INTRODUCTION
The journey to discover God stems from a deep-seated urge innate to man’s nature. It is so easy and simple for every person to undertake this journey wherever they are. One does not need to travel anywhere physically for this purpose. According to a story, someone once asked a desert dweller what evidence there was for God’s existence. The Bedouin replied that the camel’s dung was evidence of the presence of a camel, footprints on the sand were evidence of the existence of a person who had walked there, and so were not the vast skies, the wide Earth and the enormous seas filled with waves sufficient evidence for the existence of a Creator of them all? (Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Vol. 1, p. 106)
This story is about a humble and wise man. From it, one can understand that realizing the Creator’s existence is so easy that every human being, at the level of their very nature, can conclude that God does exist by reflecting on their immediate surroundings. There is no need to visit a library, read many books, or embark on a journey to discover God. You can discover God wherever you are. There is only one condition: one must be a sincere seeker.
Once, someone asked me how we can know God. I asked him to reflect on the fingers of his hands and the toes on his feet. His life would have been difficult had his fingers been short and his toes long! Our fingers and toes are just the size for our hands and feet to function properly. They indicate wise planning that only the Creator and Provider of the universe, who is beyond man, could have arranged for. If one does not accept such a God, the Creator and Provider and Sustainer of the universe, one cannot correctly understand anything in the universe at all. Knowing God is as easy as knowing oneself.
This discovery can be called the discovery of God at the commonsense level. However, there is another level of discovery, which man has discovered in modern times—and that is the discovery of God through scientific evidence. This phenomenon has been indicated in the Quran in these words:
“We shall show them Our signs in the universe and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that this is the Truth.” (41:53)
Today, man can easily discover God through new and abundant scientific evidence pointing to the existence of a Supreme Being behind the universe and its functioning. This is a significant point that this book seeks to make.
Science is the study of Nature, which consists of everything in the universe. Scientific research began with some initial issues, and as it advanced, it became abundantly clear that the universe is an exceedingly meaningful realm. Any explanation or interpretation of the universe that is not based on its meaningfulness cannot be compatible with the findings of scientific research.
Through scientific research, it has come to be known that the universe is characterized by intelligent design. Now, if one does not accept that this intelligent design indicates an Intelligent Designer—or, in other words, the Creator, God Almighty—who arranged for this intelligent design, the various phenomena of the universe are entirely inexplicable.
Likewise, scientific research has shown that our universe is custom-made—that is, it is entirely in line with the needs of all living beings inhabiting it. Now, if it is not accepted that this compatibility between the universe and its various living creatures points to the existence of a Creator Who caused this to be so, it is simply impossible to provide a comprehensible explanation of this phenomenon.
Likewise, findings in various fields of scientific research show that different parts and features of the universe are intricately, profoundly interconnected, and immensely finely tuned. There must be some explanation for these mind-boggling phenomena. However, their only truly meaningful explanation is based on the concept of the Creator, God Almighty, Who has designed the universe in the most appropriate way possible.
Science is not a religious subject. The subject matter of science is not the discovery of God or the Creator. Instead, its subject matter is the study of Nature, or, in other words, the study of the Creator’s creations. However, as we see the signs or evidence of the Creator in His creation, the study of the creation, indirectly, becomes the study of the Creator. The things science has discovered in research on the universe or Nature are Divine Signs, which in the Quran are called ‘Ayaatu Allah’ or ‘Signs of God.’ In this sense, it would be correct to say that the discovery of the meaningfulness of the creation is synonymous with the discovery of the meaningfulness of the Creator.
The realization of God has been the focal point of my quest from the very first day. My days and nights have been spent in this quest, so much so that perhaps I can say I have found God. Around 1960, I was in my brother’s house in Azamgarh, in Northern India, where I met a person. During our conversation, suddenly, he asked me, “Can man see God?” I answered, “Have you not seen God as yet?”
I have had many such experiences in my life. However, be that as it may, ‘seeing God’ in this world is in the figurative sense, not in the real or literal sense, because in the real sense, in this world, no person can see God, the Creator and Sustainer of all the worlds.
Once, in an article, I wrote that to believe in God is strange, but not believing in God is stranger still. So when I say I believe in God, I prefer the less strange to the more strange.
A friend of the scientist Albert Einstein once asked him if he was an atheist. He replied in the negative and explained that he could be more appropriately called an agnostic. An agnostic is someone who says that he cannot say that God does not exist, nor can he say that God does exist.
Einstein’s response to his friend can be paraphrased as follows: “I have no evidence to support the denial of God, as the scientific evidence in support of the existence of God is so considerable that I am also not in a position to say that there is no God. I can say that probably there is a God, but I am not in a position to say, in certain terms, ‘Yes, God does exist.’”
Taking the help of terminology used in Quantum Physics, one could say that Einstein’s position is synonymous with the acknowledgement of God because following the discovery of subatomic particles and probability waves, in Quantum Physics, probability has acquired the status close to certainty, and now it is accepted that while probability is less than certainty, it is more than ‘perhaps.’
The search for Reality is a natural quest. Every person who comes into this world has an innate desire to know what and who he is, how and why he came into existence, what his significance in this world is, how this world came into being, and what will happen to him after he dies. Such questions underpin man’s quest for understanding Reality. This quest has always been a common search for all humans who have taken birth on Earth. However, perhaps not everyone is bereft of the urge to find the answers to these existential questions. Some people have given this quest the status of a spiritual search, while others have thought of it as a mystical journey. Some have tried discovering what they were looking for through meditation, while others have taken to other spiritual practices for the same purpose.
As far as I understand, this search acquired a new form with the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) when he observed space through a telescope in 1609. The invention of the telescope (and later the microscope) that observes quantitative matter has added a new era to this search. After a deep study over hundreds of years, the scientific community differentiated between the qualitative and quantitative aspects of matter when it affirmed that science provides only a partial knowledge of reality. This means that, according to the self-confession of the material sciences itself, qualitative aspects are beyond the scope of the scientific material investigation that focuses only on the quantitative aspects of the matter. In other words, while science investigates quantitative matter, it leaves aside the qualitative search.
After that, humanity has come to realize that the qualitative aspect of this question that relates to the search for Reality is essentially unknowable, but its quantitative aspect that relates to the study of material things is largely knowable. At some point, the two sides diverged from each other. The qualitative aspect remained a subject of exploration for certain individuals who continued their search for Reality, while the quantitative aspect attracted an entire community of scientists dedicated to its investigation. This is what we now refer to as science. Subsequently, this observable aspect became further divided into two parts: theoretical science and applied science. These two aspects are distinct from one another yet also intertwined.
I have studied and extensively written on this topic, and some of my findings about scientific evidence of religious truths, which, in essence, is religious theology based on scientific evidence, are given in the pages of this book.
Wahiduddin Khan
New Delhi
25 May 2020
