Creation and Creator!

Is the Earth and the universe orderly? Has everything been created only for humans?

Many Muslim people argue by saying, look, how orderly the earth and the universe are, how perfectly everything is running, so many blessings on earth for humans – is this possible without Allah? Before looking for the answer to this question, let’s start with a story –

The runway pit

On a stormy night in 2007, a cargo plane crashed while making an emergency landing on the runway of a small airport on a remote island in Indonesia. The explosion created a large hole in the middle of the runway – about five meters deep, ten meters wide. The airport was shut down. By the time the government’s repair allocation arrived, a year had passed. In the meantime, monsoon water filled the hole. Soil and seeds floated in from the nearby forest. Algae grew. Tiny insects came, drawn by the smell of water. Behind them came frogs.

A few years later, a family of green pythons made their home in that pit. The convenience of living beside cool water, plenty of frogs and rats – all together it was like a paradise for them.

Generations passed. At some point the descendants of the snakes – if they could speak – might have said:

“Look, what a perfect arrangement for us! There is water, there is shade, there is food. Is such an orderly environment possible without some supremely wise creator? Surely some great power created this pit thinking of us.”

Yet the truth is – the hydraulic system of an old plane had failed. The pilot had come on duty after taking sleeping pills. A moment’s carelessness, an accident – and from that was born this “perfect habitat”.

There was no design. There was only an accident, and then the gradual formation of an ecosystem. But the descendants of the snakes began to worship it as the infinite blessing of a creator.

The “design argument” and its philosophical problem

In religious philosophy, the “teleological argument” or design argument is an old and influential idea. In the eighteenth century, William Paley made it famous with the watch analogy: if you find a watch in a field, you understand someone made it; similarly, seeing the complex structure of the universe, you must understand someone made that too.

The argument seems quite strong at first glance. The earth is at just such a distance from the sun that life is possible. The special structure of the water molecule makes ice float instead of sink – thus in winter life survives under the sea. The unique properties of the carbon atom allow it to form organic molecules. Are these mere coincidences?

But there is a fundamental philosophical error in this argument, which is called “survivorship bias” or “anthropic fallacy”.

Survivorship bias – why we see wrongly

In 1943, during the Second World War, the US Air Force faced a problem. Examining the planes returning from battle, they found that the wings and tail had the most bullet holes. Military engineers said, put armor on these areas.

Then statistician Abraham Wald said – no, do the opposite. Put armor where there are no bullet holes.

Why? Because the planes that returned had survived even after being hit in the wings. But the planes that were hit in the engine or cockpit – they never came back. They are outside the data.

This is survivorship bias.

We are asking questions about the universe we are in because we are here. If the laws of this universe were slightly different – if carbon were not so versatile, if gravity were a bit stronger or weaker – then we would not exist. And then no one would ask questions.

So the question should be reversed: “If we did not exist, what would happen?”

The answer: no one would know. No one would ask.

Multiverse – one successful accident among countless accidents

In modern physics, the concept of the “multiverse” or many universes is now not just science fiction, but a serious scientific hypothesis.

Based on quantum mechanics and string theory, many physicists say that perhaps countless universes exist or have existed – each with different physical constants. In most universes, the conditions for life do not exist. In those universes, there is no one to ask questions. In our universe, that rare combination has come together – so we exist.

It is somewhat like this:

In a casino, a hundred thousand people are gambling at the same time. One person wins twenty times in a row. He thinks, “This surely isn’t just luck, someone must have created this moment for me.”

But statistically, among a hundred thousand people, someone or other will do this. He just happens to be that person. And if he had not won, this question would never have occurred to him.

Evolution – the birth of complexity without design

Darwin’s theory of evolution is one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history. Because for the first time it explained how incredible complexity can arise without any designer.

The process stands on three simple principles:

First, variation: in every generation there are slight random changes (mutations).

Second, natural selection: changes that fit the environment survive. Those that do not fit become extinct.

Third, time: over millions of years, this process leads from tiny bacteria to complex organisms like humans.

Complex organs like the eye did not form “suddenly”. It started from a cell sensitive to light – which gave an advantage in the environment, so it survived. Gradually, over millions of generations, it developed into a complex eye.

There is no design. There is no designer. There is only environmental pressure, time, and blind chance.

Renowned evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins called this process “the blind watchmaker” – who makes the watch, but cannot see, does not plan.

The earth is not “for” humans – humans have adapted “to” the earth

Here lies another fundamental error of thought.

We think the earth was made for humans. But science says the opposite: humans were made for the earth — that is, they adapted to the earth’s environment through evolution.

Life came because there was water, water did not come for life. Oxygen existed, so oxygen-dependent organisms evolved; oxygen did not come for organisms. Sunlight existed, so organisms that could use that light survived; sunlight did not come for organisms.

This is the most important point of the story:

A town grows on a riverbank because of the convenience of travel – the river does not flow there because a town will grow.

The river flows according to underground water pressure, gravity, and the slope of the land – these rules operate blindly. Then humans came, saw that living by the river was convenient, and stayed.

To later generations it seemed – what a beautiful arrangement, why is the river exactly here? As if it is for us!

No. The river does not know of you. You have come to know of the river.

Is the earth really “perfect”? Or are we only seeing the good parts?

If the earth were truly “made” for humans, then some questions need to be asked:

Every year thousands of people die in earthquakes. Cyclones, tsunamis, volcanoes – are these parts of the “design”? Mothers dying in childbirth, congenital defects in children, cancer – were these included in the plan?

In the history of evolution, 99% of species have gone extinct. Did the “design” not work for them? Dinosaurs ruled the earth for 66 million years and then went extinct due to an asteroid impact. Did they also think for the previous 165 million years that this earth was made for them?

Even in the human body there are countless “flaws” of evolution – an appendix that does no work but can burst and kill a person, a spine that is actually not ideal for upright walking, a blind spot which is a sightless area in the middle of the eye.

No skilled engineer would design this. It is the result of compromises accumulated along the path of evolution.

The smallness of humankind – where are we on the scale of the universe?

The age of the universe is about 13.8 billion years. The age of the earth is 4.5 billion. The age of modern humans is only 300,000 years.

The number of visible galaxies in the universe is about 2 trillion. Each galaxy has on average 100 billion stars. In the Milky Way alone there are millions of potentially habitable planets like earth.

On one planet (earth), the third planet of a medium-sized star (the sun) at one edge of a galaxy in this vast universe, in just the last 300,000 years out of 13.8 billion, one species has appeared – and it thinks this entire universe was made for it!

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said in a lecture: if the universe were truly made for humans, then why did it need to be so big? And why did it take 13.8 billion years for humans to appear?

Does order really exist, or do we simply seek order?

The human brain, due to evolution, is accustomed to searching for “patterns”. Even where there is no pattern, humans see patterns.

Seeing faces in clouds, imagining zodiac signs in the arrangement of stars, seeking purpose in accidents – this is a natural mental tendency of humans. Scientists call it “apophenia” – the tendency to find meaningful connections in random things.

The same applies to the “order” of the universe. The laws of nature – gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear forces – seem orderly to us because they are consistent. But is this consistency something made by someone, or is it simply the nature of reality?

There is a profound question in physics: why do the laws of nature follow mathematics? A possible answer is – we try to understand nature through mathematics, so what cannot be captured in mathematics does not appear in our descriptions. This is not proof of design, it is an expression of the limits of our knowledge.

“Cause” and “purpose” – two different things

Philosophers have long distinguished between “cause” and “purpose”.

There is a cause for rain – temperature, evaporation, clouds. But rain has no “purpose”. Rain does not know whether it is saving rice fields or causing floods.

There is a cause for seeing with the eye – the gradual development of light-sensitive cells through evolution. But the sentence “eyes were made for seeing” reverses the order of cause. The correct sentence is: those who could see better survived, so the ability to see evolved.

Aristotle’s idea of “telos” or ultimate purpose is philosophically attractive, but nature does not follow that idea. A stone rolls down due to gravity, not “for the purpose of going down”.

At the end of the story – where do we stand?

If the snakes of the runway pit could speak, they might say – this pit is “perfect”, it is “designed”. But the pilot who flew the plane after taking sleeping pills did not think of the snakes. The plane did not crash thinking of the snakes. Water collected in the hole because it rained. Insects came because being near water was a natural advantage for them. Frogs came because there were insects. Snakes came because there were frogs.

At each step there was no plan. There were only circumstances and the natural tendency to respond to them.

The story of humans is more complex than this, but not different in structure. From the Big Bang – energy, matter, stars, planets, chemical reactions, first life, evolution, humans. At each step there were preceding causes, and opportunities.

In this perspective, the universe is not less wondrous – but more. Because no one planned it, yet life arose. No one commanded it, yet�