Revival of Islam in the Modern Age

haphazard assemblage of matter. Rather it is a highly organized and sophisticated factory of a very superior standard. All the things of the world inevitably move along the purpose-oriented course which will produce the best results. The discovery of organization and purposefulness in all things is certain proof that the hand of God, albeit invisible, is behind the working of the universe. But what the atheist thinkers did was divert the causes of scientific discovery towards atheism. They held that whatever has been proved is an end and not the cause. But what is the proof that it is an end? It is quite possible that it may simply be an effect. The atheists nevertheless maintain that, it is not necessary that there must be a mind which, through will, is guiding events deliberately towards a particular end or conclusion; it may be possible that, through the blind, interplay of some physical and chemical forces, certain things on their own are being produced which may, by chance, be meaningful. When this meaningless explanation itself has been produced through the exercise of will (human will in this instance), how strange it would be to believe in the functioning of a meaningful universe without a will behind it. After the emergence of science, atheist thinkers have, on a very large scale, attempted to point science in the direction of atheism. On the contrary, the attempts of religious thinkers to utilize scientific evidence to support the claims of religion have been extremely few and far between. Over the last one hundred years thousands of books of a high academic standard have come out which aim, quite wrongly of course, at producing atheism out of science, while few academic efforts worth mentioning have been made on the part of religious thinkers. One of these books, The Mysterious Universe, by Sir James Jeans, is notable for the impact it has had on both religious and scientific thinking. In this book the author has ably demolished through purely scientific arguments, the principle of causation as the acceptance of the mechanical substitute for God. In the latter half of the present century innumerable new facts have come to the knowledge of man, which prove the truth of religious beliefs on an extremely elevated plane. But so far no religious thinker has come forward to harness, this scientific information in support of religious truths. If this work could be performed at a high intellectual level, it would amount to an academic miracle in support of the religion of monotheism. As we learn from the Qur’an, the prophethood of all the prophets of the past was doubted by their contemporaries (11:62). Initially, the same fate befell the Prophet Muhammad, (38:10).