Devine Power

April 15, 2009, 9:30 am by dc-agape.

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Surāh 91 – Al-Shams: The Sun

I will start each post on the Qur’an with a link to M Mohammad Ali’s translation of the Qur’an with his commentaries. 

Reading the first six verses I cannot help but remember what my Agnostic father says about the creation of the universe, sun, moon, and earth (including the weather, seasons, etc):

If God exists, he stuck his finger in the pot of chaos, swirled it around and then stood back and watched what happened.  He calls it the divine spark, as in the spark that starts a car’s engine but then has nothing to do with the actual operation of the car.

Being that my father is also a retired civil engineer, he knows that the earth will continue to revolve around the sun for millions of years, that the sun will continue to shine for at least that long, and the moon will continue to revolve around the earth (until centrifugal force pushes it away from the earth).  He also knows that spring will follow winter, and summer will follow spring, etc.  He knows that for best results seeds must be planted at a particular time of the year to get the most yield.  What he also knows since these things will continue without fail long past his lifetime, that whatever put these things in motion does not interfere now that things are in equilibrium. 

Continuing with the verses on human’s ability to be good or bad…no Divine Retribution is seen occurs in our life time to many evil people. Adding that the “good” person does not succeed any more often than the “evil” person, gives evidence (to my father) that “God” is sitting back and watching but does not interfere.  So basically, the exact same things that “prove” a Divine Being exists can be used to “prove” that this Divine Being does not interact with the universe.  Atheists, of course, go one step further.  We know why the sun exists; we know why the earth and moon travel through space.  We know why spring arrives at the same (or close to the same) time each year.  We even know that how to increase the yield from crops with planting times, fertilizers, and water.  We know why spring is so beautiful (plants create flowers to mate), and we know what forces created beautiful mountains and lakes and seas.  This beauty, to a scientist, only makes us more humble at the power we see in a natural world.  Atheists ask the question: where is a Divine Creator in any of this?  Even life itself and humans in specific, are complex processes that have physical explanation that do not rely on supernatural intervention.  Because humans cannot fathom how life started or reproduce it does not mean that it was not governed by physical “earthly” processes that occur whenever the environment is “perfect”.  This concept of “perfect” is the same condition that causes lightening “followed” by thunder, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, or forest fires. 

The qualities of being “good” are without a doubt in polar opposition to the qualities of being “evil”.  The odd thing here is that in Judaea-Christian tradition it is not “God” who gave humans the capacity to know good and evil but our sin of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  So Christians believe that YHWH continues to punish us generation after generation for the one single sin of eating the forbidden fruit.  From the Agnostic/Atheist view point it is simply the knowledge of good and evil comes from human civilization that has existed for at least 6,000 years (of recorded history).  That’s a pretty good length of time to learn the difference between good and evil.

I do like the concept that by contemplating the size of the earth, we should be humbled by its expanse.  We, individually, are small by comparison.  If we expand that to the universe itself, the human race becomes so tiny that humility is the only logical response.  When the concept of time is introduced it only makes one all the more humble.  Carl Sagan once had a great example of the human condition, which he called the Cosmic Calendar:

Imagine that the entire history of the universe is compressed into one year – with the Big Bang corresponding to the first second of the New Year’s Day, and the present time to the last second of December 31^st (midnight).

In this Calendar, humans did not even appear until 10:30pm on Dec 31^st.  It sure did take that supreme being a long time to get around to creating his special spiritual creature: humans.  Why?

The rest of this surāh uses a specific example to prove that Allāh does intervene against the evil in human nature.  It is horrifying to an Ethical Humanist, like me, to think that a society could be so cruel, as the Thamūd, to keep livestock from drinking.  Worse, is the thought, that the same society would kill an animal for attempting to satiate its thirst.  But such tyranny cannot last, other groups of people will take offense and will overpower such brutality.  If the society was destroyed by natural causes, that would be nothing new as well.  Just look at the most recent acts of nature: floods in Fargo, Hurricane Katrina, and the December Tsunami.  Can we say that these natural events were punishment for arrogance or sin?  Yet that is exactly what the Prophet is saying about the Thamūd.

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