ISLAMIC MESSAGE IN A CHANGING WORLD

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on.” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!” Mr. Hawking comments that this picture of our world as an infinite tower of tortoises would appear ridiculous to most people, but the alternative view presented by science is also subject to doubt. Modern science has replaced the tower of infinite tortoises with a tower of infinite causes. It was necessarily assumed that there was always a cause behind every event. Thus the chain of causes is infinite in length. Then arrived the theory of Big Bang. With this, the theory of a “tower of infinite causes” lost its validity, as this theory suggested that a sudden explosion had marked the beginning of the universe rather than an infinitely continuing process of causes and effects. Mr. Hawking calculated the rate of the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang. Providing details of this calculation, he writes: “The initial rate of expansion would have had to be chosen very precisely for the rate of expansion still to be so close to the critical rate needed to avoid recollapse. This means the initial state of the universe must have been very carefully chosen indeed if the hot big bang model was correct right back to the beginning of time. It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.” (ibid) This means the scientific study of the universe has strengthened religious belief rather than weaken it. Such discoveries have opened The scientific study of the universe has strengthened religious belief rather than weaken it. Scientific discoveries have opened up opportunities for performing Islamic dawah with far greater effectiveness.