Nature Or The Creator

“If a being possesses unity, it can naturally proceed only from a single source and a single hand.”

Especially when a being displays extraordinary order, delicate balance, and a comprehensive life, it clearly demonstrates that it did not emerge from numerous hands—which are a source of confusion and disorder—but from the hand of One Who is All-Powerful and All-Wise.

To attribute such an orderly, balanced, and harmonious being to the intertwined hands of countless lifeless, ignorant, unconscious, chaotic, blind, and deaf natural causes—while their blindness and deafness only increase through their coming together and mixing among endless possibilities—is as far removed from sound reason as accepting a hundred impossibilities at once.

Even if we set this impossibility aside and assume that material causes exert influence, such influence can only occur through direct contact and touch. Yet the contact of natural causes is limited to the outward aspect of living beings.

However, we observe that the inner dimensions of living beings, which lie beyond the reach and touch of material causes, are far more delicate, orderly, beautiful, and artistically perfect than their outward forms.

The hands and instruments of material causes can never truly enter into these tiny living creatures; they cannot even fully touch their outward structure. Yet these creatures are more extraordinary in artistry and more astonishing in creation than the largest beings.

Therefore, attributing their existence to lifeless, ignorant, coarse, conflicting, deaf, and blind causes can only be the result of a profound deficiency of perception and understanding.

The Second Path

This is the claim that everything forms itself, and therefore comes into existence by itself. This claim, too, contains many impossibilities and is absurd and impossible in many respects. By way of illustration, we shall explain three of these impossibilities.

The First Impossibility

O obstinate denier! Your egoism has made you so foolish that, in a sense, you are prepared to accept a hundred impossibilities all at once. For you have been brought into existence, and you are not a simple substance, nor are you lifeless or unchanging. You resemble an extraordinarily well-ordered machine that is constantly being renewed, and a magnificent palace that is continually changing.

Atoms are constantly carrying out specific activities in your body. Your body has connections and mutual relations with the universe, especially with regard to nourishment and the continuation of life. The atoms working in your body take care that this connection is not severed and that this relationship is not disturbed, and they proceed with great care. It is as though they behold the entire universe, perceive your bonds with it, and take their positions accordingly. According to the extraordinary positions of those atoms, you benefit through your material and immaterial senses.