These are questions that are bugging the minds of many a youth in our times. The spread of knowledge of things hitherto unknown to man has made almost everyone suspicious of the tales of miracles that have held man tight to religious ideologies. Man no longer views, let’s say Jesus’ walk on water or Abraham escaping from the fire unscathed or Muhammad curing a sore eye with a spit of his saliva enough to hook him to the idea of an All-Powerful God. Man has gone to the moon and has explored the depths of the earth and seas and seems to be content with the gadgetry that is so fascinating to him. But the truth is, man is equally unhappy. The needs of man have increased with the passage of time and he is now insatiable. Yet, he is also devoid of any sense of contentment and spiritual health.
This has resulted to the excesses that we see today in modern society. No one has enough of anything. The happiness that we seek cannot be found anywhere. Man drinks liquor like water in the hope that he will find happiness. Some go the extra mile to taste cocaine or heroin or marijuana, but cannot still find the happiness they need. Sex is another area where man seeks to find happiness, but there also he seems to be in a delusion. This is manifested in the way he talks, the way he dresses or even the way he eats. When Sigmund Freud said that all problems of the world are related to sex, the world thought that he was crazy and some went to the extent of telling him so in his face. But, the father of modern psychology was right, at least partly. Sex symbolizes love and it is love that can bring about the happiness we so much crave but cannot attain. This love is manifested in different ways, love for art, love for poetry, love for music, love for wine, love for a woman or love for family. But all these manifestations of love fade in the long run. The true and real love which fades not is only the love of God Almighty. All other forms of love are misguided manifestations of that powerful bond between the Creator and the created. That is why the Holy Qur’an says that it is only in the remembrance of Allah that hearts can find rest. Whatever form of love you choose to manifest that desire within you will fade sooner or later.
One must find God, Allah, Jehovah, Jah or whatever name one may wish to call Him to be able to find love. It is to help society – those who will avail themselves of the opportunity- to find that love that we will endeavor in the coming weeks and months to answer the questions raised above in a sequence that will enhance easy understanding. This, it is expected, will help seekers after truth to find the path to success and happiness in a well-coordinated and guided way so as to fulfill the in-built desire of their hearts to find true comfort and happiness.
Does God really exist?
Some philosophers will have us believe that God does not exist and that it is man’s lack of knowledge of nature that led to the idea of a supreme being. They forward the theory that as man did not understand the powers of nature, thunder, lightning, lions, sickness, death and other forms of suffering, he started assigning them supernatural powers. When there was thunder, man ran to hide and worship the ‘god’ of rain. When there was death he did the same and so on and so forth. As time went on though, man gained knowledge and knew why or how these things happened, he therefore decided to combine all these ‘gods’ and call them one big ‘god’. To a naïve person, this explanation may seem plausible but looked at closely; it has a lot of loopholes. For, where that the case, god would be under obligation to thank and worship man instead because he discovered him! Also, how comes all peoples of all times came to the same conclusions at different times in history when no contact or communication was ever established between them? The truth is that Allah, reveals Himself to His servants and no one made this discovery. He is One and Holy and the light of the heavens and the earth. The Holy Qur’an does not only forward a claim that God exists, but has followed it with proofs and arguments which leave no doubt in the mind of an unbiased reader.
The first proof that I would like to present for the existence of God Almighty is the law of cause and effect. It is known fact that the universe is a chain of causes and effects. The Holy Quran has put this forward as an argument saying that God is the cause of all causes or is the ultimate cause. This shows that God is the originator of the universe in as much as every rationale human being knows that nothing comes of its own. No one will argue with the fact that whatever we observe in the very organized universe is either a cause or the effect of another. It is also beyond reason to imagine that this will have no end. A little study of the laws of entropy and the big bang will make it abundantly clear that there is an ultimate cause which the Holy Qur’an claims is Allah, the Almighty. So far, no scientist in the world has ever claimed that the universe in infinite. Thus it must have a beginning and an end.
The Holy Qur’an has claimed God for both the beginning and the end. It is easily observable that everything in this world decays. One only needs to look around you to observe that there is decay everywhere, which confirms that nothing is infinite. When we study the Holy Word of God we learn this very clearly. In the second chapter of the Holy Qur’an, Allah the Almighty says:
…to God we belong and to Him shall we return. (2:157)
This verse clearly indicates that everything in the universe will ultimately return to God Almighty and that nothing is infinite. Studying this verse with the knowledge of the law of cause and effect in mind, one is bound to conclude that there is a God who is the ultimate cause of all causes. The theory of the beginning and the end of the world put forward by the scientist and corroborated by the Holy Qur’an also gives credence to this fact. We are told by the scientist that the world began with what they refer to as the ‘big bang’ thus culminating in the ‘white hole’ and will revert to a ‘black hole’ which will in turn go back to a ‘white hole’, until entropy consumes everything, is consistent with the Quran’s descriptions.
The Holy Qur’an says:
Remember the day when we shall roll up the heavens like the rolling up of written scrolls by a scribe. As We began the first creation, so shall We repeat it- a promise binding upon Us; We shall certainly perform it. (21:105)
This verse is totally in agreement with the scientific description of how the world began and how it will end- both accredited to God the Almighty. In the same chapter Allah refers the disbelievers to the fact that the heavens and the earth were a closed up mass and He cleaved them asunder, perhaps creating what the scientist call the big bang, and how He created every living thing from water.
It is clear from the above that the law of cause and effects proofs conclusively that the world must have a creator who also controls it.
As I said earlier, the Holy Qur’an has put forward numerous proofs of the existence of God and in our next issues; we will be looking at other proofs of this nature.
All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of all the worlds.
Musa Bah is a teacher at Nusrat Senior Secondary School and the author of several books.
By Musa Bah
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