When the Prophet Muhammad, may peace be upon him, claimed that the Quran was a divine book revealed to him by God for the guidance of man, there were many who did not believe him. The scriptures to them were a human rather than a divine composition. The Quran then gave a challenge to these sceptics, asking them to produce “a scripture similar to it,” if what they said were true. (52:34)
It declared, moreover, in no uncertain terms that, even if all the human beings and the jinns made collective and concerted efforts to produce a book like the Quran, they would all fail miserably in their attempt. (17:88)
The Quran, being an eternal book, poses a perennial challenge, addressed to every human being under the sun until Doomsday.
Now the question arises as to the characteristics this sacred book possesses which render it inimitable. Several aspects of its uniqueness are mentioned in the Quran, one of which is its consistency:
“Do they not ponder over the Quran? If it had not come from God, they would have found in it many contradictions (ikhtilaf)” (4:82).
(Professor Arberry has translated the Arabic word ikhtilaf as ‘inconsistency’. Other renderings of the word include contradiction, disparity and difference.)
Total consistency is an extremely rare quality, one which is an exclusive attribute of God. It is, therefore, beyond any human being to compose a work in which there are no disparities. For a work to be quite flawless, the composer has to have a command of such knowledge as encompasses the past and the future, and extends also to all objects of creation. There must be no shadow of doubt in his perception of the essential nature of things. Furthermore, his knowledge must be based on direct acquaintance, not on information indirectly received from others. And there is another unique quality he must possess: he must be able to see things, not in a prejudiced light, but as they actually are.
“Do they not ponder over the Quran? If it had not come from God, they would have found in it many contradictions (ikhtilaf).” (4:82)
God and God alone can possess all these extraordinary qualities. For this reason, only His Word will remain perennially free of all inconsistency. The work of man, on the other hand, is always marred by imperfection, for man himself is imperfect; it does not lie within his power to compose a work free of contradiction.
Contradictions in Human Reasoning
It is not by chance that the work of man is fraught with contradictions. It is inevitable, given the inherent limitations of human cerebral activity. Such is the nature of creation that it accepts only the Thought of its Creator. Any theory which is not in consonance with His thinking can find no place in the universe. It will contradict itself, for it stands at variance with the universe at large; it will be inconsistent, for it does not run true to the pattern of nature.
For this reason, intellectual inconsistency is bound to mar any theory conceived of by man. We shall illustrate this point by several examples.
Darwinism
Charles Darwin (1809-1882), and other scientists after him, developed the theory of Evolution from their observations of living creatures. They saw that the various forms of life found on earth outwardly appeared different from one another. Yet, biologically, they bore a considerable resemblance to each other. The structure of a horse, for instance, when standing up on its two hind legs, was not unlike the human frame.
From these observations they came to the conclusion that man was not a separate species, and that along with other animals, he had originated from a common gene. All creatures were involved in a great evolutionary journey through successive stages of biological development. While reptiles, quadrupeds and monkeys were in an early stage of evolution, man was in an advanced stage.
For a hundred years this theory held sway over human thought. But then further investigations revealed that it had loopholes. It did not fully fit in with the framework of creation. In certain fundamental ways, it clashed with the order of the universe as a whole. For instance, there is the question of the age of the earth. By scientific calculation, it has been put at around two thousand million years old. Now this period is far too short to have accommodated the process of evolution envisaged by Darwin. It has been shown scientifically that for just one compound of protein molecule to have evolved, it would have taken more than just millions and millions of years. There are over a million different forms of animal life on earth and at least two hundred thousand fully developed vegetable species. How could they all have evolved in just two thousand million years? Not even an animal low down in the evolutionary scale could have developed in that time, let alone man, an advanced life form which could have developed only after passing through countless evolutionary stages.
A mathematician, by the name of Professor Patau, has made certain calculations concerning the biological changes postulated by the theory of evolution. According to him, even a minor change in any species would take one million generations to be completed. From this, one can have an idea of how long a period would elapse before a dog, for example, turned into a horse. The multiple changes involved in such a complicated evolutionary process would have taken much too long for them to have happened during the human lifespan of the world.
As Fred Hoyle puts it, in The Intelligent Universe: Just how excruciatingly slowly genetic information accumulates by trial and error can be seen from a simple example. Suppose, very conservatively, that a particular protein is coded by a tiny segment in the DNA blueprint, just ten of the chemical links in its double helix. Without all ten links being in the correct sequence, the protein from the DNA doesn’t work. Starting with all the ten wrong, how many generations of copying must elapse before all the links – and hence the protein – come right through random errors? The answer is easily calculated from the rate at which DNA links are miscopied, a figure which has been established by experiment.
‘To obtain the correct sequence of ten links, by miscopying, the DNA would have to reproduce itself on an average, about a hundred million members of the species all producing offspring, it would still take a million generations before even a single member came up with the required rearrangement. And if that sounds almost within the bounds of possibility, consider what happens if a protein is more complicated and the number of DNA links needed to code for it jumps from ten to twenty. A thousand billion generations would then be needed, and if one hundred links are required (as is often the case), the number of generations would be impossibly high because no organism reproduces fast enough to achieve this. The situation for the neo-Darwinism theory is evidently hopeless. It might be possible for genes to be modified slightly during the course of evolution, but the evolution of specific sequences of DNA links of any appreciable length is clearly not possible’ (p. 110).
And in any case, as Hoyle had earlier stated, ‘Shufflings of the DNA code are disadvantageous, because they tend to destroy cosmic genetic information rather than to improve it.’
To solve this problem, another theory, called the Panspermia Theory, was formed. It held that life originated in outer space. From there it came to earth. But as it turned out, this theory created new problems of its own. Where in the vastness of space was there a planet or a star with the conditions needed for life to develop? For example, there is nothing more essential to life than water. Nothing can come into existence or continue to survive without it. Yet no one knows of anywhere in the entire universe, except the earth, where it exists. We then had a certain body of intellectuals who favoured a theory of Emergent Evolution, according to which life – or its various forms – came into being all of a sudden. But this theory is empty of meaning. How can there be sudden appearance of life without the intervention of an outside force? So, we are back to where we started, with the Outside Force – or Creator¬ – to discount which all these theories were originally invented.
The fact of the matter is, without taking a Creator into account, one cannot give a valid explanation of life. There is simply no other theory which fits in with the pattern of the universe. Being inconsistent with the nature of life, other theories fail to take firm root. It is indeed significant that eminent scholars from various fields have thought fit to contribute to an Encyclopedia of Ignorance, which has been published in London. The book has the following introduction:
‘In the Encyclopedia of Ignorance some 60 well-known scientists survey different fields of research, trying to point out significant gaps in our knowledge of the world.’
What this work really amounts to is an academic acknowledgement of the fact that the Maker of the world has fashioned it in such a way that it just cannot be explained by any mechanical interpretation. For instance, as John Maynard Smith has written, the theory of evolution is beset with certain ‘built-in’ problems. There appears to be no solution to these problems, for all we have to go by are theories. And without concrete evidence, there is no way we can back up our theories.
According to the Quran, man and all other forms of life have been created by God. The theory of evolution, on the other hand, holds that they are all the result of a blind mechanical process. The Quranic interpretation explains itself, for God can do as He wills. He can create what He wishes without material resources. Such is not the case with the theory of evolution, which demands that there should be a cause for everything that happens. Such causes cannot be found, with the result that the theory of evolution is left without an explanation, – in an intellectual vacuum, one might say, while the same cannot be said of the explanation of life offered by the Quran.
