HOW MANY TIMES DID GOD ASKED US TO THINK IN THE QURAN?

 "And we have sent down to thee the book (Qur’an) explaining all things, as a guide, a mercy and glad tidings to the believers"

The Qur’an here is claiming everything is explained therein including all the branches of knowledge from Agriculture to Astronomy, Education and Economics, Law and Language, Accountancy and Administration, History and Evolution, Science and Spirituality etc. It would seem an impossible ask for a book one and a half thousand years old to contain subjects that were developed centuries later, but examining the scripture will corroborate the claim. One big problem posed to religious scholars researching the scriptures is their naïve assumptions that everything should be glaringly literal. God told us in Q47:24

"Do they not then earnestly seek to understand the Qur’an, or are their hearts locked by them?

It is necessary for people who want to understand the scriptures to employ research in order to understand the verses. Research enables us to use our brains (that is the standard procedure even in science), thinking and reflections are the basic concepts that elevated us as the supreme creatures on this planet. In the Qur’an God frequently and recurrently urged and commanded us to think, reflect, observe, ponder (and other similar words) in no less than 800 places. In fact it is the most recurring command, surpassing even the commands on great acts of worship like prayer, fasting and alms giving. Why? Because God, who made our nature, knew that by using our brains there is nothing we cannot conquer. The human brain and its capacity to think intelligently is what distinguished us from our primate relatives. Recent scientific research suggested that people were not even able to utilize 10% of their brainpower. This ability is what enabled man to reach the present level of his civilization. We were the first to develop language, and this giant stride enables us to become seekers, utilizers, retainers and also pass on knowledge. With knowledge, the domination of our environment becomes history. Our total knowledge combined is but a speck compared with what we don’t know.

That is why when Newton put forward the gravitational laws the whole world marvel only for Einstein to come and give us more clarity. That is why God said in Q31:27

"And if all the trees on earth were pens and the oceans were ink with seven oceans behind it to add to its supply, yet would not the words of God be exhausted"

This metaphorical verse is telling us that knowledge, as far as human beings are concerned is a continual process and sometimes relative but with God it is absolute. It is a well-known fact that scientific beliefs of past generations are now laughable; let me sight some popular universal examples:

1. The flat world - One of the prevailing opinions of past generations for thousands of years was the idea that the world is flat, if you keep going eastwards you will reach an edge of the world and you could fall off. Science later proved it was not so. Another belief associated with this is that the world is stationary and at the center of the universe. It was only in the last five centuries that scientific facts proved otherwise. But unknown to mankind, this information has been in the Qur’an for 1400 years.

2. Spontaneous Creation - Another prevailing opinion of mankind for thousands of years was the idea that life, spontaneously, and readily arise from non-living matter in short period of time for example in the rotting of meat or fermentation of wine. But science later established that this was due to some micro -organism in the air.

3. Eclipse - In the bygone ages the eclipse phenomena is viewed in many ways: the anger manifestation of the gods or as a portent of calamities or heralding the birth or death of great peoples. In the prophet’s lifetime when his only male son died, there was an eclipse on the same day and his companions begin to say it was as a result of the death. Immediately the prophet called a meeting and declares

"the eclipse of the sun and moon are natural phenomena ordained by God and they do not occur on the birth or death of any one (including his own son)"

At every stage of human development, due to insufficient knowledge or our nature of preferring established ideas, individually and collectively we may believe in something that is entirely wrong as several examples could be sighted. It is only God (who is omnipresent and omniscient) that can guide us.

The brain capacity in humans is what distinguished us as the supreme creatures on earth and it is by using it properly that we can live and die as human, as demanded by our higher destiny. That is why God always in Qur’an admonishes us to use it under all circumstance and what majority of us refused to do but follow blindly any teachings associated with our religion. God had show us the greatest example in Abraham’s life. The Qur’an has taught us that the father of science was our ancestor and progenitor, Abraham. God told us in 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 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. He was asking God how he produces non-existent (dead) into existence (new specie). 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, 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 (the law of independent assortment) which is responsible for the proliferation and differentiation of species on this planet, and to a lesser extent you and I 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. 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 ways 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 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. Professor Edwin Conklin aptly said “The probability of life originating from an accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing factory”.

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 scientific theories since A.D. 600.