The Third Impossibility

In order to describe this third impossibility, the following two comparisons, which have already been discussed in several treatises of the Risale-i Nur, are included here once again.

The First Comparison

Once, a primitive man entered a palace built in a remote desert, refined with the most advanced inventions and decorated with all the splendour of civilization. He looked around inside the palace and saw thousands of well-ordered and artistically crafted objects. Because of his primitiveness and lack of intelligence, he began to imagine that no one from outside had been involved in it. He imagined that one of the objects inside the palace had made the entire palace, together with everything it contained. So he began to investigate the palace further. Whichever object he turned to, he could find nothing by which he could convince even his own primitive mind that the existence of those objects could be attributed to it.

Later, he found a notebook in which the architectural plan of the palace, the list of its contents, and the governing rules of the palace had been written. Yet he realized that the notebook, like the other objects, possessed no hands, eyes, tools, or skill with which to build and decorate the palace. Nevertheless, because he perceived in that notebook—in comparison with the other objects and on account of the theoretical laws it contained—a relationship with the whole palace, he was forced to say: “It is this notebook that built, ordered, and decorated the palace, and that made all these objects and placed them in their positions.” Thus he turned his primitiveness into ridiculous babbling.

Indeed, just as in the above example, a primitive person with an atheistic naturalist worldview entered this world, which is like a palace—infinitely more orderly and perfect than the palace in the comparison and surrounded by wondrous wisdom. He did not realize that this world, with everything in it, is an artistic creation of Wājibul-WujūdAllah, whose existence is necessary and whose non-existence is impossible., Who can in no way be part of the created realm. He turned away from Him and saw, within the realm of created things, an index of His art and His universal laws, which in reality were placed there by Him and which are wrongly and baselessly called “the laws of nature.” This “nature,” or these “laws of nature,” are in reality like a writing board or notebook that continuously undergoes change and transformation, upon which the laws of Allah concerning His acts are displayed according to His decrees.

He then says: “It is absolutely true that created things need a cause for their existence, and nothing appears more closely connected with existence than this notebook. It is also true that no sound mind could in any way accept that this blind, unconscious, powerless notebook could perform an act requiring absolute lordship and absolute power. Yet, since the idea of accepting Sāni-i QadīmAllah, the Pre-Eternal Maker Who creates with perfect artistry. does not appeal to me and I do not acknowledge Him, I will nevertheless continue to say that this notebook creates and has created everything.”

To this we say:

O confused soul! You are mistaken. Your foolishness is unimaginably great. Pull yourself out of the mud of nature and look around you. See Sāni-i Dhu’l-JalālAllah, Who creates with perfect artistry and Whose greatness and majesty are boundless., to Whom all beings, from the smallest atoms to the greatest planets, testify in different languages. Behold the existence of Naqqāsh-i AzalīAllah, the Pre-Eternal Artist, who adorns and beautifies all things with perfect artistry., Who created this universe like a palace and recorded its process of construction in the notebook. Study His decree, the Qur’an. Free yourself from meaningless foolishness.