The Origin Life and The Divine Will

Here it is essential to discover the reason why ordinarily the theists refer to the origin and beginnings of life when relating life to the Divine will, and to discover as well the reason why the Noble Qur'an has never taken this path in its effort to affirm monotheism, consider­ing as it does life and biological developments absolutely the direct result of God's will, without making any distinction whatsoever between the beginning of life and its continuation.

The truth is that this difference arises from a more fundamental difference between the logic of the Qur'an and all other approaches. It lies in this that a group of theists ordinarily see God from the negative, not the positive, aspect of their knowledge. That is, when faced with a failure to overcome something unknown, they bring in God. They always seek God amid the mass of things unknown to them. That is, they always go after things whose natural causes are unknown to them. When in a certain case they encounter something whose natural cause is unknown to them, they immediately proclaim: "This was brought into existence by God's will." Inevitably, the more the number of things whose natural causes are unknown to them, the more their evidence of God's existence, and the more the number of things known and ex­plained, the lesser evidence they seem to have for God's existence. For a group of theologists and adherents of monotheism, the supranatural realm is a storehouse of their unknowns. Whenever they fail to under­stand and know something and to discover its natural cause, they immediately relate it to the supranatural. They see the role of the supra­natural as lying in, what appears to them as, exceptions to the natural order and violations of the course of nature. When they do not find a natural cause in a certain case, they substitute it with a supernatural one, unmindful of the fact that, firstly, the supranatural realm has its own order and law; secondly, they forget that if a cause takes the place of a material and natural cause, the substitute cause must itself be a material and natural cause on a par with matter and nature. It does not remain a supranatural cause. The natural and supranatural exist on separate planes and not the same plane. Neither a natural cause can take the place of a supranatural cause, nor a supranatural cause the place of a natural cause.

The Holy Qur'an never relies for the evidence of the existence of the One God on cases where the system of natural law and order appears to have been violated. It relies in this regard on cases whose preliminaries and natural causes are known to the people, and it cites this order itself as a testimony to God's existence.

In the case of life, the logic of the Qur'an rests on the view that life is absolutely an emanation (fayd) higher and above the horizon of the physical and the sensible. Whatever the character of the laws involved in it, its source lies on a plane higher than that of sensible matter. Hence, the developments of life are the developments of creation. From the viewpoint of this logic, it makes no difference whether life was created instantaneously, in a single moment, or in the form of a gradual evolu­tion, with one creation following another.

This logic rests on the principles that sensible matter is essentially devoid of life and that life is a light and emanation that must come from a higher source. Hence the laws of life, whatever form they may have, are the same as the laws of creation.

The difference between the existential degrees and planes of matter and life is a scientific and proved principle. Should we want to discover the supranatural source of life through the difference of existential planes between matter and life, it has to be on the basis of the positive aspects of our knowledge, not its negative aspects. Thereby we would be searching for God in what is known to us, not in what is unknown to us. Then we would not be compelled to bring down the supranatural from its plane as a substitute for a natural cause that we may fail to dis­cover. Rather, we would assume that a natural cause is definitely in­volved though the frontiers of scientific knowledge have not yet reached it.

Sadr al‑Muta'allihin (Mulls Sadra), in the part of his book al‑'Asfar concerning the soul, severely attacks Fakhr al‑Din al‑Razi precisely for this reason. He says: "I am amazed at this man and the likes of him who, whenever they want to prove the doctrine of tawhid or some other religious doctrine, look for instances where the natural cause involved has not been recognized and where according to their belief the order of the world has been violated and laws have been broken." [1]

From the body of verses cited above it can be inferred that creation is not an instantaneous process from the viewpoint of the Noble Qur'an.

An animal or human being passes through various evolutionary stages and is always in the process of creation. Rather, basically, the world is always in the process of creation and in the state of perpetual coming into being.

There is an opposite viewpoint which considers creation to be something instantaneous. Whenever its proponents want to discuss the world's creation, they go after `the first moment' when the world was created and brought out from the cover of nothingness. They imagine that if they were not to make such an assumption, the world could no longer be regarded as a creation and as something that came into being. Similarly, whenever they want to discuss life as a Divine creation, they go after `the first moment' when life began.

This kind of thinking is peculiarly a Jewish one:

The Jews have said: 'God's hand is fettered'. Fettered are their hands, and they are cursed for what they have said. (5:64)

That mode of thinking about the relation of life to the Divine will that always goes back to the beginning of life in order to relate it to God's will is the offspring of this Jewish outlook. This Jewish outlook gradu­ally became prevalent and has spread everywhere. Regrettably, Islamic theologans too come under its influence. However, as pointed out, the idea of a `first moment' is foreign to the teachings of the Noble Qur'an.

As indicated earlier, a problem that is discussed in our times is whether man would ever be capable of making a living organism. Would he, for instance, be able to make an artificial human spermatozoon which when deposited in the womb or some other suitable environment be able to develop into a complete human being? We said that a group of theists, whose mode of thinking concerning the relation of life to the Divine will always turns to cases of exception and the first beginnings of life, emphatically negates such a possibility. But on the basis of the teachings that we have received from the Qur’an, we may say, there is nothing that stands in the way of such a possibility. This matter needs elaboration and must be examined from two aspects.

Firstly, we must examine the amount of structural complexity of a living organism to see whether or not some day man would be able to discover all the secrets that go into the material composition of the parts of a cell and the natural law responsible for the emergence of a living cell. We cannot say anything from this aspect, for the issue lies outside the scope of our competence. This is what the experts in the field have said: "That which is more significant and higher than the creation of the earth, the planets of the solar system and the whole universe is the substance of the protoplasm."

Secondly, if man one day succeeds in discovering the law of crea­tion of living organisms, in the same way as he has discovered the laws relating to other creatures, and discovers all the conditions and material constituents of living organisms, and succeeds in preparing substances exactly like those of living organisms, will that artificial being possess life? The answer is that it will definitely possess life, for it is impossible that the conditions for the existence of an emanation should exist completely without the realization of that emanation. Isn't it the case that the One, Self‑Sufficient and absolutely perfect Divine Essence is the absolute source of all emanations? Isn't the Necessary Being‑by­Essence, necessary in all aspects and ways?

Here the doubt may possibly arise in some minds that if such be the case, what will become of the principle that life is exclusively in the hands of God and that others have no role in the giving and taking away of life? We said earlier that this is something acknowledged by the Noble Qur'an, and the answer to this question becomes clear after a review of what has been said. Should man attain such a capacity one day, all that he would have done is to be able to prepare the conditions of life, not the ability to create life. Man cannot give life, but he can complete the capacity of matter for receiving life. In other words, man is the agent of motion (fa`il‑e harakat) not the source of being.

Should man succeed in doing such a thing, surely he would have made an important achievement from the viewpoint of scientific dis­covery. But from the viewpoint of a role in creation. of life his role would be the same as that of the parents in reproduction and procrea­tion of offspring or of the peasant in creating life in wheat grains. In none of these cases is man the creator of life. All that he accomplishes is to prepare the conditions of a substance for receiving life. The Noble Qur'an has described this matter in the best possible manner in the blessed Surat al‑Waqi`ah:

Have you considered the' soil that you till? Do you yourselves make the plants grow or are We the one who makes them grow? (56:63‑64)

Have you considered the seed that you spill? Do you ‑ yourselves create it, or are We the creators? (56:58‑59)

As to the miracles performed by the prophets, their miraculous char­acter lies in that man is incapable of performing such acts with his ordinary knowledge and power. The prophets too had not attained that knowledge and capacity through the ordinary means. An extraordinary power and knowledge that accompanied them had raised them over the plane of physical nature, which made it possible for them to become a source of such a prodigious performance. Should man one day succeed in this achievement (i.e. `artificial' creation of life), it would not mean that he has succeeded in doing something which the prophets did with the leave of God. The prophets used to give life and take it away with the leave of God. But if ordinary human beings some day attain such a capacity, that would be the capacity to prepare the conditions for life, in the same way as today they are capable of causing death by destroy­ing the conditions of life, without possessing the capacity to take away life. The giving and taking of life will remain in God's hands even if man, through the discovery of the laws of emanation and withdrawal of life, prepares or destroys the capacities of a substance for possessing life.

We said that man cannot create life and that creation of life lies outside the scope of his capacities. The giving and withdrawal of life is in God's hands, although man can prepare the conditions necessary for life to exist.

This must not lead us to conclude that there is some kind of division of work: that there are some activities that pertain to man without pertaining to God and that there are other activities that per­tain to God without pertaining to man. Our sole objective is delimitation of the scope of man's activity, not delimitation of God's acts. That which characterizes the Divine aspect is absolute freedom (itlaq) and absence of limits; the limits and bounds are from the side of the crea­ture. This matter needs an elaborate treatment and I request the reader to refer to the fifth volume of Usul‑e falsafeh wa rawish‑e riyalism.

Notes:

[1]. See Usul‑e falsafeh wa rawish‑a riyalism, iii, 220.

Source: The Qur'an and the Nature of Life

by Murtada Mutahhari