This is my first contribution to the blog, it may not seem political but if you think about it you’ll realise that it is.
I was watching one of David Attenborough’s programs last night about bugs and it was absolutely amazing. The most interesting part of it was about a beetle that lives in the Californian desert and how its baby larvae find food for the first time.
This is how it does it: The beetle lays its eggs under the desert sun to protect them from the intense heat but it also lays them near a grass stalk. Once the larvae are born they need to find food quickly. Larvae usually eat pollen but once they are born they are nowhere near any pollen. How they find their first meal is truly amazing. What they do is that they all run up the nearest grass stalk, thousands of them working together in a team. They all go to the top of the stalk and bundle themselves really close together to form a big ball of larvae. They do this so that they look like a female bee - you’ll realise why in a minute. Male bees looking for a mate are attracted to this big bundle of larvae because they thinks it’s a female bee. When a bee comes near the bundle some of the larvae cling on to it. The bee then falls as a result of the unexpected extra weight of the larvae but starts flying again once it gets used to the new weight. The bee then continues to fly around until it finds a real female bumble bee and starts mating with it. While this is happening the cunning larvae jump onto the female bee. The female bee then transports the larvae to its nest where it has already collected loads of pollen for its own offspring. Once inside the bees nest, the larvae jump off and eat the pollen and then the bees’ eggs.
SUBHAANALLAH, how on earth did the larvae figure all that out? How did they know they should form a big bundle on the stalk and look like a female bee, they’ve never seen one before - they were just born! Not even the most cunning human would have been able to devise such a fantastic plan. This just proves that the larvae must have been programmed to do this and this could only have been done by their creator. The larvae have no capacity to think and had no idea what a bumble bee is, let a lone what it looks like. They had the skill to work in a team to achieve their objective at a level even the military would have been proud of.
There can be no doubt that the larvae and the rest of the universe were created and programmed to work in a specific way. That’s why we see everything work in such an organised and fluent manner. Man is the only thing in the Universe that has the choice of whether to obey the creator’s system or not. That’s why we see the mayhem in the world today and on a smaller scale within peoples own lives. The larva obeys its creator without question, and look at the success it achieves. If only man could do the same then maybe we would achieve what many people think is a dream, a world full of peace and tranquillity.
December 16th, 2005 at 12:34 pm
SubhanAllah, its amazing how Allah (swt) has organised his earth and all that is in it in such harmony. I love watching wildlife programmes, i’m always in awe at the amazing things which bugs and mammals can do.It makes you appreciate the power and might of our creator, and makes you realise that some people are so blind.
Take Scientists for instance they think they know it all with their theories on how we came to be- and how things just happened to evolve from one thing to the next, and how such amazing eco-systems, hierarchies and animal kingdoms appeared from caviar of the pre-homosapien eras. You’d think the people that understand the workings of creation would be the first to realise that nothing other than a superior being could have made it.
Socrates once said;
“The man who knows he knows nothing is smarter than the man who thinks he knows something but actually knows nothing”
I think that sums it up really…
December 16th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
Thats very true, a lot of secular scientists have become blinded by their arrogance. They feel that they have progressed so much that they have to assign a scientific theory to everything they see and that admitting there is a creator is just a cop out. They feel that they have failed if they don’t come up with some sort of scientific explanation. This also applies to secular politicians who insist on detaching Allah from lifes affairs and hence ruling according to their own whims. A notion that is as ridiculous as scientists declaring that its better for the larvae to follow their own whims and reject Allahs commands.
December 16th, 2005 at 3:40 pm
Yeh your right actually… but i bet the larvae would do a better job in ruling than all of our current leaders! Your post reminded me of something i saw a while back- i posted it on my blogspot- damasio-orbit.blogspot.com
If you’re into wildlife then i think you’ll really like this!
December 20th, 2005 at 9:02 am
Oh my Gosh! Xmas presents under my Xmas Tree - must be Santa!
December 20th, 2005 at 9:58 am
Well anonymous, if you see a Christmas present under your Christmas tree at home, you will know for sure that somebody, or even something, had to put it there. That present didn`t appear out of nothingness with no explanation. That somebody could have been Santa, as it could have been your mum or even your next door neighbor. You have no clue on who is that somebody, what is his/her/its essence, but you know for sure that the somebody?something that placed the present under the tree must have existed at that point in time. Likewise, something must have been the cause of our existence and the existence of the Universe and everything it contains. It is absolutely non-sensical to say that the Universe created itself out of the blue. If it didn`t exist initially, then how did it get the will and even the power to decide to create itself. This is one of the reasons why Muslims are convinced of the existence of a Creator. A priori, we don`t know much about its essence except that this Creator is infinte, unlimited and independent of any need. This is because if that Creator was limited and therefore dependent on somebody/thing `s existence, then that Creator must have been created too. And then if the Creator of that Creator was also limited and dependent, then this 2nd Creator must have been created by a 3rd Creator, resulting in an infinite regression, meaning that you always end up going back into the creation of another Creator and therefore a 1st Creator didn`t exist in order to start the whole thing. This is why the ultimate Creator must have been unlimited and self-dependent. I hope it makes sense.
December 20th, 2005 at 10:22 am
Possible answer:
A generation of mutated larvae are born. These mutated larvae have a random gene that inclines them to climb up the first stem they see. There’s no benefit in this so it is seen as a negative mutation but nevertheless it is just an instinctual inclination (the same way a new born baby knows to suck its mother’s breast)!
Millions of years later, another mutation occurs in the larvae – this time they develop a gene that inclines them to huddle together (the same way penguins form a triangle to protect them from the cold wind).
Millions of years later another mutation, then another mutation. Finally, we have the current series of steps. There was no intention for these steps to be there nor was there any intelligence behind it. It was just a random set of mutations… then after all this had happened we have two sets of larvae: the original type with no mutations and the new X-men type larvae.
Due to harsh changes in the climate all the original larvae die off. However, the mutated larvae survive. In hindsight, it appears that there is some form of intelligence behind this elaborate strategy but in reality it just happens to end up this way due to chance.
I know this sounds complicated so let me give you an analogy. Imagine you draw a small cross on a footpath in a forest. Next to the cross, you write please leave £1.22 if you see this cross”. The following day, I’m walking along the forest footpath and accidentally drop a £1 coin, a 20p coin and a 2p coin out of my pocket and they land on the cross. When you see these coins you will conclude that someone intentionally placed these coins there. How is it possible the exact amount would fall out of pocket and land on this cross? However, you must see by now that there is every possibility that this occurred.
December 20th, 2005 at 11:49 am
What you just said is like saying that all the rulers in the muslim lands have such oppresive policies becuase there is a few mutations in their genes. I really wish that was the case but unfortunately genes do not dictate the way you think and the actions that you choose to perform based on your concepts and previous information. The action of a baby sucking is directly linked to its organic needs and hence is instinctual. But the larvae’s actions appear to have nothing to do with their organic needs, except right at the end, you realise what they’ve been trying to do. Only actions that are directly linked to the organic needs or instincts are instinctual. so running up a stalk does not count because this action does not result in the needs being satisfied it is just a random action. So these are not actions like the sucking of babies. Also your theory doesnt make sense because after the first negative mutation all those larvae would die cos they would be on the stalk doing nothing hence that negative mutation would be lost from the gene pool.
The only possible explanation is that somehow something “programmed” these larvae to behave the way they do and that of course is their creator.
December 20th, 2005 at 12:27 pm
Big Mac, you made the point yourself in your comment with your analogy. Even if the person didn`t have the intention to give 1.22 pounds, he still did, ie he was the cause for the 1.22 pounds to be present next to the cross. Those 1.22 pounds didn`t appear by magic out of nothingness, there was a cause to their presence next to the cross. Likewise, something or somebody must have intentionally or non-intentionally caused our existence. Now, because of our limitations, we cannot preceive that Creator, we just know that a Creator must exist. Furthermore, we cannot know whether this Creator created us intentionally or randomly unless that Creator decides to tell us.
By the way, I would like to add that the existence of a Creator of the Universe cannot be proved with science, because science is only limited to what is experimentally testable, which is not the case of that Creator. Remember in your science labs at school where you had for each experiment aims, method of investigation, results and conclusions. This is known as the scientific method of thinking (in philosophy, empiricism). Instead, we need to use the rational thinking process whose criterion is ration (ie reality). For example, the scientific method of thinking can tell you what are the chemicals used in a painting, their proportion, discus about the reflection of light on it, etc. but it cannot tell you if that painting was painted by a painter. The fact that we know that there was a painter who painted that painting is understood through the rational thinking process. Likewise, the rational thinking process tells you that when you hear a knock on the door, that noise was created by somebody or something that hit the door. Scientific thinking process only will tell you how the knock noise propagated through the air and at what speed. To sum it up, science explains the how of things but not the fundamental why. Science tells you how gravity works but it doesn`t tell you why gravity exists.
Also, I would like to refer you to that interesting piece of news.
http://www.khilafah.com/home/category.php?DocumentID=12430&TagID=2
December 20th, 2005 at 3:52 pm
Interesting discussion…heres a little mind teaser for everyone..rationalise why it is that man thinks rationally…indeed it is clear design in line with mans purpose which is to rationalise the creators existence through reflecting on the beetle larvae, and thus submit to this creators system to achieve the tranquility ‘be humble’ alludes to in his post.
December 20th, 2005 at 5:16 pm
Behold! In the creation of the heavens and the earth and in the alternation of the night and day are indeed signs for men of understanding!
[Translation of the Meaning of the Qur'an 3:190]
December 20th, 2005 at 7:40 pm
Big Mac
You said:
When you see these coins you will conclude that someone intentionally placed these coins there. How is it possible the exact amount would fall out of pocket and land on this cross? However, you must see by now that there is every possibility that this occurred.
You are saying that we should believe that the £1.22 arrived by chance. I agree it could have. It is a possibility.
By continuing that line of thought, we could say that it is at least a possibility that your message came onto our blog by random chance.
It is at least possible that random static electrical signals were propagated along an Ethernet cable (just by chance), then formed themselves into a sequence of perfect TCP/IP packets (just by chance), arrived at blogger.com (just by chance) and replied to a subject being discussed (just by chance), oh and did so in the English language (again, just by chance).
Right.
Sure.
That leaves us with a problem: Either I’m writing a reply (NOT by chance) to a bunch of random static, or you do really do exist and you really did leave that message.
I’ll leave it to you to make up your own mind.
December 20th, 2005 at 11:51 pm
I think that’s a good point, we don’t adopt this way of thinking for anything else in life so why should we adopt it for the way we came into existence?