CHAPTER 17
THE SECRET BEYOND MATTER
Those who contemplate their surroundings conscientiously and wisely realize that everything in the universe—both living and non-living—must have been created. So the question becomes, "Who is the Creator of all these things?"
It is evident that the creation that reveals itself in every aspect of the universe cannot be an outgrowth of the universe itself. For example, no insect could have created itself, nor could the solar system have created or organized itself. Neither could plants, humans, bacteria, red-blood cells, nor butterflies have created themselves. As this book explains throughout, any possibility that all these could have originated "by chance" is unimaginable.
Therefore, we arrive at the following conclusion: Everything that we see has been created, but nothing we see can itself be a "creator." The Creator is different from—and superior to—all that we see, a Superior Power Who is invisible to our eyes, but Whose existence and attributes are revealed in everything that He creates.
This is where those who deny God's existence are led astray. They are conditioned not to believe in God's existence unless they see Him with their own eyes, forced to conceal the actuality of creation manifested all throughout the universe, and to claim that the universe and all the living things it contains have not been created. In order to do so, they resort to falsehoods. As explained earlier, evolutionary theory is one key example of their lies and vain endeavours to this end.
The basic mistake of those who deny God is shared by many others who don't actually deny His existence, but have wrong perceptions of Him. These people, constituting the majority of society, do not deny creation, but have superstitious beliefs about God, most believing that God is only "up in the sky." They tacitly and falsely imagine that God is off behind some very distant planet and only occasionally interferes with worldly affairs. Or perhaps He doesn't intervene at all: He created the universe, and then left it to itself, leaving us humans to determine our fates for ourselves.
Still others have heard the fact that God is "everywhere," as revealed in the Qur'an, but cannot understand exactly what this means. Superstitiously, they think that God surrounds all matter like radio waves or like an invisible, intangible gas. (God is certainly beyond that.)
However, this and other notions that cannot clarify "where" God is (and perhaps deny Him accordingly) are all based on a common mistake: They hold a groundless prejudice that moves them to wrong opinions about God.
What is this prejudice? It concerns the existence and nature of matter. Most people have been conditioned to assume that the material universe we see is itself the true reality. Modern science, however, demolishes this position and discloses a very important and imposing truth. In the following pages, we will explain this great reality to which the Qur'an points.
The World of Electrical Signals
All the information we have about the world is conveyed to us by our five senses. Thus, the world we know consists of what our eyes see, our hands feel, our nose smells, our tongue tastes, and our ears hear. We never believe that the external world can be other than what our senses present to us, since we've depended on those senses since the day we were born.
Yet modern research in many different fields of science points to a very different understanding, creating serious doubt about the "outside" world that we perceive with our senses.
For this new understanding, the starting point is that everything we perceive as external is only a response formed by electrical signals in our brain. The red of an apple, the hardness of wood—moreover, one's mother, father, family, and everything that one owns, one's house, job, and even the pages of this book—all are comprised of electrical signals only.
On this subject, the late German biochemist Frederic Vester explained the viewpoint that science has reached:
Statements of some scientists, positing that man is an image, that everything experienced is temporary and deceptive, and that this universe is only a shadow, all seem to be proven by current science.190
To clarify, let's consider the five senses which provide us with all our information about the external world.
How Do We See, Hear, and Taste?
The act of seeing occurs in a progressive fashion. Light (photons) traveling from the object passes through the lens in front of the eye, where the image is refracted and falls, upside down, onto the retina at the back of the eye. Here, visual stimuli are turned into electrical signals, in turn transmitted by neurons to a tiny spot in the rear of the brain known as the vision centre. After a series of processes, these electrical signals in this brain center are perceived as an image. The act of seeing actually takes place at the posterior of the brain, in this tiny spot which is pitch dark, completely insulated from light.
Even though this process is largely understood, when we claim, "We see," in fact we are perceiving the effects of impulses reaching our eye, transformed into electrical signals, and induced in our brain. And so, when we say, "We see," actually we are observing electrical signals in our mind.
All the images we view in our lives are formed in our centre of vision, which takes up only a few cubic centimetres in the brain's volume. The book you are now reading, as well as the boundless landscape you see when you gaze at the horizon, both occur in this tiny space. And keep in mind that, as noted before, the brain is insulated from light. Inside the skull is absolutely dark; and the brain itself has no contact with light.
An example can illustrate this interesting paradox. Suppose we place a burning candle in front of you. You can sit across from it and watch this candle at length. During this time, however, your brain never has any direct contact with the candle's original light. Even while you perceive the candle's light, the inside of your brain is lightless. We all watch a bright, colourful world inside our pitch-dark brain.
R. L. Gregory explains the miraculous aspect of seeing, which we take so very much for granted:
We are so familiar with seeing, that it takes a leap of imagination to realize that there are problems to be solved. But consider it. We are given tiny distorted upside-down images in the eyes, and we see separate solid objects in surrounding space. From the patterns of simulation on the retinas we perceive the world of objects, and this is nothing short of a miracle.191
The same applies to all our other senses. Sound, touch, taste and smell are all transmitted as electrical signals to the brain, where they are perceived in the relevant centres.
The sense of hearing proceeds in the same manner. The auricle in the outer ear picks up available sounds and directs them to the middle ear; the middle ear transmits the sound vibrations to the inner ear by intensifying them; the inner ear translates these vibrations into electrical signals and sends them to the brain. Just as with the eye, the act of hearing takes place in the brain's hearing centre. The brain is insulated from sound just as it is from light. Therefore, no matter how noisy it may be outside, it is completely silent inside the brain.
Nevertheless, the brain perceives sounds most precisely, so that a healthy person's ear hears everything without any atmospheric noise or interference. Your brain is insulated from sound, yet you listen to the symphonies of an orchestra, hear all the noises in a crowded auditorium, and perceive all sounds within a wide frequency, from the rustling of leaves to the roar of a jet plane. However, were a sensitive device to measure the sound level in your brain, it would show complete silence prevailing there.
Our perception of odour forms in a similar way. Volatile molecules, emitted by vanilla extract or a rose, reach receptors in the delicate hairs in the olfactory epithelium and become involved in an interaction that is transmitted to the brain as electrical signals and perceived as smell. Everything that you smell, be it pleasant or repugnant, is only your brain's perception of the interactions of volatile molecules transformed into electrical signals. The scent of a perfume, a flower, any delicious food, the sea, or other odours you like or dislike, you perceive entirely in your brain. The molecules themselves never reach there. Just as with sound and vision, what reaches your sensory centres is simply an assortment of electrical signals. In other words, all the sensations that, since you were born, you've assumed to belong to external objects are just electrical signals interpreted through your sense organs.
Similarly, at the front of your tongue, there are four different types of chemical receptors that create the tastes of salty, sweet, sour, and bitter. After a series of chemical processes, your taste receptors transform these perceptions into electrical signals and transmit them to the brain, which perceives these signals as flavours. The taste you get when you eat chocolate or a fruit that you like is your brain's interpretation of electrical signals. You can never reach the object outside; you can never see, smell or taste the chocolate itself. For instance, if the nerves between your tongue and your brain are cut, no further signals will reach your brain, and you will lose your sense of taste completely.
Here, we come across another fact: You can never be sure that how a food tastes to you is the same as how it tastes to anyone else; or that your perception of a voice is the same as what another's when he hears that same voice. Along the same lines, science writer Lincoln Barnett wrote that "no one can ever know whether his sensation of red or of Middle C is the same as another man's."192
Our sense of touch is no different. When we handle an object, all the information that helps us recognise it is transmitted to the brain by sensitive nerves on the skin. The feeling of touch is formed in our brain. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we perceive sensations of touch not at our fingertips or on our skin, but in our brain's tactile centre. As a result of the brain's assessment of electrical stimulations coming to it from the skin, we feel different sensations pertaining to objects, such as hardness or softness, heat or cold. From these stimulations, we derive all details that help us recognise an object. Concerning this important fact, consider the thoughts of B. Russell and L. J. J. Wittgenstein, two famous philosophers:
For instance, whether a lemon truly exists or not and how it came to exist cannot be questioned and investigated. A lemon consists merely of a taste sensed by the tongue, an odor sensed by the nose, a color and shape sensed by the eye; and only these features of it can be subject to examination and assessment. Science can never know the physical world.193
It is impossible for us to reach the physical world outside our brain. All objects we're in contact with are actually collection of perceptions such as sight, hearing, and touch. Throughout our lives, by processing the data in the sensory centres, our brain confronts not the "originals" of the matter existing outside us, but rather copies formed inside our brain. At this point, we are misled to assume that these copies are instances of real matter outside us.
The "External World" Inside Our Brain
As a result of these physical facts, we come to the following indisputable conclusion: Everything we see, touch, hear, and perceive as "matter," "the world" or "the universe" is in fact electrical signals interpreted in our brain. We can never reach the original of the matter outside our brain. We merely taste, hear and see an image of the external world formed in our brain. In fact, someone eating an apple confronts not the actual fruit, but its perceptions in the brain. What that person considers to be an apple actually consists of his brain's perception of the electrical information concerning the fruit's shape, taste, smell, and texture. If the optic nerve to the brain were suddenly severed, the image of the fruit would instantly disappear. Any disconnection in the olfactory nerve travelling from receptors in the nose to the brain would interrupt the sense of smell completely. Simply put, that apple is nothing but the interpretation of electrical signals by the brain.
Also consider the sense of distance. The empty space between you and this page is only a sense of emptiness formed in your brain. Objects that appear distant in your view also exist in the brain. For instance, someone watching the stars at night assumes that they are millions of light-years away, yet the stars are within himself, in his vision centre. While you read these lines, actually you are not inside the room you assume you're in; on the contrary, the room is inside you. Perceiving your body makes you think that you're inside it. However, your body, too, is a set of images formed inside your brain.
The same applies to all other perceptions. When you believe you're hearing the sound of the television in the next room, for instance, actually you are experiencing those sounds inside your brain. The noises you think are coming from meters away and the conversation of the person right beside you—both are perceived in the auditory centre in your brain, only a few cubic centimetres in size. Apart from this centre of perception, no concepts such as right, left, front or behind exist. That is, sound does not come to you from the right, from the left, or from above; there is no direction from which sound "really" comes.
Similarly, none of the smells you perceive reach you from any distance away. You suppose that the scents perceived in your centre of smell are those of outside objects. However, just as the image of a rose exists in your visual centre, so its scent is located in your olfactory centre. You can never have direct contact with the original sight or smell of that rose that exists outside.
To us, the "external world" is merely a collection of the electrical signals reaching our brains simultaneously. Our brains process these signals, and we live without recognizing our mistaken assumption that these are the actual, original versions of matter existing in the "external world." We are misled, because by means of our senses, we can never reach the matter itself.
Again, our brain interprets and attributes meanings to the signals that we assume to be "external." Consider the sense of hearing, for example. In fact, our brain interprets and transforms sound waves reaching our ear into symphonies. Music, too, is a perception formed by—and within—our brain. In the same manner, when we see colours, different wavelengths of light are all that reaches our eyes, and our brain transforms these wavelengths into colours. There are no colours in the "external world." Neither is the apple red, nor is the sky blue, nor the trees green. They are as they are only because we perceive them to be so.
Even the slightest defect in the eye's retina can cause colour blindness. Some people perceive blue as green, others red as blue, and still others see all colours as different tones of grey. At this point, it no longer matters whether the outside object is coloured or not.
The prominent Irish thinker George Berkeley also addressed this point:
First, ...it was thought that colour, figure, motion, and the rest of the sensible qualities or accidents, did really exist without the mind;.. But, it having been shewn that none even of these can possibly exist otherwise than in a Spirit or Mind which perceives them it follows that we have no longer any reason to suppose the being of Matter...194
In conclusion, we see colours not because objects are coloured or because they have a material existence outside ourselves, but because all the qualities we ascribe to objects are inside us, not in the "external world."
In that case, how can we claim to have complete knowledge of "the external world?"
Mankind's Limited Knowledge
One implication of the facts described so far is that actually, man's knowledge of the external world is exceedingly limited.
That knowledge is limited to our five senses, and there is no proof that the world we perceive by means of those senses is identical to the "real" world.
It may, therefore, be very different from what we perceive. There may be a great many dimensions and other beings of which we remain unaware. Even if we reach the furthermost extremities of the universe, our knowledge will always remain limited.
Almighty God, the Creator of all, has complete and flawless knowledge of all beings who, having been created by God, can possess only the knowledge that He allows them. This reality is explained in the Qur'an as follows:
God, there is no deity but Him, the Living, the Self-Sustaining. He is not subject to drowsiness or sleep. Everything in the heavens and the earth belongs to Him. Who can intercede with Him except by His permission? He knows what is before them and what is behind them but they cannot grasp any of His knowledge save what He wills. His Footstool encompasses the heavens and the Earth and their preservation does not tire Him. He is the Most High, the Magnificent. (Surat al-Baqara: 255)
The Artificially Constituted "External World"
The only world we know is the one that is designed, recorded, and made vivid there—in short, the one created and existing within our minds. Perceptions we observe in our brain may sometimes be coming from an artificial source.
We can illustrate this with an example:
First, imagine that by artificial means, your brain can survive apart from your body. And suppose a computer able to produce all kinds of electrical signals. Let us artificially produce electrical signals of the data relating to a given environment—including its sights, sounds and aromas. Finally, let's have electrical cables connect this computer to your brain's sensory centres and transmit the recorded signals. Perceiving these signals, your brain (in other words, "you") will see and experience the environment they represent.
This computer can also send to your brain electrical signals related to your own image. For example, if we send the electrical correlates of all senses such as hearing, sight and touch that you experience while sitting at a desk, you will assume that you're a businessman in his office. This imaginary world will endure as long as the computer keeps sending stimuli. Never will it become possible for you to understand that you consist of nothing but your brain. This is because all that's needed to form a world within your brain is the availability of stimulations to the relevant centres. It is perfectly possible for these stimulations (and hence, perceptions) to originate from some artificial source.
Along these lines, the distinguished philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote:
As to the sense of touch when we press the table with our fingers, that is an electric disturbance on the electrons and protons of our fingertips, produced, according to modern physics, by the proximity of the electrons and protons in the table. If the same disturbance in our finger-tips arose in any other way, we should have the sensations, in spite of there being no table.195
It's very easy indeed to be deceived into deeming perceptions without any material correlates as real. Often we experience this illusion in dreams, wherein we experience events and see people, objects and settings that seem completely genuine. But they're all merely perceptions. There's no basic difference between these dreams and the "real world"; both sets of perceptions are experienced in the brain.
Who Is the Perceiver?
The "external world" that we think we inhabit is no doubt created inside our brain. Here, however, arises a question of primary importance: If all the physical objects we know of are intrinsically perceptions, what about our brain itself? Since our brain is a part of the material world just like our arms, our legs, or any other object, it too should be a perception.
An example will help illustrate this point. Assume that we perceive a dream in our brain. In our dream, we have an imaginary body, imaginary arms and eyes, and an imaginary brain. If, during our dream, we were asked "Where do you see?" we'd answer, "I see in my brain." Yet, actually there is no real brain to talk about, only an imaginary body, along with an imaginary head and an imaginary brain. The seer of the dream's various images is not the imaginary dreaming brain, but a being who is far beyond it.
Since there is no physical distinction between the setting of a dream and the setting we call real life, when in "real life" we are asked the same question of "Where do you see?" it would be equally meaningless to answer, "In my brain." Under either condition, the entity that sees and perceives is not the brain, which is after all only a hunk of nerve tissue.
So far, we have kept referring to how we watch a copy of the external world in our brains. An important result is that we can never know the external world as it actually is.
A second, no less important fact is that the "self" in our brains who observes this world cannot be the brain itself, which is like an integrated computer system: It processes data reaching it, translates it into images, and projects them on a screen. Yet a computer cannot watch itself; nor is it aware of its own existence.
When the brain is dissected to search for this awareness, nothing is found in it but lipid and protein molecules, which exist in other organs of the body as well. This means that within the tissue we call "our brain," there is nothing to observe and interpret the images, constitute consciousness, or to create the being we call "ourselves."
In relation to the perception of images in the brain, perceptual scientist R.L. Gregory refers to a mistake people make:
There is a temptation, which must be avoided, to say that the eyes produce pictures in the brain. A picture in the brain suggests the need of some kind of internal eye to see it—but this would need a further eye to see its picture… and so on in an endless regress of eyes and pictures. This is absurd.196
This problem puts materialists, who hold that nothing is real except matter, in a quandary: Who is behind the eye that sees? What perceives what it sees, and then reacts?
Renowned cognitive neuroscientist Karl Pribram focused on this important question, relevant to the worlds of both science and philosophy, about who the perceiver is:
Philosophers since the Greeks have speculated about the "ghost" in the machine, the "little man inside the little man" and so on. Where is the I—the entity that uses the brain? Who does the actual knowing? Or, as Saint Francis of Assisi once put it, "What we are looking for is what is looking."197
This book in your hand, the room you are in—in brief, all the images before you—are perceived inside your brain. Is it the blind, deaf, unconscious component atoms that view these images? Why did some atoms acquire this quality, whereas most did not? Do our acts of thinking, comprehending, remembering, being delighted, being unhappy, and everything else consist of chemical reactions among these atoms' molecules?
There is no sense in looking for will in atoms. Clearly, the being who sees, hears, and feels is a supra-material being, "alive," who is neither matter nor an image. This being interacts with the perceptions before it by using the image of our body.
This being is the soul.
The intelligent being reading these lines is not an assortment of atoms and molecules and the chemical reactions between them, but a soul.
The Real Absolute Being
We are brought face to face with a very significant question: If the world we confront is comprised of our soul's perceptions, then what is the source of these perceptions?
For an answer, consider that we perceive matter only in our imaginations, but can never directly experience of its counterparts outside. Since matter is actually a perception to us, it is something "constructed." That is, it must have been caused by another power—which means that in fact, it must have been created. Moreover, this creation must be continuous. If not, then these perceptions would quickly disappear and be lost. Similarly, a television picture is displayed only as long as the signal continues to be broadcast.
So, who makes our soul that continuously watches the stars, the earth, the plants, the people, our body and everything else that we see?
Very evidently, there exists a supreme Creator Who has created the entire material universe, and Who ceaselessly continues His creation. Since this Creator displays such a magnificent creation, surely He has eternal power and might.
This Creator describes Himself, the universe and the reason of our existence for us through the book He has sent down.
This Creator is God, and His book is the Qur'an.
The fact is, the heavens and the Earth—that is, the universe—are not stable. Their presence is made possible only by God's creation, and that they will disappear when He ends this creation. This is revealed in a verse as follows:
God keeps a firm hold on the heavens and Earth, preventing them from vanishing away. And if they vanished no one could then keep hold of them. Certainly He is Most Forbearing, Ever-Forgiving. (Surah Fatir: 41)
This verse is describing how the material universe is maintained under the might of God. God created the universe, the Earth, mountains, and all living and non-living things, and maintains all these under His power at every moment. God manifests His name al-Khaliq in this material universe. God is al-Khaliq, in other words, the Creator of all things, the Creator from nothing. This shows that there is a material universe, outside our brains, consisting of entities created by God. However, as a miracle and manifestation of the superior nature of His creation and His omniscience, God shows us this material universe in the form of an "illusion," "shadow," or "image." As a consequence of the perfection in His creation, human beings can never reach the world outside their brains. Only God knows this real material universe.
Another interpretation of the above verse is that God constantly maintains the images of the material universe that people see. (God knows best.) If God did not wish to show the image of the world to our minds, the entire universe would cease to exist for us, and we could never reach it.
That we can never directly contact the material universe also answers the question of "Where is God?" that preoccupies a great many people.
As mentioned at the start, many cannot comprehend God's power and so, imagine Him as present somewhere in the heavens and not really intervening in worldly affairs. (God is certainly beyond that.) This logic is based on the assumptions that the universe is an assembly of matter and God is "outside" this material world.
However, just as we can never reach the material universe, neither can we have full knowledge of its true essence. All we know is the existence of the Creator Who brought all these things into being—in other words, God. To express that truth, great Islamic scholars like Imam Rabbani have said that the only absolute being is God; and that all the rest, except Him, are shadow entities.
That is because the world we see is entirely in our minds, and to directly experience its counterpart in the external world is totally impossible.
That being so, it would be wrong to imagine that God is "outside" of a material universe that we can never attain.
God is surely "everywhere" and encompasses all. This reality is explained in the Qur'an as follows:
... His Footstool encompasses the heavens and the earth and their preservation does not tire Him. He is the Most High, the Magnificent. (Surat al-Baqara: 255)
What! Are they in doubt about the meeting with their Lord? What! Does He not encompass all things? (Surah Fussilat: 54)
The fact that God is not bound with space and that He encompasses everything roundabout is stated in another verse as follows:
Both East and West belong to God, so wherever you turn, the Face of God is there. God is All-Encompassing, All-Knowing. (Surat al-Baqara: 115)
Material beings cannot see God; but God sees the matter He created in all its forms. In the Qur'an, this fact is stated thus: "No vision can grasp Him, but His grasp is over all vision." (Surat al-An'am: 103)That is, we cannot perceive God's existence with our eyes, but God has thoroughly encompassed our inside and outside, our vision and thoughts. We cannot utter any word except with His knowledge, nor can we even draw breath.
In the course of our lives, while we watch perceptions we assume to be the "external world," the closest being to us is God Himself. The secret of the following verse in the Qur'an is concealed in this reality: "It was We Who created man, and We know what dark suggestions his soul makes to him: for We are nearer to him than (his) jugular vein." (Surah Qaf: 16) When a person thinks that his body is made up of "matter," he cannot comprehend this important fact. If he takes his brain to be himself, then what he accepts as the "outside world" will begin at about 20 to 30 centimetres away. But when he conceives that everything he thinks of as matter is only perceptions in his mind, any notions such as outside or inside, far or near lose all their meaning. God has encompassed him and He is infinitely close to him.
God informs men that He is "infinitely close" to them with the verse "If My servants ask you about Me, I am near…" (Surat al-Baqara: 186). Another verse relates the same fact: "Surely your Lord encompasses the people." (Surat al-Isra: 60)
Man is misled if he thinks that the being closest to him is himself. God, in truth, is even closer to us than ourselves. He has called our attention to this point in the verse "Why is it not then that when it (soul) comes up to the throat, and you at that time look on, We are nearer to him than you, but you see not." (Surat al-Waqi'a: 83-85) People, however, remain unaware of this phenomenal fact because they cannot see it with their eyes, as revealed in the verse.
On the other hand, it is impossible for man—who is nothing but a shadow being, as Imam Rabbani put it,— to have any power independent of God. The verse "But God has created you and your handwork!" (Surat as-Saffat: 96) shows that everything we experience takes place under God's control. In the Qur'an, this reality is stated in the verse "When you threw, it was not your act, but God's." (Surat al-Anfal: 17) whereby it is emphasised that no act is independent of God. Since we humans are shadow beings, we ourselves cannot be the ones who perform any act. However, God gives us shadow beings the feeling that we act by ourselves. In reality, it is God Who performs all acts.
A person may not want to concede this reality and may keep thinking of himself as independent of God; but this changes nothing.
Everything You Possess Is Intrinsically Illusory
It is clear, scientific, and logical that we are not in direct contact with the "external world," only with a copy of it that God perpetually presents to our soul. Nevertheless, people are unwilling to think of this.
If you consider this issue sincerely and boldly, you'll soon realize that your house, the furniture in it, your car, your office, jewels, your bank account, wardrobe, spouse, children, your colleagues—in fact, all else that you possess—resides in your mind. Everything around you that you see, hear, or smell—in short, perceive with your five senses— is a part of this "replica world," including the voice of your favourite singer, the hardness of the chair you sit on, a perfume whose smell you like, the sun that warms you, a flower's beautiful colours, a bird flying past your window, a speedboat moving swiftly on the water, your fertile garden, the computer you use at your job, your hi-fi with the most advanced technology in the world...
This is the reality, because the world is created only to test man. All through our limited lives, we are tested with perceptions whose original sources we can never reach, which are intentionally presented as appealing and attractive. This fact is mentioned in the Qur'an:
Fair in the eyes of men is the love of things they covet: women and sons; heaped-up hoards of gold and silver; horses branded [for blood and excellence]; and [wealth of] cattle and well-tilled land. Such are the possessions of this world's life; but in nearness to God is the best of the goals [to return to]. (Surah Al 'Imran: 14)
Most people cast away religion for the lure of property, heaped-up wealth, hoards of gold and silver, jewels, bank accounts, credit cards, designer clothes, late-model cars—in short, all the forms of prosperity they either possess or strive to. They concentrate on this world only, forgetting the Hereafter. They are deceived by the fair and alluring face of the world, and fail to keep up prayer, give charity to the poor, and perform worship that will make them prosper in the Hereafter. They make excuses, saying, "I have things to do," "I have ideals," "I have responsibilities," "I haven't enough time," "I have tasks to complete," "I will do them in the future." They devote their entire lives to trying to prosper in this world only. In the verse, "They know but the outer [things] in the life of this world: but of the End of things they are heedless." (Surat ar-Rum: 7), this misconception is described.
The reality dealt with in this chapter is very important, for it renders meaningless all lusts and boundaries. Verifying this fact makes it clear that everything people toil to possess, their wealth amassed with greed, their children they boast of, their spouses they consider to be closest to them, their dearest friends, their bodies, their superior rank which they hold, the schools they have attended, the holidays they celebrate—all are nothing but mere shadows. Therefore, all the efforts they expended and the time they spent proves unavailing.
Some people unwittingly make fools of themselves when they boast of their wealth and properties, or of their yachts, helicopters, factories, holdings, manors and lands as if they can ever have direct contact with their original possessions. Those well-to-do who cruise ostentatiously up and down in their yachts, show off with their cars, keep hinting at their wealth, suppose that they rank higher than everyone else. In what kind of state would they find themselves, once they realize that they are boasting of nothing but images in their own minds?
In many of their dreams, they in fact find themselves possessed of grand houses, fast cars, precious jewels, rolls of banknotes, and loads of gold and silver. In their dreams, too, they enjoy a high rank, own factories with thousands of workers, possess the power to rule over thousands, and wear clothes that command everyone's admiration. But just as boasting about one's possessions in a dream often subjects one to ridicule, he is sure to be equally ridiculed in this world for boasting of images he relates to. After all, what he sees in his dreams and what he relates to in this world are both merely images in his mind.
Similarly, when people realize the reality, the way they react to the worldly events they experience should make them feel ashamed. Those who fight fiercely with each other, swindle, take bribes, commit forgery, lie, covetously withhold their money; who do wrong to others, who curse and beat them, who are full of passion for office and high rank, who envy and try to show off, who exalt themselves above all others—all will feel disgrace when they realize that they have committed all of these deeds in an illusion.
Since God creates the entire universe and reveals it to every human being individually, the Ultimate Owner of all possessions in the world is God alone. This fact is revealed in the Qur'an:
But to God belong all things in the heavens and on Earth: And He it is that Encompasses all things. (Surat an-Nisa': 126)
It is hugely foolish to cast away religion for the sake of passions whose original objects one can never reach, and thus lose eternal life.
At this point, it's important to grasp that the truth we are considering does not mean that all the possessions, wealth, children, spouses, rank and position one possesses and longs for will vanish in the future, and so are meaningless. Rather, it predicates that in fact, people have no direct contact with any of their possessions. They are merely perceptions they watch from within their brains, composed of images that God shows to test them. As you see, there's a big difference between those two propositions.
Although someone might not want to acknowledge this fact right away and would prefer to deceive himself by assuming that all his possessions really exist, he must finally to die. When he is resurrected in the Hereafter, everything will become clear, and "sight will be sharp." (Surah Qaf: 22) On that day, he is apt to see everything much more clearly. If he has spent his life chasing after imaginary aims, however, he will wish he had never lived, and say "Ah! Would that [Death] had made an end of me! Of no profit to me has been my wealth! My power has perished from me!" (Surat al-Haqqa: 27-29) On the other hand, a wise man should try to understand the great reality of the universe here on this world, while he still has time. Otherwise, he will spend all his life running after dreams and face a grievous penalty in the end. In the Qur'an, the final state of those people who run after illusions (or mirages) on this world and forget God, our Creator, is stated as follows:
But the unbelievers, their deeds are like a mirage in sandy deserts, which the man parched with thirst mistakes for water; until when he comes up to it, he finds it to be nothing: But he finds God [ever] with him, and God will pay him his account: and God is swift in taking account. (Surat an-Nur: 39)
Logical Deficiencies of the Materialists
From the start, this chapter has clearly stated that matter is not absolute, as materialists claim, but rather a shadow that God creates out of nothing and whose original we can never reach. In an extremely dogmatic manner, materialists resist this evident reality which destroys their philosophy, and bring forward baseless counterclaims to refute it.
George Politzer, for example, an ardent Marxist and one of the twentieth century's biggest advocates of the materialist philosophy, gave the "bus example" as the greatest evidence proving that he could reach the original of matter. According to Politzer, even idealist philosophers run away when they see a bus about to run them over, and this proves that they do confront the actuality of matter.198
Samuel Johnson, another famous materialist, was told that one can never reach essential matter, and tried to "prove" that he could make contact with the essence of stones by giving one of them a kick.199
A similar example is given by Friedrich Engels, the mentor of Politzer and along with Marx, the founder of dialectic materialism. He wrote that "if the cakes we eat were mere perceptions, they would not stop our hunger."200
There are similar examples in the books of famous materialists such as Marx, Engels, Lenin, and others along with impetuous sentences such as, "You understand the existence of matter when you are slapped in the face."
The disordered comprehension that engenders such examples arises from materialists' interpreting the explanation "We cannot reach the original of matter" as involving the sense of sight only. They think that perception is limited to sight, and that touching can get us directly to the essence of matter. A bus knocking a man down makes people say, "Look, it hit him! Therefore, he confronted the original." They don't understand that all the perceptions experienced during a crash—hard metal, the force of collision, pain—are in fact formed in the brain.
The Example of Dreams
The fact is, whichever of the five senses we take as a starting point, we can't ever actually reach the original of the external world that exists outside. A significant evidence of this is the way we imagine the existence of things that in fact do not exist in our dreams. In dreams, we can experience very realistic events. We can fall down the stairs and break a leg, have a serious car accident, get stuck under a bus, or eat a heavy meal and feel satiated. Events similar to those experienced in daily life are experienced in dreams too, with the same persuasiveness and rousing the same emotions.
A person who dreams of being knocked down by a bus can open his eyes in a hospital—again in his dream—and realize that he is disabled. But all this would remain a dream. Also, he can dream of dying in a car crash, that angels of death retrieve his soul, and his life in the Hereafter begins.
The images, sounds, feeling of hardness, pain, light, colours—all the feelings pertaining to the event he experiences in his dream—are perceived very sharply. They seem as natural as the ones in real life. The cake he eats in his dream satiates him, although it is a mere perception, because feeling satisfied is a perception too. At that moment, however, this person is lying in his bed. There are really no stairs, no traffic, no buses, no cake, because the dreamer experiences perceptions and feelings that don't exist in the external world. The fact that our dreams give us events with no physical, external correlates clearly reveals that the "world out there" is one whose true essence we can never know. We can learn the true nature of that world only from the revelation of Almighty God, Who created it.
Those who believe in the materialist philosophy, the Marxists in particular, are enraged when informed of this reality. They quote examples from the superficial, ignorant reasoning of Marx, Engels, or Lenin and else make emotional declarations.
However, they should realize that they can make these declarations in a dream as well. They can dream of reading Das Kapital, participating in meetings, and even feel the pain of getting involved in a fistfight. When asked—in their dream—they will think that what they see is absolute reality, just as they assume that everything they see while awake is absolutely real. But they should know that everything they experience—be it in a dream or in their daily lives—consists of only perceptions whose "real" source they can never reach.
The Example of a Shared Nervous System
Let us consider Politzer's car crash example: If the injured victim's nerves travelling from his five senses to his brain, were connected in parallel to another person's—Politzer's, for instance—then at the instant the bus hit that person, Politzer, sitting at his home at that same time, would feel the impact too. Politzer would experience all the sensations experienced by the person undergoing the accident, just as the same song will issue from two different loudspeakers connected to the same tape recorder. Politzer will hear the braking of the bus, feel its impact on his body, see the sights of a broken arm and spreading blood, suffer the aching fractures, experience entering the operation room, the hardness of the plaster cast, and the feebleness of his healing arm.
Just like Politzer, every other person connected to that man's nerves would experience the accident from beginning to end. If the man in the accident fell into a coma, so would everyone. Moreover, if all the perceptions pertaining to the car accident were recorded in some device, and repeatedly transmitted to someone, the bus would knock this person down again and again.
But which one of these two buses hitting those people is real? To this question, materialist philosophers have no consistent answer. The correct answer is that all of them experience the car accident, in all its details, in their own minds.
The same principle applies to our other examples. If the sensory nerves of Engels, who felt the fullness in his stomach after eating a cake, were connected to a second person's brain, that person would also feel full after Engels finished the cake. If the nerves of materialist Johnson, who felt pain in his foot after delivering a sound kick to a stone, were connected to a second individual, that person too would feel himself kick the same stone and feel the same pain.
So, which cake or stone is the real one? Again, materialist philosophy falls short of giving a consistent answer. The correct, consistent answer is that Engels and the second person have both eaten the cake and are satiated in their minds; both Johnson and the second person have fully experienced kicking the stone—again, in their minds.
In our previous example, let's make an exchange: Connecting the nerves of the man hit by the bus to Politzer's brain, and the nerves of Politzer, sitting in his house, to brain of that accident victim. In this case, Politzer will think that a bus has hit him, but the man actually hit by the bus will never feel the impact and think that he is sitting in Politzer's house. The very same logic can be applied to the examples involving the cake and the stone.
All this reveals how dogmatic materialism actually is. Its philosophy is founded on the assumption that nothing exists except matter. The fact is, however, that no one can ever experience any direct contact with matter and thus be justified in claiming that everything consists of it. The universe we contact is the universe that we perceive in our minds. The famous British philosopher David Hume expressed his thoughts on this point:
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.201
We can never step outside these perceptions and encounter matter as it "really" is, so it is wholly nonsensical to construct any philosophy regarding matter as an absolute entity we can experience directly. As a theory, materialism is totally unfounded, right from the outset.
The Formation of Perceptions in the Brain
Is not Philosophy, But Scientific Fact
Materialists claim that what we have stated here is a philosophical view. But the plain scientific fact is, we cannot interact with the "external" material world, but only with a world in our brain. This is not a matter of philosophy. All medical schools teach in detail how images and feelings form in the brain. Facts proven by twentieth-century science, and by physics in particular, clearly show that we can never reach the originals of physical matter; and that in a sense, everyone is watching the "monitor" in his brain.
Everyone who believes in science, be he an atheist, Buddhist, or of any other belief, must accept this fact. Even the materialist who denies the existence of God cannot deny scientific reality.
That Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, George Politzer and others were never able to comprehend such a simple, evident fact is still startling, even though their level of scientific understanding was primitive and insufficient. Our highly advanced science and technology make it even easier to comprehend this explicit fact. Materialists, on the other hand, are paralyzed with their fears of even partially comprehending this fact and thereby, realizing how completely it demolishes their philosophy.
The Materialists' Great Fear
For a while, Turkish materialist circles mounted no substantial backlash against the subject examined in this book—that matter is perceived in the brain. This gave us the impression that we hadn't made our point clearly enough, that it needed further explanation. Yet before long, it became apparent that materialists did feel quite uneasy about the popularity of this topic and moreover, felt a great fear about it all.
After a while, materialists started loudly publicizing their fear and panic in their publications, conferences and panels. Their agitated, hopeless discourse implied that they were suffering a severe intellectual crisis. The collapse of the theory of evolution—the basis of their so-called scientific philosophy—had already come as a great shock. Now they experienced an even greater one, as they realized that they were losing their belief in the absolute supremacy of matter, which for them was a greater mainstay than even Darwinism. They declared that for them, this issue is a tremendous threat that totally demolishes their cultural fabric.
One who expressed the materialist circles' anxiety and panic in a most outspoken way was Renan Pekunlu, an academician and writer in the periodical Bilim ve Utopya (Science and Utopia) which has assumed the task of defending materialism. Both in his articles in Bilim ve Utopya and in the panels he attended, Pekunlu presented our book The Evolution Deceit as the number-one threat. What disturbed Pekunlu even more than the chapters invalidating Darwinism was the section you are currently reading. Pekunlu admonished his handful of readers not to let themselves be carried away by the indoctrination of idealism and to keep their faith in materialism. He used Vladimir I. Lenin, leader of Russia's bloody communist revolution, as a reference. Advising everyone to read Lenin's century-old book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Pekunlu only repeated Lenin's counsel to "not think over this issue, or you will lose track of materialism and be carried away by religion." In an article for the aforementioned periodical, Pekunlu quoted the following lines from Lenin:
Once you deny the objective reality [that is] given us in sensation, you have already lost every weapon against fideism [reliance on faith alone], for you have slipped into agnosticism or subjectivism—and that is all that fideism requires. A single claw ensnared, and the bird is lost. And our Machists [an adherent of Machism, a modern positivist philosophy], have all become ensnared in idealism, that is, in a diluted, subtle fideism; They became ensnared from the moment they took "sensation" not as an image of the external world, but as a special "element." It is nobody's sensation, nobody's mind, nobody's spirit, nobody's will.202
These words explicitly demonstrate the fact that Lenin found alarming and wanted to expunge, both from his own mind and the minds of his "comrades." It disturbs contemporary materialists too, in a similar way. But Pekunlu and other materialists suffer a yet greater distress because they know that this certain fact is now being advanced in a way that's far more explicit convincing than a hundred years ago. For the first time, this subject is being explained in a truly irrefutable way.
Still, nevertheless, a great number of materialist scientists take a superficial stand against the fact that no one can reach matter in and of itself. The subject covered in this chapter is one of the most important and most exciting that a person can ever run across. It's fairly unlikely that these scientists would have faced such a crucial subject before, but the reactions and the stance they employ in their speeches and articles still hint at how shallow and superficial their comprehension really is.
Some materialists' reactions show that their blind adherence to materialism has somehow impaired their logic, making them far removed from comprehending the subject. For instance, Alaeddin Senel—like Rennan Pekunlu, an academician and a writer for Bilim ve Utopya—said, "Forget the collapse of Darwinism, the real threatening subject is this one," and made demands implying " prove what you tell," sensing that his own philosophy has no basis. More interestingly, this writer has written lines revealing that he can by no means grasp this very fact which he considers such a menace.
For instance, in one article where Senel discussed this subject exclusively, he accepts that the brain perceives the external world as an image. But then he goes on to claim that images are divided into two categories: those having physical correlates and those with none; and that we can indeed reach the physical correlates of images pertaining to the external world. In support of this assertion, he writes, "I do not know whether or not the images in my brain have correlates in the external world, but the same thing applies when I speak on the phone. When I speak on the telephone, I cannot see the person I am speaking to, but I can have this conversation confirmed later, when I see him face to face."203
By this, he actually means that if we doubt our perceptions, we can look at their origin and check its reality. This is an evident misconception, however, since it's impossible for us to reach matter itself. We can never get outside of our minds to reach what is "outside." Does the voice on the phone have an objective correlate or not? We can confirm that by meeting the person we spoke with. However, this confirmation too is experienced in the mind!
In fact, these writers also experience the same events in their dreams. For instance, Senel may dream that he speaks on the phone, then have this conversation confirmed by the person he spoke to. Or Pekunlu may, in his dream, feel he's facing a serious threat and advise others to read century-old books by Lenin. But no matter what they do, these materialists can never deny that the events they've experienced and the people they talked to were nothing but perceptions to them.
Who, then, can confirm the correlates of the images in the brain? The shadow beings whom people watch in their visual centres? It is impossible for materialists to find any "outside" source that can confirm information outside of the brain.
If someone concedes that all perceptions are formed in the brain, but still assumes that one can step "out" of this world of perceptions and have them confirmed by the "real" external world, this reveals this person's limited perceptive capacity and distorted reasoning.
However, the facts related here can easily be grasped by anyone of normal understanding and reasoning. In relation to everything we have said, every unbiased person will understand that it isn't possible for one's senses to reach the external world. Yet blind adherence to materialism apparently distorts people's reasoning capability. Contemporary materialists display severe logical flaws just like their mentors who tried to "prove" that they could reach the original of matter by kicking stones or eating cake.
This is no astonishing situation. The inability to understand—that is, interpret the world and events with decent reasoning—is a trait common to unbelievers. In the Qur'an, God particularly states that they are "a people without understanding." (Surat al-Ma'ida: 58)
Materialists Have Fallen into
the Biggest Trap in History
The panicky atmosphere sweeping materialist circles in Turkey, of which we've mentioned only a few examples here, shows that materialists face utter defeat. Modern science has proven that we cannot reach the original of matter, and put this forward in a clear, straightforward, forceful way. Materialists see that the material world, on which they base their entire philosophy, lies beyond a perceptual boundary they can never cross. In the face of this fact, they can do nothing. Throughout human history, materialist thought has always existed. Being assured of themselves and their philosophy, materialists revolted against God Who created them. They maintained that matter is eternal, that none of it could possibly have had a Creator. While denying God out of their arrogance, they took refuge in matter alone, with which they held themselves to be in direct contact. So confident were they of this philosophy that they believed that no arguments could ever disprove it.
That is why this book's facts regarding the real nature of matter so surprised these people. What we've related here destroyed the very basis of their philosophy and left no grounds for further discussion. Matter, on which they based all their thoughts, lives, arrogance, and denial, suddenly vanished. No human being has ever seen matter as it "really" is, so no philosophy can be based upon it.
One of the attributes of God is His plotting against the unbelievers. This is stated in the verse; "They plot and plan, and God too plans; but the best of planners is God." (Surat al-Anfal: 30)
God entrapped materialists by making them assume that matter is an absolute existence and in so doing, humiliated them in a way never seen before. Materialists deemed their possessions, status, rank, the society they belong to, the whole world to be absolute. Moreover, by relying on these, they grew arrogant against God. By being boastful, they revolted against Him and added to their unbelief. While so doing, they relied on a total conviction in the absoluteness of matter. Yet so lacking are they in understanding that they fail to realize that God compasses them round about. God announces the state to which the unbelievers are led as a result of their thick-headedness:
Or do they intend a plot [against you]? But those who defy God are themselves involved in a Plot! (Surat at-Tur: 42)
Theirs is most probably the biggest intellectual defeat in history. While growing arrogant of their own accord, materialists have been tricked and suffered a serious defeat in their war against God by bringing up something monstrous against Him. The verse "Thus have We placed leaders in every town, its wicked men, to plot [and burrow] therein: but they only plot against their own souls, and they perceive it not" (Surat al-An'am: 123) announces how unconscious these people who revolt against our Creator are, and how they will end up. In another verse the same fact is related as:
Fain would they deceive God and those who believe, but they only deceive themselves, and realise (it) not! (Surat al-Baqara: 9)
While trying to plot, unbelievers do not realize the very important fact that everything they experience is really experienced in their brains, and all the plots they devise are simply formed in their brains, just like every other act they perform. Their folly has let them forget that they are all alone with God and, hence, are trapped in their own devious plans.
Just like those unbelievers of bygone days, those living today face a reality that will shatter the basis of their devious plans. With the verse "...feeble indeed is the cunning of Satan" (Surat an-Nisa': 76), God has stated that these plots were doomed to end with failure the day they were hatched, and gave the good tidings to believers with the verse "...not the least harm will their cunning do to you." (Surah Al 'Imran: 120)
In another verse God states: "But the Unbelievers, their deeds are like a mirage in sandy deserts, which the man parched with thirst mistakes for water; until when he comes up to it, he finds it to be nothing." (Surat an-Nur: 39) Materialism, too, offers a mirage for the rebellious; when they have recourse to materialism, they find its philosophy to be nothing but deceptive. God has deceived them with such a mirage, and beguiled them into perceiving matter as an absolute. All those eminent professors, astronomers, biologists, physicists and all others, regardless of their rank and post, are simply deceived and humiliated because they took matter as their god. Assuming matter, whose essence they can never reach, to be absolute, they based their philosophy and ideology on it, grew involved in serious discussions, adopting a so-called "intellectual" discourse. They deemed themselves wise enough to argue about the truth of the universe and, more seriously to interpret God with their limited intelligence. God explains their situation in the following verse:
And [the unbelievers] plotted and planned, and God too planned, and the best of planners is God. (Surah Al 'Imran: 54)
One may possibly escape from some plots in the world; but God's plan against the unbelievers is so firm that there is no avoiding it. No matter what they do or to whom they appeal, never can they find any helper other than God. As God informs in the Qur'an, "they shall not find for them other than God a patron or a help." (Surat an-Nisa': 173)
Materialists never expected to fall into such a trap. Having all the means of the twenty-first century at their disposal, they believed they could grow obstinate in their denial and drag others into disbelief. This ever-lasting mentality of unbelievers and their end are described as follows in the Qur'an:
They plotted and planned, but We too planned, even while they perceived it not. Then see what was the end of their plot! - this, that We destroyed them and their people, all [of them]. (Surat an-Naml: 50-51)
This, in another sense, is what the fact stated in the verses comes to mean: Materialists are now told that everything they own is actually in their brains, and therefore, everything they possess has been rendered valueless. As they witness their possessions, factories, gold, money, children, spouses, friends, rank and status, and even their own bodies—all of which they deem absolute—slipping away from them hands, in a sense, they are destroyed. They come face to face with the fact that God, not matter, is the only absolute.
Realizing this truth is doubtless the worst possible thing for the materialists. That matter in which they place such faith, is separated from them by an impenetrable frontier is, in their own words, tantamount to "death before dying" in this world.
This leaves them all alone with God. With the verse, "Leave Me alone, [to deal] with the [creature] whom I created [bare and] alone!" God has called our attention to the fact that each human being is, in truth, all alone in His presence. (Surat al-Muddaththir: 11) This remarkable fact is repeated in many other verses:
"And behold! You come to Us bare and alone as We created you for the first time: you have left behind you all [the favours] which We bestowed on you..." (Surat al-An'am: 94)
And each one of them will come unto Him on the Day of Resurrection, alone. (Surah Maryam: 95)
This, in another sense, is what the fact stated in the verses comes to mean: Those who take matter as their god have come from God and returned to Him. They have submitted themselves to God, whether they want to or not. Now they wait for the Day of Judgement, when each one of them will be called to account, however unwilling they may be to understand it.
The Importance of the Subject
It is of the utmost importance to understand correctly the secret beyond matter explained in this chapter. Mountains, plains, flowers, people, seas—briefly everything we see and everything that God informs us in the Qur'an that exists and that He created out of nothing is created and does indeed exist. However, people cannot see, feel or hear the real nature of these beings through their sense organs. What they see and feel are only their copies that appear in their brains. This is a scientific fact taught at all schools of medicine. The same applies to the book you are reading now; you can not see nor touch the real nature of it. The light coming from the original book is converted by some cells in your eyes into electrical signals, which are then conveyed to the visual centre in the back of your brain. This is where the view of this book is created. In other words, you are not reading a book which is before your eyes through your eyes; in fact, this book is created in the visual centre in the back of your brain. The book you are reading right now is a "copy of the book" within your brain. The original book is seen by God.
It should be remembered, however, that the fact that the matter is an illusion formed in our brains does not "reject" the matter, but provides us information about the real nature of the matter: that no person can have connection with its original. Moreover, the matter outside is seen not just by us, but by other beings too. The angels God delegated to be watchers witness this world as well:
And the two recording angels are recording, sitting on the right and on the left. He does not utter a single word, without a watcher by him, pen in hand! (Surah Qaf: 17-18)
Most importantly, God sees everything. He created this world with all its details and sees it in all its states. As He informs us in the Qur'an:
… Heed God and know that God sees what you do. (Surat al-Baqara: 233)
Say: "God is a sufficient witness between me and you. He is certainly aware of and sees His servants." (Surat al-Isra': 96)
It must not be forgotten that God keeps the records of everything in the book called Lawh Mahfuz (Preserved Tablet). Even if we don't see all things, they are in the Lawh Mahfuz. God reveals that He keeps everything's record in the "Mother of the Book" called Lawh Mahfuz with the following verses:
It is in the Source Book with Us, high-exalted, full of wisdom. (Surat az-Zukhruf: 4)
… We possess an all-preserving Book. (Surah Qaf: 4)
Certainly there is no hidden thing in either heaven or Earth which is not in a Clear Book. (Surat an-Naml: 75)
VARIOUS FOSSILS
MUSHROOM
Age: 100 million years old
Location: Myanmar
Period: Cretaceous
The mushroom fossil pictured shows that 100 million years ago, these life forms were in existence with all their functions and characteristics fully present, and have not changed at all since then. In exactly the same way, millions of fossils unearthed since the mid-18th century reveal, that evolution never took place. Therefore, paleontologists who abandon their preconceptions must also abandon evolution and Darwinism, as is made clear in the book A Closer Loot at the Evidence:
"Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides of seeing evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record." Richard L. & Christina E. Kleiss, A Closer Look at the Evidence, Search for the Truth Publications, Mart 2004, p. January
SOLDIER BEETLE
Age: 100 million years old
Location: Myanmar
Period: Cretaceous
The beetle pictured, a member of the Cantharidae family, is important evidence that soldier beetles were using their same chemical defense mechanism 100 million years ago. According to a scientific paper published by Oregon University's George Poinar, an authority on amber, specimens of insects that used chemical defenses had previously been discovered in the fossil record. For example, the poison sacs of various squids of the Jurassic period, soldier termites in Dominican ambers contained the defensive secretions. Other Dominican ambers had been discovered containing various kinds of worms that also employed a similar mechanism. But no such fossil specimen of that age of a soldier beetle using that mechanism had ever been encountered before.
If any living thing made full use of an exceptionally complex defense mechanism 100 million years ago—back when evolutionists maintain that life was supposedly very primitive—then it is of course impossible to use evolution to explain it.
This insect was fossilized while spraying its enemy with a defensivechemical secretion.
ANT LION
Age: 100 million years old
Location: Myanmar
Period: Cretaceous
According to evolutionists' unscientific claims, butterflies and elephants, whales and ants, orchids and stinging nettles, human beings and fish all supposedly share the same common ancestor.
The fossil record is the most important evidence disproving that claim. Life forms are preserved exactly as they were tens of thousands, tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of years in the past. Thus fossils of life forms that once existed should show by what imaginary transitional stages they assumed their present forms. Traces of their so-called common ancestors should also be encountered. Yet no intermediate stages, nor any supposed common ancestors of the kind claimed by evolutionists, can be seen anywhere in the fossil record. Millions specimens like the 100-million-year-old ant lion pictured show that living things have always remained unchanged. In other words, the theory of evolution remains unproven.
SCORPION FLY
Age: 100 million years old
Location: Myanmar
Period: Cretaceous
Evolutionist publications portray every new fossil discovery as supposedly supporting the theory of evolution. Reports that appear under such headlines as "Traces of Our Ancestors Found," "Insect Evolution Finally Deciphered" or "Forerunner of the Fly Discovered," but a close reading clearly reveals that nothing in these findings actually supports evolution at all. On the contrary, all the facts refute evolution. But the facts are dismissed by way of biased reporting, scientific truths are ignored, and fictitious Darwinist myths are repeated instead of the scientific realities.
However, it is no longer possible for the public to believe such fantasies. Countless fossils, like the specimen illustrated, have been exhibited, and the fact that the origin of life does not lie in evolution has been proven with indisputable evidence.
MARSH BEETLE
Age: 50 million years old
Location: Poland
Period: Eocene
Darwinists maintain that when mud was transformed as the work of chance by such natural phenomena as lightning over a long period, the result was possible for roses, carnations, birds, insects and humans who build cities, investigate the subparticles of the atom, compose symphonies and voyage into outer space. Even a primary-school student would regard this ludicrous, and illogical idea as deficient in logic, but for purely ideological reasons, evolutionists maintain it in all seriousness.
In a paper published in Scientific American magazine, the evolutionist George Wald described at length how chance could do anything if given sufficient time. As he went on to say:
"Given so much time, the 'impossible' becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles." (George Wald, "The origin of life'. Scientific American, vol. 191 (2), August 1954, p.48))
Wald's words are most striking examples of evolutionist illogicality. The fact is that even after the passage of 2 billion or 100 billion years, stones and dirt will never be able to develop into human beings that feel, think, make judgments, rejoice, produce works of art, research, love and are loved by others. Life is the work of our Sublime and Mighty Lord, not of blind chance.
SNAIL SHELL
Age: 100 million years old
Location: Myanmar
Period: Cretaceous
The specimen amber shown here is 100 million years old and contains a snail shell. The fact that there is no difference between the shells of present-day snails and those alive 100 million years ago totally invalidates evolutionists' claims. Had snails evolved, as evolutionists maintain, then the structure of their shells 100 million years ago should be very different to that of shells today. But there is not the slightest difference between them, and this is one of the proofs that evolution never took place, and that Creation is the origin of life.
FLUTTER FLY
Age: 50 million years old
Location: Poland
Period: Eocene
By evaluating scientific findings from a neutral perspective, anyone can easily see that Darwin's claims are untrue. To date, for example, Darwin's claim that living species undergo small inherited changes over the course of time has not been supported by any scientific data. All we have are fantasies, the work of Darwinists' imaginations, and ideological insistence.
The well-known British biologist Brian Goodwin describes how Darwin's theory enjoys no scientific backing:
Darwin's assumption that the tree of life is a consequence of the gradual accumulation of small hereditary differences appears to be without significant support. Some other process is responsible for the remergent properties of life, those distinctive features that separate one group of organisms from another—fishes and amphibians, worms and insects, horsetails and grasses. (George Wald, "The origin of life", Scientific American, vol. 191 (2), August 1954, p.48)
By referring to another process as responsible for the emergence of living things, Goodwin is actually referring to the fact of Creation, although he is reluctant to openly describe it as such. Yet the fact that he is so unwilling to admit can still be seen by anyone possessed of reason.
REPTILIAN FOOT
Age: 100 million years old
Location: Myanmar
Period: Cretaceous
Fossils in amber are important examples of the kinds of forest life that existed tens of millions of years ago. Research into amber specimens provides information about not only the life forms preserved in them, but also about their habitats and other living things in their ecosystem. This 100-million-year-old fossil shows how reptilian feet have remained unchanged despite the passage of so much time. Whatever characteristics living reptiles have now, they are the same as to those living 100 million years ago.
DWARF SIX-EYED SPIDER (Oonopidae)
Age: 50 million years old
Location: Poland
Period: Eocene
In his book The Nature of the Fossil Record, Derek Ager makes an important admission:
It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student . . . have now been debunked. (Derek Ager The Nature of the Fossil Record, Proceedings of the Geological Association, Vol. 87, No. 2 (1976), pp. 131-159)
Ager wrote those words in 1976. The levels now reached by science and technology have disproved all the claims of evolution. One of the most important evidence establishing this is the fossil record. Countless specimen, such as the 50-million-year-old spider pictured, totally refute Darwins theory.
FALSE FLOWER BEETLE (Scraptiidae)
Age: 50 million years old
Location: Poland
Period: Eocene
If any insect that existed 50 million years ago had all the organs and physical features possessed by the same insect today, then it is impossible to state that this life form has achieved its present form through evolution. Research over the last 150 years or so has produced no candidates for the supposed ancestor of the more than 1 million known species of insects. Nor is it likely for any answer to be forthcoming in the future, because insects are not descended from any alleged common forebear. Insects did not assume their present-day forms through evolution. Every species is created with its own particular characteristics and never changes so long as that species survives. The fossil record is the most important proof of that.
BEE FLY
Age: 50 million years old
Location: Poland
Period: Eocene
Even after some 150 years of fossil research, not even one intermediate form fossil showing a link between two different life forms has ever been found. Every fossil discovered reveals that living things have come into being with all their characteristics already intact, and have been created. One such fossil is the 50-million-year-old bee fly pictured. Bee flies have remained unaltered and have maintained all their characteristics despite the intervening 50 million years—living proof that evolution never occurred.
TURKEY GNAT
Age: 50 million years old
Location: Poland
Period: Eocene
If evolutionist claims were true, and living species were constantly changing since the day they first appeared, then species alive tens of millions of years ago should not at all resemble those living today. Development, change and progress should be observed everywhere. Yet the fossil record reveals the exact opposite. The scenarios of progressive development that appear in evolutionist papers and journals are all fantasies, totally divorced from reality—as is described even in evolutionist books:
Has there been progress in evolution? Are recent plants and animals more advanced then their predecessor, or at least more complex? Of course not. (Richard Ellis, Aquagenesis, The Origin and Evolution of Life in the Sea, Penguin Books, 2001, p. 7)
ANT-LIKE STONE BEETLE (Scydmaenidae)
Age: 100 million years old
Location: Myanmar
Period: Cretaceous
One hundred million years is a relatively long time for any life form's completion of the supposed evolutionary development. If evolutionists' views were accurate, then over the course of all that time, ant-like stone beetles should have turned into very different forms and should bear no resemblance to beetles still alive today. Yet despite the passage of millions of years, ant-like stone beetles—like all other life forms—have undergone not the slightest change. They were the same 100 million years ago as they are today, which makes any reference to evolution impossible.
CRANE FLY (Tipulidae)
Age: 100 million years old
Location: Myanmar
Period: Cretaceous
Fossils are exceedingly significant because they clearly reveal, in a manner that anyone can understand, that evolution never happened. That is why the French zoologist Pierre Grassé says:
Naturalists must remember that the process of evolution is revealed only through fossil forms. A knowledge of paleontology is, therefore, a prerequisite; only paleontology can provide them with the evidence of evolution. (Pierre Grassé, Evolution of Living Organisms, New York: Academic Press, 1977, p. 297)
Yet all the work carried out by paleontologists over the past 150 years has presented evolutionists with a terrible disappointment. No traces of the past have provided any findings in support of evolutionists' claims. All the fossils so far unearthed, without exception, indicate that living things are the work of our Omniscient Lord, not of blind chance.
FALSE METALLIC WOOD-BORING BEETLE (Throscidae)
Age: 50 million years old
Location: Poland
Period: Eocene
One of the propaganda techniques Darwinists use most effectively is providing a detailed exposition of something that never happened as if it really took place. For example, evolutionist articles, describe mutations and natural selection at length, even though they do not have an ability to give rise to new species. They ascribe these fictitous mechanisms to a supposedly creative power (God is beyond that).
The truth of the matter is very different. Yet because of this indoctrination, many people with scant knowledge of the subject imagine that evolution is undeniable, an inseparable cornerstone of biology. In fact, however, science has long since written off the theory of evolution.
Arthur Koestler describes the misinterpretation of natural selection and mutation, which are portrayed as the two mechanisms of evolution, but which actually have no such power or effect at all:
In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations plus natural selection—quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection a tautology." (Luther D. Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma, Master Book Publishers, California, 1988, p.32)
HARVESTMAN
Age: 50 million years old
Location: Baltic region, Jantarny, Russia
Period: Eocene
Living things of the order Opliones, of which there estimated to be some 6,400 species, are members of the class Arachnida (arachnids). The theory of evolution cannot explain how one single protein or the first living element formed, much less why living things have remained unaltered for tens of millions of years.
One of the fossils that silence evolutionists is the 50-million-year-old harvestman pictured. The way that harvestmen have remained unchanged for so long cannot be explained in terms of evolution. There is only one possible explanation: Creation.
SNIPE FLY
Age: 50 million years old
Location: Poland
Period: Eocene
Darwinism's basic claim is that living species constantly change and develop in a supposed process of evolution. Yet observation reveals no evidence to support this Darwinist fantasy. Scientific discoveries over the last 150 years have not confirmed Darwinism even once. On the contrary, every new finding has been a new death knell. One such discovery is the 50-million-year-old snipefly illustrated. This fossil is an evidence that like all other species of flies, snipe flies have never changed, and have never evolved.
SNAKE FLY (Raphidioptera)
Age: 125 million years
Location: Santana Formation, Araripe Basin, Brazil
Period: Cretaceous
Snake flies, of which there are estimated to be 150 or so species, are members of the class Raphidioptera—another life form showing that evolution never took place. In fact, scientific circles are well aware that the fossil record does not support evolution. But because of their ideological dependance on the theory, they never openly admit this fact.
In his book Aquagenesis, The Origin and Evolution of Life in the Sea, Richard Ellis states that fossils prove stasis, rather than the change expected by evolution:
The fossil evidence does not provide ready answers to questions of descent or relationships, but it unequivocally demonstrates the durability and complexity of life's history on Earth." (Richard Ellis, Aquagenesis, The Origin and Evolution of Life in the Sea, Penguin Books, 2001, p. 6)
HYENA SKULL
Age: 73 million years old
Location: Dai Lin, Yun Nan, China
Period: Cretaceous
The history of evolution is filled with hoaxes. Attempts have been made to portray fossils of various extinct life forms or even a few fragments of fossilized bone as evidence of imaginary transitions. Fossils of living species have long been described to the public by the evolutionists as living things that have been evolving. But a profound silence has now replaced all this misleading speculation regarding fossils. Eventually, as you can see from the 73-million-year-old hyena skull shown here, it was realized that many present-day life forms lived millions of years ago in exactly the same forms they have now and that therefore, they never evolved. The time has now come for evolutionists to put an end to their hoaxes and speculations about the myth of human evolution.
LYNX SKULL
Age: 65 million years old
Location: Ma Ling Mountain, China
Period: Paleocene
All the important details, including the teeth, of this animal can be seen in this 65-million-year-old skull.
The universe created by God contains flawless marvels of Creation. Every manifestation of beauty created in the universe is also a manifestation of His omniscience and sublime artistry. It is God Who creates from nothing, and there are no bounds to His Creation.
Darwinism tries to make people forget that we inhabit a universe filled with perfect details. In fact, however, anyone looking at all the innumerable living things and seeing how these, have all lived in exactly the same form for millions of years—as this 65-million-year-old lynx skull demonstrates—will be freed from this indoctrination and come to the conclusion we inhabit a world of true marvels. All entities are the work of Almighty God.
JACKAL SKULL
Age: 51 million years old
Location: Gao Xiong, Taiwan
Period: Paleocene
No fossil indicating that life forms share common ancestors has ever been found. In the fossil record, there is no sign that living things are in a constant state of change. Then why are Darwinists so determined to cling to their theory? Why do they insist on defending the idea that living things evolved, when there is so much evidence that they were in fact created by God? The reason is ideological. Defending the theory of evolution is of vital importance for materialist and atheist ideologies.
No matter how much Darwinists persist in the theory of evolution, the fossil record constantly produces more evidence that totally discredits it. The 51-million-year-old jackal skull pictured is one such example. The fossil reveals that, just like turtles, tigers, foxes, mink, lions, rhinoceroses and all other living things, jackals never underwent evolution at any time.
LEOPARD SKULL
Age: 73 million years old
Location: Qi Pan, Yun Nan, China
Period: Cretaceous
Darwinists' ruses and the techniques they use to mislead people are now totally futile. Faced with atlases that make the fact of Creation crystal-clear—and countless fossils that demonstrate how living things have never changed in the slightest—Darwinists have seen that all life forms were created out of nothing. Their ruses have been exposed and effectively neutralized.
By itself, this 73-million-year-old leopard skull is sufficient evidence to show that all tales regarding the changes supposedly undergone by life forms are totally invalid. They show that leopards living 73 million years ago had exactly the same characteristics as leopards living today.
The jaw structure and teeth of this fossil can be seen in great detail.
ZEBRA SKULL
Age: 45 million years old
Location: Xi An, China
Period: Eocene
God has created all living things with their different appearances and forms. In the same way that their lifestyles and needs differ, so there are profound differences in their body structures. This means it is not difficult to describe the fossils that are unearthed, making it possible to establish the anatomical features of a living thing whose fossil remains have been discovered. The 45-million-year-old zebra fossil illustrated makes this distinction. It's evident that there is no difference between the fossil's characteristics and those of a present-day zebra's skull.
There is no doubt that this is one of God's divine miracles. The scientific evidence to hand is too definitive for scientists to be able to deny, even if they are evolutionists. It's a scientific fact that species have not changed, and they have undergone no evolutionary process.
ASIAN WILD HORSE SKULL
Age: 33 million years old
Location: Yun Nan, China
Period: Oligocene
The myth of the horse evolution is one of Darwinism's best-known frauds. This scenario—which many contemporary evolutionists admit is untrue—is still defended by a number of fanatical Darwinists. However, this claim is full of extraordinary inconsistencies and lacks any scientific evidence, and has been totally refuted. Horses have remained unchanged over millions of years. The 33-million-year-old Asian wild horse skull illustrated shows that horses lived in exactly the same way then as they do now. This by itself is sufficient to demolish all Darwinist claims about the alleged horse evolution.
RACCOON SKULL
Age: 4.3 million years old
Location: Gan Su, China
Period: Pliocene
Fossil specimens dating back millions of years, when compared with present-day life forms, reveal that there was no transition in morphology and that evolution from one species to another never happened. This fact applies equally to ants and butterflies, polar bears and lizards, and fruit flies and zebras. Darwin's theory of evolution is unsupported by any scientific findings whatsoever. No evidence to support it has ever been produced since Darwin's day. And with every passing day, the fossil record makes that lack of evidence even more obvious. This 4.3-million-year-old raccoon skull clearly shows that Darwin was completely wrong.
TIBETAN WILD DONKEY
Age: 29 million years old
Location: Yin Chuan, China
Period: Oligocene
Evolutionists' attempts to portray the wild donkey as the ancestor of the horse are totally hollow. Fossils have proven that wild donkeys have always existed as wild donkeys, and are not descended from any other life form. The fossil illustrated shows that wild donkeys living 27 million years ago were identical to those living today—which effectively silences all evolutionist claims.
New species did not emerge as the result of mutations and blind coincidences. It is Almighty God, Who possesses a sublime creative power, Who created them all.
MONKEY SKULL
Age: 32 million years old
Location: Qing Dao, China
Period: Oligocene
Not one single fossil possessing half-ape and half-human characteristics has ever been found. All the fossils portrayed at one time or another as evidence for the supposed evolution of man have later been exposed as hoaxes, and all have been withdrawn by evolutionists themselves. All they have left are scenarios based on Darwinists' imaginations.
Concrete findings have proven that monkeys have always existed as monkeys, while human beings have always been human. One such finding is the 32-million-year-old monkey skull shown here.
CAMEL SKULL
Age: 3.9 million years old
Location: Gan Su, China
Period: Pliocene
According to evolutionist claims, the camel's large skull, long neck and humps must be the result of a large sequence of mutations. As a result, there should have been innumerable mammals with semi-lengthened necks, odd-shaped heads and incipient humps. These imaginary life forms should be encountered frequently in the fossil record, and there should be no trace of fully-formed camels dating back millions of years, like the one shown here. But data from the fossil record show that such imaginary transitional forms never existed. Camels never passed through any intermediate stages, and have always existed as fully-formed camels.
GREY FOX SKULL
Age: 78 million years old
Location: Lan Zhou, Gan Su, China
Period: Cretaceous
The theory of evolution—about which countless false pieces of evidence have been produced and which has been kept alive by the invention of totally incredible scenarios—has now come to the end of its life. People are realizing that they have faced a terrible deception. From now on, no scenario invented by Darwinists will have any effect, and their theory's collapse will continue apace, because scientific findings totally refute evolution.
This 78-million-year-old grey fox skull is just one of the proofs that are accelerating this collapse. Darwinism has been completely discredited in the face of living fossils.
FISHER MARTEN SKULL
Age: 78 million years old
Location: He Zheng, Gan Su, China
Period: Cretaceous
God has the power to create from nothing. Failing to comprehend this, Darwinists cannot or will not understand that God creates a living thing whenever He so desires, simply by commanding it to "Be!" This lack of belief and lack of awareness of the true facts underlie the illogical scenarios and false proofs they come up with. Yet people who are not influenced by the Darwinist spell have no difficulty in grasping the magnificent Creation in the world. Clearly, living things have been created and equipped with perfect systems. They have been the same down through their generations, since the moment they were first created.
The 78-million-year-old fisher marten skull illustrated is one of the representatives of this reality.
CARIBBEAN MONK SEAL SKULL
Age: 3.1 million years old
Location: Yun Nan, China
Period: Pliocene
Darwinists cannot account for the trilobite's eye, which these crustaceans already possessed as long as 530 million years ago. Darwinists cannot explain how living things in the sea, on land and in the air appeared suddenly and survived unchanged for the entire course of their existence. Darwinists maintain that one species developed into another, but they cannot explain how a single original cell could change in such a way as to assume different functions in a multi-cellular creature. Darwinism is a theory at a dead end, and is gradually dying out as new discoveries are made with every passing day. The 3.1-million-year-old Caribbean monk seal skull shown here is one of the many proofs to accelerate this process of disappearance.
RHINOCEROS SKULL
Age: 75 million years old
Location: Gan Su, China
Period: Cretaceous
Darwinists claim that living things are descended from one another and assumed their present form by way of gradual changes over time. If this claim were true, then it should be apparent from the fossil record. Yet the Earth produces nothing but fossils dating back millions of years that are identical to specimens alive today. There is not a single transitional form to verify Darwinists' claims. All living things, from the smallest to the largest, existed millions of years ago in the same forms as they are today.
If other living things never changed, then there are no rational and scientific grounds left for claiming that human beings changed. Humans have always been fully human, and have never altered.
INDIAN CIVET CAT
Age: 48 million years old
Location: Gan Su, China
Period: Eocene
In 1993, Stephen Jay Gould wrote in the magazine Natural History about the way living species can be observed to have exactly the same characteristics throughout the fossil record:
Stasis, or nonchange of most fossil species during their lengthy geological lifespans, was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as uninteresting nonevidence for nonevolution . . . [T]he overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, but left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, nonevolution). (S. J. Gould, "Cordelia's Dilemma", Natural History, February, p. 10-18)
The only reason why evolutionists refer to the stasis in the fossil record as "embarrassing" is that if living things experience no changes, that invalidates the theory of evolution. This information, which shows that evolution never happened, is evidence for the fact of Creation.
GIRAFFE SKULL
Age: 65 million years old
Location: Meng Gu, China
Period: Cretaceous
Giraffes are noted for their extraordinarily long necks. Darwinists hypothesized that the necks of these animals lengthened gradually as they stretched to reach higher branches. This, one of the best known deception of the theory of evolution, is totally refuted by the fossil evidence: giraffes were exactly the same 65 million years ago as they are today. There is no trace of any specimens in the fossil record undergoing constant change and growing longer necks in order to reach higher branches. The giraffe today is exactly the same as it was 65 million years ago.
BOAR SKULL
Age: 58 million years old
Location: Shan Dong, China
Period: Paleocene
Darwinists were able to gather their original supporters by using a very primitive logic. In a climate of scientific ignorance, it was easy to convince the public that proteins and eventually, cells could form spontaneously from muddy water that mammals hunting in water eventually developed fins and turned into dolphins and that monkeys decided to stop leaping from tree to tree and instead to walk upright, and thus evolved into human beings.
The sciences of genetics and paleontology were unknown, so all these imaginary transitions were depicted as incontrovertible fact. But now Darwinists are in a far more difficult position. The science of genetics has revealed the complex structure of the cell and how traits are passed on from generation to generation. Paleontology has shown that living things have never changed. Countless specimens, such as the 58-million-year-old boar skull shown here indicate that living things exhibited the same complexity millions of years ago as present-day specimens. It is no longer possible for Darwinists to deceive the public.
ANTELOPE SKULL
Age: 50 million years old
Location: Da Quing, Hei Long Jiang, China
Period: Eocene
Specimens of these mammals dating back 50 million years have been perfectly preserved. This specimen, also millions of years old, shows that antelopes have never been subjected to any alteration, and neither descended from nor evolved into any other life form. Just like zebras, wolves, tigers and foxes millions of years old, these living things were also created in the manner determined by God, and never changed since. As is the case with all other life forms, there is not a single intermediate form to support the myth of human evolution. As with all other evolutionist claims, this one is completely false. Living things on Earth never evolved.
CHEETAH SKULL
Age: 7.3 million years old
Location: Shan Dong, China
Period: Miocene
On the basis of some elements of ape behavior, Darwinists maintain that monkeys and human beings are both descended from a common ancestor. They claim that monkeys one day decided to descend from the trees, to walk upright, to speak, sing, and compose music, to construct buildings and to make scientific discoveries, and thus turned into human beings. In that case, similar processes of transition must also apply to other living things. Since cheetahs, for example, are able to run very fast, they should one day be able to alter their physical structures and turn into sentient beings winning gold medals at the Olympic Games. However, a look at the scientific facts reveals that cheetahs, tigers, wolves, fox, lions and leopards—in short, all animals—never changed at all.
The same stability or stasis also applies to apes and human beings. Apes have always existed as apes, and human beings as human beings.
BINTURONG SKULL
Age: 88 million years old
Location: Yun Nan, China
Period: Cretaceous
Darwin imagined that living things changed slowly. In his view, all living things, humans included, were descended from other species and thus arrived at their modern-day appearances. Given that 19th-century science provided no evidence to support his hypothesis, Darwin believed that the intermediate-form fossils that should exist would be found at a later date.
Darwin's closest followers inherited this legacy of belief. Ever since that time, they have ceaselessly looked for the intermediate forms that Darwin believed would eventually be forthcoming. However, it did not take long to realize that Darwin had been mistaken. The unaltered life forms in the fossil record definitively refuted Darwinism. One blow to this superstitious belief, sought to be kept alive solely as an ideology, is the 88-million-year-old binturong skull illustrated.
TASMANIAN DEVIL SKULL
Age: 32 million years old
Location: An Hui, China
Period: Oligocene
The British paleontologist Derek W. Ager describes how the fossil record poses a major difficulty for the theory of evolution:
The point emerges that if we examine the fossil record in detail, whether at the level of orders or of species, we find—over and over again—not gradual evolution, but the sudden explosion of one group at the expense of another. (Derek A. Ager, "The Nature of the Fossil Record", Proceedings of the British Geological Association, Vol. 87, 1976, p. 133)
One fossil that proves that its species never passed through any intermediate stages is the 32-million-year-old Tasmanian devil skull pictured here.
TURTLE
Age: 98 million years old
Location: Shan Li Mountain, China
Period: Cretaceous
Darwinists, who maintain that living species are descended from another and develop by constant small changes, are at a loss to explain the stasis, or total stability, observed within those same species. The theory of evolution, which maintains that human beings are descended from apes, must explain why no other life forms underwent the imaginary transition similar to the one from ape to human. Evolutionists have no rational and logical answer to give. Birds never changed. Rhinoceroses, foxes and hyenas never changed; and neither did the 98-million-year old turtle shown here.
Neither did human beings. The idea that Darwinists seek to impose on the public—that living things make progress by small changes and eventually develop into other life forms entirely—is a massive lie.
POLAR BEAR SKULL
Age: 74 million years old
Location: Liaoning, China
Period: Cretaceous
The Atlas of Creation series and this book offer important evidence that can only add to Darwinists' panic, showing them that evolution is dead and that they can no longer deceive the world. This 74-million-year-old polar bear skull, for instance, is identical to the skulls of polar bears alive today—sufficient on its own to undermine Darwinists' arguments.
As the evidence increases declaring that Darwinism is invalid, the more Darwinists seek to give the impression that "We are alive and well." They try to use propaganda techniques to fight an intellectual struggle that they were unable to wage with science. They attempt to cover up studies that demolish Darwinism. But this behavior does not prevent them from seeing, albeit subconsciously, the scale of the collapse that has taken place.
COYOTE SKULL
Age: 65 million years old
Location: Qing Hai, China
Period: Cretaceous
When a living thing first appears in the fossil record, it then continues on in the same form for the millions of years that follow. All the fossils illustrated in this book, such as this 65-million-year-old coyote skull, are just a few examples. Like all other life forms, coyotes of 65 million years ago possessed the same appearance and structures as they do today. This totally demolishes the whole concept of evolution.
This state of affairs, which applies to all living things, inevitably applies to human beings as well. Humans have always existed as human beings, ever since the moment they were first created, and have never undergone the slightest change. Given that so many life forms clearly refute all claims of evolution, there can be no scientific foundation to the scenarios concerning human evolution dreamed up by Darwinists.
The teeth of the fossil illustrated can be seen in full detail, offering significant proof that coyotes living 65 million years ago were identical to those alive today.
SASSAFRAS LEAF
Age: 54-37 million years old
Location: Cache Creek Formation, British Columbia, Canada
Period: Eocene
One of the most familiar forms of Darwinist propaganda are groundless slogans along the lines of "Rejection of the theory of evolution is a dogma," or "Denying the theory of evolution is unscientific." In fact, however, such statements are preconceptions based on evolutionists' biased conception of science.
"Science," according to the Darwinist definition, is not a discipline that researches, investigates and analyses its findings in a neutral manner and then accepts the results of those findings. According to Darwinists, scientific inquiries must first confirm their own beliefs and ideas and in the process, which findings must be interpreted by distorting them in line with evolutionist dogma.
To put it another way, evolutionists portray their biased interpretations, rather than the evidence itself, as science. Darwinist science is an attempt not to uncover the facts, but to interpret them selectively and distort them.
KATSURA TREE LEAF
Age: 65-54 million years
Location: Spain
Period: Paleocene
One of the most significant facts revealed by the fossil record is that living species appeared in a single moment, together with all their characteristics. In other words, there is no sign any species that developed from a primitive form and slowly began to acquire all its limbs. All living species were flawless and fully formed from the moment they emerged, and those species that have survived are still identical to their original form. The book The Origin of Species Revisited describes how this represents a serious dilemma for Darwinism:
The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several palaeontologists—for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and Sedgwick—as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural selection. (The Origin of Species Revisited, p. 46)
ASH LEAF
Age: 23-5 million years old
Location: Spain
Period: Miocene
If Darwinists think scientifically, as they claim to, then they should act not in the light of their ideology—their imaginings, in other words—but rather according to facts and the concrete findings. The concrete fact revealed by paleontologists today is that each living species appeared suddenly and has never changed so long as as it has survived. The meaning of this is evident: life never evolved. Like the universe itself, life is the work of God, the Creator.
The 23- to 5-million-year-old ash leaf in the picture once again serves as a reminder to everyone.
MYRICA LEAF
Age: 30 million years old
Location: Cereste, France
Period: Oligocene
Rather than debate the meaning of scientific findings, Darwinists prefer to resort to psychological propaganda techniques, to restrict freedom of thought by banning works that refute evolution, and to influence the public by adopting a mocking style. They usually employ psychological warfare techniques for that purpose.
Evolutionists should not turn a deaf ear to others and resort to slander, insult and flase accusations without even a glance at the available evidence and documentation. If they are truly confident in their theory and possess scientific evidence, they should display it to silence their opposition on an intellectual level. However, they have never yet done so, and it is impossible for them to do so, because Darwinists have not a single piece of evidence to support their theory.
DIOSPYROS
Age: 40 million years old
Location: France
Period: Eocene
According to Darwinists' unscientific claims, date trees, pine trees, cacti, orchids, carnations, roses, cherry trees, grasses, ferns—in short, all plants share the same imaginary forebear. But when asked about the nature of this common forebear, or by what stages different plants diverged from one another and finally assumed their present forms, evolutionists have no scientic response to give.
E. J. H. Corner, an evolutionist botanist from Cambridge University, admits that evolutionists have no answers on the subject of the origin of plants:
The words of widely recognized evolutionist botanist E.J.H. Corner of Cambridge University still ring true 40 years after he wrote them: "But I still think that, to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favour of special creation . . . Can you imagine how an orchid, a duckweed, and a palm have come from the same ancestry, and have we any evidence for this assumption? The evolutionist must be prepared with an answer, but I think that most would break down before an inquisition." ( E.J.H. Corner, Prof of Botany, Cambridge University, England, Evolution in Contemporary Botanical Thought, Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961, p. 97)
The level of science and technology of the 21st century has made Corner's concerns more valid. Countless scientific findings, and the fossil record in particular, have placed Darwinism in an insoluble dilemma—not in the field of botany alone, but in all branches of science. In their intellectual death throes, Darwinists are trying to keep their theory alive and to prepare for questions they may be faced with. Yet they still have not a single scientific answer to give.
ARAUCARIAN CONE
Age: 170 million years old
Location: Patagonia, Argentina
Period: Jurassic
The fossil illustrated here, which proves aucarias have undergone not the slightest alteration over the last 170 million years, condemns Darwinists to profound silence. The late evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould expressed the silence and "embarrassment" of Darwinists before the fossil record:
"The overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record."(Stephen Jay Gould, "Cordelia's Dilemma," Natural History, February 1993, p.15)
Darwinists' embarrassment in the face of the fossil record arises from the lie they have propagated for the last 150 years. They spent decades describing how life forms supposedly assumed their present forms by a series of gradual changes and misled the public in what has become a major fraud in the history of science, and are entirely justified in feeling embarrassed by the reality revealed by the fossil record. They should now let that embarrassment lead them to the truth and stop knowingly espousing a lie.
TURKEY OAK LEAF
Age: 5-1.8 million years old
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria
Period: Pliocene
Most evolutionist books or articles present a great many fantastical tales. These describe processes that could never have taken place and that are scientifically impossible. You'll read how the first cell emerged from a pool of mud, how fish one day decided to move onto dry land and turned into hundreds of different species and how reptiles one day took to the air as birds. But all these tales are science fiction, and far frombeing scienctific. The main hero of these tales is blind chance.
In his book The Great Evolution Mystery, Gordon Rattray Taylor says this on the subject:
Evolutionary history is a mass of such modifications; one could almost say it consists of them. Scales become feathers. Legs become wings. Stomachs become swim bladders. Even at the level of biochemical processes, substitutions and elaborations occur. All Darwinism has to say about such miracles is that they are due to chance. (Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery, New York: Harper & Row, 1983, p.10)
The fact is, however, that chance can never produce an order requiring intelligence and consciousness. No logical person can accept that the variety and complexity displayed by living things are the work of chance. Coincidence can never give rise to bright flowers, delicious fruits and vegetables, leopards, rabbits, tigers, birds, ants and human beings able to found whole civilizations. Life and everything we see around us is the work of Almighty God, the Omniscient Lord of sublime artistry.
JUNIPER LEAF
Age: 5-1.8 million years
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria
Period: Pliocene
Since the early 20th century, the theory of evolution, constantly depicted as a scientific reality by some circles, has received a string of lethal blows—which, however, have been carefully concealed from the public. Darwinists constantly issue propaganda suggesting that nothing has changed, but they never mention the countless fossils that serve as evidence of Creation and continue relating the same, familiar tales. One of the most notable aspects of evolutionist propaganda is that they almost never feel the need to back up their tales with any scientific findings. Phillip Johnson describes the position:
There is no requirement that any of this speculation be confirmed either experimental or fossil evidence. To Darwinists, just being able to imagine the process is sufficient to confirm that something like that must have happened. (Phillip Johnson, Objection Sustained, p. 23)
On its own, in fact, this situation is proof of Darwinists' despair. They are obliged to rely on their own imaginations, because scientific data offer their theory no support. Countless fossils, such as the juniper leaf illustrated, prove that evolution never took place. For that reason, Darwinists prefer to seek refuge in speculation rather than seek to explain the evidence.
MOUNTAIN ASH LEAF
Age: 50 million years old
Location: Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada
Period: Eocene
Mountain ash trees are the same today as they were 50 million years ago. In other words, in the past the Earth was not inhabited by primitive, semi-developed and odd-looking animals and plants, as evolutionists would have us believe. The Earth of 50 million years ago was not filled with life forms busily developing stage by stage. All living things then had the same physical features, limbs and fully formed structures as those living today, and were identical to them in appearance. The fossil pictured is an obvious evidence of that.
APPLE LEAF
Age: 50 million years old
Location: Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada
Period: Eocene
Just as sourcherries have always existed as sourcherries, apples also have always been apples. The apple did not emerge by descent from some other peculiar fruit. Darwin's claim, proposed some 150 years ago, that living things are descended from one another through very small changes, still lacks any confirmatory evidence, despite the passage of all those years.
The evolutionist Richard Darwkins admits this "painful" fact for evolutionists:
One hundred and twenty five years on, we know a lot more about animals and plants than Darwin did, and still not a single case is known to me of complex organs that could not have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications. I do not believe that such a case will ever be found. (Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, p.91)
CHERRY LAUREL LEAF
Age: 50 million years old
Location: Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada
Period: Eocene
Cherry laurel trees in the past lived in the same manner as today's. Were Darwinists telling the truth, then present-day cherry laurel trees should bear no resemblance, or only a partial one, to those of the past. In addition, other fossils should be able to show how the cherry laurel trees of the past turned into the trees of today. But over the last two centuries or so, Darwinists have been unable to obtain any evidence of this process, which exists solely in their imaginations. All the findings made reveal that cherry laurels have always existed as cherry laurels, that they have not evolved, and that they were therefore created.
TARPON
Age: 110 million years old
Location: Ceara, Brazil
Period: Cretaceous
In his book Missing Links, Robert A. Martin says:
If the creationist model is correct, there can be no ancestor-descendant relationships, no evolutionary progression of any kind. If the evolution model is correct and with a dense enough fossil record, intermediates at all structural and chronological scales should be found. (Robert A. Martin, Missing Links: Evolutionary Concepts and Transitions Through Time, Jones and Barlett Publishers, UK, 2004, p. 8)
Without exception, all fossil specimens, of which this book describes only a few show that there is no line of descent between life forms, and that every species emerged suddenly with its own particular characteristics. Excavations have failed to turn up even one semi-developed life form or intermediate form fossil. Given this evidence, it is clear that evolution is invalid, and Creation is an undeniable fact.
FILEFISH
Age: 4 million years old
Location: Marecchio River Formation, Italy
Period: Pliocene
Filefish, members of the Monacanthidae family, live in tropical or subtropical waters. There are 107 known species within that family. One of the most important characteristics of most of these species is that they are masters of camouflage, able to conceal themselves by changing color to match their surroundings and thus protect themselves from predators.
This Monacanthus fossil is 4 million years old, evident proof that this species never evolved. Living things are not descended from one another by undergoing constant change in the manner suggested by Darwinists. Almighty God created the universe and all the life forms within it.
OCTOPUS
Age: 95 million years old
Location: Hjoula, Lebanon
Period: Cretaceous
Octopi, whose high capacity for learning has been tested in the laboratory, are also masters of camouflage. This ability depends upon specially created skin cells. Thanks to their skin cells' ability to change color, become opaque and reflect light, they can protect themselves from danger and also warn other octopi of potential danger. Some octopi do even more: They camouflage themselves by imitating other sea creatures. These, known as "mimic octopi," assume the appearance of frightening-looking life forms such as lionfish and sea snakes.
But could octopi have acquired these features in stages over the course of time, as evolutionists maintain? Were the first octopi strange-looking, semi-developed creatures with rudimentary organs, very different from those living today? One of the main ways of determining this is by examining the fossil record. When we do that, no matter how far back in time we go we encounter fossil octopi exactly the same as their counterparts living today. This is one of the main proofs of the invalidity of evolutionist claims. Octopi did not evolve, but were created by Omniscient and Almighty God, together with all their characteristics.
SEAHORSE
Age: 4 million years old
Location: Marecchio River Formation, Italy
Period: Pliocene
The seahorse's head stands at a right angle to its body, a feature is not present in any other fish. That is why seahorses swim upright and can move their heads up and down. However, they cannot move their heads from side to side. Were other living things to have this inability to move their heads from side to side, it would represent a problem exposing them to all kinds of threats. But thanks to the special structure of their body, seahorses never experience any such problem. They have been created able to move their eyes in all directions, independently of one another, and can easily see all round them, even without being able to move their heads from side to side.
If Darwinists' claims were true, then the seahorse should have been eliminated long before it developed this appropriate eye structure, and it should never have survived down to the present day. It should be impossible for a seahorse with an upright head, unable to see behind it, to survive, so seahorses should have become extinct. This means that, like all other living things, seahorses did not evolve, but were in fact created in a single moment, with their heads are attached to their bodies at a right angle, able to move their eyes independently in all directions, and with all their other characteristics.
POLYIPNUS
Age: 35 million years old
Location: Sobniow, Poland
Period: Oligocene
Fish of the polyipnus species, members of the family Sternoptychidae are some of the living things that prove that Darwinism is nothing more than speculations. There is no difference between polyipnus living 35 million years ago and those alive today.
KILLFISH
Age: 3 million years old
Location: Lahontan Beds, Nevada, USA
Period: Pliocene
Evolutionists claim that Darwin's theory answered the question of how life and living species emerged. Indeed, that's the reason behind for materialists' and atheists' blind devotion to the theory of evolution: They imagine that it gives them an alternative answer to Creation. But this is a grave error. Darwin's claims have never been verified by any scientific data, neither in his own day or afterwards. On the contrary, science has proved that Darwin's scenario is impossible. In short, there is no other scientific and rational answer to the question of the origin of life than Creation.
The evolutionist paleontologist George Simpson admits how Darwin's theory fails to answer any questions:
Darwin was always utterly helpless to answer any valid objections to his theory. (Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery, p. 140)
SOLDIER FISH
Age: 95 million years old
Location: Lebanon
Period: Creataceous
The fossil record shows that living things have not changed over tens or usually hundreds of millions of years. This evident truth represents a major dilemma for Darwinists, as many evolutionists are aware. For example, the evolutionist paleontologist Steven M. Stanley describes how Darwinist accounts are incompatible with fossils:
More generally, any topsy-turvy sequence of fossils would force us to rethink our theory. . . (Steven M. Stanley, The New Evolutionary Timetable, New York, 1981, p. 3)
One of the countless fossils imposing a review of the facts on evolutionists is the 95-million-year-old soldier fish pictured. Soldier fish have never changed over 95 million years and thus refute evolution.
SQUIRREL FISH
Age: 50 million years
Location: Monte Bolca, Italy
Period: Eocene
The fossil record shows no gradual, stage-by-stage development of the kind claimed by evolutionists. There's no evidence that living things are descended from any supposed common ancestor. Findings have revealed that living things are not descended from one another and that no species ever changed for as long as it survived.
In other words, species never evolved, as is described by the Oxford University zoologist Mark Pagel:
But instead of finding the slow, smooth and progressive changes Lyell and Darwin had expected, they saw in the fossil records rapid bursts of change, new species appearing seemingly out of nowhere and then remaining unchanged for millions of years-patterns hauntingly reminiscent of creation. (Mark Pagel, "Happy Accidents?," Nature 397:665, 25 February 1999)
WOLF HERRING
Age: 95 million years old
Location: Haqel, Lebanon
Period: Cretaceous
Because fossils demolish the claims of evolution, Darwinists usually ignore them, or else attempt to use them as tools for propaganda by means of various distortions. However, the recent exhibition of hundreds of fossils in displays, books and websites has made apparent for all to see the quandary facing evolutionists. When you can compare fossils and living specimens side by side, you have no difficulty in realizing that evolution is a lie, and need no further explanation. That is why evolutionists are in a state of panic. They are helplessly watching the global collapse of their theory, from which there can be no return. One proof of the collapse of the theory of evolution is the 95-million-year-old wolf herring fossil illustrated.
TANG
Age: 95 million years old
Location: Haqel, Lebanon
Period: Cretaceous
In The Origin of Species Revisited, Wendell R. Bird states that the theory of evolution's claim of intermediate forms is a fantasy:
The geological record . . . tells now what it has told from the beginning, that the supposed intermediate forms between the species of different geological periods are imaginary beings, called up merely in support of a fanciful theory. (Wendell R. Bird, The Origin of Species Revisited, Thomas Nelson Inc, December 1991, p. 44)
To date, the fossil research has never produced any intermediate-form specimen to support evolutionist claims. No fossil indicating a line of descent between species has ever been unearthed. Tang fish fossils, for instance, never have any semi- or half-developed organs. No matter how far back in time one searches, every fish fossil has exactly the same characteristics as those fish living today. The 95-million-year-old tang fish fossil in the picture is just one example.
SHRIMP
Age: 150 million years old
Location: Solnhofen Formation, Germany
Period: Jurassic
If shrimps really had an evolutionary forebear of the kind that Darwinists maintain, then there should be fossilized examples of what kind of a creature that alleged "proto-shrimp" looked like. Yet the fossil record provides not the slightest evidence that any such ancestor ever lived. Moreover, the fossil record contains no trace at all of any evolutionary stages that shrimps supposedly went through.
No "shrimp-like" fossil has ever been found that that has not yet acquired all the particular characteristics of modern-day shrimps. No matter how old they are, all fossilized shrimps are identical to those still living today. The 150-million-year-old shrimp pictured here also possesses all of present-day shrimps' flawless features. Under these circumstances, no one can speak logically of "shrimp evolution."
Like all other living species, shrimps never evolved at all. Life is the work of our Glorious and Majestic God.
BLUE WHITING
Age: 5 million years old
Location: Marecchia River Formation, Italy
Period: Miocene
The Swedish scientist Søren Løvtrup states that evolution is the greatest deceit of science as thus:
I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science.
And countless scientific findings, such as the blue whiting in the picture, have already shown that evolution never happened and that it is a great deceit. It is pointless for evolutionists to try to ignore such findings. Running from the truth changes nothing.
Conclusion
The subject we have explained so far is one of the greatest truths you will ever read in your lifetime. Proving that everything we see and refer to as "the material world" is actually in our minds, that we can never have direct experience of the material originals existing outside, is important in comprehending the existence of God and His creations and to understanding that He is the only absolute Being.
The person who understands this will realize that the world is not the sort of place that most people surmise. Not an absolute place with an exterior existence, as supposed by those who wander aimlessly about the streets, get into fights in pubs, show off in luxurious cafes, brag about their property, or who dedicate their lives to hollow aims. The world is an image we see in our brain, whose original we can never reach. All of the people cited above watch these perceptions in their minds, yet are unaware of this.
This very important concept undermines the materialist philosophy that denies the existence of God. This is why materialists like Marx, Engels, and Lenin panicked, became enraged, and warned their followers "not to think over" this concept when told about it. Such people are so mentally deficient that they cannot even comprehend the fact that perceptions are formed inside the brain. Assuming that what they watch in their brains is the "external world," they cannot comprehend obvious evidence to the contrary.
This unawareness is the outcome of the lack of wisdom God gives to disbelievers. As it is said in the Qur'an, the unbelievers "have hearts wherewith they understand not, eyes wherewith they see not, and ears wherewith they hear not. They are like cattle-nay more misguided: for they are heedless [of warning]." (Surat al-A'raf: 179)You can explore beyond this by using the power of your personal reflection. Concentrate your attention, and ponder on how you see the objects around you and feel their touch. Think heedfully, and you can feel that the being that thinks and reads this book at this moment is only a soul, who watches the perceptions called "matter" on an inner screen. Anyone who grasps this has moved away from the domain of the material world that deceives a major part of humanity and has entered the domain of authentic existence.
This reality has been understood by a number of theists or philosophers throughout history. Even though the Wahdatul Wujood view has deviated from the truth by misunderstanding this reality and rejecting the existence of all creation, great scholar Imam Rabbani set the right measure on this subject. According to Imam Rabbani, all beings are "shadow beings" relative to Allah.
Islamic intellectuals such as Imam Rabbani, Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi and Mevlana Cami realised this fact from the signs of the Qur'an and by using their reason. Some Western philosophers like George Berkeley have grasped the same reality through reason. Imam Rabbani wrote in his Mektubat (Letters) that the whole material universe is an "illusion and supposition (perception)" and that the only absolute being is God:
God... The substance of these beings which He created is but nothingness... He created all at the sphere of senses and illusions... The existence of the universe is at the sphere of senses and illusions, and it is not material... In real, there is nothing in the outside except the Glorious Being, (Who is God).204
However, the number of those who have understood this fact throughout history has always been limited. Great scholars such as Imam Rabbani have written that it might have been inconvenient to tell this fact to the masses and that most people would not be able to grasp it.
However, in the age we live in, this fact has been made empirical by the body of evidence put forward by science. For the first time, the fact that matter is not absolute and our knowledge of it is extremely limited is described in a concrete, clear, and explicit way.
For this reason, the 21st century will be a turning point when people in general will comprehend the Divine realities and be led in crowds to God, the only Absolute Being. In the 21st century, materialistic 19th-century creeds will be relegated to the trash-heaps of history; God's existence and creation will be grasped; facts like spacelessness and timelessness will be better understood. Humanity will break free of the centuries-old veils, deceits, and superstitions enshrouding us.
It's not possible for any shadow being to impede this inevitable course.
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