play any role in evolution of animals and plants ), the very special structures of the huge molecules necessary for life not producible through pure random chances and their parts not able to play the necessary roles, etc.

In using these evidences as arguments for divine existence and action, care is needed and that care is missing in almost all the efforts so far. This is most of these evidences are examples of observations or of scientific results. So, we have to tell how is it that we use some natural phenomenon to prove or describe supernatural such as human spirit or divine action? Related to this is: does giving supernatural explanation to the natural phenomenon mean we should oppose a natural explanation? (Remember the search for natural explanation is basic to the progress of science.) For example, is saying that it is Allah’s care for the life on earth that water at 4 degrees is heavier than ice (so that ice floats on water and fish survive in the cold weathers) means we should not look for a natural explanation of the phenomenon in terms of the properties of the atoms? Another question about the whole approach mentioned in the above paragraph could be that examples, in spite of being the best way to teach and preach, have problems to logicians: examples of observations cannot be used to prove something but only refute something. So, where is the statement that we try to refute through the examples in the above paragraph? It should be remembered that this is not a question about these examples only: all the experimental sciences are based on examples of observations. But examples do not prove statements. Proofs are possible only in mathematics and logic and the students of these disciplines know how proofs are possible. There was a time when peoples used to say that experimental evidence (examples) prove scientific theories. During the 20^th century this view has been rejected in sciences. Now it is understood that scientific observations and experiments only refute theories and never prove. You do not need to know advances in the philosophy of science to realize that the scientific theories, getting support from the examples of observations, are not proved statements: if they were proved to be true, they could not become false with time. But everyone knows that the scientific theories accepted at one time can be rejected or modified with time. The presently accepted philosophy of science is based in some form or other on the understanding that scientific observations and experiments do not prove or even suggest new theories. It is generally said that it is human creativity that suggests scientific theories, and observations can only refute these. If a theory does not get refuted in spite of many efforts to disprove it, it is regarded as valid till modified. For example, that is the view of perhaps the most influential philosopher of science during the 20^th century Karl Popper.

Keeping in mind all these possible questions, a statement about the natural world can be made so that each of the examples of the natural phenomenon mentioned above is evidence refuting it. It is “there is available a completely natural explanation of the start of universe, design in it, and of life and consciousness in it.” For example the modern Big Bang theory of the start of the universe in astrophysics tells us the natural i.e. scientific knowledge about the universe is not possible before a moment termed the Big Bang. The balance of different forces in the universe to guarantee the emergence of stars and life is so extraordinary that it cannot have a natural or random origin. The parameters like temperature, size, and magnetic field of the earth etc, are too special to be all result of blind natural or random causes. A completely natural explanation cannot be sufficient to understand why the wavelength of light emitted from sun and the wavelength suitable for life, photosynthesis and vision are exactly same, and why water has the extraordinary thermal properties like the bigger mass density of 4 degree water than ice allowing fishes in extremely cold weathers to survive in the water beneath the thermally insulating ice layer, etc.

Presenting all these examples and the arguments against Darwinism as evidences refuting “there is available a completely natural explanation of the start of universe, design in it, and of life and consciousness in it” we use the natural evidence to justify a limit of the natural knowledge, not to describe something supernatural. The statement refuted in this way has always been refuted: even theories like alchemy, considered ‘wrong and superstitious today, were once valid because of not being refuted and only later were refuted. But the idea of a complete natural explanation of the world being in hand has always been wrong! One may think that the 19^th century physics considered that idea to be true and only in 20^th century it is considered wrong. That is not true: in 19th century there were many fundamental parameters like the size of atom that were just experimentally known but were not theoretically explained. To this we can add that in 19th century, just like in the century following it and today, there was no complete explanation of life and consciousness available: Darwinism has always been far from being a complete explanation for the phenomena it claimed to explain. Darwinism basically gives a hope to many scientists that some day a complete natural explanation of life and consciousness will be available. This is a strange kind of expectation. Science is based on taking future to be same as past. For example, the statement “the sun rises from the north has always been refuted. So we expect it to remain false in future as well. Similarly, the statement ‘there is available a completely natural explanation of the start of universe, design in it, and of life and consciousness in it” has always been refuted, so everyone should expect it to remain false in future. But most of the scientists today and many non-scientists following them expect that one day we will be able to give a complete natural explanation of the universe through the astrophysics and high energy physics and of life and consciousness through Darwinism!

We cannot stop here. It can be argued that we have not seen in past any tendency in sun towards rising from north, but we are heading towards a fully natural explanation of the world. Those who have this view should realize that even if we obtain one day the required complete natural explanation of the world, the situation may change within next few years because of some new discovery not yielding to a natural explanation. There can never be any guarantee against such a new discovery as we the human beings can in any age observe only a fraction of the universe, and any thing can happen (can be observed) when we continue our exploration of the farther parts of the universe. One has to be really crazy to neglect that possibility and look forward to a day when a complete natural explanation of the whole world would be in hand. But lots of peoples are crazy in this way, and a further analysis is needed to clarify the nature of the argument to them. The argument uses the examples of the extraordinary phenomena to refute the statement of a complete natural explanation of the world being in hand, and thus logically’ does what is done in science. There is, though, some difference in that, in science we use a failure of the refutation efforts to validate a theory (Newton theory remained valid as long as efforts to refute it had failed but here we are talking about the success of a refutation, and not of a failure. So here the logic is used negatively to destroy a claim and in science logic is used positively to justify a claim (theory) through destroying the efforts to destroy it. So in science we positively get something and here we apparently get a negative result only: a complete natural explanation of universe. life and consciousness not available. It will be shown below that this negative result also gives some positive information: there is a supernatural explanation of these phenomena. But for the moment the question is if logical argument through examples for the negative result (of no natural explanation) is in any way weaker than the arguments for the positive results (of validity of different scientific theories)?

Other difference between the arguments in favour of scientific theories and the arguments against a completely natural explanation of the world may be:

In trying to show that a scientific theory is not refuted we know the consequences of both the success and failure of the theory and we show that consequences of the failure are not observed. But here we can imagine the consequences of the possible success of “there is available a completely natural explanation of the start of universe, design in it, and of life and consciousness in it”. (i.e. a completely natural explanation) but not of its failure.
It may happen that the examples we have chosen at one time for refuting the statement of a completely natural explanation being available do not remain useful with time and have to be replaced by some other example. For instance, it may happen that at one time the special properties of water can be shown as “miracles refuting a complete natural explanation of the world but then these are discovered to be a natural result of the properties of the atoms forming water. So, we have to think of some other example about the extraordinary features of the world.
Our conclusion (the truth of Islamic beliefs) is not revisable, whereas scientific theories are.

The first of these is a difference but it is not clear and certain if it can be a logical objection to refuting a complete natural explanation. To the third point, one can say that the arguments for or against the Islamic beliefs can be considered separately to the question of these being revisable or not. Or one can say that for the sake or argument these can be considered revisable. If they remain valid in the argument after it, just the thought of there being false would not be materialized anyway. Only the second is a serious problem. To this, it can be shown that the supporters of scientific theories are also normally not ready to give up their favourite theories because of few examples of failure and would take refuge in some other examples. But this may look like justifying a weakness of the argument for the absence of a completely natural explanation through comparison with a similar weakness in the arguments for the scientific theories. So, it may be said that the arguments for the Islamic belief through observational and scientific examples lack something as scientific arguments? They would be imperfect if they are scientific arguments and they fail to quite do the job. But if they are not scientific arguments and we the Muslims of this period have taken them as scientific arguments and found them imperfect in some senses whose fault is it? It may be the case that we wrongly took these for the scientific arguments. It seems that the examples mentioned in Quran and the ones picked from the scientific results for the design in universe are basically meant to be ways to illustrate something to ordinary man only, and not as scientific arguments to be presented in the science circles. Similarly, the science in Quran” may have basically an educational purpose and not scientific or philosophical. That is why we have problems of

how can they be compared with changing science and
why only after a discovery we know that it was in Quran, if we were already told through Quran?

There is reason to think that the examples of the extraordinary features of the world, in Quran and the one picked up from the scientific results, are something other than scientific theories: the message through these examples is only that the natural explanation of the world is not complete, and the supernatural explanation basing the Islamic beliefs is needed. The specifically Islamic teaching here is that whatever supernatural power is involved in the creation and control of the universe, it belongs to nothing hut Allah. Islam leaves it to the analysis of human experience (that is, to science) to know how far the natural explanation can go, but reminds to the peoples in every age that the natural explanation is not complete (in their respective times, you can say). The examples pointed out by the Islamic teachings do not pinpoint a limit of the natural knowledge that can be scientifically studied and tested through observations: these examples just remind to peoples in each age that there is some limit to the natural knowledge, but do not specify what that limit is. Examples are the best way to teach and preach, though, the persons paying attention through these examples to the always- true conclusion of the natural explanation being not complete (at least in their age) can construct a limit to natural knowledge valid for their age. For example, the origin of species of animals and plants cannot be natural causes or pure randomness. Or, the thermal properties of water (ice being light than 4 degree water) are a special gift of Allah to the life on earth. Such limits of knowledge constructed by Muslims (or the similar ones constructed by the followers of other religions) can be specific and can be scientifically tested. But if these limits of knowledge constructed to “give” scientifically arguments” to ordinary man not able to understand the general argument fail, it is a problem for the preacher who have to think of the new examples and new limits of knowledge but not a problem for the general underlying message that there is some limit to the natural knowledge. But preachers rarely can see the difference and take scientists opposing their chosen examples as peop1e opposing the basic religious message as well. This gives rise to the conflict of the science and religion. The religious view sees the examples as extraordinary phenomena and hence miracles in themselves, and the scientific view tries not render these example results of scientific theories and hence not extraordinary.

It should be clarified that in Islam the fight against naturalism (the idea of a complete natural explanation) has been less furious, meaning a less serious clash with science than the clash of, say, Christianity and science. The reason is that, as mentioned above., against the believers in many supernatural gods Muslims had to argue for the natural explanation in attacking the beliefs in several supernatural gods. Islam’s denial of all the supernatural powers other than that of One Creator of the universe must have helped humanity in reducing the role of different supernatural forces in the accepted explanations of the world and phenomena therein. (Though we need not say that the islamic teachings started of the human naturalistic inquiry reducing the role of supernatural explanations: this inquiry started earlier than the revelation of Quran, and might have been as old as the human race.) A continuation of this trend is that many simple Muslims think that the efforts in modern high energy physics for giving a unified view of different fundamental forces of the world are in support of their beliefs, whereas actually these efforts are being done with exactly opposite aim to eliminating a thought of some supernatural factors in the explanation of the world. The atheistic or agnostic scientists actually commanding this naturalistic inquiry hope that through these efforts they would be able one day to eliminate all the references to any supernatural and hence all the religiosity in the world. To them this programme is a generalization of Darwinism. But Muslims normally support this programme of the unification of fundamental forces and oppose, Darwinism. (Part of the reason for this support is that Muslims rightly think that a unified view of the universe would strengthen the arguments for a Unified Divinity, termed tawheed in Islam: if the universe is found to be governed by the same laws, it cannot be explained by assuming many gods operating in this world.)

So, a Muslim physicist is encouraged to go ahead and unify forces and study the evolution, of the universe after the Big Bang and the stellar evolution but a Muslim biologist is discouraged to engage in the other part of the programme, the study of the evolution of species. Is not the treatment different just because more examples from biological sphere have been used to bring out the point that the natural explanation of the world is not complete and the role of the supernatural divine action is necessary to understand the real nature of the world? If a biologist likes the idea that some 1000 animals (other than humans) are related and hence must have the same origin, this idea may disturb a preacher who had chosen (without any direct statement from Quran and Sunnah) these 1000 animals as 1000 different signs of Allah. But just that much might not mean saying anything against the Islamic message that the evolution of life on the earth had a plan, purpose and direction and that Allah had especially gifted to the first human the special feature known as consciousness. We do not know if Allah managed to give life on the earth a plan purpose and direction and to give the human being the distinctive quality of consciousness by separately creating all species by separately creating a few and the rest by some mechanism, or by creating few important genes especially and letting these genes work according to the routine laws knowable by science. It is not said here that Darwinism or any other purely natural and/or random theory of life is so superb that we should interpret the Islamic teachings to correspond to it within the limit provided in Quran and Sunnah. The only point is that there may well be many discussions in this field that are technical and not religious, and we might have made them religious just so as to facilitate the teachers and preacher of Islam in giving simple examples understandable by ordinary men. What is advocated here is that if Quran and Sunnah leave a question to human observation and experiment and do no specifically say anything, we should accordingly give Muslim biologists enough freedom in research. One should not be unnecessarily forced to feel that adopting Islam means sacrificing the freedom in (biological) research. Only for a few issues such a compulsion is necessary. For example, in biology, it is against the Islamic teaching to advocate the idea that all aspects of all the species are results of purely natural causes or random chances. Especially reducing the human consciousness to just fixed or random properties of the atoms forming human brain, and thus denying the ruh (spirit) of Allah in the human beings, is against Quran. But, as advocated below, science by its very nature cannot deny the Islamic view on these issues, no matter how one interprets scientific observations experiments and calculations. So, adopting the Islamic view on these issues cannot disturb the freedom of the doing the scientific research based on observations, experiments and calculations provided this research keeps to the results legitimately implied by the data or calculations and not ventures into exaggerations disallowed by the nature of science.

The way to give examples of natural phenomena to point to the supernatural is always very effective for ordinary persons but problematic for the philosophic - minded ones if the argument involves shifting examples, that is in one time we point out to one extraordinary phenomenon as divine action and in later times to some other example if the first example is understood to be a result of some known scientific laws. One way to avoid the blame of shifting examples is to stick to the same example, but change its role in the argument if the scientific status of the examples is changed. For example, in one age we interpret an ayah of Quran by saying that Allah created the mountains so as to stabilize the earth as a mercy to mankind. In the later time we might find it better to interpret the same ayah by inferring that it is Allah’s mercy that He managed through some laws mountain appear on the earth, and that by the same laws earth’s atmosphere was made friendly to the mankind, all these consequences of the laws being part of a big plan of which the laws are a part. Sometimes we, the Muslim teachers and preachers, may suggest a limit of natural knowledge eventually arguing that in absence of complete natural knowledge mankind needs to accept the supernatural explanation of the world provided by the Islamic beliefs. An example of this could be a life uncertainty principle, meaning that it is not possible to understand the properties of life and consciousness in terms of the atomic constituents of the living matter while it is alive and of the human brain while it is normally working beyond a certain limit. The reason being that if we want to know the full details of the arrangement of each and every atom of some living matter, especially of the human brain, the living thing will die at one stage or other of the required dissection. (One can decide without any reason to adopt the view that death does not change the essential properties of the living matter, like its atomic arrangement, though).So, we cannot know in full detail what is special about the atomic arrangements of life and consciousness. Hence the situation is and will remain that we consider life and consciousness as composed of atom, but still consider it as something special, something different to the inanimate matter for which we know the atomic arrangements in full details. So, the statement of the full natural explanation of life and consciousness being in hand is always expected to remain refuted. This life uncertainty principle is analogous to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle established in physics. This basic principle of modern physics says that if we want to know the full details of the state of a particle, we have to throw some radiation on it. This throwing of radiation disturbs the particle in a manner we cannot completely figure out. So, we cannot fully know what was the state of the particle before we threw radiation on it so as to know it state. In physics there are detailed and clear calculations clarifying its status in the fundamental theory. The life uncertainty principle suggested here depends upon the assertion that to know the full details of life, we have to throw radiation like strong X-ray on life and this may end the life. Actually, for heavy atoms the resulting disturbance by radiation is so small that it does not stop us from knowing the atomic arrangement in say in an inanimate tungsten sample: In biology the situation is so complex that it is difficult to know how much such radiation would disturb life. But it may well be the case that strong X-rays do disturb life so as to kill it. and some biologists work out the details required to know if the life uncertainty principle suggested here is a serious limit to the scientific knowledge. Even if it is suggested as a scientific theory sometimes in future, the life uncertainty principle will remain subject to refutation by further scientific inquiry. But its refutation would mean a failure of an effort to illustrate the general assertion that a complete natural knowledge of life and consciousness is not in hand, and not a failure of this general assertion itself.

In spite of all these ways to use examples, perhaps the situation remains that the way to give examples of natural phenomena to point to the supernatural is effective for ordinary persons but problematic for the philosophic minded ones. A question is if it is possible to support the Islamic message by arguments avoiding examples as arguments but still stopping people from looking forward to a day when a complete natural explanation of the world would be available and face the reality in their age that this sought-after complete natural explanation is always missing? Arguments are also needed to prove that the scientific laws of nature do not have so much intrinsic power to make even the Creator of the universe is bound to ‘work’ (if such a work is possible) within the limits allowed by scientific laws. (Or, that a possible violation of scientific laws by divine action does not contradict the actual human observations and their logical consequences. Such arguments need not be in Quran. Trained by Quran, Muslims have always had to think of styles and arguments themselves to present the case to different people. Similarly, efforts on these lines can be made for philosophic minds of today by thinking about the nature of the limits of the scientific knowledge. For example, divine action is not regularity and is not repeatable, and science normally deals only with what can be repeated whenever asked. But regularity and repetition is not the whole story in this world! We have for example the animal unpredictable behaviour and human free will. The present science generally regards this apparent irregularity, to be eventually understood in terms of the Darwinian mechanism etc. This mentality of scientists is a neglect of the very idea and purpose of science. Science is an activity meant to explain the human experience, and the human (unpredictable) free will is perhaps the most direct and important human experience: no matter how reasonable prediction about a certain action of a person is made, he or she can, at least in principle, do otherwise. (It may be necessary to grant the person concerned enough freedom of action. The point is that just a prediction based merely on an understanding of some supposed “mechanism” of a person can never be completely sufficient to know what he or she would do.)

A fully natural description of life and consciousness would thus be either deterministic, predicting a fixed unchangeable behaviour, (using modern physics) a random one. We do not need to wait, if ever, for science to reach a conclusion on this point: the purpose of science is to explain the human experience and human free will is the most direct experience we have. So science can explain free will, but cannot deny it by replacing this either fixed behaviour or pure randomness. A completely natural explanation being impossible, it will never be possible to deny the role of some supernatural factor in any valid explanation of consciousness. (We will not be able to pin point or know in detail this supernatural factors, though, as by the very definition of science and reason only natural factors or causes can be pin pointed or known in detail.)

A limit of natural knowledge is also there for any description of the inanimate matter, though this limit is more difficult to understand. The point is that the human beings have actually observed by any means a minute part of the whole universe, and we can scientifically predict about even a smaller part. Obviously the verified predictions of the science are about a very minute part of the universe that is both predicted about and observed (for the verification). All the sciences we have are based on regularities noted in this minute part of the universe. The reason why our scientific theories are always amenable to falsification or revision through new observations is because the part of the universe we have observed directly or by our instruments is a small fraction of the full size of the universe, and we have seen this part for a time that is a small fraction of the total age of the universe.

But our empirical knowledge (the knowledge based on our observations) is also limited in another subtle but important philosophical sense: whatever we observe we do not observe all the times. There is a table in my office. I see it many times during the day but rarely in the night. And even during the day I do not see it continuously . Our apparatuses may have noted the movement of a cloud for some time, but then were focused on some other cloud, etc. This means that not only scientific theories but also scientific facts are not always directly observed or logically derived only from our observations. This statement has nothing to do with this or that scientific theories. It is general nature of the way things have always been happening and happen in this world, regardless of the state in which the scientific knowledge is. Examples can still he used to illustrate the point here, but the argument is not based on these examples. This analysis may look like a play on words. But it has an important implication for the way we think of divine action. Suppose a person walking on a mountainous road under a rock and a stone is falling on him in such a way that scientifically the stone is bound to fall on the person (if he goes on walking). But the person is somehow not aware of the stone in any way and also no other person and no apparatus is observing or detecting that stone. No scientific prediction of any kind has ever been made about that particular stone. How can we rule out the possibility that a supernatural factor stopped the stone from falling and the freely falling stone moved up and got stuck to the rock up? This movement of stone would he a violation of science. But is that much a sufficient reason to rule out such an unnatural motion? Would we have any empirical reason at all telling us that the stone did not move up in this way? It is a scientific fact that freely falling stones fall to the ground or on the thing on the earth under them. By that token this stone must fall down on the person. But here the question is not what science says about falling stones in general. The question is that what science says about this particular stone? The stone is special in that no one has seen it, no apparatus has noted it, and no scientific prediction has been made about it. And science deals with only observations and science makes only predictions. Since this stone does not fall in either of these categories, science cannot in principle say anything about this stone. At least science did not say anything about this particular stone, as no prediction was made about it, no observation was made of it.

So, in principle only for the events (happenings) both predicted and observed we can be sure that there was no violation of science there. In the 18th and 19th century science there has been a claim often uttered in words that “science can predict everything.” (The 20th century physics makes, as mentioned above, somewhat weaker claim about the scientific predictability. But that is a technical modification, and our arguments here better not rely on the truth or falsehood of that model of reality.) This was actually a wrong way of putting the actual statement emerging from the equations of physics of that time. The actual statement was that “if we completely know the past at one time, we can predict each and every detail of the future to be experimentally verified.” But it should not be neglected that through no apparatus or otherwise we know past in full details. This is simply a nature of measurements and has nothing to do with 18th, 19th or 20th century physics etc. And not knowing past in full details, we cannot accurately predict the future. So, science by its very nature is even potentially unable to predict future in full details, and this conclusion is true regardless of which scientific theory are the valid ones.

In no way it is argued here that for each of the events not predicted or observed, there has been a violation of science. The whole point is that for such events we cannot know for sure, meaning we cannot say if there has been a violation of science just like we cannot say if there has not been a violation. The whole argument may still look like a far fetched one. It may or may not be so. But still, philosophically, it is true; a claim apparently more drastic has been made in philosophy and no one has ever been able to logically refute it. (Such claims do not say anything about observations made, so cannot he empirically refuted anyway.) Imam Ghazali (in his Tahafat-ul-filasifa) said that it is possible that fire does not burn wood and a person survives after his head is cut from the rest of the body etc. He meant to say that though we always see that fire burns and after cutting the head a person is dead, and we have got so much used to all this that we find it very difficult to even imagine otherwise, there is no logical reason why these routines cannot be broken. The 17th century Scottish philosopher David Hume explained the same point by writing that it is only probable that the sun will rise tomorrow. What he meant was that the statement of the sun rising the next day cannot be proved like inferences in the deductive logic or theorems in mathematics. Technically, now this conclusion is described by saying that induction is not proved. This result has never been refuted in philosophy. And the claim made above is at least apparently less drastic; the paragraph above only said that for events not observed or predicted about we cannot be sure, and philosophers agree that even about our factual predictions like a person would die if his throat is cut or the sun will rise tomorrow we cannot be sure (of their truth). Actually both claims are related: the one in the above paragraph is about the unobserved events, and the one agreed upon in philosophy is about the future and future is also unobserved by its very nature. (No one has observed his future!)

It is also not denied here that for unobserved and unpredicted events we should basically expect scientific laws to be valid. Only proofs (like the ones in mathematics and logic) have been indicated to be lacking. Three questions arise here: 1) why should we expect? 2) how much should we expect? and 3) does it matter if we expect or regard scientific laws as proved? First we take up the question of why should we expect. The common man’s reply to this question is that we should expect science to be always true because it has always worked so well. But this amounts to saying that we should expect science to be valid even we are not observing because science has described so well whatever we observed (with or without prediction). Involving an obvious contradiction, this statement cannot be logically right.

A serious defence of the expectation of science always working, that is of the law of uniformity of nature, has been by the famous 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant justified the law of uniformity of nature as an a priori condition of knowledge, without which we cannot even start thinking and experience anything. But a careful re-examining would tell that a strict observance of the law of uniformity of nature is not must for the argument. It is enough to demand an approximate regularity of nature, with occasional violations, which lets the people decide which is regularity and which is a violation to it. For example, if sun rises in the east normally, we are able to have a piece of knowledge about it i.e. it rises in the east. Now suppose, one day it rises from the west. We would be able to retain our knowledge of the (sun rises in the east) with understanding the rise in west a violation of the routine. Just because of one violation, it would not become impossible to recognize routine as routine and violation as violation. Only if the irregularity becomes so much that it is difficult to recognize a violation to the law of uniformity of nature as violation systematic experience and knowledge becomes impossible. Thus if one day sun rises in the east. the following day in the north, then in south, then in east, then in west, with no pattern in the direction of rising, we would not be able to say what is routine. Only then knowledge would become impossible. And we see in our lives that it is not necessary that every phenomenon be subject to strict regularity: the human behaviour does not show that much regularity but still we do get knowledge about people. Background regularities are enough to make the knowledge possible, if violations are rare enough to be recognized as violations. Thus a break of the laws of nature would not disturb our conditions of experience or knowledge if this break were because of some reason like the Divine action. And it would not contradict our scientific knowledge and understanding as well.

The above discussion also tells how much we should expect science to be working when we, or our apparatuses, are not there to check if it is really working. Kant’s justification of the law of uniformity of nature (that is of science working) as something without which knowledge is not possible, and nothing more, also tells, if properly thought over, what are the implications of the logically sound attitude of expecting science to be valid and the baseless one of thinking that science is proved to be always true. If you only expect, you would be ready to 1) listen to the solution (Divine Will) of the puzzle of why knowledge is possible (or why science works) and 2) would not regard an occasional violation of it through the Divine action as impossible, taking Allah to be not permanently bound by the scientific laws. And that is basic to the Islamic vision of the scientific knowledge: this is the route to understanding how science is related to the Islamic beliefs. But if you think that science is simply proved to be always true, the question of why it works would not be a question to you and you would naturally not consider an answer to this question. You may then satisfy your curiosity about the very nature of the universe by remaining thinking about the scientific answers to its fundamental nature. But the scientific answers of any kind and through any theory cannot be an answer to the question of why science works, that is why universe is so ordered that its scientific study is possible. (Had the order in the universe been significantly lesser than what we see, there would not have been enough regularity here, meaning no scientific theory working and hence no science at all.)

The status of the scientific answers to the question of why science works is an interesting topic. Because of the success of science during the last few centuries, scientists were so much esteemed that they took in the recent history an additional role of telling why science works, that is, why there are regularities in the world. More interestingly many of them came up with an answer that is, philosophically speaking, not an answer: they said that these regularities are their own reasons! Apparently scientists are not so naïve: reading the books of scientists on the topic of ‘the Ultimate Explanations’ like S. Hawking’s “A Brief History to Time” reader feels there a reason or basis of reason is provided for most of the regularities found in our observation and experiments. For example, both falling of a stone towards and movement of moon are explained through the reason termed the theory of gravitation. But the theory of gravitation, in the form suggested by Newton or as improved by Einstein, is actually another regularity, and not an answer to the question of why there are regularities at all. Hawking would admit this in the form of accepting that the theory of gravitation needs further explanations, and would give it in the form of proposed particles called gravitons, or in terms of theories like the quantum gravity, and so on. Here we are not concerned with if the graviton theory or the quantum gravity is the proper explanation of the gravitation or not; the real question for us is if this whole programme (explaining observations by gravity and gravity by graviton and so on) can be an answer to the question of why there are regularities here, why science works? It simply cannot be an answer as this explains one regularity in terms of others but not tell why there are regularities in general. This is like a manager of a national sports team who is given the task of trying to beat other countries, but who keeps the people interested in sports by arranging matches between different teams of the same country. What is meant here is that rather than trying to address the question of the regular nature of the world, or accepting that it is not their tasks, many scientists keep their readers busy reading the stories of different regularities (that is, different scientific results).

A way used to explain away these regularities in terms of something else than other regularities is to say that these regularities are a result of random chances. Philosophically, reasons are required for the very law of uniformity of nature, and a talk of randomness (with its own laws of unknown origins) does not address this issue. Even accepting the law of uniformity of nature and a validity of science for all the times and all the events, something shown above to be logically not proved, there is a strong argument within science as well that the order in the universe is so much that it cannot be a result of purely random chances: the law of increase of disorder (entropy) with time. This law tells us that the total order in universe at its start must be more than the total order we see here now. The probability of getting the present day order in the universe by chance is equal to the probability of ordering one particle in it by chance multiplied as many times as is the number of particles in the universe. This is something like 1/10 multiplied by 1/10 multiplied by 1/10………10⁸⁰ times. Thus the probability of getting the order in the present universe by chance is roughly as small as 1 divided by 10⁸⁰ power of 10! And the probability of getting the bigger early order of the universe by chance is even smaller! That is why Roger Penrose, on page 344 of his book “Emperor’s New Mind” says that the Creator’s aim in creating this ordered universe must have been choosing I out of 10¹²³ options.

Another limit of the human knowledge is in understanding the human consciousness. Continuing the line of thinking that the human mind is just a very complicated arrangement of atoms, and hence actually is nothing more than a machine, many people think the human mind is just a refined computer evolved through the natural selection described by Darwinism. Any natural explanation of the human consciousness is of this kind. But computers are based on logic (i.e. algorithms), and human conscious cannot be totally logical. That is, it cannot be just algorithmic or mechanical. This is because the (deductive) logic that computer can simulate brings out the information which is equivalent to, the given, though normally in a more useful form: it can never produce something fundamentally new. Had human thoughts been totally logical (algorithmic) as well, these thoughts would have always been logically equivalent to the past knowledge and experience. Thus human knowledge would have never advanced and predicted new phenomena to be experimentally verified afterwards! Thus the human mind has a quality called the human creativity that cannot be a result of some mechanical or purely random activity and hence cannot have a natural origin. The advancement of human knowledge is most obvious in science itself. Science always progresses by a unique combination of this supernatural non-algorithmic human creativity and the natural experimental testing of the new ideas arriving through what is called the human creativity. (Islamic teaching, though, would teach that these ideas are a gift from Allah to mankind, and there is no reason to deny that.) . Some supernatural-natural combination may also be involved in the explanation of the biological evolution of species (animals and plants) on the earth over probably millions of years in the remote past, and may he responsible for many difficulties of the purely natural explanation in the form of Darwinism etc. Thus it may well be the case that the survival of the fittest part of the theory (comparable to the experiential checking of scientific ideas) is the statement of a natural process. But some supernatural (Divine) factor is responsible for the generation of new kind of genes, mutations and variations in general. (Minor mutations and gene changes may be natural.) It may be the same (Divine?) factor or source the human creativity benefits from.

The last but not the least important question is if the very start of the universe can have a natural explanation. That is, can the universe have a first natural cause? The answer is simply no, because a natural first cause of the universe would demand a further natural cause by its nature a contradiction. This is the old argument of an infinite regress being impossible. (That is, explaining something in terms of the second, the second in terms of the third, and so on ad infinitum---without stopping this chain of explanations----cannot be an explanation.) It is still, true, because it did not rely on any scientific theory valid in ancient times and rejected now. It is a mathematical style of argument. It can be, though, put in modern language where it means that scientists would always be talking about the fractions of the first second after the Big Bang, and then fractions of this fractions and so on and would never say or able to say about the actual start of the universe. This is because the scientific knowledge about this event is in terms of the language of mathematics and this language can connect only a time interval and events in it to its fractions and events in this fraction and nothing else.

It is sometimes argued that a supernatural explanation of the universe would also suffer from the same problem of never ending chain of explanations. An example of this mentality is the question: “who created God?” If our purpose is just a discussion for the sake of discussion, we can remain stuck here. But if we want to systematically proceed to finding answers to the Ultimate Questions of the universe, we better first keep our inquiry to finding if a fully natural explanation of the start or the first cause of the universe, of its extraordinary features, its order and design, and life and consciousness in it, is available or not. That is what we have done so far. With our conclusion that no such complete natural explanation is available and there are no reasons to remain looking forward to a day when such a complete natural explanation would be available and neglect the always-present reality of its absence, strict logic gives us two options. Either we accept a supernatural answer to these Ultimate Questions, or advocate that there are no answers to these questions at all.

At this stage it is necessary for us to think about the nature of logic. Is logic (and science) something we directly know to be true? The real situation in life is not quite this. Each human being is directly aware of certain perceptions and feelings only: our eyes convey certain coloured impressions to us, or ears convey certain sounds, we smell what we smell, we touch what we touch, feel what we feel. There are certain patterns in the data coming to us through our senses, and thus we conclude that there are certain objects around us. I see a certain pattern of brown colour in front of me, and see a certain behaviour of other persons towards it (every one stops near it, and sits on a thing called chair). I consciously or (mostly) subconsciously explain all this observation to myself that this is what others and I have called a table.” The process continues throughout our lives, and each of us goes on believing in existence of many phenomena around. To few individuals, this process culminates in the scientific explanations of mans phenomena etc. The details of the processes are a subject of a large number of works. Many people take the process as telling us there are certain “objects” out there: there is an existence external to and independent of the human observers. This is a convenient view, but philosophically does not have a strong base. In the 20^th century, this view has been rejected even is science itself through the (above mentioned) quantum mechanics demolishing the idea that what we study in physics is necessarily a “real world” external to and independent of our perceptions. This theory basically points out that the very act of trying to know about the world changes the world by an extent not knowable beyond a certain limit. So, we cannot be totally sure what the world was like before we tried to measure a part of it. In the present discussion this technical point should be taken just as an illustration of the basic idea that was valid even before this 20^th century physics. And this is that knowledge depends upon 1) a person getting knowledge, through his or her certain faculties (of observation and analysis) and 2) some features of the outside world that take all of us to almost the same conclusions about what we call the objects around us.

So, the basic requirements of knowledge are man and natures, and not logic, science and disciplines like that. These disciplines emerge as results of the interaction of man and nature. So, it is not necessary that all what human beings know or all what is there in the world is limited to formal logic or science. In case of logic, the actual thing is a human capability of which the rules found in the books of logic are just expressions. We can call this the logical capability. The guidance of this capability includes the formal rules of logic. But our use of this ability is neither bound by these rules, nor is the use limited to a study of the natural causes through science. The best way to figure out what this capability is, nevertheless, to understand the rules of formal logic and their use in science. The disciplines of logic and science are actually expressions of a kind of agreement between all the humans: we all have decided through the academic discussions about logic: how we should correctly think in certain situations, and through the discussions in science what we regard as valid information about the world and the connections of its different parts.

In science or otherwise, whenever the human beings make use of the logical capability, they conclude for example that a statement and its contradiction cannot both he true. (The two statements “this table is brown” and “this table is not brown” cannot both be true. Also, “there is one God” and “there is not one God (but three)” cannot both he true.) The situation of contradictory statement is often met in science and in the human life otherwise. So, the conclusion about it is well documented, agreed upon generally and has found its rightful place in the books of logic. But the question if there is a supernatural explanation of the world is obviously not addressed in the search for the natural explanations i.e. in science. So, neither the situation nor any conclusion or agreement about it is found in the books of logic and science. A person pondering over the issue has to decide himself or herself what the logical capability of all the human beings (illustrated by the rules of formal logic but not limited to these) says about the issue. An educated person can take help of certain other uses of the logical capability in similar situation by other men. For example, there has been a basic law of thought mentioned in all the books of classical logic called the Law of Sufficient Reason. And humans always prefer some reason to no reason. This reason can be of a different kind, as in the case of quantum mechanics of modern physics where in absence of an explanation giving definite results scientists have preferred to use a new explanation of the atomic-level phenomena that gives nothing more than chances and implies that the exact knowledge is impossible. Here, rather than thinking that there is no proper explanation of the observations and experiments, scientists have preferred to use a completely different kind of explanation. Also interesting is the ceaseless endeavour of many scientists to give a complete natural explanation of the universe, life and consciousness: they know that if a natural explanation is denied, the human nature would inevitably prefer a supernatural explanation. None of the opponents of a supernatural explanation of world and life has hoped that even if a natural explanation is denied, the human nature would prefer a “no explanation” conclusion to the supernatural explanation. Why the human logical capability, always opting for some explanation of one kind or other, to “no explanation.” Would have a different character in this regard and prefer “no explanation” to a supernatural explanation. The human logical capability demands that the supernatural explanation should be free from internal logical contradiction, but if a supernatural explanation is free from such inconsistencies there is no reason to reject it and opt for “no explanation.”

The features of the world not having a natural explanation, and thus yielding to a supernatural explanation, are its start (or the first cause), the order and design it in, and the presence of life and consciousness in it. Our logical capability would require a supernatural explanation of all these features that is free from internal contradiction. This capability cannot in itself tell what the required explanation is, but can judge the available ones. A belief in a Creator of the universe provides such an explanation of the ultimate (first) cause of the universe. To explain the design and order, and especially the vastness of the whole universe, one has to accept the belief that the Creator is One. Then we have to examine if there is a supernatural explanation of the world available that provides us with an explanation of the life and consciousness in the world and also tells us what it practically means to accept such an explanation. We do not have to survey each and every explanation of the world proposed during the last thousands of years; it is enough to examine the statements of those persons who had a claim of such knowledge, their lives and /or message had some extraordinary feature that cannot be explained away in a natural (scientific) way. That is still not sufficient: there can be people like magician who give impression of having qualities that defy a scientific explanation. Perhaps no such person has ever claimed with confidence to have knowledge of a supernatural explanation of the universe, life and consciousness. But suppose one does so. How are we going to judge that such a person knows about the Creator of universe and conveys His message? Our logical capability expects that a Divine message would also have some supernatural qualities, would provide some insight into the nature of universe, life and consciousness not achievable otherwise, and would help sustained progress human life and society. With these conditions and expectation in mind, our historical survey cannot miss noticing the extraordinary features of the fact that in the desert of Arabia in an “uncivilized” period of history there, an illiterate person conveyed to us a message, The Quran, whose miraculous nature defies all natural explanations and can not be explained but through his claim of having a (Divine) source of knowledge – revelation – not accessible to other human beings. The kind of influence he had on the people around him and millions afterwards was also extraordinary and can be explained only by assuming that he was not jus to amaze people and get material rewards out of the resulting admiration. He taught the message, everyone realizing universal or objective moral values being good would regard as virtuous and necessary for sustaining any society. (These values include honesty, truth, justice, opposing cruelty, respecting human rights and equality before the law etc.)

His message is Islam, available in the only fully preserved book that is said to be Divine, that is Quran, and also in his life descriptions and sayings: Sunnah. Accepting Islam means that to those questions where we have no other reason to chose between natural and supernatural explanation (like the remote future and the final destiny of the universe, the truth of the miracles of the Divine prophets, the purposeful but unnoticeable violation of the scientific laws as a part of the Divine action, and the biological creationism if we think the Islam teaches us that) we prefer the Islamic teachings to agnosticism. Where there is a genuine reason to prefer a natural (scientific) explanation, Islam allows us opting for a natural explanation normally by not providing an Islamic scientific theory to be contested. This may include some partial biological evolution and some natural explanation of it like (partial) Darwinism.

The approach to the Islamic beliefs presented in the later part of the article does not rely on some examples of the natural phenomenon as an argument. It is not expected to replace the normal presentation, defence and criticism of the Islamic beliefs through the examples of the natural phenomena and scientific result. The reason is that those preaching Islam find it most effective to talk in terms of the concrete pin pointed facts and scientific results (i.e., in terms of examples – as – arguments) and those attacking the Islamic beliefs find it most easy to attack these examples. (As these are chosen by the preachers, or their role in the argument is decided by them, nothing having a Divine guarantee of validity.) In spite of this importance of examples, we think it is important to keep in mind that there is available an approach to the Islamic beliefs that do not rely on examples – as – arguments. This would keep preachers from being sensitive about the examples, and would tell the ones criticizing Islamic beliefs that some problems in some examples do not mean that the basic message is wrong or imperfect.