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The facts of life, confirmed by science
Materialist
philosophy lies at the basis of the theory of evolution. Materialism
rests on the supposition that everything that exists is matter.
According to this philosophy, matter has existed since eternity, will
continue to exist forever and there is nothing but matter. In order to
provide support for their claim, materialists use logic called
“reductionism”. This is the idea that things which are not observable,
can also be explained by material causes.
To
make matters clearer, let us take the example of the human mind. It is
evident that the mind cannot be touched or seen. Moreover, it has no
center in the human brain. This situation unavoidably leads us to the
conclusion that the mind is a concept beyond matter. Therefore, the
being which we refer to as “I,” who thinks, loves, gets nervous,
worries, feels pleasure or pain, is not a material being in the same way
as a sofa, a table or a stone.
Materialists,
however, claim that mind is “reducible to matter.” According to the
materialist claim, thinking, loving, worrying and all our mental
activities are nothing but chemical reactions taking place between the
atoms in the brain. Feelings of love and fear are merely chemical
reactions in some cells in our brain. The famous materialist philosopher
Karl Vogt stressed this logic with his famous words: “Just as the liver
secretes gall, so do our brains, secrete thought.” (Encyclopedia
Britannica). However, gall is matter, whereas there is no evidence that
thought is the same.
One
of the most prominent features of this picture is “information” which
is present in nature and can never be reduced to matter.
Matter cannot produce information
There
is incredibly comprehensive information contained in the DNA of living
things. Something as small as a hundred thousandth of a millimeter
contains a sort of “data bank” that specifies all the physical details
of the body of a living thing. Moreover, the body also contains a system
that reads this information, interprets it and carries out “production”
in line with it. In all living cells, the information in the DNA is
“read” by various enzymes and proteins are produced according to this
information. This system makes the production of millions of proteins
possible every second, with the required type of protein for specific
places needed in our bodies. In this way, dead eye cells are replaced by
living ones and old blood cells by new ones.
At
this point, let us consider the claim of Materialism: Is it possible
that the information in DNA could be reduced to matter, as materialists
suggest? Or, in other words, can it be accepted that DNA is merely a
collection of matter, and the information it contains came about as a
result of the random interactions of such pieces of matter?
All the scientific research, experiments and observations carried out in the 20th
century CE show that the answer to this question is a definite “No.”
The director of the German Federal Physics and Technology Institute,
Professor Dr. Werner Gitt has this to say on the issue: “A coding system
always entails a nonmaterial intellectual process. A physical matter
cannot produce an information code. All experiences show that every
piece of creative information represents some mental idea-giver who
exercised his own free will, and who is endowed with an intelligent
mind. There is no known law of nature, no known process and no known
sequence of events which can cause information to originate by itself in
matter.” (Werner Gitt. In the Beginning Was Information).
Werner
Gitt’s words summarize the conclusions of the “information theory”
which has been developed in the last 50 years and is accepted as a part
of thermodynamics. Information theory investigates the origin and nature
of the information in the universe. The conclusion reached by
information theoreticians as a result of long studies is that
“Information is something different from matter. It can never be reduced
to matter. The origin of information and physical matter must be
investigated separately.”
For
instance, let us think of the source of a book. A book consists of
paper, ink and the information it contains. Paper and ink are material
elements. Their source is matter: Paper is made of cellulose and ink of
certain chemicals. However, the information in the book is non-material
and cannot have a material source. The source of the information in each
book is the mind of the person who wrote it.
Moreover,
this mind determines how paper and ink will be used. A book initially
forms in the mind of the writer. The writer builds a chain of logic in
his mind and orders his sentences. As a second step, he puts them into a
material form, which is to say that he translates the information in
his mind into letters, using a pen, a typewriter or a computer. Later,
these letters are printed in a publishing house and take the shape of a
book made up of papers and ink.
We
can therefore state this general conclusion: “If physical matter
contains information, then that matter must have been designed by a mind
that possessed the information in question. First, there is the mind.
That mind translates the information it possesses into matter, which
constitutes the act of design.”
The origin of information in Nature
When
we apply this scientific definition of information to Nature, a very
important result ensues. This is because Nature overflows with an
immense body of information (for example in the case of DNA, and since
this information cannot be reduced to matter, it therefore comes from a
source beyond matter.) This fact is revealed as in the following verse
in the Quran (which means): “They said: ‘Exalted
are You! We have no knowledge except what You have taught us. Indeed, it
is You who is the Knowing, the Wise.’” [Quran 2: 32]
One
of the foremost advocates of the theory of evolution, George C.
Williams, admits this reality, which most materialists and evolutionists
are reluctant to see. Williams has strongly defended Materialism for
years, but in an article he wrote in 1995, he states the incorrectness
of the materialist (reductionist) approach which holds everything is
matter: “Evolutionary biologists have failed to realize that they work
with two more or less incommensurable domains: that of information and
that of matter. These two domains will never be brought together in any
kind of the sense usually implied by the term “reductionism.” The gene
is a package of information, not an object. In biology, when you are
talking about things like genes and genotypes and gene pools, you are
talking about information, not physical objective reality. This dearth
of shared descriptors makes matter and information two separate domains
of existence, which have to be discussed separately, in their own
terms.” (George C. Williams. The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific
Revolution).
Therefore,
contrary to the supposition of materialists, the source of the
information in nature cannot be matter itself. The source of information
is not matter, but a superior Wisdom beyond matter. This Wisdom existed
prior to matter. Matter was brought into existence, given form and
organized by the Creator of the Heavens, the Earth and all that exists.
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