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IBy the end of the 19th century scientists believed
that with the increase in knowledge they had been
heading towards the final reality. But new research
by the end of the first half of the 20th century
proved that man cannot reach the ultimate reality
unaided. His limitations are decisively obstacles in
his path. It is now an accepted fact among the
scientific community that science gives us but a
partial knowledge of reality.
2. With the emergence of modern science it had
become fashionable among intellectuals to hold that
the universe could be explained without God.
Therefore, every fact that came to light was
explained in a way that would prove that there was
no mind or consciousness behind the universe. But
this bid to explain the universe atheistically
failed.
The Indian scientist, Dr Subramaniam Chandra Shekhar,
who won the Nobel prize in Physics (jointly) in
1983, is a self-avowed atheist. He has briefly
stated the present position of science on this
subject:
There are aspects which are extremely difficult to
understand. A famous remark of Einstein—and other
people have said similar things, Schrodinger in
particular—that the most incomprehensible thing
about nature is that it is comprehensible. How is it
that the human mind, extremely small compared to the
universe and living over a time span microscopic in
terms of astronomical time, comprehends reality in
ideas which spring from the human mind? This
question has puzzled many people from Kepler on. Why
should mathematical description be accurate?
Mathematical description is something the human mind
has evolved. Why should it fit external nature? We
don’t have answers to these questions. One is not
saying the world is orderly and therefore must be
ordered. But why should we understand the world in
terms of the concepts we have developed? (The
Hindustan Times, May 31, 1987)
T.S. Eliot has said:
Where is the wisdom that we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge that we have lost in
information?
A book called (published in 1989) Wisdom,
Information and Wonder, by Dr Mary Midgley,
elaborates—as its title suggests—on the above
rhetorical questions, and makes a significant
contribution to the new thinking of the latter half
of the 20th century.
In his book, The Secular City, Professor Harvey R.
Cox (published in 1965 in the U.S.A.) showed that
people had lost interest in religion. But the same
writer in another book titled, Religion in the
Secular City, published in 1984, has shown that
religion in the U.S.A. has seen a revival. The same
has been found to be true of the western countries.
God wants the message of His religion to be
communicated to all human beings; Islam being the
final religion, He has taken special care to
safeguard it from all human additions and
interpolations. Islam is thus the only totally
preserved and genuinely historical of all the
religions; as such, it deserves pride of place as
the sole reliable guide to pious living.
This attribute of Islam has rendered its
communication very easy. If believers in Islam do
not, by their own foolishness, create problems
unnecessarily, they can continue the work of Islamic
da‘wah without any hindrance. And then, no
intellectual hurdles have to be surmounted to
understand Islam. That is one of the qualities that
has made Islam such an acceptable religion. The only
task now is to introduce Islam to people in a purely
positive way, so that on their own they will feel
attracted to it, and will adopt it in response to
their own desires.
The return to religion, in respect of its potential,
is a return to Islam. Who will rise to convert this
potential to reality?Who will join us in this Plan
of God? |
