THIRD QUESTION

The former enemy and now rightly-guided friend then asked: “Philosophers, who have  made many advances these days, claim that nothing is created out of nothing, and  nothing  is  annihilated  and  goes  to  nothing;  there  is  only  compostion  and decomposition, and this makes the factory of the universe run. Is this correct?”

T h e  A n s w e r : Since the most advanced philosophers who did not consider

beings in the light of the Qur’an saw that the formation and existence of beings by means of  nature and causes was so difficult as to be impossible – in the manner proved above, they diverged into two groups.

One  group  became Sophists; abdicating reason, which is exclusive to  human beings,  and  falling  lower  than mindless  beasts,  they  found  it  easier  to  deny  the universe’s  existence  and  even  their  own  existences,  than  to  follow  the  way  of misguidance, which  claims that causes and nature have the power to create. They therefore  denied  both  themselves  and  the  universe  and  descended  into  absolute ignorance.

The second group saw that in misguidance, according to which causes and nature are creator, the creation of a fly or a seed, even, entails innumerable difficulties and requires a power unacceptable to reason. They were therefore compelled to deny the act  of  creation  and  to  say:  “Nothing  can  exist  out  of  nothing.”  Seeing  total annihiliation also to be impossible, they declared: “What exists cannot go to nothing.” They  fancied  an  imaginary   situation  in  which  combining  and  decomposition, gathering together and dispersion, occur through the motion of particles and the winds of chance.

Now, see! Those who consider themselves to be the most intelligent are the most

profoundly ignorant and stupid. Understand just how ludicrous, debased, and ignorant misguidance makes man, and take a lesson!

Indeed, a Pre-Eternal Power created the heavens and the earth in six days, ever y year  creates four hundred thousand species simultaneously on the face of the earth, and in six weeks every spring constructs a living world more full of art and wisdom than the world itself. Thus, it is more foolish and ignorant than the Sophists, the first group above, to deny the act of creation and deem it unlikely that, like a chemical that when applied shows up  invisible  writing, Pre-Eternal Power should give external existence to beings, which, though externally non-existent, exist as knowledge, and whose plans and measures are determined in the realm of a Pre-Eternal Knowledge.