God's Design

in all things

A.Muhammad

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One of the oldest disputes between atheists and believers is the question of whether the universe and everything in it is a result of chance or a result of intelligent design.  One of the rational conclusions for the believers is that if there is a design in the creation, one is justified in attributing it to an Intelligent Supreme Designer.  However, the atheits still insist that if there is a design in the universe that it too is a product of chance.

Ultimately, and as the Quran wisely informs us, the atheists will not believe no matter what signs and proofs they receive, for them disbelieve is not a result of lack of proof but it is a much deeper issue.  The atheists categorically refuse to accept that there is a superior power that controls everything in the universe (them included).  The issue in depth is one of egoism.  That is why the effect of God's signs on two people may be categorically different.  They may both be scientists who have similar knowledge and education, however, for one the signs may be regarded as conclusive evidence while to the other they are of no significance whatsoever.

"Say, "Look at all the signs in the heavens and the earth." All the proofs and all the warnings can never help people who decided to disbelieve."  10:101

These simple words give us 2 valuable truth's:

1-    All the signs in all the universe are not sufficient for the disbelievers.

2-   These signs will not convince the disbelievers not because they lack merit, but because the disblievers have already decided not to believe " ...people who decided to disbelieve.".

The purpose of this article is thus to present areas of deliberate design in the universe for all readers.  If disbelievers decide to see the Designer behind these signs, then they have done well.  If they decide to continue in their disbelief it is their own detriment.

Without doubt, all believers will marvel at God's awesome signs in the universe and in everything around us.  The following are some areas of signs in the creation that touch us and strengthen the believer's belief: 

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Design perceived through Intuition

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Perhaps the oldest of all, is the design we acknowledge by means of our intuition. Watching the beauty in nature, watching the birth of a new child, marvelling at how all creatures function through instint, not least mother's instincts, or looking through a telescope at the complexities of the universe, all these can inspire belief in a Supreme Designer of incredible intelligence that made all of this possible.

The beauty of this kind of intuitive appreciation for God's signs is that it comes from every field of science and from everything around us.

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Structural Design

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The second type of design is what is termed as "Structural design."  This is evident in the fact that we frequently see things of identical pattern in the universe when they have no apparent reason to be that way.  A very evident example of such design is what we may call the 'Orbital Design'.

We know that the moon orbits the earth.  The orbit of the moon is meticulously calculated in accordance to mass (of the moon and also earth), distance between moon and earth, the orbital speed of the moon and the orbital eccentricity.

In turn the earth employs the same design and rules to orbit the sun, which in turn orbits the centre of the galaxy.  

But this is not all, God's true signature is stamped through the employment of the same design in quantum mechanics.  Inside the atom, we also find a central nuclues with electrons rotating around it.   

The same structural design which is employed in the macro world, is employed in the micro world.   

Another example of identical designs is seen in Fibonacci's ratio. In 1202 the mathematician noticed some constant patterns in numbers that ultimately resulted in not only some interesting data about numerical sequences, but also in geometric patterns.

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The figure above is a spiral that has been constructed using these numbers.  This type of spiral is used in designing lots of things like spiral staircases, music symbols, etc.  The interesting thing is that this spiral is also seen over and over in evrything around us.  Galaxy arms curve with the same shaped spiral that we have here. The same spiral describes water as it goes down the drain. A wave curls with the same shape as does the tail of a comet Subatomic particles curl in magnetic fields with the same shape. We find the same shape in the curl of the horns of animals, the curve of the roots of teeth, the curl of a spider web, or of the antenna of insects. The Fibbonaci curl is seen in the tuber of plants, in the arrangement of seed in sunflowers, or the shape of pine cones. We see the same curl in sea shells, in the inner ear of a human, in the internal structures of all brain tissue, in the inside structure of algae.

It is important to notice that this curl is not confined to biological systems or to astronomical systems. Numerous examples abound in every discipline of science one can imagine. One cannot say that this is a common thread of DNA (although the helix of DNA also curls with this same curve) because gravity, magnetism, electricity, and the like, also experience the phenomena. You can also not argue that it offers any advantage. The Fibbonaci curl is not a form that increases strength. Hexagonal structures and triangular structures are much stronger than any Fibbonaci curl. Having a Fibbonaci curl does not offer some kind of evolutionary advantage that natural selection can work on to perpetuate the form especially when we are talking about systems that are not biological in nature.

You are an expert in something that reflects your appreciation of the creative ability of mankind. Some of us can look at a piece of art and know immediately whether it is a Picasso or a Rembrant. Others of us can identify a piece of music as having been composed by a certain person or played by a famous virtuoso, be it Pavarotti or Alan Jackson. We all have things we enjoy and perhaps have studied or created ourselves which reflect our creative wisdom and our ability to recognize design. The beauty that is seen in the creation that has no function or reason to be as it is reflects the creative wisdom and design in an intellect superior to our own. God has expressed His creative genius in color where there is no camouflage necessity and thus no survival advantage. We see patterns of immense complexity where there is no strength advantage and no survival advantage. The most common response of atheists to this argument is that the viewpoint that man has beauty created just for him is egotistic and not worthy of consideration. Whether the charge of egotism is valid or not, such a challenge does not address the question of why the beauty and design is there (John Clayton, Designs).

One recent discovery unveiled yet a new sign of a divine design. This is is related to the prime number 19. It has been found that a great number of designs in the universe are based on 19 and its multiples, the following are some examples:

1- The sun, the moon and the earth become aligned in the same relative positions once every 19 years (see Encyclopaedia Judaica under ‘Calendar’)

2- Halley’s comet a profound heavenly phenomenon, visits our solar system every 76 years, which is a multiple of 19 (19 x 4).

3- The human body contains 209 bones (19 x 11).

4- 19 is the 8^th prime number (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19), the human hand has 19 bones, but amazingly right next to our hands, our wrists contain 8 bones!

5- In general the length of pregnancy for a full term foetus is considered to be 266 days or 38 weeks after fertilisation. (see Langman’s Medical Embryology, 5^th edition, page 88). Both 266 and 38 are multiples of 19.

6- At mean distance, it takes light 8 minutes and 19 seconds to reach earth from the sun. Note again that the 8^th prime number is 19!

7- The Gematrical Value of the word God (Allah) is 66, the code of the Quran is 19.

The tempreture 66 Fahrenheit = 19 degrees Centigrade

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'Exception to the rule' Designs

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The creation of the universe was accompanied by the setting of a great number of unchanging laws. All the laws of physics have continued to function in the same manner for millions of years.  The speed of light, the speed of sound, laws of gravity, chemical reactions, thermodynamics laws and numerous other fields of science all function at set and unchanging rules.

Once in a while however, we witness a deliberate breaking of the rules in a certain field of physics. The breaking of the rule must be deliberate since it is normally decreed to serve a visible and vital purpose.

One such example is related to the law that governs the weight of various forms of matter. The rule is that the solid state of any substance is heavier than the liquid state of the same substance, which is turn is heavier than the gas state of the same substance.

Liquid iron will float on solid iron, and gas iron is lighter than the two.  This rule applies to all known substances except one.  This is water, solid water (ice) floats on liquid water. This kind of deliberate design is a great sign of an intelligent Designer.  The purpose of this deliberate breaking of a law of physics is intented to serve mankind.  If water was like any other substance, ice would actually sink to the bottom of the oceans.  In due time all the oceans would become one big ice pond.  All marine life would exterminate.  However, and since ice actually floats on liquid water, in arctic and other similarly freezing areas, it froms a thermal protective layer to the water beneath it, leaving the ocean water below at above freezing tempretures, and thus protecting the marine life below.

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Irreducible Complexity

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David Behe a biochemist and several other writers have introduced a new design principle. He defines this design as follows:

"Irreducible complexity--a single system composed of several well matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning." (David Behe, Darwin's Black Box).

Behe is a biochemist and his illustrations involve biochemical systems which he demonstrates could not have happened by chance because all have to be integrated for the system as a whole to work. On a physics/chemistry level one might work with the systems responsible to produce a molecule.

In order for a stable molecule to exist, a variety of physical systems have to be operative. The mass of the components of the atom determines how much gravitational attraction will exist between the individual parts of the atom and of the atoms that make up the molecule. The electrical forces in the atom are defined in terms of electrical charge and have no direct relationship to anything gravitational. These electrical forces are also critical and have to be structured in a particular way for the molecule to exist. The magnetic forces within the electrons and protons that make up the atoms and the molecules are also critically integrated with the other forces. In addition to all of these there are nuclear binding energy forces that contain all of the other forces and allow the atoms, and therefore the molecules, to exist. All of these forces and particles are claimed to have begun at the same point in time and space sometimes referred to as the big bang. If any one of them was not at the appropriate level, stable atoms and molecules could never have come into existence.

To suggest a series of chance events which could produce all of these forces and the mathematical constants which regulate them is an impossibility, because there is no time sequence that allows it to happen. Similar problems come up in biochemical processes of high complexity critical to life. Behe and others have shown the absolute necessity of intelligence to come up with a functional system that allows these biochemical processes to take place (John Clayton, Designs).

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Mathematical Design (Probability)

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Over the past 30 years mathematicians have entered the discussions about whether chance is a viable mechanism to explain the complexities seen in the cosmos. For many years there have been books and articles written by experts in the field on the question of statistical reasonableness of explanations of the origin of life and other evolutionary models.

The huge number of variables that have been discovered to exist pose a major problem for those who wish to believe that chance is the cause of all we see. The problem lies in the nature of probability. When you flip a coin, the odds of getting a "heads" is one in two or 50/50. If you flip a coin twice and want to get a "heads" each time, the probability is 1/2 x 1/2, or 1/4. That means if you flipped the coins twice, four times in a row, you would get back-to-back heads only once. If you wanted to get "heads" three times in a row, it would be 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 or one chance out of eight tries. The total probability is calculated by multiplying the individual probabilities that make up the total. To get a "heads" ten times in a row, the odds would be one in 1,024.

When we start considering highly complex things like life, atomic structure, chemical processes, or galactic events, the individual odds are not nice and simple like one out of two. Not only are the numbers not as simple, but there are far more variables involved. When scientists do these kinds of calculations they end up with probabilities that are so astronomical that chance becomes a clearly untenable explanation. Numbers like 1 in 10¹⁶⁰ are common (that would be one chance out of 1 with 160 zeros after it). This kind of a number exceeds the number of possible stars in the cosmos, or even the number of possible baryons (building blocks of an atom). One cannot argue that given a certain amount of time, the event has to occur; but the event is unlikely to occur in any amount of possible time. On top of that, the event is only one step in a long line of steps to get to a desired final objective.

Chance is an invalid mechanism to explain the complexities seen in all parts of the cosmos. If there is an intelligence who used purpose and design to accomplish the creation then the odds no longer are relevant. A tornado will not go through an aircraft assembly factory and produce a 747, but human intelligence and creativity will.

The lessons we can learn by studying God's design and planning are many and can draw us to our creator and His design for our own lives.

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Conclusion

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These are some of the designs that we can see around us and in the universe at large. By no means are these the only such designs, there are probably thousands others that are lying dormant and inaccessible to us due to our limited knowledge of the universe.

What we see in these marvellous designs are sufficient to indicate to us that we are a product of design, purpose, and intelligence. It must also be said that the very same designs speak to us of some of God's attributes. Authority, Intelligence, Power, Creativity, Adaptability, and an incredible love and concern for man are all displayed.

Intellectual belief in God rests on the merits of observation, contemplation, and verification. It should not be a product of blind faith nor an inherited collection of unverified beliefs.

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