FATHER ABRAHAM: THE FIRST SCIENTIST

 Science itself or rather the scientific method, originally evolved from religion and religious thinkers. The Qur’an has taught us that the father of science was our ancestor and progenitor, Abraham, as God told us in chapter 

Q6:75 "So also did we show Abraham the power and the laws of heaven and earth, that he might (with understanding) have certitude"

Abraham was the first to study astronomy and geography, he was depicted in the Qur’an as a great scientist, as he was always reasoning and asking questions. Whenever he was confused he directly asked the almighty to clarify. So during his lifetime he begins to notice a strange phenomenon as his specie (Homo erectus) were inter-marrying with their contemporary, the Lots people (Homo Neanderthals) and the resulting children were hybrids. He asked God for clarification as we were told in chapter

Q2:260 "Behold Abraham said "My lord! Show me how thou give life to the dead" (God) said "Do you not then believe? He said "Yea (I believe) but to satisfy my own understanding"

Abraham has absolute belief in God, but will not like to take things for granted like an illiterate. He was shown earlier on how the physical world operates, his curiosity naturally turn on to his biological world. In the same verse God gave him the answer

Q2:260 "He said "take four birds. Tame them to turn to thee: put a portion of them on every hill and call them. They will come to thee flying with speed. Then know that God is exalted in power, wise"

God ordered Abraham to conduct an experiment by himself in order to understand the laws of nature. The magic number is four (as God asked Abraham to cross breed four different birds species), which led Gregor Mendel millenniums later to formulate the laws of inheritance. In every cross-pollination/cross-breeding, the ratio will always be 3:1 (or one in four) dominant and recessive genes. This is a universal law and responsible for the proliferation and differentiation of species on this planet, and to a lesser extent you and me are just like hybrids of our own parents. We all know that during fertilization of every existing individual, the donation of haploid set of chromosomes (with the accompanying genes) by both parents create a new, unique individual. Therefore there are no two individuals alike (even mono zygote twins), somehow we are all hybrids. Undertaking this experiment made father Abraham to become the first real scientist in history. Having lived hundreds of thousands of years ago and his generation having not comprehensive system of preserving records, all his books were lost. But God resurrected his story in the book of Genesis in the Old Testament and finally in the Quran (though the old testament did not mentioned the experiment and the hereditary law). God in the Quran commanded Muhammad thus

Q16:123 "So we have taught you the inspired message "Follow the ways of Abraham, the true in faith and he joined not gods with God"

The way of Abraham as we have seen is asking questions and pondering over the laws of nature, and this has been ordained as a religious duty. The questioning and pondering is what majority of mankind refuses to do (but disbelieve) for the simple fact of maintaining the "status quo", "separatisms" and "conservatism". This has been the trend throughout history. Remember when Galileo (the creator of modern scientific method) published his book "Dialogue on the great world system" The challenge came from the church and he was forced to recant and eventually detained under house arrest for the rest of his life. Just for the mere reason of wanting to adhere to an established idea (that the world is the center of the universe) by a Levantine Greek (Ptolemy) not what the almighty says in the Bible. By using our brain through research we can understand all the physical process around us. God told us in chapter

Q45:3-5 "Verily in the heavens and the earth, are signs for those who believe. And in your creation and the fact that animals are scattered through the earth are sighs for those of assured faith. And in the alternation of night and day and the fact that God sends down sustenance from the sky and revive therewith the earth after its death, and in the change of the winds are signs for those who are wise"

In a nutshell the above verse outlined the kind of reasoning and reflections man is supposed to do. That is to study the physical and the biological sciences in Astronomy and Geography, Physics and Chemistry, Meteorology and Oceanography, Biology and Evolution, Zoology and Botany, History and Spirituality. In all of these subjects, man will be able to realize the power bestowed on him and to a larger extent the reasons behind his existence, as he will, at every turn, notice the signature of his creator. The atomic structure and the cellular structure, the two basic units that shaped our physical and biological worlds, with their infinitely intricate systems cannot have happened out of chance. As someone aptly said "To imagine life has originated by chance is akin to saying a tornado passing through a junkyard can assemble a Boeing 747 jumbo jet".

All the greatest scientific discoveries, except for Ptolemy’s work in astronomy and Galen’s work on medicine, were made 1000 years after Christ (or 400 years after Muhammad). But the Qur’an has all the greatest scientific theories since A.D. 600. Today in the 21st Century,  one of the greatest contentions between science and religion is the issue of evolution. Since the publication of Darwin’s "Origins of Species" in the 1850’s, Religious scholars vehemently oppose his research despite its Scientific standing (and perhaps rightly so because Darwin on his part completely eliminate God’s hand in creation and evolution). Darwin himself was reluctant to publish his findings, knowing that it is going to be shocking to the public. It was only after 20 years and the threat of another man (Wallace) stumbling upon the same idea that forced him to publish the book. The moment the book hit bookstand, the debate rages on. Now a 150 years later, significant number of people even in the academia still rejected his theory. Unknown to mankind, for 1400 years, the Qur’an was the first to have explained the evolutionary theory. Mark you, not in passive or hinting manner, but in great detail. God said in chapter

Q29:19 " Do they not see how God originated creation, then repeats it?"

In the 7th century God poses this question to mankind. Do they not observe nature and see how he originated life in this planet and it kept spreading? People might say how can mankind at that time could have understood the process? In the next verse God supply the solution as he says

Q29:20 " Say " Travel through the earth and see how God originate creation"

The one and only way at any other time to understand evolution is by traveling through the earth, as God has scattered ample evidence in fossils, diversity and nature of the living world to convince us that God is the architecture of life through evolution. Surely it is not by only trotting around the globe that will give us evidence of evolution but as God further show in chapter

Q22:46 " Do they not travel through the land, so that their hearts and minds may thus learn wisdom and their ears may learn to hear. Truly it is not their eyes that are blind but their hearts which are in their breast"

Traveling through the earth will make us see all the evidences of evolution in History, fossils, and diversity. But it is not mere looking that will do, we have to study and examine so many things to be able to understand the whole process. This Qur’anic call fell on deaf ears for 1200 years, until when Charles Darwin responded to the call and travel for five years studying nature. Alas he stumbled upon the evolutionary theory.But due to his deliberate elimination of the hand of God in creation and linking man with monkeys, majority of religious scholars (of all religions) rejected the theory.Even today, whoever travel around the world studying nature as the above verse guides i.e. by observation with the eyes, listeming to history with ears and being objective in our hearts will reach this conclusion as God says in chapter Q6:68 " There is not an animal (that lives) on the earth, nor a being that flies on its wing but forms part of communities like you"

 

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