Fourth Proof

The fourth proof we find in the Holy Qur’an for the existence of God is as follows:

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That is, God has given to the prophets the knowledge that everything has its ultimate end with Him. All happiness and grief emanates from Him and life and death rests in His hands. It is He Who created both men and women from the emission of a droplet.

In these verses, Allah the Exalted focuses the attention of people to the fact that every action has an agent behind it. It is for certain that whenever an act occurs, there is perforce a performer of that act. Thus if people ponder over the workings of the universe, it will bring them to the conclusion that all things are ultimately caused by God Who is the ultimate or first cause of everything and by Whose command everything occurs. Therefore, God reminds people of their initial state and says they have been created from something [as insignificant as] a sperm drop and the further back they trace their beginnings the more insignificant they become, therefore, they could not have been their own creators. There can be no creation without a creator and human beings are not the agents of their own existence as is evident from the journey of their progress from a state of weakness to a [state of strength]; therefore, when human beings are not agents of their own creation in their current state, how could they be so in their state of weakness? It has to be accepted from this that they originated from an independent creator whose strength is absolute and whose powers are infinite.

Thus when one ponders over the causes of the gradual development of human beings, the means of this advancement become more and more imperceptible, until a point where all worldly forms of knowledge offer no further explanation or insight into the processes of [these remote stages of human existence]. It is here that the hand of God is at work and all scientists eventually have to concede that everything has a point of culmination and the ultimate end is with a being which cannot be comprehended by the human intellect and that end is God. This is a simple argument which can be understood even by the most ill-educated of people.

It is said someone once asked a Bedouin what proof he had for the existence of God. The Bedouin replied that if he were to see camel dung in a forest, he would be able to tell by looking at it that a camel had passed that way. Therefore, by observing the glorious creation of the universe, why would he not be able to recognise that there was an ultimate creator. What a true and natural response. If human beings ponder over the origins of creation, it perforce leads them to the acceptance of a being who is the ultimate creator of all things.