BaKhabar, January 2013, Page-10 [I came to Canada + US Poll: 85 Percent of Muslim Voters Picked President Obama]

The Scientific World Is Turning to God

.... By Haroon Yahya

"As people have certainly been influenced by me, I want to try and correct the enormous damage I may have done." (Anthony Flew)
The newspapers these days are echoing with these regret-filled words by Anthony Flew, in his time a well-known atheist philosopher.
The decisive factor in this radical change of view is the clear and definitive evidence revealed by science on the subject of creation. Flew realised, in the face of the information-based complexity of life, that the true origin of life is intelligent design and that the atheism he had espoused for 66 years was a discredited philosophy.
Flew announced the scientific reasons underlying this change in belief in these terms:
"Biologists' investigation of DNA has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce [life], that intelligence must have been involved." (1)
"It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism." (2)
"I have been persuaded that it is simply out of the question that the first living matter evolved out of dead matter and then developed into an extraordinarily complicated creature." (3)
The DNA research which Flew cites as a fundamental reason for his change of opinion has indeed revealed striking facts about creation. The helix shape of the DNA molecule, its possession of the genetic code, the nucleotide strings that refute blind chance, the storage of encyclopaedic quantities of information and many other striking findings have revealed that the structure and functions of this molecule were arranged for life with a special design. Comments by scientists concerned with DNA research bear witness to this fact.
Francis Crick, for instance, one of the scientists who revealed the helix shape of DNA admitted in the face of the findings regarding DNA that the origin of life indicated a miracle:
An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going. (4)
Based on his calculations, Led Adleman of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles has stated that one gram of DNA can store as much information as a trillion compact discs. (5) Gene Myers, a scientist employed on the Human Genome Project, has said the following in the face of the miraculous arrangements he witnessed:

"What really astounds me is the architecture of life… The system is extremely complex. It's like it was designed… There's a huge intelligence there." (6)
The most striking fact about DNA is that the existence of the coded genetic information can definitely not be explained in terms of matter and energy or natural laws. Dr. Werner Gitt, a professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, has said this on the subject:
A code system is always the result of a mental process… It should be emphasized that matter as such is unable to generate any code. All experiences indicate that a thinking being voluntarily exercising his own free will, cognition, and creativity, is required… There is no known natural law through which matter can give rise to information, neither is any physical process or material phenomenon known that can do this. (7)
Creationist scientists and philosophers played a major role in Flew's acceptance of intelligent design, backed up by all these findings. In recent times Flew participated in debates with scientists and philosophers who were proponents of creation, and exchanged ideas with them. The final turning point in that process was a discussion organised by the Institute for Metascientific Research in Texas in May, 2003. Flew participated together with author Roy Abraham Varghese, Israeli physicist and molecular biologist Gerald Schroeder, and Roman Catholic philosopher John Haldane. Flew was impressed by the weight of the scientific evidence in favour of creation and by the convincing nature of his opponents' arguments, and abandoned atheism as an idea in the period following that discussion. In a letter he wrote for the August-September, 2003, edition of the British magazine Philosophy Now, he recommended Schroeder's book "The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth" and Varghese's book "The Wonderful World."(8) During an interview with the professor of philosophy and theology Gary R. Habermas, who also played a major role in his change of mind (9), and also on the video "Has Science Discovered God?," he openly stated that he believed in intelligent design.
The "Intelligence Pervading the Universe" and the Collapse of Atheism
In the face of all the scientific developments outlined above, the acceptance of intelligent design by Antony Flew, famous for defending atheism for many years, reflects a final scene in the process of collapse being undergone by atheism. Modern science has revealed the existence of an "intelligence pervading the universe," thus leaving atheism out of the equation.
In his book "The Hidden Face of God," Gerald Schroeder, one of the creationist scientists who influenced Flew, writes:
"A single consciousness, a universal wisdom, pervades the universe. The discoveries of science, those that search the quantum nature of subatomic matter, have moved us to the brink of a startling realization: all existence is the expression of this wisdom. In the laboratories we experience it as information that first physically articulated as energy and then condensed into the form of matter. Every particle, every being, from atom to human, appears to represent a level of information, of wisdom." (10)
Scientific research into both the functioning of the cell and the subatomic particles of matter has revealed this fact in an indisputable manner: Life and the universe were brought into being from nothing by the will of an entity possessed of a superior mind and wisdom. There is no doubt that the possessor of that knowledge and mind that pervade the universe at all levels is Almighty Allah. Allah reveals this truth in the Qur'an:
Both East and West belong to Allah, so wherever you turn, the Face of Allah is there. Allah is All-Encompassing, All-Knowing." (Qur'an, 2:115)
___________________________________________
i Richard N. Ostling, "Lifelong atheist changes mind about divine creator," The Washington Times 10 December 2004;
2- Antony Flew, "Letter from Antony Flew on Darwinism and Theology," Philosophy Now;
3- Stuart Wavell and Will Iredale, "Sorry, says atheist-in-chief, I do believe in God after all," The Sunday Times, 12 December 2004;
4- Francis Crick, Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981, p. 88
5- John Whitfield, "Physicists plunder life's tool chest", 24 April 2003;
6- San Francisco Chronicle, 19 February, 2001
7- Werner Gitt, In the Beginning Was Information, CLV, Bielenfeld, Germany, pp. 64-7, 79
8- Antony Flew, "Letter from Antony Flew on Darwinism and Theology," Philosophy Now;
9- "Atheist Becomes Theist: Exclusive Interview with Former Atheist Antony Flew;"
10- Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God, Touchstone, New York, 2001, p. xi

WITNESS (a Poem)

.... By Dr. Tazein Hussain, BDS <dr.tazein.hussain@gmal.com>

Let me pass through like a shadow,
let me not make any noise,
let me be a little more of ears,
and a little less of a voice..

I know I am puny,
I know I am small,
I know when all comes crashing,
I am right beneath the fall,

I know when I am sinking,
I will be unable to call
I know when I wake up one day,
there will be nothing at all.

I have heard all the big words,
I have heard the ones unsaid,
the world has no defined dignity,
or measured shame,
where I stand becomes my world
where you stand becomes yours,
we are separate yet intersecting
different yet the same
as "I" becomes abeyant,
and "we" begins to grow,
its then the vision clears,
and I begin to know..

I know,
that amidst the mammoth nations,
amidst rulers big and small,
of babies born in a battlefield,
of gods fighting wars,
I see places as dark as death,
I see monsters of hunger and hate
I see children grey in a day,
and women with nothing to save,
I see devils walking proud
I know crime is an easy thrill
a place where silence grows loud and louder,
and becomes madder than a shrill..

the world is boiling and spilling,
its dealings are monstrous and tall,
I stand amidst the chaos,
I know I am puny,
I know I am small,
I know when all comes crashing
I am right beneath the fall,
so let me pass thru' like a shadow,
so let me not make any noise,
let me be a little more of ears,
and a little less of a voice.

Pepsi, Coke, Alcohol and Hajj

Dear Brothers,

Assalamoalaikum.

You have probably seen a lot of emails circulating around the internet on comparing Pepsi and Coke, from them supporting Israel to being unsafe to drink to being used as a cleaning agent for removing rust. However, the issue I want to address is much bigger than this and I have seen many Muslims ignoring this fact altogether, so much so that the most widely consumed beverage during Hajj 1433, probably next to Zamzam, was none other than Pepsi. I had been wanting to write this email ever since witnessing this during Hajj in October.

Earlier this year, Gulf News here in UAE brought it to public knowledge that traces of alcohol had been discovered in Pepsi and Coke (as well as some other drinks). This was not discovered by a Muslim person belonging to a Muslim country, but was highlighted by National Institute of Consumption, based in Paris. While Gulf News did publish this in the UAE, I noted that outside of UAE, this is not a very well-publicized fact.

coca-cola

I am enclosing links from various news sites, including Daily Telegraph and Huffington Post, who have published these stories. There is also a link from Coke's website, who have acknowledged this fact.

Huffington Post

Daily Mail

The Sun

Gulf News

Indian Express

Yahoo! News

Coke has acknowledged this fact on its website in the 'Rumors' section and has mentioned that "Trace levels of alcohol can occur naturally in many foods and beverages. Governments and religious organizations have recognized that such minute levels are considered acceptable in nonalcoholic foods and beverages."

For those brothers who may innocently buy into Coke's above explanation and may argue 'logically' that the quantity of alcohol that Coke or other drinks pointed at in the French research may contain, is not enough to intoxicate anyone, all I can bring forward is the following hadith:

"Whatever intoxicates in large quantities, a little of it is Haraam."
(Narrated by al-Tirmidhi, 1865; classed as Saheeh by al-Albaani in Saheeh al-Tirmidhi)

I have considered it my duty to inform everyone of this and would appreciate if you, after checking the above links and ensuring the authenticity of whatever I have quoted above, including the Hadith, can share onwards.

Jazak Allah Khair,

Regards,

Arif Nota,
MBA, CIA, CISA, CISM, CRISC, PMP, ITIL
Internal Audit, IT Risk Management and Business Continuity Consultant, UAE.

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