Episode 29 – Got You! Alleged Flaws in God’s Creation

Got You! Finding Fault with God’s Creation and How to Respond

A Dramatic Introduction

Salesman: Sir, here is the Jeep you asked for, this year's model. We have given you a good deal; go ahead and try it.

Customer: Yes, it certainly looks comfortable. But before I get in, tell me: what is this pedal? It looks useless!

Salesman: No, sir, that is the accelerator; it is what moves the car. Is this your first time driving a car?

Customer: My first time driving a car?! Cars are my specialty! What is wrong with you, man?! But this pedal feels completely useless. And what is this? This is useless too... It looks as if the whole car was not manufactured at all and has no plan behind it; it is all coincidence upon coincidence!

Salesman: Sir, that button is for cruise control.

Customer: Cruise control?!

Salesman: Yes.

Customer: And this one? It is useless; there is no question about it... This whole car is coincidence upon coincidence, neither manufactured nor planned!

Salesman: Man! Are you not ashamed of your ignorance? Everything is coincidence upon coincidence, and this is useless! Please get out of the car; I am not going to sell you the car. Go on, get out.

Customer: But this button is a coincidence.

Salesman: Please, I do not want to sell you the car.

Customer: Then what is this button for? Before you tell me anything else... tell me what it is for.

Salesman: Am I allowed not to tell you?! Please get out of the car.

Customer: Just what is it for? You do not know what it is for!

Salesman: Please... I am no longer selling it to you. Please.

Customer: But it has no function. Got you… See? I’ve beaten you!

Our Situation with the Followers of the Myth

This is our situation with the followers of the myth. When they failed to find traces of coincidence around them, they turned back to themselves... Was it to say, as Abraham's people said before: “So they returned to blaming themselves and said to each other, ‘Indeed, you are the wrongdoers.’” [Al-Anbiya’ 21:64]? Was it to reconsider and recognize the falsity of their myth? No; they turned back to themselves to look for a fault there!

(Sound effects)

This is our situation with the followers of the myth. They speak about what they call errors in the design of the human being: the retina of the eye and the sperm duct; or what they regard as superfluous organs, such as the appendix, the coccyx, and others. All of these are splendid signs of God's precise creation, yet these people—sometimes through ignorance and sometimes through deliberate disregard—turn them into evidence for coincidence and randomness.

Will we show that all these are indeed examples of wise creation? Yes. But first, brother and sister: what if you had not watched this episode? What if you did not know the answer to the examples they mention? Would the followers of the myth then have embarrassed you until you supplied an answer? Are you the one required to answer these examples? Or is the supporter of the myth required to provide a convincing explanation for the precision and order in the universe and its creatures?

The Fallacy of Shifting the Burden of Proof

This method of the followers of the myth is called, in the study of logical fallacies, shifting the burden of proof. An opponent says something absurd and thereby puts himself in an embarrassing position because it contradicts facts plain to everyone. Then he starts a side battle, demanding that you answer a subsidiary matter; he shifts the spotlight away from himself and all eyes turn to you, waiting for your answer to his question. Yet whether you answer or not changes nothing about the fact that his own statement is absurd, and your lack of an answer to his question gives his statement no value at all.

Therefore, brother, when followers of the myth confront you with questions such as these as a challenge, it is not right for you to search desperately for a function for these organs as though you were obliged to answer or else they had defeated you. Rather, tell them: first explain to me how the system works, the system in which you are discussing this particular part.

Answering the Claim about the Retina

For example, the priests of the myth may tell you: the arrangement of the cells of the retina is wrong. The light-sensitive cells are cones and rods, so they should be at the front for light to fall on them directly. But in reality they are at the back, and light has to pass through cells unrelated to receiving it. This shows that the eye came about through randomness and chance. In this they merely repeat like parrots what Richard Dawkins said in his 2015 edition of The Blind Watchmaker, where he mocked this retinal arrangement and said that any engineer would laugh and be appalled by such a reversed design.

When you hear this, brother, before the overall picture disappears in details and before you burden yourself with looking for an answer, tell them: first explain the operation of the visual system whose particular part you object to—the arrangement of its retina. Surely you objected only because you know the details of this visual system, and therefore judged this part to be superfluous or defective... and judged that it should instead take some other specified form.

Let them explain, if they know. Let them tell you about the eye: its muscles, which control its lens for nearby and distant objects; the neural supply of those muscles; its two necessary fluids; the various retinal cells—rods and cones—of which each eye contains more than 100 million cells. A study that has remained with me from my doctoral days says that the structure of one of them is more complex than the most complex factory built by human beings.

Let them explain to you how randomness could assemble the atoms of the compound 11-cis-retinal in the proper form, so that the form of this compound changes when photons of light strike it. Then how did randomness place this compound in the proper proportions in rhodopsin, the light-sensitive pigment in the eye? Let them tell you how the eye was prepared to capture precisely the visible band of the electromagnetic spectrum, enabling it to see creatures. Let them tell you about the nerve bundles leaving the retina, neural transmission, the brain's centres for interpreting the image, storing the image in memory, and the visual system performing the function human beings need in the most complete way—until the eye has reached such sensitivity that it can respond to a single photon, as Nature magazine states.

Let them explain, if they know, and see how they answer themselves! If they recognize their ignorance, then good; otherwise leave them wandering blindly in their transgression. In the evidence of design found in the very systems in which they allege defects there is enough for whoever seeks guidance. Yet it is among God's ways that, within the clear evidence of truth, He places ambiguous matters for whoever wants to cling to them and deprive himself thereby of God's mercy. “As for those in whose hearts is deviation, they will follow that of it which is unspecific, seeking discord and seeking an interpretation suitable to them.” [Ali ‘Imran 3:7]. It is the same mentality that seeks ambiguous matters in the revealed verses and seeks ambiguous matters in the signs of the universe. Just as our friend left the car, with all its evidence of design and mastery, and clung to a button whose function he did not know: he was ignorant of the reason for a certain button and made that ignorance a reason to deny the car's design. Though the matter is certain and clear, every part of the car points to it and so does the harmony of its operation. Then he shifted the burden of proof to the car salesman, challenging him: tell me its function.

It would have been enough, brother, to say this to one who claims that the retina proves randomness. But what if you learned that this allegation is an old joke used to mock the uninformed, and that sound science—as usual—has turned this objection into a new sign of power and wisdom? Research in evolutionary journals themselves has for many years stated that retinal cells need to be arranged as they are because this provides a "Superior Solution" for using the eye's space, as Vision Research reports. This arrangement also lets light pass first through Müller cells, increasing the sensitivity of retinal cone cells, as reported by PNAS and Nature Communications. Even Phys.Org—also evolutionary—states that having sensitive cells at the rear of the retina is not a design flaw but a "Design feature", and that saying the eye would be better if those cells were at the front of the retina is foolishness. Congratulations, then, to those whom Arab priests of the myth teach something that many foreign priests of the myth openly called foolish years ago, while you think you are listening to reasonable people addressing your minds.

This concerns only one kind of cell: Müller cells, through which light passes thanks to this retinal arrangement. If you wish, read also in the evolutionary journal Nature about the (13) types of bipolar cells in these layers, the function of each of them, and how their arrangement in the retina assists vision. Read about amacrine cells in these layers and others besides. Read, brother, then return and listen to the priests of the myth say: the retinal arrangement is wrong! Ask any creationist for an explanation of this phenomenon and he will have none. Listen to them and you will learn the meaning of the comedy of ignorance and deliberate disregard. Glory be to God: just as the doubts raised by fools against Islamic rulings are themselves turned by sound knowledge into new signs of God's knowledge and wisdom, so the doubts concerning God's creation are turned by sound knowledge into a new proof of His knowledge and wisdom.

I can hear you say: but you cite research from evolutionary journals! Yes, brother, because, as I explained in the episode Rent Me Your Mind, we have not rented our minds out to Western scientists. We benefit from their knowledge, but do not imitate their conclusions. Nor are we followers of Ahmet Ağaoğlu, one of Turkey's secularists, who said: "We resolved to take everything the Westerners have, even the infections in their lungs and the filth in their intestines!" Rather, we take what is sound and leave intellectual filth to its owners. What we have mentioned is stated by both followers and rejecters of the myth among natural scientists. But we bind the followers of the myth with the words of the scientists they revere, so that the argument is stronger. We take from them knowledge when its research method is sound, and we do not imitate their conclusions when their method is corrupt and filled with logical fallacies.

We may ask: if someone saw the Sukhoi Su-47 aircraft flying impressively in the sky with its swept-forward wings, then laughed at its wings and said, "This is poor design, proving that this aircraft came about through a collection of coincidences," would any place other than a mental hospital suit such a person? This would be so even if we had not learned that this reversed design accounts for the aircraft's agility and ease of manoeuvre. How, then, can the followers of the myth speak about the retinal arrangement and call it evidence of chance and the absence of design, and some regard it as respectable science? We see them utter this nonsense with the very eyes whose design they criticize—eyes that function in the most complete, precise and efficient way, even if we had not learned that this retinal arrangement contributes to this precise sight.

Answering the Claim about the Appendix

When a follower of the myth tells you that the appendix is superfluous—a remnant from animals which evolution did not get rid of—and asks why the Creator would place a useless appendix if creation were designed, as Jerry Coyne and other scientists of the myth say, suppose, brother, that you had not read the research published two months ago by doctors who also follow the myth. It states the importance of the appendix: it is not superfluous as was thought. Rather, it contains all the types of beneficial bacteria present in the digestive system, so that if you suffer an illness that damages intestinal bacteria, the appendix restores them. It also produces immunoglobulin A, essential for regulating beneficial bacteria in the digestive system, and its removal increases susceptibility to many illnesses. Some of this information, incidentally, has been known for many years.

Suppose you had not read scientific websites stating that the appendix may save your life. Even if you had not learned all of this, brother, do not let a follower of the myth shift the burden of proof onto you. You are not charged with explaining it, and not knowing the function of a part of the digestive system is not evidence that the entire system lacks design. Instead, let them tell you how randomness and blind chance could produce the digestive system: the arrangement of your teeth, the kinds of taste papillae, the kinds of enzymes secreted at every stage, the muscles around it that move food, the valves that operate in harmony, and the villi and microvilli in the intestines, which create a flat surface at least equal to an apartment in size and increase the intestine's capacity for absorption. Let them tell you about the trillions of beneficial bacteria in their varied forms in your intestines and their functions, and about the enteric nervous system and its complexities. The spiritually blind see none of the marvels of creation we have mentioned and attach no importance to them; they leave them aside and cling to what they call the appendix, ignorant of or disregarding its function, making their ignorance into an argument.

Answering the Claim about the Sperm Duct

If the Arab parrots repeat to you what Richard Dawkins says in his book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution—that the male sperm duct ought to be shorter, and that this is a defect disproving design and proving chance—then suppose, brother, that you had not read detailed references showing the necessity of this length for preserving the temperature differences between the testes and the rest of the body, along with its other benefits. You are not obliged to read or research this, brother. Do not allow the burden of explanation to be shifted to you; instead let them explain how their laughable randomness could bring male and female together in more than 8 million species of creatures at the same time. Let them tell you about the innate sexual inclination between mates and about the inspiration of small creatures without reason, such as insects, to mate. Let them tell you about the reality of pairing, by which God Most High points to a knowing and wise Creator “And of all things We created two mates; perhaps you will remember. So flee to Allah. Indeed, I am to you from Him a clear warner.” [Adh-Dhariyat 51:49–50]

But instead of fleeing to God, these people flee to ignorance and deliberate disregard. The follower of the myth leaves all the evidence of wisdom in pairing that we have mentioned merely to say arrogantly: the sperm duct ought to be shorter! If it had been designed with knowledge and will, these defects would not exist! He proposes alterations to the design of the human being as if he were a god encompassing all things in knowledge—knowing what was, what will be, and what was not, had it been, how it would be. “Rather, they have denied that which they encompass not in knowledge and whose interpretation has not yet come to them.” [Yunus 10:39]. Is it not shameful for you to deny something simply because you do not know it, or have not yet examined its interpretation and explanation?

Conclusion and Emphasis

Here, brothers, we are dealing not only with logical fallacies, but with a moral problem: excessive arrogance combined with profound ignorance or intentional disregard. It has led atheists to show bad manners toward the phenomena of the universe, which they ought to respect out of respect for science. It has also led Muslims who are dazzled by them to show grave bad manners toward God by finding fault with His creation while vainly trying to reconcile the myth with Islam. However devoted a surgeon may be to the myth of evolution, and however much he speaks about alleged traces of chance in the human body, when he enters an operation his greatest concern is not to disturb the system present in the body, because he implicitly knows that it is the best system.

Finally, some may think the dramatic sketch is exaggerated because our friend did not know the function of the accelerator that moves the car. We say: no, the followers of the myth have often done the same. Wiedersheim included the pituitary gland among organs that have no use, although at that time they did not know that it is like the operating switch for all the body's hormones.

These were brief examples, brothers. When a follower of the myth then wants to move you to a new objection and cast the burden of proof on you, tell him: are you not ashamed of the accumulating evidence of your ignorance and your disappointments? Do you expect me to spend my life answering you? Rather, what has gone before is enough for whoever seeks guidance.

We repeat and emphasize once more our thanks to our brothers at the Muslim Researchers website, from whose research on that site we have benefited greatly. Peace be upon you.