Question
Asalaamualaykum
In many places in the Holy Quran man is instructed to reflect on the exquisite beauty, perfection and order in Allah’s creation. However, if one looks closely one finds ‘imperfections’ and ‘apparent disorder’ in creation. For example, sometimes an animal may give birth to an offspring that is not properly developed or has some sort of deformity, which may occur in a natural habitat without human interference, which would cause the animal to die. Also the brown hyena is known to kill seals indiscrimitely and lets them die without eating them, which seems random and disorderly. There are also cases where humans are born deformed which make their lives difficult. There are numerous other examples I can give. How does one understand these natural and biological occurrences which appear to contradict Allah’s perfect and balanced creation?
Answer
No doubt, from the human being point of view there are deficiencies in the nature. However, the main point is whether this perceived deficiency is against God. Deficiency can only be an evidence against the designer if it goes against the purpose of the design. Imagine a builder who has build a house with the sole objective of making it as spacious as possible. He says very clearly from the beginning and at the end that his ONLY objective for making this house is/was to make a spacious place. Now if some one says that some of the colours that are used do not match, this will not be an argument against the designer because he will say, well I said a number of times that my only objective is to make a spacious place. Even those colours have been used with this purpose in mind.
When some one argues against that God that we (followers of religions of Ibrahim) introduce, he needs to consider our concept of God with all its associate beliefs. One of the main associate beliefs is that God has made this world only to test us. We also know from the Qur’an that God has made the world around us in a way so that we can benefit from it in our life.
Therefore there is a purpose and a divinely arranged feature in the design of the world:
- Purpose: to test us
- To facilitate this: the divinely arranged feature is for the world to be beneficial for our life
Now if some one can find a deficiency in the world in a way that it negates the above purpose and the above feature, then yes, he has evidence against God. Any other so called deficiency is only the perception of human being, but what, from the perspective of God’s design and system, is only part of the whole that works well with this design and the system. Where this “deficiency” has anything to do with human being, it is still working towards the purpose (test) or the divine feature of the world (benefiting).
Also please bear in mind that there has to be an order and discipline in order for human being to recognise deficiency, otherwise in a total chaos deficiency has no meaning. The order and the discipline that is embodied in the world create certain rules that are again contributing to the purpose and the divine feature of the world. God lets the world to be governed by these created rules. What we see as deficiencies are merely occasional outcomes of these rules and are therefore again a contribution to the purpose, as a sign of the existence of the creator.
Abdullah Rahim