The creation of life on the earth Part 01

With the accumulation of means and factor for the creation of life on the earth, God decided to bring about a mysterious entity, the fact of which will never be revealed to anybody. Life, which is a ray of His commands and a reflection of His Being, caused the hustles and bustles of the living things.

Corsi Morrison, a well-known scientist of the western world, whose book called the “secrets of man’s creation” is actually based on the Islamic knowledge, has concisely put together the findings of the world’s famous scientists together with his own views conceming the creation of life:

Life is eternal. Countless centuries have gone by, different geological epochs are over, but life still goes on.[1]

The continents have come out of the depth of the ocean water and have submerged once again, but life still goes on. Life is everywhere: in the ocean depth, on the sea waves, and on the sands beside the oceans.[2]

Any time that the Ice Age was over and freed some lands, life appeared there immediately.

Whenever there was an Ice Age again, once again life started once more.

Mountains have erupted from the surface of the Earth; earthquakes have had their role in the destruction of the earth. Some continents have been washed away into the ocean and the earthly remnants are to be observed at the bottom of the oceans: but life still goes on.

The white rocks of Doover, which is composed of the layers of chalk, lime and flintstone, are a living history of the marine creatures, plants in the preceding centuries. The green forests, oil, and gas are the result of the activities of the earth centuries ago and are kept for our use today.

These precious heritages have progressed man beyond his imagination. Fuel and oil are the very bases of human civilization. All these marvelous accidents happened only because life absorbed the sun rays and then kept them.[3]

Life has defeated the changing conditions of water, earth and the air and has produced plants and animals in every corner of the earth.

In its different shapes, from the one-celled creatures to fishes, insects mammals, birds and from microbes and parasites and microscopic creatures up to plants, animals, mamutes, and man, life has defeated the natural elements and has forced them to take on new shapes.

Life creates animals of various forms on their ancestoral samples and gives them such a power as to reproduce off springs of their own, forever.

Life is over-productive to the point which consumes its own extra production. But it severely controls its reproduction so that not to let populations of creatures go out of the limits. For instance, if the reproduction of locusts were not controlled, they would devastate all plants within a short time, leaving the animal life demolished altogether.

Life is a skilful sculptor which designs the shapes and the forms of the living things; it is an artist which draws the format of each green leaf or tree stem and decorates the flowers, fruits, forests and the bird’s wings with wonderful colors.

Life is a musician which has taught the birds to sing for love and has put something in the feeble songs of insects so that they can communicate with one another.

All these songs and sounds which are produced by the larynx of life, from the sounds of frogs in the spring, to the cackles of the hens, to the roaring of the lions, and to the horn of the elephants, are its manifestations. Above all it is the human voice which is more charming than that of other creatures.

Life has made man capable of producing all sorts of sounds and pitches of sounds and using them properly.

Life is a skillful engineer which has designed the leg of the locust and fly and man’s muscles and joints and the automatic heart and the nervous systems of all animals and their blood circulations and lungs.

The same engineer has desined the lily of the valley and has scattered its seeds with the wind. This engineer has drawn the forms of the flowers and causes insects to carry their reproductive cells from one bush to the other to fertilize them.

Life is an amazing alchemist which provides fruits with flavor, spices with odor, and flowers with fragrance.

Life provides the butterflies and glowworms with a light and radiation which help them in their night love-making. The alchemy of life entails the prosperity of the world of being. It not only changes carbonic acid and water into wood and sugar with the help of the sunshine but also, during this process, provides man and other creatures with the life-giving element called oxygen.

Life is a wise historian who has written down for us every page of its evolution during the long periods of time and has told us its story in the heart of the granite. Only the smart eyes and hearts are needed to read it and interpret it.

Life has provided the beings with the excitement and eagerness to be alive.

The young lamb moves about happily and runs energetically without knowing why it is doing so.

The alchemist of life has colored the child’s cheeks, has made its eyes to glow and his thin lips to smile. Matter, however, will never smile without life.

In order to nourish its creatures, life stores nutrient substances in the reproducing cells of the creatures. It has provided the mothers, breasts to feed their young. Life begets life. It satisfies new-borns with milk and anticipates their future needs. Life gives mother-love to mothers and love for family and their home land to men. This love makes men ready to fight for their country.

Life has provided all creatures with special means to defend themselves. Disguising by camouflage is one of these defense mechanisms. Feathers, horns and teeth, and claws are other mechanisms for the birds’ animal’s defense. Life strengthens their senses of smell, and sight to be used by animals at the moments of danger. Life sometimes gives the most innocent insect the ugliest form so that it would not be attacked by other creatures and thus may remain safe.

Matter would not do anything outside its specific laws. Particles and atoms are under the influence of such factors as the earth gravity, electricity, and the air actions and reactions. Matter has no initiative of its own; it is life only which brings about new forms of life at any moment. Without life the earth is nothing but a dead sea and an arid land and a desert. Matter with no life is motionless and stagnant. Matter houses life. That is the only function it may perform.

Man has been unable to understand the essence of life. Life has no weight, no dimension; neither does it have any geometrical form. But life has immense power. It gives the roots of the trees to burst the stones and go through them and protect the stem of the tree.

Life makes the tree roots to absorb tons of water daily and to change it into leaves and fruits. The oldest living thing on earth is a five-thousand year old tree. This length of time is only an instant compared with the life on the earth, however.

With a constant and infallible trial, life enlivens the corpse of the matter and in doing this it is impartial, showing no sympathy towards anything, and not feeling any satisfaction whatsoever. Yet, life is the very basis of any kind of thinking apparatus. It is only through life that we are able to realize the creation of God, the Almighty, and to worship Him. Life is a means to materialize the intentions of the Complete Wisdom. Life is eternal.[4]

Imam Zainol Abedin (s) states:

اِبتَدَعَ بِقُدْرَتِهِ الْخَلقَ ابْتِدَاعاً، وَاخْتَرَعَهْم على مَشِيَتِهِ اخْتِراعاً.

God’s inventions and novelties are innumerable. There is no power, except Him, who can perceive the qualities and quantities of all creatures. All the books written on the issue of creation are but one drop of God’s grandeur. Just look at yourself and see the strange aspects of His creation within yourself.

On the basis of the researches done, any normal person is able to keep ten million memories in his brain. In other words, if we were to publish the whole memories of a single person, we would need a whole library in which there are several million volumes of books.

The number of the recorded memories of a huge electronic calculator is round one upto four millions. For each one of these memories there is used a thin magnetic circular wire.

The most recent machine of this sort invented so far, is a machine which through adding some auxiliary units to its central section, can house up to sixteen million news-units.

This recent electronic brain has a volume of twenty five cubic meters; and compared with the earlier brand which was produced in 1946 and which could memorize only 600 units, is far more advanced. However, man’s capacity to memorize is not comparable with these electronic man-made devices. This is because one piece of man’s brain as large as the end of a pin could process more information than these devices. There are ten millard nerve cells in man’s brain, on the average, each one of which can process a thousand news-units.

Prior to the entry in the world of the foetus, did the womb, or zygote, or blood know what would the foetus, which for the time-being sat in a dark location, need in order to survive? Were they aware of the laws of light and sound so that they could provide the foetus with the strange mechanisms of sight and hearing?

Were the womb, the zygote and blood aware of the fact that the foetus could only survive through the blood circulation for which hundred big and small veins are scattered throughout the body with delicate length and diameter.

Did the womb, the zygote and blood know the significance of the brain and the heart so as to put the brain in the skull made up of hard bones, and to locate the heart in the chest encompassed with the ribs?

Had the womb, the zygote and blood recognized hundreds of bones equipped with all sorts of muscles and related nerves? Even eyes were equipped with eyelashes and hands were equipped with nails.

The blood circulation is one of the world’s most amazing ways of transportation. The length of the veins is longer than all the rail ways put together, which is estimated to be between one hundred and one hundred and fifty thousand kilometers.

This automatic apparatus works twenty four hours a day continually.

The blood circulation prepares the required blood for the dody tissues. This system feeds the body cells the number of which is more than hundred milliards. It rectifies the cell damages, builds up white and red globules. Each second, it provides one million red globules for the lost ones.

When the veins get hurt, the blood circulation repairs them. And if a needle sticks in the finger and makes a hole in the small veins, it quickly repairs the damage.

If there is a small cut on the skin, coagulation takes place immediately surrounding the red globules. If this process did not occur, the wound and bleeding would cause one’s death.

The blood circulation distributes five liters of blood every minute. It distributes more than seven thousand liters of blood every day and night.

Blood vessels are not ordinary pipes; rather they are live veins which are flexible and cause pulses.

The heart secretes blood piecemeal and sends it into the blood circulation. Then the veins make the blood flow regular so that a constant flow occurs in the blood vessels. At one’s death, the veins become empty of blood.

The blood circulation carries out two functions: the arteries carry amino acids for the repairment of the body cells and sugar, which is the source of the body power. They also carry vitamins, hormones, and oxygen.

The blood which returns back to the heart through veins carry with it the CO2, water and the decomposed cells and proteins.

Now let us see what happens to a piece of meat that we eat. The digestive system changes the proteins into amino acids. The walls of the small intestine are covered with hairy projections, the number of which exceeds five millions.

Each hairy projection rests on a blood vessel. The walls of the blood-vessels are porous. These pores refine the amino acids.

The kidneys control the amount of sugar required for the use of the muscles and amino acids which are required for the reconstruction of the cells.

A meal which contains lots of meat will include a lot of amino acides. The kidneys, however, store some of them and let the rest go out of the system. Blood, then, is ready to feed all cells proportional to their individual needs.

The sugar which we take with our tea, as well as the starch contained in bread and potato go the same way and change into glucose in the small intestine and then enter the liver. If the amount of sugar exceeds certain degree, the liver changes it into glicogene and stores it. When the muscles need fuels, the stored glicogene once again changes into glucose (the sugar contained in the grapes) and gradually leaves the liver. During heavy sports, the liver will make use of the stored glucose which will last between 12 to 24 hours.

The fats, too, are among the fuels of the body and upon passing the intestine walls change into fatty acids and enter the digestive system. If the storage of glicogene in the liver is finished, the liver may use its stores and provide us with fuels for a few weeks.

As it was mentioned earlier, the contents of the blood are significant: for instance, one of the proteins contains ioda which is good for the thyroid glands, a second one contains phosphorus which is good for the bones and a third contains calcium which is good for the strength of the bones and the teeth.

One liter of oxygen is also solved in the blood. This life-giving gas mixes with hemoglobine in the blood and prepares the good-looking red color of the blood. Although this action takes place in the lungs, the reverse action takes place in the cells, i.e., hemoglobine gives oxygen to the blood and receives CO2 from it.

The most fascinating part of the blood circulation is the capillary system through which the veins and arteries are connected. The capillaries are so narrow that the red globules have to pass through it in a queue. It is here that the blood system does its main job, giving the sells the necessary materials and taking away the decayed cells.

Each cell rests in a saline solution and multiplies constantly. That solution acts as a care-taker to nourish the cells which are floating in it.

The vein blood contains different sediments such as CO2, water, and the decayed proteins. The blood system carries these wastes into the kidneys and liver.

The kidneys are the refinery system which consist of very narrow pipes, the length of which is one hundred kilometers. They resemble two opposing beans and every 24 hours they purify and refine 200 liters of blood. The kidneys change the waste material, especially urea, ammonia and food wastes into urine which is then sent out from the body and they send back the 178 liters of the refined liquid into the blood system.

The liver controls the amino acids and sugar in the blood; the kidneys modify the amount of the mineral content of the blood.

The blood which enters the kidneys may contain great quantity of sodium, magnesium and phosphate. The kidneys control these minerals and modify the amount of each. When blood leaves the kidneys, it contains the exact amount of the necessary mineral for the function of the body.

Besides red globules, there are white globules the task of which is to defend the body against infection and blood decay. Some of these globules attack the microbes, eating them up.

There is a substance for the coagulation of the blood, the nature of which is still unknown to the chemists, however.

As we have already observed, the blood system and circulation and its web of arteries, veins and capillaries as well as the complicated structure of blood itself are all amazing phenomena, indeed. If we delve into the issue of creation, we will have to bend our heads in front of the Great Creator and we have to worship Him constantly.[5]

The world is amazing; the world of skies, of plants, of animals, of men all depend on the determination of Allah.

اِبْتَدَعَ بِقُدْرَتِهِ الْخَلْقَ ابْتِداعاً، وَاخْتَرَعَهُم على مِشِيّتِهِ اخْتِراعاً.

It is advisable for the Moslem nations to refer to the Holy Quran, Nahjolbalaqa, Sahifeh Sajjadieh and other sources on the Islamic knowledge in order to recognize Him and His commands. The recognition of Him causes prosperity both here and Hereafter and makes the man’s capabilities to blossom and permits justice reign all over the world.

In the narrations on the Prophet (s), we will read:

أعْرَفَكُم باللهِ أعْلَمَكُم بِكِتابِهِ.

“The most cognizant of you of Allah are the most cognizant of you of His book.”

In order to recognize the Great Creator, there are three ways:

The cognizance of God’s Nature;

2) The cognizance of His Attributes; and

3) The cognizance of His Actions.

God’s Book, the Holy Quran talks about God’s Nature, His Attributes and Names and His actions.

Nahjolbalaqa, Sahifeh, Invocations and the Islamic knowledge are all interpretations on the Holy Quran. These, together with the signs of God in the creation, will help us to recognize Him. All these sources will guide man to go through His path to reach Him.

But unfortunately today ninety percent of Moslems are ignorant of the Divine facts. Instead of preparing themselves for a journey towards Him, they are after their lusts. They are away from the world of light. All are proud and drunken. They do not realize that the source of these wars, struggles, and corruption all rests in our separation from Allah.

ثْمَّ سَلَكَ بِهِمْ طَرِيقَ إرادَتِهِ، وَبَعَثَهُم في سَبيلِ مَحَبَّتِهِ لا يَمْلِكُونَ تأخيراً عَمّا قَدَّمَهُم إلَيهِ، وَلا يَسْتَطِعُونَ تَقَدُّماً إلى ما أخَّرَهُم عنْهُ.

“When He created creatures, He guided them in the direction of His determination. He put them on the way of His Love and Affection. This is done in such a way that creatures will not procrastinate, nor can they advance beyond what is predetermined”.

The elements of universe and creatures, including the galaxies, stars, the suns and moons were put in the specific paths. Their exact movements and their actions and reactions over one another, so meticulously predetermined, has produced such an amazing and awesome system of creation. The Holy Quran says:

قَالَ رَبُّنَا الَّذِي أَعْطَى كُلَّ شَيْءٍ خَلْقَهُ ثُمَّ هَدَى.

“Our Lord is He Who gave to everything its creation, then guided it to its goal. 20:50”

The creation of all mines which have a crucial role in man’s life is based on the determination and the judicial decision of that unique Allah.

The issue of plants should also be under our scrutiny: what is the relation between seeds, soil and weather? What sort of energy changes the seed into a tree, flowers and plants? What is the source of all these vitamins contained in the fruits?

The answer to all these questions rests on one word: His Kindness and Benevolence.

Researchers, scientists and scholars have done a lot of work concerning plants, and trees. All these findings lead us to His guidance.

The following topics are among the researches of botanists: the structure of plants, the functions of the plant organs, the entry of material into the body of the plant, the mechanism of water entry into the plant, the mechanism of the absorption of materials by the plant, the mechanism of the absorption of liquids and gases by the plant, the movement of liquids and materials within the plant, the consumption of the soul-less material by the plant in its construction, the structure of glucides, the production of protides, lipids, the movement of the material produced by the plant metabolism, light energy, chemical energy, mechanical energy, and finally the electric and heat energies.[6]

Fifteen centuries ago, Imam Zainol Abedin (s) refered to these topics when he praised the Almighty God:

ثُمَّ سَلَكَ بِهِم طَرِقَ إرادَتِهِ وَبَعَثَهُم في سَبِيلِ مَحَبَّتِهِ...

With the guidance of Allah and with the cooperation of the sun, soil, weather and water, plants are decorated green so that the world will look charming and desireable.

Walking on the grass obliterates sadness; why? It is because plants are green. If they were red, they would be hazardous to our nerves.

If the plants were black, would they cause our depression or happiness?

If the plants were not green, would man have a place for excursion; wouldn’t man’s depression be continuous? What would man do if all the plants were yellow, and if it were fall for ever? Would the eyes be safe if plants were all white? If you look for a long time at a plain full of snow, your eyes would get hurt; that is why opticians recommend special eye-glasses for snow.

Isn’t the selection of green for plants a sign of the creator’s wisdom and knowledge?

If a machine worked automatically and not a thinker interfered with it, it would not produce various products, its products would be the same.

A driver-less car will go in the direction which the slope of the ground determines.

The variety of products in a factory leads us to think that there should be a manager for it. The movement of a car in its desirable direction indicates the existence of a wise driver.

Now let us look at the amazing factory of creation and its wonderful products. Let us look at man, at the plants with green leaves, every one of which has a different color of its own.

Even the green color is not the same in all these green plants.

The enumeration of the kinds of fruits is just an impossible task. The number of the types of flowers seems infinite, too.

Fruits, too, are different in kind. They say there are three hundred different types of mangoes in India.

An agricultural engineer used to say that in Paris grapes gardens there are five thousand types of grapes which are called by numbers: For instance, the grape No 1752.

Is anybody able to count all types of apples?

Isn’t this variety of produce and products a sign for the existence of a great thinker behind it?[7]

The story of the guidance of animals is one of the mysterious actions of Him: The Holy Quran says regarding this:

مَا مِنْ دَابَّةٍ إِلَّا هُوَ آخِذٌ بِنَاصِيَتِهَا إِنَّ رَبِّي عَلَى صِرَاطٍ مُسْتَقِيمٍ.

“There is no living creature but He holds it by its forelock; surely my Lord is on the right path. 11:56”

Corsi Morrison, in his book “The secret of Man’s creation”, has devoted one chapter on the intelligence of animals and reports the results of the researches of thousands of scientists:

Birds have an instinct for building nests: the swallow which builds up a nest in the root of your balcony goes to its winter resort in winter time and returns home when spring arrives.

Due to the cold weather, many birds, in the month of January, migrate to the warm locations in the southern part of Iran. They often travel hundreds of kilometers away from their nests; however, they will never lose their way.

Take a dove and put it in a sealed cage, taking it away for a long distance; then open up the cage. It will first circle the sky, but then moves towards its home.