Signs in creation and the argument for GOD's existence
For the listener with no scripture, the thread begins where the Quran begins with the Meccans: with GOD's own questions. "Were they created from nothing? Are they the creators? Did they create the heavens and the earth?" (52:35–36). "To whom belongs the earth and everyone on it, if you know? They will say, 'To GOD.' Say, 'Why then do you not take heed?'" (23:84–85). "If there were in them… other gods beside GOD, there would have been chaos" (21:22). "We will show them our proofs in the horizons, and within themselves, until they realize that this is the truth" (41:53). Faridi's four grounds (instinctive, rational, evidential, intuitional) and the information-in-DNA argument are ways of walking a modern listener to the same questions; the scientific illustrations are illustrations — labelled so, kept short, placed after the verses (R5) — and restricted to the list the AEV itself gives, plus the two genuine common-ground items with the Bible (six periods of creation; the water cycle). Nothing in this strand is proof; the proof is strand 9's.
The witnesses 15 passages
Clear match
Kind: The Quran's own questions
The Final Testament
[52:35] Were they created from nothing? Are they the creators? [52:36] Did they create the heavens and the earth? Indeed, they have no certainty. [23:84] Say, "To whom belongs the earth and everyone on it, if you know?" [23:85] They will say, "To GOD." Say, "Why then do you not take heed?" (…to [23:89] "Where did you go wrong?") [43:87] If you asked them who created them, they would say, "GOD." Why then did they deviate? (also 10:31; 21:22; 41:53; 30:8; 3:190–191; 45:24)
Reasonable reading
Shaikh Shahidullah Faridi, "Belief in God" (the true religion.txt)
(1) instinctive — man's innate sense of inadequacy and desire for refuge; (2) rational — "an effect cannot exist without a cause… the universe itself must be the effect of a cause, a cause which is itself mightier than and outside the universe"; "diversity cannot exist without a fundamental unity"; (3) evidential — man's machines are "a poor and crude imitation of what already exists in an infinitely finer form in nature"; interdependence ("a fortuitous system is a contradiction in terms"); and decisively the prophets, "spaced throughout history usually at a time of great moral degeneration", whose messages "not only bear remarkable similarities but are basically identical"; (4) intuitional — the sense of value and purpose leads to "the Supreme Purposer".
Kind: Faridi's four grounds
The Final Testament
[30:30] …Such is the natural instinct placed into the people by GOD… [2:164] In the creation of the heavens and the earth, the alternation of night and day… there are sufficient proofs for people who understand. [16:36]; [35:24]
Clear match
"Is There a God?" (the true religion.txt): the archaeologist and the clay pot; "Design ⇒ Designer"; "Something cannot be the Creator and created at the same time"; in a crashing plane everyone calls on the one Creator
Kind: Design and the three options
The Final Testament
[52:35–36]; [10:22–23] (storm at sea, as cited); [25:1–3] (gods that "can create nothing but are themselves created", as cited); [22:73] …the idols you set up beside GOD can never create a fly…
Reasonable reading
"God prior to religion", chs. 1–3 (submission.txt)
First debate: the universe had a beginning (second law; stars' finite fuel; background radiation). Second: a Cause "above and independent of the laws of physics… Neither can this power be of a physical essence"; time began with the universe, so the Cause has no beginning — "before that initial moment of creation nothing existed, not even chance!" Third: "if we were to consider the possibility of the existence of more than one god… which god came first, which god is more powerful… If God is absolute, by definition, He must be One." Ch. 3: one truth, many revelations, "each revelation being one further chapter in the same book"; "If there appears any apparent contradictions between different revelations, they are in human receptacles and not in the divine message"; start comparative study from Moses, whom all three faiths accept.
Kind: The Submitters' rational case
The Final Testament
[21:22]; [23:91]; [42:13]; [2:136]
Reasonable reading
Perry Marshall, The Atheist's Riddle (Christian apologist)
"Not all patterns are designed, but all designs have patterns"; DNA has alphabet, grammar, meaning, intent, error-correction, and can be copied to other media without loss — "The pattern in DNA is not like a language; it IS a language"; Norbert Wiener: "Information is information, neither energy nor matter"; "Show me a language that does not come from a mind."
Kind: Information / DNA
The Final Testament
[96:1] Read, in the name of your Lord, who created. [96:2] He created man from an embryo. [96:3] Read, and your Lord, Most Exalted. [96:4] Teaches by means of the pen. [96:5] He teaches man what he never knew. [55:1] The Most Gracious. [55:2] Teacher of the Quran. [55:3] Creator of the human beings. [55:4] He taught them how to distinguish.
Reasonable reading
Is the Qur'an God's Word?; Focus on Islam
"I congratulate the atheist… he has said the first part of the Shahadah, La ilaha"; "who will be the first person who will be able to tell you the mechanism of an unknown object? — the creator, the manufacturer"; "who created God?" is like asking whether a man's baby is a boy or a girl — the definition of GOD is "uncreated… does not have a beginning"; "Science is not eliminating God — it is eliminating models of god."
Kind: Zakir Naik's atheist dialogue
The Final Testament
[112:1–4]; [52:35–36]
Reasonable reading
Naik's "powerful criminal"; the five reasons for the Hereafter (strand 8, row 8.10)
Kind: The moral argument
The Final Testament
[67:2]; [45:24]; [36:78–81]
Reasonable reading
AEV heading "The Big Bang Theory Confirmed"; AEV fn 21:30
Kind: ILLUSTRATION (AEV list): the Big Bang
The Final Testament
[21:30] Do the unbelievers not realize that the heaven and the earth used to be one solid mass that we exploded into existence? And from water we made all living things. Would they believe?
Reasonable reading
AEV heading "'Expansion of the Universe Theory' Confirmed"
Kind: ILLUSTRATION (AEV list): expansion
The Final Testament
[51:47] We constructed the sky with our hands, and we will continue to expand it.
Reasonable reading
Kind: ILLUSTRATION (AEV list): the sky as gas
The Final Testament
[41:11] Then He turned to the sky, when it was still gas, and said to it, and to the earth, "Come into existence, willingly or unwillingly."…
Reasonable reading
AEV heading at 27:88 "Earth's Movement: A Scientific Miracle"
Kind: ILLUSTRATION (AEV list): the earth moves
The Final Testament
[27:88] When you look at the mountains, you think that they are standing still. But they are moving, like the clouds. Such is the manufacture of GOD, who perfected everything…
Reasonable reading
Kind: ILLUSTRATION (AEV list): sex from the male fluid
The Final Testament
[53:45] He is the One who created the two kinds, male and female - [53:46] from a tiny drop of semen.
Reasonable reading
AEV fn 6:125: "Centuries after the revelation of the Quran, we learned that the proportion of oxygen diminishes as we climb towards the sky, and we gasp for air."
Kind: ILLUSTRATION (AEV list): oxygen thins with altitude
The Final Testament
[6:125] …He renders his chest intolerant and straitened, like one who climbs towards the sky…
Clear match
Genesis 1 ("evening and morning"; Gen 2:4 "in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens"); Campbell (debate): "'The day' in the Bible also can have the time of 'a long period'… I believe that it was long periods of time."
Kind: COMMON GROUND: six periods of creation
The Final Testament
[7:54] Your Lord is the one GOD, who created the heavens and the earth in six days, then assumed all authority… [50:38] We have created the heavens and the earth, and everything between them in six days, and no fatigue touched us. [22:47]; [32:5]; [70:4] (a day as a thousand / fifty thousand years)
Clear match
Job 36:27–28 (as Campbell quoted): "He draws up the drops of water, which distil as rain from the mist… the clouds pour down their moisture." Amos 5:8: "…who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the land — the LORD is His name." (also Ecclesiastes 1:7)
Kind: COMMON GROUND: the water cycle
The Final Testament
[30:48] GOD is the One who sends the winds, to stir up clouds, to be spread throughout the sky in accordance with His will. He then piles the clouds up, then you see the rain coming down therefrom… [39:21] Do you not see that GOD sends down from the sky water, then places it into underground wells, then produces with it plants of various colors… [24:43]; [86:11] By the sky that returns (the water).
Sharing this thread
With an atheist or agnostic, do not begin with science and do not begin with the Quran as a book; begin with the three options (10.3) and Faridi's rational ground (10.2), in the listener's own terms, then the Submitters' beginning-of-the-universe and absolute-therefore-one arguments (10.4), then — if the listener is scientifically minded — Marshall's riddle (10.5), presented as a question, not a trump. Only then read 52:35–36 and 23:84–89, and say: this is how the Quran argued with people who had no scripture, fourteen centuries ago. The scientific illustrations (10.8–10.15) come last and short, each labelled "the AEV reads this verse as…", never "science proves"; and the two common-ground items (10.16–10.17) are offered as what the Bible and the Quran share about creation, because a listener who has left Christianity will hear fairness in that. Then hand over to strand 9's proof and to strand 8's destiny. Follow R16's order throughout: creation → history → code.