RAMADAN 2007 The 21st Day

But the Messenger and those who believed along with him have struggled with their wealth and with themselves. They are the people who will have the good things. They are the ones who are successful. (Surat at-Tawba: 88)

	The example of a believer is that of a fresh tender plant. From whatever direction the wind comes, it bends it. But when the wind becomes quiet, it becomes straight again. Similarly, a believer is afflicted with calamities (but remains patient until Allah removes the difficulty). (Bukhari)

EXPECTING REWARD ONLY FROM ALLAH

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HARUN YAHYA

Anyone desiring to acquire sincerity should be aware of the following fact: He should expect reward for his worldly deeds only from Allah. Any deed done by expecting any recompense other than Allah's consent, compassion and heavenly reward, will diminish his sincerity. A good deed performed to gain material and societal advantages rather than a reward from Allah will bring only loss instead of gain. Even if one had served Allah for years with this mindset, he could never hope to acquire true sincerity until and unless he strove only to gain His consent. However, any religious deed performed without contaminating one's intentions with anything other than Allah's pleasure will certainly result in a great heavenly reward.

In the following verse, Allah announces that believers who do good will be given a great reward:

This Qur'an guides to the most upright Way and gives good news to the believers who do right actions that they will have a large reward. (Surat al-Isra': 9)

Allah informs us in another verse that doing good will be rewarded doubly.

But those of you who are obedient to Allah and His Messenger and act rightly will be given their reward twice over; and We have prepared generous provision for them. (Surat al-Ahzab: 31)

In his works, the renown Turkish scholar Bedüizzaman Said Nursi claims that humankind could only be successful through sincerity, and that people could only acquire sincerity by considering Allah's consent:

"… That is to say, the only means of salvation and deliverance is sincerity. It is of the greatest importance to gain sincerity. The tiniest act performed with sincerity is preferable to tons of those performed without sincerity. A person should think that what gains sincerity in his actions is doing them purely because they are a Divine command and that their result is Divine pleasure..." 1

Anybody wishing to acquire sincerity should clearly grasp this fact. Thus, his efforts will become pious and he would then be able to hope to attain Allah's consent, compassion and heavenly rewards.

However, Satan continually attempts to lead men astray from the straight path and direct them towards seeking benefits other than Allah's consent. Excuses such as, "I am already working to gain Allah's consent, what harm will it do to me if I hope some small personal benefit as well?" "I will gain both Allah's consent and the community's respect," "I will do a good deed, but they will owe me one in return," or "I would make a self-sacrifice, but I hope that everything will be repayed to me" etc., results out of the Satan's efforts. Each one of these thoughts that compel one to seek rewards other than Allah's consent prevents him from acquiring sincerity and of performing pious deeds.

Indeed, all recompenses other than Allah's consent hoped for by mankind belong to this world and represent the preference of this world to the hereafter. Such persons, who enjoy these worldly benefits may be deprived of them in the hereafter. Whereas, a person who performs pious deeds by aiming at acquiring only Allah's consent, and who keeps his intentions untainted will be granted by Allah blessings both in this world and the hereafter. Allah gives the following good news to believers:

Anyone who acts rightly, male or female, being a believer, We will give them a good life and We will recompense them according to the best of what they did. (Surat an-Nahl: 97)

In the Qur'an, there are many examples highlighting the supreme morality of the prophets in this regard. In the verses of the Qur'an, it is told that the prophets informed their communities that "they did not demand any reward other than Allah's consent for their service":

[Hud said:] My people! I do not ask you for any wage for it. My wage is the responsibility of Him who brought me into being. So will you not use your intellect? (Surah Hud: 51)

[Nuh said:] My people! I do not ask you for any wealth for it. My wage is the responsibility of Allah alone. I will not chase away those who believe. They are surely going to meet their Lord. However, I see you as ignorant people. (Surah Hud: 29)

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi also reminded that one could only hope to acquire sincerity by wanting to imitate the superior morality of the prophets:

"… Many may be candidates for the same position; many hands may stretch out for each moral and material reward that is offered. Hence it is that conflict and rivalry arise; concord is changed into discord, and agreement into dispute. Now the cure and remedy for this appalling disease is sincerity. Sincerity may be attained by preferring the worship of Allah to the worship of one's own soul, by causing Allah's pleasure to vanquish the pleasure of the soul and the ego, and thus manifesting the meaning of the verse: 'Verily my reward is from Allah alone' (Surah Hud: 29) by renouncing the material and moral reward to be had from men and thus manifesting the meaning of the verse: 'Naught is incumbent on the Messenger but conveying the message' (Surat al-Ma'ida: 99); and by knowing that such matters as goodly acceptance, and making a favorable impression, and gaining the attention of men are Allah's concern and a favor from Him, and that they play no part in conveying the message, which is one's own duty, nor are they necessary for it, nor is one charged with gaining them-by knowing this a person will be successful in gaining sincerity, otherwise it will vanish." 2

1) Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, The Risale-i Nur Collection, The Flashes Collection, The Seventeenth Flash
2) Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, The Risale-i Nur Collection, The Flashes Collection, The Twentieth Flash

BIRDS THAT DEACTIVATE POISON: MACAWS

HARUN YAHYA

When a person is infected with poison, his only recourse is to take a drug to counter the effects of the poison or to remove the poison from his body through medical intervention. Otherwise, a person who lacks specialized knowledge about poisons will be unable to cure himself through using a plant or some other kind of counteractive substance.

Yet, some creatures innately have this knowledge that most people must learn through education. Certain animals, which do not possess minds to be educated, any intelligence and, in short, any consciousness at all, can cure themselves very easily. The striking feature about the methods animals use to cure themselves is that they know what to do very well and have determined what is good for each particular illness. Is it really the animals themselves who have determined these things? How have animals come to possess such knowledge? Evolutionists claim that most animal behavior such as this is instinctive. However, they cannot explain the origin of these behaviors or how they originally came to exist.

First of all, it is not possible for creatures to learn these behaviors over time. An animal that is poisoned, for example, will die right away. In this case, it is not possible for it to imagine how it might remove the factor that caused it to be poisoned. Besides, we should by no means forget that animals lack the consciousness capable of thinking up such a solution.

Let us see, by giving an example, how animals display conscious behavior while curing themselves. Macaws, which are a kind of parrot, are found in the tropical regions of Central and South America. One of the most striking feature of these creatures, besides their truly dazzling colors, is that they feed on poisonous seeds. These birds, who can break even very tough shells with their hooked beaks, are experts on the subject of poisonous seeds. This is a somewhat surprising situation because, when the bird eats a poisonous seed, normally it should suffer harm. Yet, amazingly, this does not happen. Immediately after the bird eats the poisonous seeds, it flies directly towards a rocky place and begins to gnaw and swallow the clayey rock pieces there. The reason for this behavior is that the clayey rock pieces absorb the toxins in the seeds, and so neutralize the effects of the poison. In this way, the birds can digest the seeds without experiencing any harm.

It is certainly impossible for macaws to know on their own how to neutralize or counteract the poison found in the seeds they eat. It is evident that such conscious behaviors in creatures do not originate from themselves, and that their origin cannot be sought in some other force or factor that exists in nature either. An invisible power controls the behavior of all creatures and, in other words, inspires them with what to do. This matchless power belongs to Allah. Allah, Who is the owner of a superior knowledge, is the Preserver of all things.

You can also watch the movie >> The Miracle in Birds
You can also read the book >> The Design in Nature

THE MYTH OF "HUMAN EMBRYO GILLS"

HARUN YAHYA

The thesis that living things go through various stages in their mothers' wombs that can be seen as evidence for evolution has a special position amongst the unfounded claims of the theory of evolution. That is because the thesis, known as "recapitulation" in evolutionist literature, is more than a scientific deception: It is a scientific forgery.

Ernst Haeckel, one of the foremost charlatans in the history of science.

The term "recapitulation" is a condensation of the dictum "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," put forward by the evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel at the end of the nineteenth century. This theory of Haeckel's postulates that living embryos re-experience the evolutionary process that their pseudo-ancestors underwent. He theorised that during its development in its mother's womb, the human embryo first displays the characteristics of a fish, then those of a reptile, and finally those of a human. The claim that the embryo possesses "gills" while it develops stems from this thesis.

However, this is utter superstition. Scientific developments in the years since recapitulation was first broached have enabled studies to be made of just how valid it is. These studies have shown that the recapitulation doctrine has no other basis than evolutionists' imaginations and deliberate distortions.

It is now known that the "gills" that supposedly appear in the early stages of the human embryo are in fact the initial phases of the middle-ear canal, parathyroid, and thymus. That part of the embryo that was likened to the "egg yolk pouch" turns out to be a pouch that produces blood for the infant. The part that was identified as a "tail" by Haeckel and his followers is in fact the backbone, which resembles a tail only because it takes shape before the legs do.

These are universally acknowledged facts in the scientific world, and are accepted even by evolutionists themselves. George Gaylord Simpson, one of the founders of neo-Darwinism, writes:

Haeckel misstated the evolutionary principle involved. It is now firmly established that ontogeny does not repeat phylogeny. 1

The following was written in an article in New Scientist dated October 16, 1999:

[Haeckel] called this the biogenetic law, and the idea became popularly known as recapitulation. In fact Haeckel's strict law was soon shown to be incorrect. For instance, the early human embryo never has functioning gills like a fish, and never passes through stages that look like an adult reptile or monkey. 2

In an article published in American Scientist, we read:

Surely the biogenetic law is as dead as a doornail. It was finally exorcised from biology textbooks in the fifties. As a topic of serious theoretical inquiry it was extinct in the twenties…3

As we have seen, developments since it was first put forward have shown that recapitulation has no scientific basis at all. However, those same advances would show that it was not just a scientific deception, but that it stemmed from a complete "forgery."

Ernst Haeckel, who first put the recapitulation thesis forward, published a number of drawings to back up his theory. Haeckel produced falsified drawings to make fish and human embryos resemble each other! When he was caught out, the only defense he offered was that other evolutionists had committed similar offences:

After this compromising confession of "forgery" I should be obliged to consider myself condemned and annihilated if I had not the consolation of seeing side by side with me in the prisoner's dock hundreds of fellow-culprits, among them many of the most trusted observers and most esteemed biologists. The great majority of all the diagrams in the best biological textbooks, treatises and journals would incur in the same degree the charge of "forgery," for all of them are inexact, and are more or less doctored, schematised and constructed. 4

In the September 5, 1997, edition of the well-known scientific journal Science, an article was published revealing that Haeckel's embryo drawings were the product of a deception. The article, called "Haeckel's Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered," had this to say:

The impression they [Haeckel's drawings] give, that the embryos are exactly alike, is wrong, says Michael Richardson, an embryologist at St. George's Hospital Medical School in London… So he and his colleagues did their own comparative study, reexamining and photographing embryos roughly matched by species and age with those Haeckel drew. Lo and behold, the embryos "often looked surprisingly different," Richardson reports in the August issue of Anatomy and Embryology. 5

Later in this same article, the following information was revealed:

Not only did Haeckel add or omit features, Richardson and his colleagues report, but he also fudged the scale to exaggerate similarities among species, even when there were 10-fold differences in size. Haeckel further blurred differences by neglecting to name the species in most cases, as if one representative was accurate for an entire group of animals. In reality, Richardson and his colleagues note, even closely related embryos such as those of fish vary quite a bit in their appearance and developmental pathway. "It [Haeckel's drawings] looks like it's turning out to be one of the most famous fakes in biology," Richardson concludes. 6

It is noteworthy that, although Haeckel's falsification came out in 1901, the subject was still portrayed in many evolutionist publications for nearly a century as if it were a proven scientific law. Those who held evolutionist beliefs inadvertently sent out a most important message by putting their ideology before science: Evolution is not science, it is a dogma that they are trying to keep alive in the face of the scientific facts.

(For further reading, see "The collapse of the theory of evolution in 20 questions" by Harun Yahya)

1. G. G. Simpson, W. Beck, An Introduction to Biology, Harcourt Brace and World, New York, 1965, p. 241
2. Ken McNamara, "Embryos and Evolution," New Scientist, vol. 12416, 16 October 1999
3. Keith S. Thompson, "Ontogeny and Phylogeny Recapitulated," American Scientist, vol. 76, May/June 1988, p. 273
4. Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong, Ticknor and Fields, New York, 1982, p. 204
5. Elizabeth Pennisi, "Haeckel's Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered," Science, 5 September
6. Elizabeth Pennisi, "Haeckel's Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered," Science, 5 September

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